The setup is: strain: full moon (obviously) - nirvana feminised medium: rockwool & perlite grow space: 500mmx780mm type: drip system transferred to bubble bucket common reservoir no lid suspended pots drains to waste lights: 2x 36W fluorescents, 2x 150W metal halide (unknown globes) cycle: 24/0 fan: standard box sprouted: 15/7/11 it also features an air ioniser and 55L/min air pump with 6 stones scattered throughout the reservoir. ----- first (or second) of all, hi. this is my first post here after months of browsing various forums. i figured i'd delve a little and figure out which community would be best to join and settled on grasscity. it wasn't close, for reasons of which you are all obviously familiar, so i'll get down to business. in order for this journal to have any sort of meaning, i think i should fill you all in on the history of the grow in as much detail as necessary. as such, i'll start from the beginning. after endless reading on the various types of hydroponic systems at one's disposal, i figured i'd visit the only hydroponic shop for miles. it's also a brew shop, but it's not very successful and it shows. it's extortionate when it comes to the price of home brew cans and so i usually avoid it, and while i have a general distrust for the knowledge of shop staff there was nowhere else to turn for person-to-person dealing. he showed me the aeroponic system for about $350AU, and i was almost sold on it but figured if they were selling 2 tubs, some sprinklers, pots and a pump for that then i could surely do better at my local hardware store. so i wound up with (despite reading much advice to the contrary) a homemade drip system. it was a cheap bucket and a fuel hose, fed into garden hose that was right-angled around the edge of the growspace. hopefully the photos will be of some assistance to your imagination here in spite of the quality of the shots. i thought about germinating them in paper towel as i have done in the past without failure, but decided i'd chance against any damage to prospective roots and plant it straight into its final growing position, no transplants. i did this also because i don't for one second trust myself with a transplant, and given this is my first hydroponic grow i'm even less willing to risk damage to the sensitive roots. i've grown outdoors in soil before, both pre-germinating and not, and i've had a lot of success, although i've always been forced to abonadon the grow for various reasons before i could yield flower. at first, i had as much success as could have been hoped for. i fed them with filtered water through the drips, with no nutrients and 30ppm/5.8ph water. after a tad over 24 hours, we had liftoff. healthy, fat cotyledons sprouted and simultaneously grew the first pair of serrated leaves, which i found oddly vigorous of them. i should mention here the nutrients i'd pre-purchased. the local hardware store only sells "organic" hydroponic plant food, which i'd hoped to avoid like the plague on account of the drippers. it turned out that was case for every nursery in and around town. epic disappointment. i hadn't gone back to the hydroponic store though, as the brief glance i'd caught at their stock while checking the systems out left me less than satisfied. so, i settled on these water soluble flower fertilisers, for pink hydrangeas and african violets. how lovely. having read vital calcium and magnesium were in fact filtered out of the tap water by charcoal, the calcium nitrate bag that came with the hydrangea fertiliser seemed pertinent. chemicals are chemicals, yeah? if it's water soluble and has all the elements, she'll be right... this actually worked fine for a couple of days. truth be told, so many factors changed after that i'd lost all hope of pinning down the problem. my cheap bucket and hose, which had been sprouting only minor, manageable leaks in the silicone sprouted a major one, necessitating the change to a bubbler system. i'd built the system with this transition in mind, although preferably not until i'd seen some root action, but this had to happen. a perferct testament to 'do it right or do it twice'. so i switched the bubbler on full time, which until now had been running occasionally in the nutrient solution suspended above the pipes. the bubbler is certainly preferable over the drip in that it eliminated a leaky bucket of water suspended above (although not adjacent to) expensive and dangerous electronics. figuring (ironically) more was less when it came to keeping the young girls watered, i couldn't help but lift the water level to about half way up the visible pots. having used nutrients in the solution just previously i lifted the ppm to 250, which i estimate was an acceptable introduction dose, although i do believe i could have delayed that for several days. the leaves had started to curl under a few days earlier but looked robust, so i'd ignored it, but confusingly the serrated leaves also started to turn yellow and i've since realised there was a significant slowdown in growth over the period. i traced the symptoms back to either a nitrogen deficiency, a nitrogen as ammonium overdose, overwatering or a combination. ph was fairly stable throughout, so i shouldn't have had problems with lockout. the remedy for one of these, however, is an exacerbating factor for another. so, i went back to basics: assume too much love. i flushed the rockwool and reservoir (a pain in the ass as it is so close to the ground), refilled with the organic hydroponic food (drippers were no longer an issue) and let it settle at 5.8ph/144ppm, just touching the bottom of all (hopefully) of the pots. ridiculously, i thought i'd throw in another possible symptom by significantly lowering the lights. they were, however, far too high given they're only 150W each. they are now about 320mm away from the top of the rockwool. as a brilliant follow-up cock-up, i managed to check on them one morning, forget to turn the fan back on after filling in the on-paper grow journal and the lights fried the edges just a tad, as you can see. i've since stopped using filtered water as the organic hydroponic food doesn't seem to contain calcium, and while ppm of our unfiltered tap water is pretty good (100-130) the ph spikes a shitload and i find myself constantly having to dump vinegar in there to bring it back down. so that brings us to where we are now. they 'canoed' (if my understanding of the colloquial term is correct) a bit after i fried them, but the leftmost 2 now seem reinvigorated, with the leaves re-greening from the centre out. this lone shot of the end one is what they all started to look like, the yellow spread out from the centre, which really fucked with me. the left ones still look overwatered, but the three on the right seem to be strecthing their leaves at the light rather than... growing towards it. i decided not to abandon them and rework my growroom after reading countless grow journals where despair looked certain, but was overcome by heroic mary jane. it is, after all, a hardy plant. the hope is that i, nay, WE, can yet give life to to those facing adversity in my garage closet. i've covered a lot of ground here and i think i got everything, but if you've got any, fire away with the suggestions, questions, demands and such. cheers, dicko p.s. any tips on image hosts?