The CDXX-Files - First time indoor grow. 5,000W total, 5 Strains.

Discussion in 'Indoor Grow Journals' started by CDXXFiles, May 1, 2011.

  1. I started this project about two weeks ago with a more experienced grower than myself and what you see is the collective result. We have a 5 x 10 Secret Jardin Darkroom 2 for our flowering tent with an air-cooled three light, 3000W hps set up running off Grow King 120/240V switchable ballasts. We use a 8,000 BTU in room A/C with several fans to keep it cool. In the next room over we have another 4 x 8 Secret Jardin Darkroom 2 with a two light 2000W T-5 system, and a modified 6,000 BTU in window A/C to keep the temperature regulated. We purchased everything except the 6,000 BTU A/C new for this project to start fresh!

    As you can see, our ducting is a little unique in that we were able to vent the hot air from the lights in the large tent straight our my uncapped chimney, and the air from both tent's A/C units out the dryer vent making the grow extremely discrete and efficient.

    Now on to the good stuff. We are currently flowering 6 plants; 3 Afghan Kush; 2 Kryptonite; and 1 Blueberry. They are potted in a coco fiber blend, watered daily with two gallons per three plants on the CES 6 part nutrient system. In our veg tent we have 4 Sour Diesel and 4 Super Lemon Haze getting ready.

    These pictures are mostly taken yesterday (5 days into the flower, 1 day into the veg), but the pictures of the tent/ducting are a little older. I'll try to update once a week or so with pics so feel free to ask any questions and I'll try to answer or my associate can get me the right info.

    Cheers!

    In case the images don't work here is my album with the images so far:

    The CDXX-Files - Marijuana Pictures, Photos & Videos - Grasscity.com Media Gallery
     
  2. #2 CDXXFiles, May 3, 2011
    Last edited by a moderator: May 3, 2011
    Alright so we've hit day 7 of flowering, end of week 1. I took up close pictures of the same plants as last time so you can see the development. They have bushed out so much more in the past week then I could have hoped. I'm really excited for the first buds to pop asap.

    Clones are now potted and looking a lot happier than they did in the clone boxes. I hope to have pictures of those up soon.


    The first plant you see is the Afghanistan Kush

    The second plant you see is the Blueberry

    The last plant is the Kryptonite



    In case the images don't work here is my album with the images so far:

    http://forum.grasscity.com/photopos...=1&cat=all&ppuser=412307&thumbcheck=0&cat=all
     

    Attached Files:

  3. Alright so today I have a question for the masses. Please take a look at the pictures below (our 8 clones when they arrived to us, our 4 Super Lemon Haze clones today, and our 4 Sour Diesel clones today). We are currently 6 days into our veg cycle.

    Question: What can I do to help my ragged Sour Diesel clones get better/are they past the point of no return?!?

    Back Story:Neither my friend or I is particularly experienced at growing clones. As you can see from the original pictures uploaded when they arrived to us they all seemed to be healthy. Our 4x8 tent was set up with lights, ready for their arrival but we hadn't tested the a/c system. It worked but the first day the clones were in our possession I saw the termo climb as high as 95. This concerned me a lot so as you can see I moved a few clip fans in to help with air flow, and when we potted them, we raised the lights.

    When we potted them (3 days ago at this point) in our coco fiber blend, we added our 6 part CES nutrient system in the "transplant seedling" measurements. Unfortunetley, it being a long day we both miscalculated on our conversions from the 1 gallon chart to our 32 oz watering containers and added double the nutrients we needed. As a correction I've just been watering all of the plants with regular water to flush until today. Today I watered all but the two worst looking of the SD clones with the nutrient solution. I used a clonex water solution on the other two plants in an attempt to boost them back onto their feet but I'm worried I might be too late.

    Temp wise the tent stays around 79-85 by the lights and the base of the clones has never really gone dry. Please let me know any suggestions or questions you have.

    Cheers.
     

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  4. Well as it turns out the answer presented itself last night as we were talking about our sad Sour Diesel situation. We were given some clones that were of a lesser quality then they were supposed to be, and the two that have since died never rooted fully like rest. In a piece of good news the back two have sprouted large brand new leaves. The Super Lemon Haze are looking extremely healthy and have doubled in size since last night.
     
  5. I see you modified an in-window A/C for your tent. I have been debating whether to do that, or purchase a standalone A/C for my Growlab tent. Is it worth the extra elbow-grease to save 150$? Also, do you have any back-shots of the unit? I see you did some modification and I'd like to have an idea of what you've manage to craft :D

    Aside from that, everything looks SUPER clean. Just how I like it :) I'm definitely following this one. Stop by and check out mine... We're working with similar setups: http://forum.grasscity.com/indoor-g...hite-russian-blue-dream-strawberry-cream.html
     
  6. [quote name='vc77']I see you modified an in-window A/C for your tent. I have been debating whether to do that, or purchase a standalone A/C for my Growlab tent. Is it worth the extra elbow-grease to save 150$? Also, do you have any back-shots of the unit? I see you did some modification and I'd like to have an idea of what you've manage to craft.

    -- Well recently in our larger 5x10 flowering tent we are noticing the stand alone a/c has a few kinks here and there that seem to plague all in room a/c units. According to the box and the directions these were problems they had fixed but don't be swayed.

    For one, it came with an in-unit fan that is supposed to blow the hot air out the provided ducting, but because of the way we are venting both the large and small tents a/c systems out the same dryer duct, we seem to be getting a lot of blow back into our large tent and as a result, the stand alone a/c's thermostat is set at 65 to keep the tent at a balmy 77 haha. We are going to remedy this by buying another 4 inch blower fan to assist the one already in the stand alone unit, so right there you have another 80 dollar investment bringing the total to at least 230. Also the humidity drain on the stand alone a/c is placed on the very bottom corner of the unit. There is a lot of humidity in our large tent, but the box and the directions assured us it could handle it so we didn't think much of it at the time but this claim is false. We have to leave the cap unscrewed at all times now and rotate towels to keep a pool of water from forming underneath it. So not only is it going to cost us 230 dollars more in the end but its kind of another one of those routine maintenance things I'd rather not be dealing with haha.

    That being said, my friend brought over this box he made for his cabinet hydro set up with the exact same window a/c. As you can see he took measurements of the back (You need to make sure that you measure so that the intake vents on the back are uncovered by the wood or the tape) and cut pieces of plywood the top, bottom, and sides so that they would form a box around the large hot air vent at the back. He also cut a small hole out of the bottom piece so the humidity drain could just drop straight into a five gallon bucket underneath. Then he cut a piece to cap the box off and make it air tight, and he cut a 4 inch hole in the center so we could feed a length of 4 inch ducting in the back connected at the other end to a 4 inch blower which pulls all the hot air away from the unit and the tent. The box is air tight because rather than connect everything with glue, or nails/screws we just sealed it together with the same metal tape we use on the rest of our ducting. It is expensive tape but it is way stronger than duct tape and will last a long time.

    As far as I can tell from watching the temps in both tents recently it is certainly a more efficient way to cool your tent than a stand alone a/c even if it does take more work in building the stand and rigging up the vent in the back. Your going to save at least 200 dollars not to mention the hassle of having to go on yet another shopping trip.

    Well I hope that helps, a bit long of a process but worth spending an afternoon to not deal with the headache we are having in out big tent right now haha.
     

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  7. Daayum, going big for first indoor grow. I dig it!
     
  8. Damn, that's awesome man. Wish I would have seen this before I went out and made my purchase. I managed to grab a nice LG one that is doing WORK right now, but it is definitely taking up some space :p - Not only that, but the air outside of my tent is about 5 degrees warmer now until I get an exhaust extension and run it outside. I appreciate the time you took to lay that out. I suggest you just copy+paste that into a tutorial, as I haven't seen many how-to's for in-window AC mods. I know there are A LOT of people who could use some cheap cheap temp regulation. Especially with DWC and no water chiller. When those bucket temps rise, root rot strikes. And I'm an all-about-the-roots guy :D Definitely why I don't do soil.
     
  9. Haha I will throw that into a tutorial, thanks. We probably would have bought two of those in room ones if we hadn't had the window unit laying around from my buddies hydro cabinet. If I had more cash laying around I would have gone with hydro but the two tents alone were a stack and we got a steal hah. Maybe in the future cause I've seen the results and I'd really like to switch...
     
  10. Soil is awesome man. If you know what you're doing, and you have the knowledge, you can produce out of this world herb my man. But like I said, I'm a roots guy. If I can't see what they're doing at all times, I lose the ability to fine tune their progress and maximize plant growth. Obviously this can be achieved in soil through the right mixtures and top feeding, but I find it much more controllable when I can add/remove whatever I want within minutes. I brew a special beneficial microbe tea (I call it benny tea) by mixing in one 5-Gallon bucket a half scoop of Great White Mychorrizae and 4 TSP of Mighty Microbes. From there I feed them a little Bud Sweetener (you can use molasses) to get them going. Throw a couple airstones in to make the water near turbulent and let it rock for a few days. After about 48 hours you can bottle it and refrigerate. From there you just add a cup into your reservoir every 2-3 days. It should keep for a about a week and a half too. Just give it a smell, if it's sweet/tart/earthy it's good, if it's foul, it's no good. I mix it up in 5 gallons to get a nice cauldron going, but you can downgrade to what you need. I suppose you could even do it in a small jug. Anyways, from there the game is on. No hydrogen peroxide or bleach needed to fight off nutrient buildup/gunk and root rot. Insane root mass, nutrient uptake increased, and growth rate increased. Little things like this are why Deep Water Culture can be so fun. Be once again, soil is constantly the experts choice, and I definitely understand why. I am also very aware that DWC is a serious force in the right hands. I've smoked some top-shelf private reserve quality herb that was achieved through a very clean and fine-tuned deep water culture. The proof is out there :)
     
  11. Alright so it's been about 12 days since we started veg cycle in our 4 x 8 and so far so good. I was a little disappointed with the loss of all but one of our Sour Diesel clones, but recently the one that survived has been looking pretty healthy. As for the Super Lemon Haze...these plants are going to be bushy little monsters. One in particular has just jumped off, you can see we had to til the light for the various heights but that's why we bought two t-5's :)

    Hopefully in the next couple of days we will be getting our 8 Big Bud clones as well, bringing the total to 6 strains. I'll throw some pics of the flower tent up tonight, we've had to go through and stake 5/6 flowering plants because they are getting too tall for the tent. Should be huge producers though, can't wait to see.

    You can see our set up in the first pic, the second is our biggest Super Lemon Haze plant. Third we have the lone Sour Diesel and last but certainly not least the other two smaller SLH.
     

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  12. So we are now 15 days into our flower cycle, and all of the plants have just taken off. When we first got these girls, they were much taller than we anticipated (this was largely due to the fact they sat in a veg room for about a week and a half longer than they were supposed to thanks to delays in setting up this new project). Not only were they taller than we anticipated and they were only getting watered about twice a week with a three part nutrient system and much less light than they get in our tent so the past two weeks has seen them go from just under 4 feet per plant to just over 5 and half feet tall. They are also getting significantly bushier.

    With all the plants now so tall that the top buds are above the lights we had to stake them off the side so that the whole plant could fit under! You can see from the pictures that dispite not getting light to the whole plant for a few days, buds have begun popping up all over. Almost every off shoot now has growth, and in addition to our CES nutrients, I've started adding big bud powder and bud candy to the feeding regiment as of yesterday. Still water every other day with 2 gallons per three plants.

    That being said we've run into a little discoloration on the new leaves, and we're coming to you for a little help. I've been noticing this color on the leaves for a few days (my camera isn't good enough to get a good pic of it) and I can best describe it as a very dark golden yellow, much darker than sun burn otherwise I would have just chalked it up to the plants getting to close to the lights. My friend suggested a nutrient issue but he wasn't sure what nutrient (or lack there of) would cause that color to appear so any thoughts are appreciated!

    Well, that's all for now. We should be getting the rest of our clones in the next few days so check back for pics of the new strain :)

    Cheers!



    Afghanistan Kush
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    Kryptonite
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    Blueberry
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    Our Tent (as you can see getting a little full with the big plants)
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  13. P.S Just for comparison's sake take a look at the same tent shot Day 1 of flowering....
    [​IMG]
     
  14. Well it is now day 18 of the flower and the girls have switched to full bloom nutrient cycle with big bud and bud candy. We had to rearrange and re-stake some the whole tent today, not to mention putting our third light on. We know have two plants under each 1000W. The A/C in our tent is really giving us some problems now, and hopefully tomorrow we'll be able to replace it...I guess we'll just be selling this silly in room unit to someone on craigslist. Anyway not much else to report. I'm super excited about the buds I'm starting to see. Should be a great crop provided I we can get this heat problem fixed asap!

    Our new tent arrangement
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    The other angle
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    Afghanistan Kush
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    Affy again!
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    Blueberry
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    Kryptonite
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  15. Just a quick update since we are now using 3000W! All three of the lights running made our a/c problem in our large tent much worse than it already was (it would get to almost 90 F when the lights were on). So we went out and bought a 4 inch blower to help the in room a/c deal with the added heat and what do you know....it worked! The problem was the units built in fan was not enough to push the hot air out our ducting system and we were getting lots blow back from tents! We're now running a cool 78 all day with three lights flowering our six beautiful ladies. Here's to a 100 dollar fix for a 300 dollar problem :)

    New Ducting
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  16. i would definitely pull those plants down slowly with some LST'ing if you cant raise the lights. your gonna fry those buds when they stretch.
     
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    Seconded. I would also look into using an early bloom additive or vertical growth limiter. Just go easy and always mix half-strength. Your plants should remain squat for the first week of flower and start compounding new nodes like crazy. From there you can halt the dosage and figure out what's next. You will definitely maximize yield without any stretching.

    Sucks to hear about the A/C too. Hope things are up and running quickly for you
     
  18. Word, the good news is the A/C is now working almost as well as when we first bought it. That booster fan on the ducting really helped. I'll have to look into that growth limiter. We've stopped putting the the grow part of our formula and we've already bent them over once but it looks like we might have to go in and sculpt them a little more. The problem is they weren't topped by the guy who had them in veg for us while we were setting up so they have just taken off haha. So far, thanks to the air cooled hoods the glass underneath the lights and the hoods themselves don't get hot to the touch, they stay pretty cool but it's definitely something I'm keeping my eye on.
     
  19. Alright well it has been almost a week and a half I think since I was last able to post, but as much as I would like too I don't have all the time in the world to sit around growing! :smoke:

    Well with our new two fan system, the tents were running much cooler. Unfortunately the second fan while it helped didn't completely fix the problem. Insted we have now separated the two systems and have the large tent venting out the dryer duct and the small tent venting out the upstairs bathroom window. I was trying to avoid putting a window vent, we had so far managed to leave all of the windows closed but this has totally fixed our temperature problem so in the end it seems like a small sacrifice haha.

    New fan arrangement
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    New window vent
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    We just received our latest batch of plants. They are about two weeks into the veg process right now so we've turned on another of our three T-5's in our smaller tent. The 7 new plants are all Grape Ape, a strain I had planned to grow originally but we weren't able to get it the first time around. As you can see they are a little tall and really need to be staked but we're going to have to wait until Wednesday to do that.

    New Grape Ape Plants
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    We are also planning to clone all of our plants in veg right now on Wednesday so we can have more Super Lemon Haze and Sour Diesel as well. As you can see the 4 plants we raised from clones are doing pretty well, although as we found out the nutrient system we bought was drastically out of proportion, so some of the leaves are a little burned over all they are very healthy. We have quartered the feeding from the six part system now and it seems to be reading a much more reasonable PPM than the full recepie they suggest. They will be topped and moved to the back corner of the tent after we clone them.

    Super Lemon Haze
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    Sour Diesel
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    Super Lemon Haze
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    Super Lemon Haze
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    You can also see we picked up a tower fan and little cyclone fan to help with the air circulation under the T-5's. We ran all three after the tent was fully set up to make sure the A/C could handle it and with the dial set as cold as it would go it ran at 85 F. It should be able to run all summer but we're hoping to pipe a little of the cold air from outside of the tent through an intake vent to help with the temp as well.

    New Tent Look
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    That's it for now. I'll take pictures of the flower tent and post again later tonight.
     
  20. So let me start off today saying sorry for the lack of updates in the past few weeks. I was hoping to be able to invest more time on this GJ but some of the headaches we've been having combined with every day life it's been harder than I thought!

    First, flowering photos. We have just hit day 56 in the big tent, and it looks like I'm going to do one to two more feedings and then start the week lone flush before we harvest. Some of the plants need a few more days to fully mature but some of these lovely ladies are just at their prime. It's been a rough ride getting them here. We found out about two weeks ago that our nutrient system's provided feeding chat was giving us measures that were 5 times what they needed to be for the proper PPM. I had to convert the chart to keep the ratio but drop the amount of nutes and so far the plants have been looking a lot healthier than they were. You can tell there was pretty bad burn but thankfully we caught it early enough that we were able to salvage most of the buds. Next time around should be much better :)


    Afghanistan Kush

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    Kryptonite

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    Blueberry

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    Tent shot looking nice and bud heavy :)

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    There are more good bud shots in my albums but wanted to post the centerfolds up here :) On to veg! Our veg tent has been causing us all sorts of trouble. I posted a little while ago when we got our Grape Ape plants from NorCal and I am dismayed to report that they had mites!! They must have been infect right before they arrived to my house because we didn't notice when we were first arranging them in the tent, but three days later, what do you know....huge mite problem. So immediately we dunked each plant in cold water, then we set off a pytheron bug bomb inside the tent and then three days later sprayed with a mixture of Einstein oil and organic pesticide. On top of that, either tomorrow or Wednesday we are also planning on spraying with floromite just to be safe. We were lucky that our normal procedure of taking our shoes on and off between each tent and changing clothes after going into the large tent meant that blessedly our flowering plants weren't affected by mites at all. Hopefully once we treat with floromite, we will be able to clone all of those plants and get them onto the transition mix until we harvest.

    Grape Apes

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    Grape Apes

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    Super Lemon Haze

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    Sour Diesel

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    Well that's it for now. It'll probably be right before harvest day next time I snap a few but aside from these pics there is more in the album so check it out! :smoke:
     

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