1st Grow - CFL

[Khaoskalan187]

Hello all! First time grower here. I've been doing alot of research on the matter, and I guess as a newb I'm kinda freaking out, lol. Someone suggested I start a journal so more people could help me out, so I guess I'll start with my setup, and any information I have.

I have a hydroponics setup. I guess it would be considered a DWC, it has a 1 gal reservoir. I have an air pump pumping air through an air stone into the reservoir. There's a fan for circulation, and a CO2 booster. I have 6 CFLs, 2 per Y. 3 CFLs are rated at 900 lumens, 14 watts, and 6700k, and the other 3 CFLs are rated at 860 lumens, 13 watts, and 6700k. I'm using those for the blue spectrum of light for the veg state, and I have 6 rated at 2700k for the red spectrum of light during the bloom phase. The light cycle is at 18/6 right now.

I started with 6 seeds, only 3 of which sprouted. I'm feeding them moon dust right now. It says it's 19-8-13. The info on the packaging reads:

19% Nitrogen, 8% Phosphate, 13% Soluble Potash, 2.5% Calcium, 1% Magnesium (water soluble), 0.02% Boron, 0.05% Copper, 0.25% Iron, 0.075% Manganese, 0.015% Molybdenum, 0.075% Zinc (chelated).

Beneficial Fungi: Glomus aggregatum, G. intraradices, G. mosseae, G. entunicatum, G. monosporum, G. deserticola, and G. clarum

Beneficial Bacteria: Bacillus subtillus, B. licheniformis, B. azotoformans, B. megaterium, B. coagulans, B. pumlis, B. polymyxia, Sachromyces cervisiae, Streptomyes griscus, S.treptomyces lydicus, Psuedomonas aureofacceans, and P. florescence.

Trichoderma: Trichoderma Koningii, and Trichoderma harzianum.

I didn't list the other vitamins, just what I thought would be important. I'm trying to keep the pH around 6.0 as best as I can. I've been using strips, and recently got a pH meter which is pretty accurate, except that it seems that I need to recalibrate it every time... It seems I need to add some pH down every few hours.

The solution is around 480 ppm when I took these photos yesterday. I was gonna start keeping it around 600 ppm soon. I read somewhere it should be 600 ppm week 1, 900 week 2, etc. I noticed that the cotyledons are turning yellow, which I heard was normal for the plant to do once it didn't need them anymore. However, they look like they're cupping, and wilting, and the leaf stems are kinda purple. So, I'm not sure what's going on.

Sorry for the sideways photos, kinda loaded them in a hurry yesterday. After getting some help in another post, I put the lights a little closer, but I guess they were a little too close, so one of the plants was kinda damaged. Hopefully it wasn't for too long, and it'll recover, but I dunno, we'll see. I'll post some pics from today in a few to show any differences, and the damage already done.

 

[Khaoskalan187]

These were taken today. 2 of the plants are 13 days from sprout, and the other one is 10. You can see the damage done by the lights getting too close. Hopefully it'll recover.

 

[Khaoskalan187]

Well, looks like the damage will have to be removed I figured that was gonna happen.

 

[Khaoskalan187]

Ok, removed the damage, removed 3 lights. Made sure the solution is around 100 ppm for now. It hasn't even been a day, and they are already looking much better. The leaves are starting to flatten out, as they should. Since I removed the extra lights, temperature has been in the lower 80's, and the humidity is finally above 15%. I'll continue keeping an eye on them, and see what happens.

 

[Khaoskalan187]

Ok, I've still been worrying over these little ladies (hopefully), and have been trying everything to make their environment better. So far I've been able to maintain an air temp of 82, humidity level of 48-50%, root/water temp of 68, all while having a total of 7 lights inside the box. 1 extra from before. I was able to accomplish this by moving the box to a chair, and fabricating some aluminum foil around the intake vent to allow the mist from a cool mist humidifier to enter the vent. The solution is around 130 ppm. It looks like they're enjoying themselves alot more than before!

 

[Khaoskalan187]

I'm gonna have to figure out something better/more permanent then the aluminum foil. The drip pan underneath the chair works great and all, but unfortunately there's still buildup of condensation between the box and the chair. Which then travels down the chair leg, and onto the carpet... I'm thinking some duct tape (like ventilation duct) to help keep the condensation from traveling outside the path to the pan. Not sure yet, I'll have to walk around the Home Depot aimlessly until I think of something.

 

[CronicHempHog]

I use botanicare pure blend line for hydro I check ph daily
I just follow the chart I have for the nutes and never had a problem
I started with rockwool which has to sit in phed water overnight to 5.5 before using
now I strictly use rooting plugs like rapid rooters and use hydroton to fill the netcups
I find that rockwool holds too much water at least for me as I usually have my water lvl just about the bottom of my netpot
I use 6 inch netpot lids on 5 gallon buckets in bloom but only 3 gallon buckets in veg
I also mix my ph solution with water before I add it into my buckets when I do my daily check
on my weekly res change since no plant is sitting in the bucket I add directly without diluting it with water
put a hygrometer in the growspace so you know whats going on with temps and rh if you don't already have one in there
also its not good to have water or nute water on your plants while the lights are on as it will magnify the light and burn the plants

 

[Khaoskalan187]

I know my setup is small. My reservoir for all 3 is 1 gallon. I'm not planning on moving them or anything, they're staying in the box until harvest, just trying to get the most out of them. I don't even know if they're gonna be females yet, lol. The box wasn't designed for that many lights, but I was an engineer, so I'll get it figured out. Anyways, this is a better shot of my setup, and you can see the plants are alot better now. Not sure if they'll recover 100% from the heat stress they've endured, but we'll see what happens.

 

[Equanimity]

These are hardy plants and will recover so long as the problem is solved; the old leaves will not self repair - you'll see in the new growth whether it's all better.

Your setup looks great man; puts my first time setup to shame.

 

[Khaoskalan187]

Thanks! I did alot of research before starting. I know my space is rather small, it's only 9" x 14", but it should be sufficient for what I'm trying to do. Here's a pic of my roots. The one root is brown because of the OM microbials and such, they kinda stained it, lol. You can see my pH and ammonia meters as well. I've also read Ed Rosenthal's Marijuana Grower's Handbook, and Jorge Cervantes's Marijuana Horticulture the Indoor/Outdoor Medical Grower's Bible, which have a substantial amount of information in them. So, I guess I'm experimenting for now, lol.

 

[CronicHempHog]

try to keep res temps max at 75-76 ish but better low 70's to 69
I say 75-76 ish cause I do have res temps that high during summer
and I haven't had an issue
but it may also be the nutes im using that help
cause theres people who did have issues with those res temps

 

[Equanimity]

Personally I wouldn't bother with the bibles; they're a lot like the computer programming books - obsolete by the time they go to press.

Keep doing what you're doing, reading on here, ask questions, and remember you can type a question into google as well and it'll answer - mostly lol

 

[Khaoskalan187]

Yeah, I've just been combining everything really. I got the books after using google, and I could find everything in the books online, just took longer lol.

I find that if I don't check on them at least once an hour while the lights are on, things could be very dire and go south very fast. This morning it was back to being a desert again, but it was only an hour/hour and a half this time, instead of 2 weeks...

 

[Khaoskalan187]

Thanks Cronic. Without putting a small aquarium heater in the reservoir, it stays at 68-69 with the lights on, while the air temp stays at 81 with the lights on and the door closed. I have a ton of different microbes in the res which seem to be helping. I dunno, this is my first grow, lol.

 

[CronicHempHog]

theres lots of help here so just keep truckin on

 

[Equanimity]

Kudos for jumping straight into DWC on your first grow. I just used coir. Stayed in coir lol
I'm afraid of DWC in the same way I'm afraid of liquid cooling my PC lol

 

[CronicHempHog]

dwc aint hard just need to kiss

 

[Equanimity]

I eat parts of my plants.


But I've never kissed them lol

 

[CronicHempHog]

never heard of the kiss method?

 

[Khaoskalan187]

Thanks guys! I figured dwc was the best way to get a better bang for your buck I guess. I wanted small bushy plants, with hopefully something to brag about in the end, lol. I'm trying to keep it simple. I just upgraded the airpump. The old one looked like it was only really providing the roots to 1 with a substantial amount of O2, so now it looks like they'll all get a lot more O2 to their roots.

Trying to figure out a way to keep the condensation under control with the cool mist humidifier, that you can't see in the photos. I have it blowing into a vent which is hidden by the res. I wish I could take a photo of the inside with the door closed. It looks awesome with the cool mist floating around the little ones.