NOTE Ballast is operating at 400W. Testing has proven temps can be controlled with the increased wattage. Hey there my fellow blade. Thanks for stopping in to my thread! I got a couple of harvests under my belt with my first iteration of a cab grow using LED and CFL. I wanted to up my yield and quality and opted to make the switch to MH/HPS. I hope you stick around for this grow! Setup: Wally world cab - Modded to increase strength and stability 21.25"X13.25"X48" (Actual growing space) 4x 120MM 12V Fan Econo wing reflector Lumatek 400W Dimmable Ballast GE 400w MH HPS to be determined. BlueLab PPM and pH meters Bag seeds (Since this is a test run ) Happy frog Various nutes from FF, Roots Organics, Earth Juice, etc. Tap water The cab sits in room that is air conditioned. The room is cooled to around 69F-75F and the temperature at the plants hovers around 80F. I have a few thermometers in the cab to have some idea of what kind of micro climate I am maintaining. I germinated the seeds using the paper towel method. The seedlings were initially sown into some homebrew soil. The homebrew soil proved to be improper for one reason or another; the seedlings began yellowing shortly after breaking ground and growth slowed to a standstill. About 2 weeks into their life I transplanted them to pure Happy Frog. The seedlings have since bounced back and greened up quite nicely. Intake temperature/humidity
Minor Update: Just wanted to post some pics of the younglings. 2 and 3 have grown some. 1 appears to have begun growing again. I guess that's what I get for trying to make my own soil.
Experimental update: I switched the ballast to 400W. I've been running it for the past 3 hours and the box temperature is hovering around 80F. Depending on how stable the temperature stays I may keep it at 400W.
Experimental update: After running the cab almost 24 hours with the ballast set to 400W, temperature is stable at 80-81F. It dipped a couple of times to less than 80F; the room was at 69F at that time. Nice and chilly!
Watered plants this evening. Half gallon of water for all three plants. Pots are probably < quart. pH ~5.7 1/2 TBS RO Trinity (0.1-0.5-0.25) 1/4 tsp Alaska fish fertilizer (5-1-1) 1/8 tsp HCO Snow Storm Ultra (0-0-3) 2 drops Superthrive Pinch of Great White PPM ~640
I picked up some new fans, 2 gal smart pots, and the equalizer. I decided to take some lux readings with my galaxy nexus to see what the equalizer would do as far as improving light uniformity. The results speak for themselves. The higher lux reading is without the equalizer; roughly 27k-30k lux. With the equalizer I was gathering readings of 25k-27k. Needless to say its going back to the store.I also added some sun grip light hangers to ease light adjustments. I will keep the chains in place as a safety. Updated pics in next post.
Watered plants tonight with a half a gallon. Added 2 drops ST, 1/2 TBS Trinity, 1/2 tsp Buddha Grow. pH 5.4. Didn't measure ppms. I'll be transplanting tomorrow to the 2 gallon pots. They might get 2 more weeks before I switch to 12/12. I have not decided on a 400 w HPS bulb yet. I've been tossing around the idea of getting either: Ushio super mh, ushio super hps, or hortilux. I'll probably go with the ushio shps.
I prefer to pH my water/nutes to less than 6. pH naturally rises in any system so I don't want to put the water in at the nominal pH only to have said pH rise above and out of the nominal range faster.
Still looking good, things are starting to take off for you it looks like on a different note, i sexed my indoor today...100% female preflowers showed. Still to small to pic up on my phone but soon as they are visable enough ill hvae pics and the best part, is at the last second, YESTERDAY, i decided to take a cutting showed sex very next day lol. Couldnt have timed it better lol. And alternating nodes just started and the clone was from the bottom of the plant and after 24 hours has not even stopped growing lol (using water cloning method, slow but has a 100% success rate)
Yes sir. Its so amazing how the plant seems to grow exponentially! Big congrats on the female buddy! I hope to be as lucky as you when it comes time over here. So are you just putting your cuttings in like a cup of water or something?
i meant the run off when i gave that figure. my current runoff is 6.8, the water i use goes in at 6.6
Transplanted to 2 gallon smart pots this evening. Once the plants are sexed I may do one more transplant. Time will tell. I also watered right after the transplant. 2 gallons of water total. ~1/2 tsp Roots Excelurator, 2 tsp EJ Catalyst, 4 drops ST, pinch of Great White. pH'd to 5.8-5.9. PPM read 320.
its coming along nicely, i finally sexed my indoor as FEMALE yesterday after a torturous 12 days of 12/12 before showing lol
I had to pull number 2 today upon finding some balls. Too bad since that was the biggest plant but I suppose the balls explain the vigor. Here's some pics. The plants really are not growing vertically it seems. The inter node space is very small The side growth has definitely kicked up as well. I also flipped the switch to super lumens on the ballast. Last lux reading from my phone at pot level was 33k. Not too shabby but still nothing compared to the +100k readings I get in direct sunlight when the sun is highest in the sky. I included some pics of some oil I made recently. The bud was pretty brown and really did not smell good and was not really pleasurable to smoke. The oil however is pretty darn stoney. The light green stuff is from some bud I grew previously under led. Headier than the dark stuff for sure. Lots of bubbles in the dark stuff too since I was a bit impatient and didn't totally purge it. Oh well, a little bit of butane never killed anyone.