Coco Flood & Drain 2020

[Vike]

My first grow journal.

Light is a 600w hps but will be hopefully replacing it with DIY led light before flowering. Atm waiting for parts.
4x4 tent. Plants are Royal Gorilla, Sour Diesel and Skunk XL.
Started from seed this time because my last crop got stolen by a "friend" who got himself into synthetic drugs. He's dead now unfortunately but at least I can grow in peace.

I'm using 16x11L pots on top of a flood and drain. It's gonna be tight but It's doable with heavy-ish deleafing. I'll post a pic from my last grow.

Started in rockwool a couple of weeks ago. Now they are in 1L yogurt pots. I'm going to try making the led-light before transferring them into the 11L pots and setting up the drain tray.

I'm using Canna Nutrients. Haven't given them much yet. Around 500ppm. I think some of them are suffering from over watering so I'm waiting a bit.

I will be documenting the led build and my thoughts on how they perform.

 

[Dankman_420]

I'm in. I've always wanted to try flood and drain coco. Looks like a great setup

 

[013]

Hey Vike,

Welcome to 420! Sorry to hear about your friend... Nice setup! More folks will jump in soon

 

[Vike]

Thanks.

Plants look to have recovered from overwatering. I originally germinated 15 Gorillas and 3 Skunk XLs. 1 gorilla didn't pop out and 1 Skunk died. After that few of the Gorillas didn't look so hot so I decided to pop 5 Sour Diesels to get 16 healthy plants in total.
Because of this I did some bending on the tallest plants to let the SD's catch up a bit.
Found one Gorilla that only pushed out 3 leaves so I went ahead and topped it. I'll be topping some of the tallest soon.
Still using the same nutes. 400ppm worth of Canna Coco A/B, drop of CalMag and a drizzle of Rhizotonic bringing the ppm around 750. For the smaller ones I diluted it a bit with RO water.

Still waiting for leds that should be arriving tomorrow.

 

[Vike]

Still waiting for parts for my Led-light and it will be till Dec 2 before they come. My cat was eating some leaves so I decided it's time to transplant. I started by changing the activated carbon in my carbon scrubber but as I was removing it I dropped it on top of that glass "table" and broke it. Plants took some more hits from that.
Cleaned up. Changed carbon. Prepared about 160L of coco, Prepared the flood table and finally transplanted.

The plants are sorry looking but I hope they bounce back.
What a day.

 

[Vike]

Plants are looking better. PPM around 1000 and ph 6.5. Bought a new automatic watering system so I don't have to manually fill the reservoir. Still under 300w hps but I finally made my led light.
I Haven't fired it up yet. I'm really nervous about it.
I made the first version using some aluminium joining pieces the idea being I could save the 2020 extrusion and not make holes into it. It ended up being too hard to solder the strips so I drilled holes in the end to make some space for the soldering.
It has 12x 98x Samsung LM301B LEDs 3000k strips from led-tech.de and the drivers are HLG-320H-20A set to 19.42v.
I'm nervous because the pots seem to rotate infinitely so I'm not 100% sure the Amps are as low as possible.

Next update I'll be either very happy or very sad. Hope it doesn't explode.

 

[Vike]

Guys I'm dumb help me. Everything light up when I briefly turned it on but when I tried measuring the Amps I shorted it. I drew a diagram how I did it. Only one driver in it but you get the picture.
I'm gonna buy a clamp meter but who knows how long does that will take. Any help measuring will be welcome.

 

[013]

I’m gonna shout for @Nunyabiz - if I‘m not mistaken he can wire one up or troubleshoot in his sleep

 

[JamesBong502]

Digging the setup man! I’ll ride along

 

[Vike]

Yes well that previous picture was to show how NOT to measure amps with a multimeter. This pic is for showing how to do it.
However I'm still having problems adjusting the current. When I turn my lo-out pot the current stays the same. 0.8Amps. For me to replace my HPS I would need to run the strips with 2.1A current.

I topped like 4 plants about a week ago. PH 6.5 and PPM's was 1200. Adjusted the HPS from 300W to 450W a couple of days ago. Then removed 2 biggest fan-leaves from each plant. Shouldn't maybe have deleafed yet. Better to do it when flipping to flower but removing few leaves probably does not affect anything.
I'm basically going to Veg them until I figure this Led-light out.

 

[Vike]

Taking pictures is on hold. Forgot my phone on the flood table and its toast. Had to send it to repairs and my old phone can't be unplugged from the charger at all.
Bought a Fluke T6-1000 but it doesn't measure DC current and is overall a bad product. I should be getting another ammeter in a couple of days that can measure DC. Who else hates having projects being delayed because you have to wait for some little part to arrive?
Well, I also started about 30 chillies and 5 tomatoes on another tent so I'll have something to do while waiting. Building small flood and drain systems for them out of Ikea boxes.

I Topped one more plant. Trying to get an even canopy but having 3 different strains and some germinated weeks later than the others it won't be perfect.
On the positive side the plants are looking healthy. I'll up the PPM to around 1300 and adjust the PH.
The nice thing about the automatic watering system is that I can add a small amount of water at a time keeping the res aerated so no need for airstones. Atm, I have it adding about a litre of water 4 times a day.

 

[Vike]

Alright, It's been 6 weeks in veg and the plants are getting too big for my space. I'm going to flip to flower in 3 days as my ammeter is going to arrive and I can hopefully get the Led-light i action. Today I'm going to defoliate. They can rest few days before flipping. I'm going to take cuttings later.

 

[Vike]

Ok, the Meanwell driver trimpots for adjusting current were broken on both drivers. Current doesn't go up or down no matter how many strips I use. I might be missing something. It's hard to believe two brand new drivers to be broken.

This is now going to be just your box standard old HPS grow. Already fucked around with the LED build so long that the plants are getting slight heat damage.

I'm going to pull an allnighter defoliating, tying and lollipopping as I'm going to flip to flower.
Made this cloner for the cuttings. Haven't yet tried if it's watertight. Lots to do!

 

[Spitz]

It’s gonna fill up quick in there. I’ve lost a few gardens to what I can only refer to as “runaway“. I like the setup. Looking forward to flower. Good luck!

 

[Vike]

It’s gonna fill up quick in there. I’ve lost a few gardens to what I can only refer to as “runaway“. I like the setup. Looking forward to flower. Good luck!

Thanks. Yeah, it's not looking good. I can only tie them down so much. Afraid of snapping them. Can't even reach one of the corners.
I was kinda counting on getting an extra 15 cm by replacing the HPS with the Led light. Not the first time I would get heat damaged top buds. That's kinda the main reason I wanted to change to leds. Oh, well I'll do my best.

 

[Spitz]

one time (in band camp) I literally took a weed wacker and gave 4 plants (in a 4x4) a flat top. Flipped a week later. I cut them what I estimate to be 4 inches below where you have your screen set. Last real good plants I’ve grown. My yields went down when I moved from hps to Led. Went down further went I moved to qbs. I just cut down a real nice bubblegum (thseeds) but have an Afghan that is foxtailing like I’ve never seen before. I’ve got baseball sized tops of not real pretty flowers.

sorry... rambling.
quick question. How are you flooding your table with the sides only an inch or two high?

 

[Vike]

one time (in band camp) I literally took a weed wacker and gave 4 plants (in a 4x4) a flat top. Flipped a week later. I cut them what I estimate to be 4 inches below where you have your screen set. Last real good plants I’ve grown. My yields went down when I moved from hps to Led. Went down further went I moved to qbs. I just cut down a real nice bubblegum (thseeds) but have an Afghan that is foxtailing like I’ve never seen before. I’ve got baseball sized tops of not real pretty flowers.

sorry... rambling.
quick question. How are you flooding your table with the sides only an inch or two high?

That's what I'm afraid of switching to leds. Some have said they get smaller nugs but denser.
Maybe I should take the tops off and clone those instead of lollipopping.

Timer runs the pump for less than a minute several times a day. The pots are mostly full of coco and it seems to wick the water pretty quickly. I'm just using a layer of the hydroton rocks on top to block algae from growing.

I've tried using bubblers and drip-feed systems before and I like this setup the most because it's so simple. No need to worry about blocked drip-nozzles or whatever. I only need to add nutes and everything else is more or less automated with 2 pumps.

 

[Vike]

Flipped to flower. Took some 10 tops off and lollipopped. Lots of cuttings. Interesting to see which ones will root first in the cloner. Half are tops and the other half is bottom BS.
Just a tip for anyone planning to DIY a cloner is to make sure the box has a watertight lid like I now have. My old cloner was some random Ikea box and it leaked everywhere.

Still the plants are probably too close to the HPS but I'll figure something out later. Looking at the pics doesn't seem like I did a lot but got 2 garbage bags full of leaves out

 

[Spitz]

well done. I can hardly wait to see how much trouble those 30 seedlings in cups get you in when combined with your 20 clones!

 

[Vike]

well done. I can hardly wait to see how much trouble those 30 seedlings in cups get you in when combined with your 20 clones!

Oh, those are chillies and tomatoes. Trying something new
Tomatoes already died but still got like 10 different types of chillies. Other plants seem to be more picky about transplanting and stuff like that.
Growing weeds is a pretty forgiving hobby.

In the aero are the ones I'm hoping to grow next. Then there's like 60 cuttings just sitting in water for backup if the cloner doesn't work.
Top right there are 4 seedlings that didn't make it to the table. Didn't have the heart to trash them so I'll try bonsai tricks etc to them.