1st Grow, RainForest 318, 400W HID, Chronic Haze, Yumbolt47, California Dream

WarBux79 said:
I dont know your exact setup but what I do is vent at night to keep the humidity down then during the day I run the dehumidifier and CO2 w temps around 85-90. Heating your plants at night just to get rid of some of the humidity will get expensive. When looking at dehumidifiers they will often tell you how many ML or pints of water they will remove in a day, what they dont always tell you is that there figures are for a room @ 85f and 80% RH (maybe 75% RH not sure) and total dehumidification is relative.
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Thanks for that info. My tent is in an unheated room, so I do need to use the heater at lights-out or it would get too cold, venting or not. I leave an aperture open on top, though, so that much venting is going on. When the ambient was warm I had a fan pulling air out that aperture, drawing in air through one of the bottom vents. Next summer I suspect I'm going to have to air condition the room where the tent is, so dehumidification inside the tent might not be as much of a problem.
 
Dec 20 - 2100: pH a little high, added pH DOWN. Added 2 gal tap water, pH-adjusted. All look healthy, not much different than yesterday. Temps around 80, turning it up a notch again. No nutes tonight.

Secondary top of tallest Cali Dream:
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Main top of tallest Cali Dream:
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Top of smaller Chronic Haze - finally starting to get some trichs:
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The other Chronic Haze top:
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Tent shot:
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OK, I just spent an hour with a calculator, pen and paper figuring out exactly how I should set my CO2 system. The instructions that came with it are completely FUBAR, including how to determine flow rate and how to set the timer for on/off times. (HydroFarm's CO2 System, a beautiful system for a bargain price, just as long as you don't follow their instructions... :smokin:)

The only thing that was right was the formula for finding how much CO2 you need to add to a given room volume to bring the ppm up to 1500. From that point, you're on your own as far as setting up the system goes.

I calculated that I need .2 cu ft of extra CO2 to bring my 5x5x6.7 tent up to 1500ppm. After running a bunch of numbers and crunching the hourly flow minus the 1/3 total volume leakage per hour, I came up with a flowmeter setting of .3 cfh (standard cubic feet per hour).

Then I had to figure the hourly on/off settings for the timer. I figured the first hour all on, which would put .3 cf into the tent, minus .1 leakage, which should end up around .2 cf at the end of the hour. From there, I alternated hourly settings, using {15 off/15 on/15 off/15 on} for hours 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12. I'm using {30 off/ 15 on/ 15 off} for the odd-numbered hours. That keeps my total CO2 in the tent at an average of .215 cu ft throughout the 12-hour period, never going above .233 or below .200.

Anyone care to check that to see if I'm off on something? I'm going to start running it at lights-on tonight if I don't think of something I missed.

I've been running too much CO2 into my tent the first few days, and I hope it hasn't hurt the plants. I had the flow meter set on .75 cfh (my own miscalculation) and the timer on for the first 2 1/2 hours, per the instructions, then 15 on/15 off until the last hour when it was full on the whole hour.
 
Jesus. I calculated that I was getting the tent up to 5000ppm CO2 and above the last 2 days. No wonder the plants had that shocked look on their faces... (and no wonder I kept getting headaches when I peeked in to test pH, etc...).

I had the flowmeter set on .75 cfh and it should have been on .25 at the most. I was also running it non-stop the first 2 1/2 hours, then 30 min./hr after that.
Now I'm running it non-stop the first hour and alternating between 30 and 15 min/hr the rest of the night.

Should be much better now.
 
They are looking really good. Dont worry about over doing the CO2. You wont even at 5000 ppm. Your just wasting it but you wont harm them. You really should get a CO2 controller. You can get one like mine that does everything for around 400 if you shop around 500 is about average or you can get one that just does CO2 for a lot less. I tried doing the math in my tent to see how accurate it was. It was impossible to keep the numbers close. It would go from 600 or so ppm to 2500
 
WarBux79 said:
They are looking really good. Dont worry about over doing the CO2. You wont even at 5000 ppm. Your just wasting it but you wont harm them. You really should get a CO2 controller. You can get one like mine that does everything for around 400 if you shop around 500 is about average or you can get one that just does CO2 for a lot less. I tried doing the math in my tent to see how accurate it was. It was impossible to keep the numbers close. It would go from 600 or so ppm to 2500
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I went with the $139 setup because of price. It gives me peace of mind that I'm adding SOME amount of CO2 to the grow, and the timer and flow regulator give me some amount of control. If I ever decide to expand, I want one of those controllers like you have.
 
WarBux79 said:
Wow they are getting so frosty! How many week strains are these girls? Boy they look so nice... You should post up some comparison shots. Like with another object in the shot for reference.
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I have no idea how many weeks the CDs are supposed to take, and the Chronic Haze product site says "within 10 weeks", so they're gonna be long. The CDs were germinated 3 days later than the rest, but are obviously ahead in the flowering development. I'm estimating that they're going to be at least 8 weeks though, maybe more.

If the buds ever get large enough to brag about, I'll hold up a Bic in the pics... :smokin:

Thanks for the comments on the frost. I found that if I force the camera flash to fire it shows up the trichs really well. They kind of get hidden in pics with just the grow light on them.
 
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