First Grow Since ‘Nam - Stealth, Ebb & Flow, SCROG, & A Good Time

Discussion in 'Hydroponic Grow Journals' started by PoonDaddy30, Mar 23, 2019.

  1. #1 PoonDaddy30, Mar 23, 2019
    Last edited: Mar 24, 2019
    Hey All!

    I’ve just started my first solo grow. I was actually using an app called My W Days to keep a grow diary of sorts, however, considering Michigan is legal I figured what the hell, maybe someone out there would enjoy the journey.. To clear up the “my first solo grow”, I have completed one grow in the past at least 6 to 7 years ago at this point with a couple buddies of mine. Beyond that experience I’m as green as they come, granted I’ll say I was the researcher/planner of the group so I accumulated a decent amount of knowledge along the path.

    At this point I’m about a week into my grow, however, as I had mentioned I was keeping a journal of sorts so I do have a few pictures & some verbiage from the journey thus far. I should also note I have created my grow as a stealth grow of sorts, however, my wife is 100% on board. I maintain a fairly straight lace job and don’t broadcast my recreational activities. I wanted people to be able to come to the house and have no idea whatsoever there was a grow going on – even if walking around the basement. Enjoy!

    First off - My Room. I needed a veg and bloom chamber as going forward I plan on keeping mother plants of the strains I grow to adore. My experience in the past was an ebb/flow table and thus I fell back to what I was comfortable with. For my veg chamber this will be my first experience with LED lighting. I'll be using the General Hydroponics Flora Series. Bloom light is a 1000w.
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    Here in the next few weeks I'll be building an enclosure for my 6" inline. Directly above the fan is our guest bathroom and while you only hear it if you truly listen, the hum bothers me. I want this stealth and am a sucker for little projects.
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    The lid of my reservoir is thick yellow plastic. I don't like the idea of light shining into my rez and thus I cover in a blanket. At some point I'll get pictures to show the inner working.
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    The venting going in/out the side and in/out the top is meant to keep temps down when I have the LED running. There are 2 120mm case fans on each piece of venting. The vent on the side is the inlet and the vent on the top is the outlet. I plan on having a small oscilating fan (currently on table) inside of the tent pushing air down and circulating. The tent is small, however, it just fit by the narrowest of margins (less then an inch of clearance). It's only purpose is to keep mother plants/clones.
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    This picture was taken March 19, 2019. From left to right is Dutch Passion Strawberry Cough, Dinafem Cheese, and Dinafem Blue Widow. The original plan was to grow Strawberry Cough and Sensi Seeds Jack Herer, however, I made a mistake and let the lights go off while I was drunk at a Metallica concert and the cold killed all but one of my seedlings. Ya live and ya learn.. smh... Costly mistake considering the cost of the JH..
    PH 5.9
    PPM 300

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    This picture was taken on March 21, 2019. You'll notice the SC appears to have a mild case of nute burn. The PPM isn't very high in my inexperienced opinion so I'm leaving as is and hoping she bounces back.
    PH 6.0
    PPM 525

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    These three pictures are all from March 22, 2019. 1st is SC, 2nd is Cheese, 3rd is BW.
    PH 6.0
    PPM 525
     
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  2. #2 PoonDaddy30, Mar 23, 2019
    Last edited: Mar 24, 2019
    Reserved for Edits.
     
  3. Ehh so I was bored and wanted to upload some better quality images of what I had going. Figured I'd upload a little more for shits and gigs. It's Friday and I'm on kid duty (wife is out and about), midaswell tool around while sipping on my beer.
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    A better look of the room from the outside ^
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    I'm considering going SCROG with this grow. The original plan before the untimely death of my compadres was 3x Jack Herer and 3x Strawberry Cough. With 3 plants it'll take a bit more work but why not..
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    My first grow I made the mistake of having the tubes running through the lid of the reservoir which ended up being a complete pain everytime I needed to get into the rez. This time it's all ran outside of the lid. My life has been easy so far. I do have three holes you cannot see drilled through the top where I test my PH/PPM and input nutes/PH adjustment.
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    Nothing special here. Just the inter workings of the rez. Pump and 2 extra large airstones.
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    This I'm a little excited about. My house is actually fitted to have a bathroom in this basement corner. When I setup the water lines I wanted to be able to pump out the rez without having to pipe across the basement to the sump pump and/or utility sink setup. With this setup I simply close the ball valve to the table and open the ball valve to the clear tubing. Stick the clear tubing in the drain hole and magic is had. I do know I could have had a straight tube going to the table that I disconnected and stuck in the drain hole, however, I had bad experiences in the past tinkering with the fittings on the table and a leaks springing up in the silicone seal.
     
  4. I'll watch.
    Uh, one thing....Do you have a drain line in the E&B table that will keep it from over flowing?
     
  5. Hey HardDrive! Happy to have you on board. Yes Sir, if you go up three pictures you’ll see the overflow fitting on the right side of the Rez. Good call, I didn’t go outta my way to point that out. I’ll have some updates tomorrow, just walking in from a family get together. Plants are looking happy.

    Only major change today is I switched the watering cycle to twice daily at 10am/10pm. Running a 24/0 light cycle (first time, had historically used an 18/6).

    PH: 6.0
    PPM: 530


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  6. Hey All!

    The babies slept soundly last night. I went through this morning and updated my original post with better quality images considering it showed the most around my room/setup. Figured I’d throw some updates today how I monitor my room as I’m fairly impressed with the automation of my setup that makes me feel comfortable not checking for days at a time (although I’m checking in multiple times as day regardless).

    I bought temperature/humidity monitors that connect with the wifi of my home so I can monitor temps while at work and/or on mini trips. These things are awesome as they store the info back weeks/months which for someone like me (information porn addict) is awesome. Originally in haste and without fully realizing what I was getting into I bought a Sensorpush device. It pushes the information at you via BlueTooth which is great considering you’re within a few hundred feet of the device. To get a Sensorpush to connect to your wifi you have to drop an addition $100 on their gateway device which honestly pissed me off. Because of this I circled back and ended up buying Govee monitors which come with 2 separate devices that connect directly to your wifi. Thus far I’ve found them to be highly accurate and reliable.
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    In addition to monitoring the room “in the cloud” I also wanted to be able to control aspects of the room from the go as well. With this in mind I bought Tan Tan Wifi Outlets which have proved to be exceptionally awesome. I do have to say I intend on circling back and buying mechanical timers for my water pumps here in the near term as a wifi outage while the pumps are on and missing the trigger to turn off has me freaked. They allow down the the minutes on/off schedules which have proved to be accurate within a 10-15 second window.
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    The plants all appear to be growing happily. The SC being a few days older then the Cheese & BW is slightly ahead of her sisters, however, they’re all continuing to make strides in the right direction. I’m excited for the grow to get a little further along so I can incorporate some training techniques.
    PH is 5.9
    PPM is 545
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    SC^
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    Cheese^
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    BW^
     
  7. Might be a bit high on the PPM's.
    Do a light schedule of 20/4 to let the plants and roots rest.
    A week before you go to 12/12 drop to 18/6
     
  8. Hey HardDrive, you know I had been considering this. I’ve read a few articles & forum posts about the whole 24/0 versus rest cycle. Seems like there are valid points on both sides.

    Considering I was already on the fence and you’ve suggested it, I’ve adjusted the light schedule to go off 3am - 7am. I also adjusted the watering schedule. My basement gets down to around mid 60s with the lights off, I’ll keep an eye on the plants and if I’m worried it’s too much of a temperature swing I may use a small heater during the lights off schedule. With it being mid 60s I doubt there should be too much of an issue though.


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  9. Mmmm wondering if anyone has an idea what’s going on with SC? It had brown spots on the leaves. The other two plants (different strains) aren’t having similar issues..

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  10. Ph, nute burn or watering from the top and getting it on the leaves
     
  11. Roger, must be nute burn then. PH has been maintained between 5.9-6.1. Being a flood table they are fed from the bottom. I’ll get the PPM’s down. They’re sitting around 525-550 right now. Tap water is around 100.


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  12. This is a great read, thank you for taking the time to share. I am in the early stages of an ebb and flo build and really considered the Wifi automation. Glad I came across this as my wifi is known to drop often. I was worried about temps as I do a basement grow in Maine, Ive monitored the temps(test runs with no plants) and decided that my 4 hour lights off would be in the warmest part of the day. Just a possible option for you instead of the AM rest period you spoke of.
     
  13. Hey whats up Bails! I’m happy this journal could be of service. So I did consider doing the same, however, wanted to keep the option of afternoon check-ins for myself. I occasionally work from home (work laptops ftw) and also work within a 5 minute drive of where I live, so having access while I’m awake was the deciding factor for me.

    Last night was the first 4 hour window for the plants and according to my reading only just barely touched 70.0 for about a 15minute timeframe before the lights came back on. With that in mind I think I’m in the clear throughout veg. As I get closer to flower assuming the basement doesn’t heat up more as we come into spring/summer I’ll probably pickup a $30 space heater that works via toggling on/off. I’ll leave the heater toggled on then plug into one of my tan tan outlets. A few days of getting readings and I should be able to work out a good on/off cycle to keep the plants warm while they sleep. There is a potential of humidity getting too low due to a space heater, but only time will tell.


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  14. In case you were interested to see the past weeks readings. My basement will get down to about 60.0 at its coldest. I had been running the lights 24/0 before yesterday. The variations in temp are typically from me coming/going from the room. [​IMG]


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  15. Tap water....Mine kills plants. I must run RO I have no choice.
    If they replaced chlorine with the new Chloramines
    then that may be the problem with the seedlings.
     
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  16. Uggh I’m truly hoping this is not the case for me. I did dig into the water supply. Looks like it comes from Lake Huron and chlorine not chloramines are added. I have been ensuring the water sits for at least twelve hours before using.

    I know the rule of thumb for chlorine is 24 hours, however, that’s not necessarily doable for my reservoir setup. I did read an article that stated if the water is being agitated and aerated it cuts down the window to about 9 hours. The one reservoir clean out I’ve done thus far was right after watering which gave the water 12 hours before being used.

    Last night I diluted my Rez solution and the ppm is right at 300 now. Hoping this will resolve the issue .


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  17. Hey All,
    Just a minor update tonight. This week has been hellacious so I’ve fallen back on any updates. At this point I’m fairly certain HardDrive was correct with his PPM comment for the SC. After dialing back to 300 she seems to have bounced back. Yesterday I started noticing what I interpret as heat stress on all three plants. I’ve since bumped up the light to ~28” from ~24”. I need to finish up my box enclosure for my inline so I can crank the speed but that’ll have to hold off til this weekend at the earliest. PH has been hanging in the 5.7-5.9 range and PPM’s remain right around 300-325.
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  18. Hey All, sorry I’ve been a little busy lately. Just swinging in to drop a little weed porn. Hoping to put together a post soon. [​IMG]


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  19. Shit, didn’t know it was going to blow up.. She pissed. Top/LST Pull. [​IMG]


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  20. Looking good.
     

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