First Grow - Bagseed Hydro PC grow

Okay so I decided to start a grow journal. Will be growing in a pc case ordered from mrgrowpro.com. I tend to write alot so be prepared for that, I try to atleast break things into paragraphs but wall-o-texts may be found in this thread, you've been warned! Wanted to get some seeds from attitude but wasn't able to, so theres a possibility that i'll end up rushing through with a quick veg then go into flower. More concerned with gaining the knowledge of going from seedling to harvest and less concerned with the actual yield at this point.

I'm about a week into the grow, been taking pics since the start though so will start from the beginning so i'll try to update yall on how i got to where i'm at currently. I call the start day -1(or day 0) and you'll see why. Had been out of weed the days before I ordered my box, ended up having a friend germ some seeds for me but then wasn't able to pick them up until two or three days after the first one pop'd so by the time i got to it, the taproot was about an inch or two long and I couldn't even bury it all the way, so I stuck part of it under ground and kinda put the rest of it in a circular position around the top of the jiffy peat, pop'd one other potentially good looking seed in a peat pellet and tossed a couple of the seeds that hadn't pop'd into a few other random peat pellets just incase.

At this point I had ordered my box online and got anxious(as i've seen several other people do also... us newb growers... always wanting to rush into things) so grabbed a peat pellet tray, small lamp, and set of 2 13w 6500k cfl bulbs from wal-mart

pic 1 is about an hour or two after i planted the seedlings, the cotyledon were completely white(from memory) at first but within the short time(seemingly short for me) it had already started turning green and then by pic 2-4 towards the end of the first day(about 30 min before i turned the lights off) the rest of the stem had mostly turned green and 2nd seedling had sprouted out of the peat pellet but still had its little seedling shell strapped to its head like a helmet

end of day 0

 

Day 1 - I think I had left the dome off the jiffy peat trey cause I thought the seedlings were growing fine and wouldn't need it. When i came back to check the tallest seedling had fallen over on its side(I may have been over watering, i was keeping the jiffy peat pellets pretty moist at first) and seemed weak, which I attributed to half of what would have been its roots being above dirt, so I dug slightly more room and stuffed it further down to make the seedling stand straight up. No major change with seedling 2. And i forgot to mention the day before i had messed with a couple of the peat pellets since none of the other planted seeds had sprouted. Dug a little bit but wasn't able to find any of the seeds I had planted in the other pellets.

But luckily a 3rd seedling sprouted, it looked like it grew through the broken up soil I had disrupted when looking for the seed.

Decided I should keep the dome on at this point

End Day 1

 

Posting updates of day by day progress at first because I know when I was starting and i'd look at grow journals people would go from first day or two, to a week or two later in a lot of cases(understandable because there aint much to see) but I didnt really have much to compare my daily growth to, and the first set of real leaves was growing real slow and looked a little deformed.

With that said day 2(i think these pics were taken towards the end of the day) the runt/late bloomer had caught up and passed my former #1, and i'd helped the seed shell off of #2

The leaves looked a little weird to me, some of them were kinda pointing up at weird angles, dont know if they were stretching for the light or what. Was still only using one small lamp and and a 13w cfl at this point, but the reflector on the lamp atleast helped concentrate the light onto a rather small point, i pretty much had the lamp against the top of the jiffy peat dome.

End Day 2

 

Yea definitely seemed like they were stretching at this point in their lives, had wanted to find a higher wattage bulb since i was gonna be starting with a single bulb but wal-mart and home depot didn't seem to have any about 13 watts in the 6500k range

thanks for the comments and sub, will continue updating, am currently at about a week so got a little more catching up to do still, hopefully this ends up being successful!

Money is/was also very limited so little things i would have liked to do like get a 2nd lamp was out of my price range(even if it would have only been another $10)

 

So my former runt is now my star seedling, other two not showing the best of growth but are hanging in there. At the end of day 3 I stopped using the humidity dome because the tallest seedling was getting close to the top and didn't want it to slow down the growth. By the end of day 4 when these pics were taken I couldn't put the dome back on without pushing down on the seedling so no more dome for the seedlings. The lighter in the pic is one of the smaller versions, I think they go for like 80 cent to a dollar at the gas stations(just for reference so you know its not a full sized lighter)

Also first set of leaves are starting to develop, the original two seedlings also have their leaves forming but they seem to be staying small and not really showing much. If i had to guess i'd say putting them into the peat pellets so long after they pop'd caused them to have underdeveloped roots? That combined with the fact that I think i was keeping the soil way more moist than i should have the first day or two. I'd say weak roots plus too much water = bad growth but i guess thats obvious lol

pic 5 is of the first seedling planted, the one that had looked promising, not looking so great

and my star is definitely still stretching at this point

End Day 4

 

So day 6, box arrives from mrgrowpro, i'd also picked up some dyna gro bloom nutes and some rockwool cubes since i'd finally found a local hydro store(though its a very mom and pop type operation, looks to be ran out of a dudes house/basement) I'd also ordered the milwaukee ph600 ph tester, but didn't realize it had to be stored in liquid, preferably calibration and/or buffer solution. It said not to store it in RO or distilled water(i'd also picked up some distilled water from the store before i realized that distilled water presents the problem of having NO nurtients in it which may have been another part of the problem as i'd switched over to watering my seedlings for a day or two before i realized this) so i stored it in tap water. I tried to check the ph of a few different things after setting up the grow box but within a day or two of receiving the ph600(i got it before i got the box just had no real use for it) the calibration was wayyyyyyyyyyyyyy off and the lowest it would show for anything was a ph of around 12-13 and my tap water would read around 16-17 and the meter is only supposed to go between 1-14, it was also supposedly precalibrated before it came, came with a slip in the packaging stating that also, but it has been absolutely useless.

I'd also ordered a ph up/down kit from general hydroponics and a tds meter from hanna instruments but they hadn't arrived yet so i couldn't reliably ph my rockwool but since my hydro system was here i wanted to definitely get some of the seedlings into rockwoll, especially since i'd heard its easy for the roots to grow through and was thinking it'd possibly help speed up the growth(after the recovered from the shock of the transplant)

By now my star seedling was showing pretty good progress for its conditions so i didn't wanna risk messing with it especially since i couldn't control ph so i grabbed one of the other seedlings, popped open the jiffy pellet and tried to get most of the dirt off around the roots, then dipped it into a cup with some water gently trying to get most of the dirt off the roots trying not to be too rough with it. Then I grabbed the peat pellet that had my star seedling in it and noticed the roots had actually started to grow out of the edges/bottom, just barely but enough to cause me some excitement so i just pop'd it into one of the net pots, threw some hydroton on top(side note: didnt realize how small the net pots that came with the pc case were, i was barely able to put any hydro ton on top of the jiffy peat pellet and couldn't put any on the netpot that had the rockwool cube cause to get a decent layer of hydroton it felt like it'd be crushing the seedling) and pop'd it into the pc case

note on the mr grow pro pc case: its shipped with fed-ex home delivery which from what i've read on forums online isn't an actual part of fed-ex its like a sub contracted company or something, which has caused lots of people shipping issues(though i'd assume they've been fairly decent since mrgrowpro is still using them) the shipping info said it left the facility around 8 in the morning and at 7 pm that night i hadn't received it, it finally showed up around 8, and i had no clue they delivered that late, dont know if it being late on the guys shift had to do with how it was handled though because once i got the box inside and started opening it i found out two of the bulbs had broken in the packaging

he pretty much stuffed everything inside the pc case so there was a little bit of room for it to bounce around if handled roughly, all 4 of the 2700k bulbs were okay but the two broken were 6500k which is gonna affect my veg growth, luckily i had an extra 6500k from when i'd initally bought bulbs and was able to pop that in, but the bulbs he sent are like 25 or 27w compared to my 13w, i think they have output of like 1500 compared to mine which was like 900, so i'm a little down on light(haven't had a chance to email him yet to see what he says) the box is bigger than i expected, which is good for growing but it definitely doesn't look like your average computer case, i've been planning on telling people its a server instead of a pc(i do music and can claim its for storage of files/tracks/etc. if needed) the fans are loud enough that its noticeable if you're in the room, and the timer provided is only the 2 prong style(no ground) yet the surge protector provided is 3 prong(with ground) so they dont even work together unless i'm missing something... it also has two small light leaks where the side case comes off in the top corner towards the front and top corner towards the back... not major but if the room is completely dark you can definitely see the light coming out from it but there small enough that you could probably put a strip of tape over it to cover them up

first pics were taken at the beginning of day 6, last pic was at the end right before lights off

 

Day 7... almost caught up to where i'm actually at right now, my ppm meter and ph test kit with ph up/down had arrived, its hard to tell exactly what the ph is based on the colors so i only have a idea of what the ph is, nothing exact, wasn't sure about how high the water should be either so i just put it up to about 20% of the netpot was sitting in the water hoping that it'd grow and not drown

star seedling doing good, roots starting to grow out of net pot, the two small blurry lines coming down from the netpot in the first pic are roots just couldn't get them in focus with my cell phone with all the light from the pc case 2nd pic is a little bit clearer, the seedling in the rockwool cube hasn't show much of any improvements

the 3rd of the initial seedlings had been sitting in a rockwool cube(i had initially transplanted both of the two smaller ones and only used the better of the two, left the 2nd one just sitting out to die) but then i just tossed it in the middle of the res to see if it could be revived, just to kinda get an idea of how far gone i could let a seedling go and bring i back so dont mind it in the pic, wasn't actually expecting it to grow like that(and it definitely didnt lol)

i'd also started using a very small amount of of dyna grow in the mix now(i know too soon, but was doing whatever i could to try to get some faster root growth, and was using distilled water still since i had about a gallon i'd bought) only had it around 100 ppm, seems to be working okay, growth rate has improved now that the roots are starting to hit the water, it also had a few small brownish spots which i think was from a calcium deficiency? but hasn't gotten any worse and new leaves seem okay

end day 7

and last pic is from day 8(monday) so you are now caught up to where i am now

 

currently have 2 more bag seed germ in rockwool cubes that are hopefully the correct ph sitting in the jiffy peat tray/dome i had originally used and have 1 bag seed of dank germ'ing in a paper towel, mainly practicing to see if the 2 bag seed grow in the rockwool cubes before the dank seed pop's to make sure i dont waste it, plan on popping it into the grow in place of the dying seedling

need to line the top of the case with some the extra sheet of reflective material provided by mygrowpro, and add enough hydroton to the 2nd netpot to make sure its not letting light through, will update later this weekend once theres some development

 

thanks for the heads up, i'll look into it, i'd like to try to jump start my next seed that i germinate since it'll be almost two weeks behind the seedling currently in the box

 

so its been 2 weeks, i've moved the former runt out of the box and put in a new seedling, its going into its 3rd or 4th day in the box

i took the old one out because the 2nd and 3rd set of leaves only really formed on one side of the plant, the other side was small and twisted, i tossed it into my jiffy pellet tray and have had it sitting under a single cfl with the humidity dome on it and its leaves(one side) have grown and look much stronger, i was contemplating putting it back in the box but then i noticed purple on the underside of the new seedling thats in the box

i dont know if its a genetic trait or something else... it hasn't been two weeks so i couldn't see it being a deficiency and neither of the other 2 that i had in the same rez have purple on the underside, just want opinions on which plant i should move forward with, lil purp or the formerly banished plant?

i will also update more pics of my main girl in the next post in a couple hours, its roots have grown a ton since last week

 

after 2 weeks my main girl is doing great, first pic is 3 days after i last posted a pic of the roots barely sticking out of the netpot, and next two are from today about a week since the initial pic, roots definitely took off once they hit the water

last pic is of some orange spots(and 1 little bug) that i have on some leaves, they had started on the first set of leaves as the 2nd set of leaves was developing, and by the time the 4th set of leaves were growing it had moved up to the 2nd set

it seems like its spreading much slower than my plant is growing so i figure no worries, they're small orange/brown spots, i think possible cal deficiency?

at this point in the grow i'm planning on going for about 2 more weeks of veg then flipping to 12/12, want to give the little seedling some time to catch up but also want to flower as soon as possible cause i plan to orer some seeds from attitude and don't wanna delay it any longer than i have to... we'll see how this plan pans out

 

Thanks, that's the power of hydro its really jumped since it hit the water and i can't even very accurately check my pH, so its definitely not my greenthumb lol

I recommend everyone try a hydro run atleast once, its easier than some people on here try to make it sound