Alienpus's DWC, Indoor, HPS: Kripple Shock, Incredible Bulk & Ice Cream, 2014

[Alienpus]

Ok, first journal

Strains:
Kripple Shock - Dr. Krippling - Indica Sativa 90/10
Incredible Bulk - Dr. Krippling - Indica Sativa 80/20
Ice Cream - Paradise Seeds - Indica Sativa 60/40

The Kripple Shock and Incredible Bulk are from seed at 10 seeds each
The Ice cream is a current Grow already in progress, from clones of 2 preselected mothers


Lights: Root and seeds under CFL's
veg under 2X 430 son agro's
Flower 4X 1000hps Hortilux

DWC: Net pots with a 3" rockwool cube - 2 part solution @ 2.2 EC @ PH 5.8 - Hard water so only Nitric Acid
for PH down
Flower room - Converted flood tables to DWC - Two 4'x6' tables, each hold 160 litres solution
Reservoir 320 litre capacity for a total of 640litres solution - temps 18c-20c - one circulating pump per
table - big ass air pump with 6 airstones in each table and 2 in the reservoir
Veg is in my vintage 19 year old growbox with a 2'x4' flood table converted to dwc that holds 30 litres
Reservoir 70l capacity for a total of 100litres solution airstones in res and in table

Flower room is 7' x 9' and 7.5' high. I grow in winter and am set up so I recirculate 100% of grow room air with the house to recycle the heat and the humidity. Two six inch fans with speed control. One takes air from one part of the house and pushes it through four 1000k air cooled lights then into a cooler part of the house. The other fan pulls through a carbon filter 24/7 from ceiling of grow room and pushes it back in the house also, the humidity in the house is controlled by my air exchanger. The room is in the basement so it pulls in in air from basement ceiling. It keeps my flower room environment pretty much the same as my home environment , a few degrees warmer when lights are on. The ozone cannon in the pic has not been used in many years, never got around to removing it.

I have decided to remove one of the 1k lights and try an inexpensive king 1200W LED full PAR (actual draw 600W) Why? because I was curious

There are 2 4'x6' flood tables side by side, that I have converted into DWC tables, that hold 160l each with a 320l reservoir. each table has 6 air stones in it with 2 more in the reservoir. each table has a pump that circulates 24/7.

The somewhat stealth Grow box I built back in '95. It has two air cooled 430 son agro's cooled with a 4" inch fan through carbon, it also vents in the house. There is a place with 8 24" fluro tubes that fits 2 trays . Not much to it but it serves it's purpose well, pictures are better to describe it so...

Then there is the converted fridge, it is a multi config grow box for up to 5 standard trays, each with their own reflector with 2 CFL's, 3 with heat mats and controller, Vented with a box fan. It is multi purpose, keep alive mothers, or root cuttings ect. No pics except this one kinda empty.

So first post, that's the entire setup, and pertinent background info, the rest will come in the journal I guess.

 

[Alienpus]

Ok, first up, Ice Cream. I am right in the middle of this grow. I have 12 plants that are 3 weeks into flowering from 2 very different phenotypes. I chose them from 5 seeds I grew in pots this summer so not much of a reference as to yield. The one with more sativa traits has been eliminated, too long to flower and no vigor. The other pheno damn near overgrew me tripling in size during stretch. Took clones from seed mom, rooted in bubble cloner for two weeks, then under 430hps, they were topped once at 6 nodes and vegged 3 weeks, flowered at 9'-10' under 1000hps and now measure around 26".

I am spraying one branch with silver nitrate and another with silver ions hoping to produce pollen

They look like this

I took more cuttings from the one mother I chose, in rock wool cube this time, and they are almost 3 weeks into veg in the veg box and ready to flower in 2 - 3 days. I topped a second time on these to control height and increase width so we will see the diff. Also they will be under a side by side HPS/LED test . They look like this

 

[Alienpus]

I went with dr. Krippling incredible bulk and also Kripple Shock. Big claims, big price. I got 10 seeds of each and and hoping to find one good phenotype of each to clone and then doing a whole lamp or two. If I can produce pollen I would like to also get a few fem seeds from each. This journal will be from seed to final grow of clones from selected mothers and maybe some fem seeds along the way. Got my order from HERBIES with some nice free beans.

Started beans in soil, incredible bulk first, kripple shock three days later.

On day 5 of incredible bulk 8 seeds have broken the surface
On day 2 of kripple shock 2 have broken the surface

So back into the fridge they go for a few days.

 

[Alienpus]

Ice cream strain: 3 weeks into flowering I have decided to cull 4 flowering plants and the original mother from seed, eliminating this particular phenotype . They are too long to flower and can't keep up with the growth rate of the other pheno.

As for the kripple seeds, those that sprouted are doing fine, they are grouped together 5cm below a pair of 23w CFL for a few days, then they will be transferred to the 430w hps grow box. Letters are incredible bulk and numbers are kripple shock.

Incredible bulk ut of 10 seeds, 8 sprouted but only 6 are healthy
Kripple shock : So far out of 10 seeds 6 have sprouted and 5 are healthy, I am expecting 1 maybe 2 more.

 

[Alienpus]

In an effort to make female seeds, I have been spraying two branches of a flowering female every other day for over 3 weeks with a 100ppm silver nitrate solution. It definitely stopped the flowering, turned all pistils brown, spotted and mutated the leaves but I still don't see any male flowers yet. I also started spraying an entire female that entered flowering today, with a colloidal silver mix. I really want some pollen.

I also took a nice flat of Ice Cream cuttings today as I will be flowering another table of this strain, not expecting much yield from my first attempt.

But most importantly I started flowering my second table, also with the Ice Cream strain. I over vegged in the growbox by a week and they had doubled in height due to the tight space, so I cut them back quite a bit to about 9 inches. This table also has a 600W (actual draw) LED replacing one of the two 1000W HPS lamps, so I can finally see an LED in action. As far as the seedlings nothing has changed much.

 

[Alienpus]

Today I transplanted the seedlings that are between 8 and 12 days old and put them back in the veg box to do their thing

 

[akisunni]

Looking really good. I love your design.

 

[Alienpus]

Looking really good. I love your design.

Thanks, always nice to hear

 

[Alienpus]

The first table of 'Ice Cream" is in day 32 of flowering and doing well, you know what that means,.....we start getting pictures of buds:

 

[Alienpus]

Couple of fails this week, pump #2 stopped and I didn't notice until the girls started showing signs. The pump must have been down for days, I can't really tell unless I specifically and manually check each pump, I would have noticed if both had stopped though. My design for redundancy was flawed, it was based on the principle that if pumps stop for whatever reason the tables cannot drain back to the res and stay full. I should have also configured so that if a single pump fails the other takes over, and I should be notified somehow. The updated(red) design accomplishes this with flow indicators and a bridge between the two pumps.

Next fail, I was taking down a reflector for cleaning and dropped something on it

 

[Alienpus]

Update wise, looking into the growbox:

These girls will be pruned severly tonight as I start to shape them for flowering in a few weeks. The first batch were too tall and the second too small so these will be just right.

The seedlings are I think 18-22 days old, starting tomorrow I will be taking cuttings from the main stems, and then more veg. I started giving them nutes yesterday, with the fast growth they were looking pale.

The tray of cuttings have rooted and are looking healthy. I came on a little strong on nutes and burnt the tips a little but they are nice and dark green. Too bad most will have to die.

You can really see the how difference between HPS and CFL lighting affect color, the plants are all the same.

 

[Alienpus]

In the flowering room Table one is 12 days into flower and coming along and filling up space, I will be training them soon. They fell short a little during strech this time.

In table two are my Sally too tall's at 5 weeks into flower who are doing ok, they took a hit with the pump fail but I expect that they will be OK. They started draining the older fan leaves and I cut out a bunch of the yellow ones this morning.

As to the LED vs HPS experiment, both lights are the same distance from the plants, but I think I will lower the LED. The LED side has kept up with the HPS in plant height and speed of growth (height wise) of the main stems but,

Seen from above, the HPS side grew wider, denser, and filled in the available space more, with secondary growth I assume.

 

[Alienpus]

Left my camera somewhere so I don't have many pics. O.K, so with the Ice Cream strain, table one has filled in nicely, the side with the LED are shorter and little less dense, I guess its because there was a lot less stretch so plants have to be sized accordingly. I'll be harvesting table two in a few days. Got lots of pollen from the branches I turned male with the AgNo3 so yay homemade female seeds.

The Krippling Bulk and Shock strains, I have taken a total of 3 cuttings from each of the 13 original seed that made the cut, once they have rooted I will destroy the plants from seed, flower one of each and keep one of each as new moms. I do this because I find the plants from seed get too big/tall compared to ones from clones and since I have to keep one of each until the others are done flowering, I can keep size in check

I picked up this industrial ph controller for cheap, I can finally start setting up automatic PH adjustment. Had a real hard time figuring it out even with the manual but its pretty cool, has proportional and limit/timer control, with hysteresis of both ph up and down. I am setting it up to work in a batch mode as it is safer, if PH needs correcting it will stop the table pumps, start a reservoir mixing pump, dose chemicals, and wait for certain amount of time until PH is stable and then restart the pumps. Ordered all the parts needed so it's a waiting game.

 

[Alienpus]

Did a root inspection today and they look fine.

 

[Alienpus]

Deleted, posted wrong thing at wrong place

 

[Alienpus]

I'm impressed by the LED.

 

[Alienpus]

I killed off just about everything in veg from the ice cream strain, I self pollinated a female so I'll have some seeds in case. Growbox is completely empty. My phenotype was great but not enough yield, what I grow in winter has to last me all year. I started harvesting table 2, forgot to take a pic. Table one is doing good, pictured in previous post. I started to clean up the canopy, things are getting too dense.


I have a rooted cutting from each plant of the Bulk and Shock strains and will be planting them in some soil to replace the ones from seed that I killed off. You can tell they got cold.

Here's the originals from seed before I chucked them

Here I have two clones from each individual in a bubble cloner and two in RW cubes, I only need one of each for flowering but I like taking a whole bunch as insurance and to achieve a uniform size and shape. As soon as they root they'll go in the box as these are the next to flower, unless I choose to flower the first bunch.

My PH controller project parts are slowly arriving I'll soon be able to assemble a test rig

 

[Dan Ultra]

Looking good bro

 

[Alienpus]

May not look like much but these are 13 of the most beautiful seeds I have ever seen, they are the result of my first attempt at producing my own female seeds. I plucked them from a cluster of flowers that I turned male that pollinated itself.

 

[Alienpus]

Ice Cream strain: Last week I had harvested the main colas, Just harvested the first entire plant from table two, she still looks pretty sweet even without her main bud.