First grow - CFL Bubble DWC scrog from seeds (PICS)

Hello there, thanks for checking out my grow journal!

This is my first post but I have been lurking here for some time. I am growing from seeds that I bought from a friend, but eventually I am only going to keep 1 or 2 plants for DWC bubble bucket ScrOG growth. I am lighting with compact fluorescent bulbs. The seeds were produced by a friend from an AK47 plant and a Purple Kush plant, so they are a mix. I have 12 seeds in all but I am going to germinate them in 3 stages to see what works best, or if I screw up.

Planted 7 July I have four seeds in four 1" rockwool cubes sitting on a chopped, upturned strawberry basket in a tupperware-type container that has a little bit of solution in the bottom that I occasionally (once or twice a day) will drip on the rockwool with a little syringe. The solution is 1 gal distilled water with 30% recommended Pure Blend Pro Grow formula and 30% recommended Cal-Mag formula, then pH corrected (it was "4.0 or below") with more distilled water, further diluting the nutes. One of the seeds has sprouted just this morning and by the end of the night both of its first cotyledons were facing the (now uncovered) 2x 23w 6500k CFL bulbs hanging a couple of inches overhead. Prior to the sprout popping up I had only one lamp on and a piece of white-black plastic shaded the container.

I have left the lid on even with the sprout but I turned a 4" fan on and aimed it at the two lamps. Really the lid is cracked open in one corner for the wire for the digital thermometer. Temps stay in the 83-88F range, never past 90.1F. Condensation stays on the lid and sides.

My plan is to grow a half dozen plants or so until they are of sexing age and then keep one or two females for the buckets. I'm not sure yet how I am going to grow the plants until that age. Suggestions? I know I'm doing this the worst way, by the seat of my pants, but I really enjoy it nonetheless. Pictures to come, I just finished taping up most of the grow closet with 6 mil plastic and foil tape, I have completed a bubble bucket but I still need to find a dual-outlet air pump cheap in the city and eventually build a screen and work out a DIY carbon filter. More bulbs are going to be necessary very soon as well as a few more DIY lamps I have been wiring up for a couple bucks a pop.

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^~5 weeks old
updated 30 August, ~ 11:30pm

 

Sprout number two is up and the cotyledons have started to unfold upward bout 70%. Sprout #1 looks a darker green color than yesterday but not much change otherwise. I noticed before I went to sleep that one of its roots is already sticking out the bottom of the 1" cube, so I'm going to go to the store and get some 3" grodan cubes today.

Also, some cellphone pictures! Better pics coming soon, these are from last night, just the one sprout:

 

Bought 3" grodan delta cubes that I am soaking in solution (distilled water/30% PBP grow/30% Cal-Mag, pH corrected to ~5.5). Grodan instructions say to soak 30 min., everywhere else I read says 24 hrs. Any reason I shouldn't drop the little guys in after an hour or so of soaking? Let me know or that's what I'm going to do.

Also I have read that folks who use larger rockwool cubes with DWC setups can have root rot issues so I bought some Cannazym. I paid $12 CAN no tax because the best before date reads 10-07-2009 and the guy at the store wasn't sure if it had expired or if it will in October. Either way he said to keep it in a dark place and it should keep for about 6 more months, with a drop-off in potency near the end. Anybody can refute this? Also will it interact with the little bit of peroxide I have been using to clean out my buckets and things? If so/not, when should I start using it? Right away?

 

More pictures, before and after first two sprouts were "transplanted" into larger 3" grodan cubes:


^This morning (afternoon), second sprout showing.


^After the upgrade. Light bulb is closer than it appears to be in this image.


^Remaining two seeds in 1" rockwool back under the lid, ~90F.

Obviously I am going to need way more than just two 23w daylight spectrum bulbs, so my mission tomorrow is BULBS. Either I will finally find a local source of 42w CFLs or I will load up on cheap 23s that are available nearby. I have plenty of soft white CFLs for flowering because my whole house is lit with them, but I need daylight spectrum (6500k) for better vegetative growth. Right?


^This should give you sort of an idea what's going on in this half of the closet. The other side (where I am standing) is also taped up with plastic and "sealed", but I still need to cover the ceiling and part of the wall above the shelf from which that fan at the top is hanging with plastic. Behind me is this:


^The completed bubble bucket! Ready and waiting for a female plant. I still need an air pump, but I routed hose and placed the two 6" strip airstones in the bottom. I just noticed the valve is still open. I'll have to remember to close that before I fill it up!

That's it for now.

 

I decided not to wait until I had more daylight bulbs and so I threw in three 23w "soft white" CFLs I was using around the house. I moved the two daylight bulbs directly 2-3" over my sprouts and put one soft white bulb directly 2" over the seed container to maintain ~90F, and then I put two more soft white bulbs over my sprouts slightly above and in between the daylight bulbs' reflectors with a fixture I wired up and a y-connector that splits it into two sockets. Total wattage right now in the chamber is 5x23w or 115w, but some of those bulbs are pretty old CFLs from ~4 years ago so they might not be full power. The daylight bulbs are fresh, though.

 

I bought more daylight 6500k CFL bulbs today, two 26w and three 42w. That brings the total daylight bulb wattage to 224 (2x23w, 2x26w, 3x42w). Right now, I have removed the soft white bulbs and the 23w daylight bulbs over the sprouts and replaced them with two 42w bulbs, and I replaced the soft white bulb over the "propagator" with a daylight 23w. The propagator stays at a steady ~90F, never above 90.7, and the sprouts hold at ~80-81F with a 4" fan on them and the 42w bulbs inches overhead.

I also bought an air pump and check valves and finished completely the bubble bucket. My dual 6" strip airstones churn the water like a jacuzzi.

My two sprouts look about the same today as yesterday. They might have grown a bit, but not significantly. I did notice today that the younger one is not the same yellow green as the first sprout, but more of a forest green. It will be interesting to watch.

 

I fashioned and wired a rack from which to affix the lamps and hung it in the grow space. All of the bulbs are in sockets, but only the three 42s are screwed in tight enough to light. With the rack all the bulbs are level to the ground, perfect for scrog. 126w lit, plus one 23w soft white for heat over the propagator.

Sprout #1 is a bright happy yellow-green and sprout #2 is a darker forest green. They both look like they haven't changed much since yesterday, although #1 might have grown and generally seems very visibly healthy. Sprout #2 is more limp and not so large.

I found out today that the strain of the seeds is a mix of AK-47 and Purple Kush, according to my friend, who produced them from two plants of either variety that he is growing. He was very excited to discover the other day that he has a female from the same batch of seeds, his first female grown from seed he made himself. He said that the varying color and characteristics of my two sprouts is probably the result of them being from two different strains.

I might need to get a bigger fan, as the single 4" fan isn't enough to keep temps below 82 with all three 42w bulbs lit. In order to keep things cool I had to lift the rack higher than the bulbs were before. Now things stay consistently in the <84-85F range. Still too hot? When I put my hand at level with the sprouts it does not become uncomfortably warm, even after awhile.

Pics of the light rack tomorrow!

 

Pictures! Still cell pics, sorry.


^The sprouts. You can see the color difference here. Those black things are the digital thermometer probes, which stay within ~.5F of each other.


^Obviously the cell phone can't focus this close but this shows you the color difference as well.


^New light rack, fashioned from the base of a tabletop easel I got as a Christmas gift when I was 14, and hung from the closet hanging-rod with plastic chain and zipties. Screwed into it are 7 ceramic sockets wired in parallel to one power cord. One of the sockets uses a Y-type adapter so it can hold two bulbs. I got my hands on about four of these things and only ended up using one, of course. Maybe in flowering I'll go nuts and have bulbs hanging all over the place.


^Horrible pic but it shows the ziptie chain-shortening "device" I am trying out with the light rack. Really I was just bored and had to incrementally lift the rack in order to get temps under control so I made this with all the extra zipties I seem to have.

 

I noticed that temps were starting to creep into the 86-88F range over the sprouts so I went and got another fan to supplement the 4" metal job I already had in there. This one is a 6" plastic Lasko clip-on fan that is quieter than the first and pushes way more air. To get more work out of both of the fans I removed their front safety cages. Now I just can't forget and stick my fingers in there. I'll monitor temps to see how they do.

Since I moved my sprouts into 3" cubes I have just been squirting each of their cubes once or twice a day with a 10mL syringe of solution. Is this enough? They have both slowed visible growth but that doesn't mean those roots aren't taking off, I guess. I just don't know what I am going to do with them once they grow out of the grodan cubes but aren't old enough to sex. I don't want to have to untangle roots from my bubble bucket net pot when I find out the plant I stuck in there is male.

 

Couldn't quite get temps down, so I unscrewed one of the three 42w bulbs and rotated the rack to better orient the remaining two bulbs over each sprout. Then I noticed that all of the noise in the room was coming from the small 4" metal-blade fan so I pulled it out of the space. Now I'll have to get another 6" clip fan for $11, or a 12" Honeywell fan I saw for $21 to try and bring temps lower than 84-87F with the bulbs 4-6" away from the sprouts.

 

Temps are back down to 81-82F, but I got a second fan anyway, just in case.

Both of my sprouts seem to be stuck in neutral, one of the MAY have grown a bit larger, but the other one definitely hasn't changed one iota since yesterday. What gives? Am I being ridiculous and impatient or do I have slow plants? There's 42+26w spread 6" above the sprouts. Is that not enough light?

 

Still no sprouts from the other two rockwool cubes, but my seed-provider friend said he once had to wait 14 days (!) for a sprout, but he agreed that was pretty ridiculous. Anyway, I'm going to keep them around just in case but last night I started germinating four more seeds in toilet paper in between two teacup saucers. We'll see if this gives a >50% success rate. This morning I realized that I used tap water last night for the germinating, but the paper was dry today so when I re-wet it I used distilled. Also, I've been watering the grodan with just distilled since yesterday to see if that helps growth. My 30% solution might have been a bit too soon.

 

Thanks Legasaurs, and welcome (?) to the City!

 

Thanks Felix. CFLs seem like a pretty good option to me too, definitely the cheapest for a first-time grower skittish about spending hundreds on a MH/HPS setup. At least with CFLs I can use the bulbs for other things when I am done with them.

 

Well, this afternoon I woke to find that sprout #1 had shriveled up dead. It had not really grown for a while and had become increasingly yellow, now it is nothing. Sprout #2 had had literally no change for 3-4 days, save for the very yellow speck of a new set of leaves perhaps coming from the very center. The leaves on this sprout have been curled under since it showed up and I'm not sure how to fix that.

I placed one of the popped seeds with a 2cm radicle into wet rockwool, but I didn't soak the rockwool for more than 30 seconds before I dropped that sucker in. We'll see what happens.

Yesterday I bought Jorge Cervantes' bible and read almost all of it. Based on things I read in the book I hoisted up the CFLs to ~10-12" to help with heat (and because the book said I could during seedling phase). Temps are still in the lower 80s, and humidity is 65%. I cut a little vent in the upper corner of my space to let some dry air in from the other half of this room-length closet. I wonder if I build a carbon filter with inline fan will venting into this part of the closet allow for enough airflow? There is kind of a large gap around the folding doors that seems like it would let plenty of air through.

@S-V-K Thanks! So far I have left everything on 24 hrs.
@piff toker Thanks, so far it seems more mistakes than success but that's how it goes, I guess. I'm not giving up, because learning is fun. You might be right about long term cost of HID vs. CFL. Mostly I chose CFLs because I already had a ton of soft white bulbs I could use for flowering and the cost of buying daylight bulbs for veg was cheaper for me than getting a HID setup. Plus I wouldn't have to think too much about heat. (Or so I thought!)