Delps8 DWC Original Glue

[Hafta]

Just an observation .....

I noticed, in several of your photos, that your DIY lid is curling up around the edges. This may make controlling humidity challenging. I know the original lid fit tightly and no water vapor could escape around the edges of the res. You might try some small C-clamps to improve the seal.

Plants are looking good!!

 

[Delps8]

Just an observation .....

I noticed, in several of your photos, that your DIY lid is curling up around the edges. This may make controlling humidity challenging. I know the original lid fit tightly and no water vapor could escape around the edges of the res. You might try some small C-clamps to improve the seal.

Plants are looking good!!

Heh, thanks for the idea.

I'd noticed that it was bowing but decided to leave it for this grow. It's a little frustrating to see that but it is my own doing.

RE. the original lid - agreed. It "snaps" in place and provides a moisture seal but it also provides structural support for the res. I've noticed that the res is bowing in the back.

I might be able to change res tops. It's an issue of being able to get the root bal out through the net pot holes. I'd like to avoid damage to the roots but my understanding is that they will grow back quickly. The other issue is that the base of the plant causes the net pot to bulge so I might have to "excavate" some of the hydroton. Shit.

Temps hit 85 so I opened the back garage door for a but and it's at 79° and 55%.

 

[Hafta]

Pretty expensive res, I would try to save it before it gets misshaped beyond repair. You might be able to catch it before the major bulge.

 

[Delps8]

Day 40.

 

[Delps8]

Pretty expensive res, I would try to save it before it gets misshaped beyond repair. You might be able to catch it before the major bulge.

No question, they're $$. I'll take a look this weekend.

 

[Delps8]

Day 40

The photo above is from the tent cam. After some defol yesterday AM, I waited a day and shut out the lights at 1130 today. The speed of recovery//growth rate has been really something.

Picture taken 20241028 0810

Picture taken 20241028 2117 (13 hours later)

Picture taken 20241029 1051 (13 hours later)

There's noticeable change in the second and third photos. Really something.

Temps in the tent were a little higher than previously, reading 85 ambient. I've let it get the high because the leaf temperature offset has been running -6 and -7. My IR thermometer is a few years old and didn't have an adjustable emissivity value so I ordered new one and the offsets are the same. That means that 85 in the tent is only high 70's on the canopy so I'm good to go.

Added some nutes to bring PPM to 620/500. Doser ran more than expected at 7.2 yesterday, 3.0 as of this AM when I put the lights out, and, since 1124 it's added 5ml of down so the N is "leaving the building". I expect to see PPM drop tomorrow.

Light is the big driver and I've been feeding them well. Just for the heck of it, I took readings with flaps open and then closed. Any drop values with the flaps closed shows how inaccurate it is to take readings manually (and hastily).

They're both getting really good light and are responding very well. Per the photos above, the foliage filled in very quickly after I defoliated. All in all, I'm at 1kµmol and it's the unevenness of the canopy and the falloff in light output that I'll need to address.

The AC Infinity heater has been running today, with the C69 set to keep the temp at 77°. I've set it to level 4/10 and it's used 1.52 kWh which is about 60¢ of electricity here in the People's Republic. Worst case is $40 per month, add in the 330 watts for the light and that's another $50±. Oh, don't forget the $1.18 it costs for nutes when I do a new res.

The little Pohl Schmitt dehu has been running but it's not up to the job. It's rated at 10oz/day so I found one that's pretty much the same size that will extract 34oz/day. That will be here "tomorrow by 10 PM" so I'll that will be in the tent on Thursday AM.

Lights kick on at 2330. I'll set an alarm for zero dark and will see how temperatures are doing and then check things out after I get up in the AM.

 

[Delps8]

Day 41.

I think I f'd up. The change in the plants with 12 hours of darkness was quite something and it makes me think that 24/0 in veg is not optimal. Cannabis doesn't need darkness to do its "dark cycle" processing but that doesn't neceassarily mean that cannabis benefits, overall, from not being in darkness for some time every day.

Bugbee was asked about 24/0, 20/4, 18/6 in veg and his reply was "plans could use a little rest". While I've gotten good results from 24/0 previously, I think it's worth it to back off to 20/4. What's been in the back of my mind is that these plants seem to me to be smaller than they should be. They've got a huge amount of foliage but they're just "wee little f'ers".

The other factor that's influenced me was that my first few grows were done using the Mars SP3000 in veg. The Mars is a white LED do it's got a fair amount of red vs the Growcraft veg light with huge amounts of blue photons.

First day of flower and things went pretty well. VPD dropped when the light went out (as it did just now) but the heater kicked in and brought the temp up which pushed RH down.

The big confounding issue is my leaf temperature offset. At -7±, it's very hard to get RH down low enough to get VPD up to 1.0. Per my previous posting, I bought a new IR gun. The numbers are the same so I've got to believe they're accurate. I'm calibrating the Govee's again and will use those to check/calibrate the C69 RH values.

In term of temperature, I've use a Thermopen to calibrate the Pulse and then bumped that against the C69 and they're in synch.

I've checked temps with fans running and with no fans running, flaps opened and closed and I always end up -5 to -7.

Despite all that, the plants are doing well. There was growth for this first day of flower and they're enjoying the light. I increased the hang height to 12" to try to get a more even light cast and will keep upping the hang height and wattage, if I need to. ATM, wattage is 291 so I'm running at about 90% power.

The only issue I'm seeing is that Erica has developed a nute issue. Two potential causes come to mind - the res is 40 days old and there's a difference in VPD between Donna and Erica of about 0.2.
VPD, even being +0.2 for Erica, would only put it at 1.3 which is not high enough to cause a nute issue with nutes at EC 1.2 so I'm thinking it's time for a new res. I'll do a new res tomorrow AM.


This discoloration showed up since lights out yesterday at 1130.

The fan isn't running. I've removed it from the tent.

Erica

Donna

Adjusted the hang height. The front row on Donna is further from the light than on Erica even though I removed the weights on that part of the plant.

Oh, I did get up at 02 to check the tent and everything was good. What struck me though was that night time VPD should stay fairly close to daytime VPD, according to the folks at Pulse. What I'm seeing, though, is that VPD drops precipitously at lights out and takes a few hours to claw back up to 1.0. I shut the lights out at 1100 today and, in the past hour, the heater has brought the temp up to 77 but RH is 60%.

With a leaf offset of 0°, those 77 + 60 give me a VPD of 1.26 which is perfecto. But my offset is -7 so that puts my VPD in the shitter. :-(

This raises the question-is my offset -7 when the lights are out? I can guess all I want (and have zero expertise to come up with sounds arguments much less a conclusion) so the only way to find out is to find out.

I'll check temps around 2000 today. My hope is that the offset (magically) drops to the "standard" -2 which means that VPD is exactly where I want it because I really would like to avoid having VPD in "bud rot range" and not be able to do much about it. The new tent dehu will be here shortly but it's better to have VPD at the right range instead of having to wring out every last drop of moisture to get it up to 1.x.

Just got a text from Amazon - my new dehu is out for delivery. "Where were you guys two hours ago!" Spoiled, aren't we!

 

[Hafta]

You may want to wait to make any major changes until you get the lid secured. Just a suggestion.

 

[Delps8]

You may want to wait to make any major changes until you get the lid secured. Just a suggestion.

The gap between the lid and the res is really small, ¼" or so. It does impact temperature and RH because it's not sealed but the magnitude of the impact would be hard to measure. At most, it's a couple of square inches of air gap on the underside of the res top.

The only change I'm thinking of is a res change. It's 40± days old and I'm interpreting the nutrient issue as being an indicator that the res needs to be changed. I'll get to the tomorrow.