Advice please

[XiwsX561]

Maybe it was nute lock maybe light burn, so flushed turned down intensity. Did medium strength nute mix 740ppm. And this morning was at 640 ppm so shes eating. My question penny is ive read you want your EC under 1.4 but other places i read that during flower it likes 1100 to 1400 ppm which is an EC of 2.1 2.4. So not exactly sure whats a happy medium, or the max shell allow me to go.

 

[XiwsX561]

@Pennywise , mike and kismet ever tried autos? I know its my 1st grow but its like a kid waiting for xmas. I can see it just cant do anything yet. Prolly could have done 2 autos by now. What are pros n cons of autos? Why wouldn't every one do it?

 

[Pennywise]

They can be touchy as seedlings. If you mess up on a photo plant you just veg it longer. With autos it hurts final yield. Look around there are a lot of members running them. If you only have 1 light and 1 space they make sense. Also some places can pull off 2 crops a year with autos. It’s just a matter of what suits your situation.

 

[XiwsX561]

Ya where i live you prolly could definitely pull off 2 crops outdoors. Indoors u can get 3-4 with autos. Since i got new light i didnt connect the boards other then the power so its like having 2 and then i have the 150. So how do you run yours? Do you have a seperate area for propagation, veg, and flower? I mean thats the setup right?

 

[XiwsX561]

How many plants do you have going at any given time? Guess i could keep the 4x2 for seedlings n clones. Need atleast a 4x4 for veg. I cant fit the 5x10 and i havent found anyone that makes an 8x5.

 

[Pennywise]

I run a 4 x 4 flower and a 3x3 veg, normal I flower 4-5 at a time.

 

[XiwsX561]

So you have 4 to 5 in flower how many in veg tent? Same? Can you give your average yield u get from 4 to 5?

 

[Pennywise]

Around a pound from 4 plants.

 

[XiwsX561]

Id be happy to get 4 zips

 

[Mikesem420]

That root ball is looking good my clones exploded in the dwc they veged in half the time now all you really gotta do is watch ph and ppm looks like your lst work came out good and the super croping I bet shes gona surprise you an come out just fine I see alot of praying fan leaves good thing you got the dimmable light perfect for this situation.

 

[LEDXpert]

Mike believe it was you maybe @Kismet but u told me you run a 150 hps in addition to you hlgs.i only have 4x2 so i could squeeze all 3 in do you think its necessary? This goes for penny as well do any of you use supplemental side lights? Does it work? A myth? I thought reieves everything thru tops od leaves. @Pennywise The last picture u can see nutrient burn, didnt notice any signs prior thought it was from me taking it out daily and just figured they touched the lamp and burned. With a bit more troubleshooting found she wasnt eating. I do appreciate that charts great just dont have EC meter. Cause some nutes say during flower 12-1400 ppm is good. That chart with the formula you gave me , 1400 would be an EC of 2.8 which is extremely high

Just helped a friend with side lights. He went from getting about 2.2lbs in a 4x4 to 3. Crazy results, more than I thought it would based on g/input-watt. In my brain the the lower level growth would become denser and then "usable" to count in the weight plus the additional light would make additional growth. I'm not sure if this is what happened but what I'm thinking is the side lights pulled the plants on the side outwards kind of like a bouquet it a vase looks allowing better vertical penetration from the light above (and then obviously plus the light from the side). When you just have the vertical light plants grow very vertical and in the outdoors light shines from all sides and plants grow bushier outwards. I don't have enough data on this to conclusively add more or say how much one should expect to gain but if you have a light you're not using I'm going to go ahead and say its worth the cost of the watts.

 

[XiwsX561]

Mike how do i fix praying leaves? Whats ideal? I think i prolly shouldnt have vegd so long, she would have been easier to work. Bc of lst my canopy is more like an oval then a circle and Bush. So Definately need side space. But i do like the dwc in addition to the drip. Suprising how resilent the plant is. 2-3 transplants, nute lock twice . kind of reason for such long veg the learning exp. Starting to see alot of trichome development. What did you use for resin boost? N could u answer my q? About thr ppm and ec?

 

[XiwsX561]

@LEDXpert once i lollipop it wouldnt make a difference. Unless like you said the lower smaller branches become usable. Which ideally if they did i can see where the minimum increase your yield would prolly be about 20%. But you would need ample space for lst and the stretch. But once in flower you buds go up anyways so during flower would it be a waste? I dunno ur friends proof it works.

 

[LEDXpert]

Friend doesn't lollipop per se but cuts off all branches from half way down so it is bare from that sense, just doesn't do the LST to round the top out with less plants. Side lights are positioned in the middle of the canopy. So if he grows to 2' and then flips. Plant doubles to 4' tall. He then cuts off the bottom 2' leaving a canopy between feet 2 and 4 and puts side lights at the 3' mark. He has the side lights on though during the flip so plants grow in to it.

I agree with not knowing how much it will help a specific case or help on average. This is only for flower, not veg. This was his first go and saw those gains (~35% increase). Even a 20% increase though is worth it though I think. If you got 2lbs you'd now get 2.4lbs with no extra work or space if you got the 20% you're thinking might be possible. For anyone curious he had 600W LED on top and added 100W LED to each side so essentially 1000W (true watts) of LED. So essentially 67% more power for 35% more weight. So for me anytime you can pick up growth without having to add plants, equipment, space, or man hours its worth it and repays itself each grow. Other people may not feel the same way on that value proposition.

I disagree with the lollipop, it would help. It is still more light. More light = more better. How much better is a different question. Just center the light on the middle of the "pop"

The point isn't to get massive flowers at the ground and make a bush its to penetrate mid canopy and firm up the lower ones that get shadowed and under develop. What I was saying about vertical growth is since plants grow towards light I think it opened the top up allowing more of the top light to hit a wider cross section of the top rather than missing the plants and bouncing off the wall and picking efficiency up there. Par decay is exponential in distance and walls are inefficient even with a reflective wall (every bit helps but you're better to pick light up before it bounces off a surface).

Thus making the top light more efficient plus the addition of the side light. On a side note you don't want to put light under your plants it will cause them to bend to grow down and the weight of the flower will cause it to snap. Really confuses them. I tried under lights once, did not get good results : )

I'm not here to be the preacher of side lights, just saying I helped someone with one and he get really good results and if @Mikesem420 has a light laying around, why not?

 

[Mikesem420]

The praying fan leaves is usually a good thing.. I just got 4, 50w 3000k canagrow driverless cobs to fool with I'd try to use them as side lighting but I'm pretty sure they will be to powerful maybe during veg but theres no room in my 4x4 flower tent I think e26 bulbs are awesome for supplemental/side lighting just screw then into any goose neck or desk lamp the sansi ones are pretty bad ass I grabbed a 30w ceramic to test half off 15$ plants responded super well in the veg closet. I'm gona do some tests on my next round as far as side lighting and far red initiator pucks but as @LEDXpert said never under lighting only side..

 

[XiwsX561]

Mike do you use a tds or ec? Or both? During flower in your dwc what do you keep your rez at? Preferably in yhe one where u use hydroton

 

[Mikesem420]

All of my dwc is in hydroton. I havent got to flower yet in my dwc I'm still about a week away but I use a ppm/tds meter does the calculation for you i got mine from amazon for 15$ health metric is the brand but ppm is what you need to know my gorilla glue that's in dwc veg is at about 600-800ppm depends on what stage there at but there growing amazingly good I'll prolly go up to 1100ppm for flower no more I learned the hard way in my soil grow I burned the shit outta my diesel plant I was up to about 2000ppm because I didnt know to go 50% of fox farms scheduale plus I was adding other things in way to high of dose but once I reduced the ppm they came back just always go 50% of what your feeding scheduale says then work up from there so if you see burn you can back off.

 

[XiwsX561]

Ya in my mix i have a crap load of things, although a few dont effect the ppm. I have her in flower right around 650-700 i shes kindy finicky during flower doesnt eat more then 100ppm a day if i go higher then the 7 she stops eating. I use a tds i stole out of a Brita water filter jug from walmart lol. So who can tell me a good ec during flower? Everyone tells me and ive read 1000-1400 during flower but she doesn't seem to like it. During veg id go to 800 and 1st week of flower 1000 2nd 1200 but stayed around there. Im confused u want a low ec but higher ppm. A ppm of 2000 would be 4.0 even 1100 is 2.2. @Pennywise from that chart u posted a while back it said water lvl goes down, ph is static or droppin , ec was static not feeding to lower it below 1.4, if your under and its happening to raise it. 1.4 is 700 ppm. Then another confusing thing is ec and ppm differz from brand to brand of meter.

 

[Mikesem420]

So basically you have to multiply the EC reading by 1000 then divide by 2 the good meters do it all for you and that's how you get ppm there 2 different readings. I havent seen to many grows on here that ever go by ec usually always ppm because only the really really cheap ec meters dont convert to ppm. If the plants are eating at 700 then keep them there wait till you see some signs that they are hungry then add more that was my biggest mistake trying to give my girls wayyy to much nutrients there more supplements your lights are the food if there eating and happy then why try to push it then get nute burn and or lock out like i did..

Your making it more confusing for your self by trying to go by both ec and ppm you really only need ppm in my opinion it's worked so far for me an ec meter that doesnt convert to ppm is just more of a pain to use.

 

[XiwsX561]

Well i have a tds, so i only see the ppm. Was only questioning it bc of the chart penny posted. Seems like everyone says 1-1400 ppm during flower but chart seems like u want a low ec. But 1400 ppm is an ec of 2.8 which i thought is super high