GreatLife4All's DWC G13 C99 Grow Journal - 2013
- Thread starter GreatLife4All
- Start date
the fan leaves are the engine that drives the plants growth, i would not defoliate such small plants as much.
Re: First To Flower
Hi GreatLife4All,
did you install the white bucket from your E&F inside the RDWC bucket or did you removed them ?
Can you show as your roots ?
How deep did you set your nutr. from the bottom of your RDWC nest pots ?
What is your PPM at this time , 1st. week veg. ?
Thank you
Hi GreatLife4All,
did you install the white bucket from your E&F inside the RDWC bucket or did you removed them ?
Can you show as your roots ?
How deep did you set your nutr. from the bottom of your RDWC nest pots ?
What is your PPM at this time , 1st. week veg. ?
Thank you
- Thread starter
- #45
GreatLife4All
New Member
Re: First To Flower
I Will Come over and take a Look At Your Journal And Provide Some Help.
T
I Will Come over and take a Look At Your Journal And Provide Some Help.
- Thread starter
- #46
GreatLife4All
New Member
I certainly agree with the first part of the statement and waffle on the second.
As part of this grow, I am experimenting further with defoliation. It is intentional that I am doing this at such a small stage. If I kill a couple of plants, I am OK with that as I will be learning. I have two sativa varieties with multiple plants - one of which is defoliated and one of which is not. So I do have a control to check my work.
My ultimate goal is to produce bud 10 weeks from now. If I can optimize the amount of bud, even if I take a one to two week hit on schedule at this point, I feel it is worth it. If the plant suffers now, but produces more later - I will be happy.
Without experimenting on my part, I won't be comfortable with defoliation. And there is so much information out there, much of it in stark disagreement about the same things, that I feel this is an area where only personal experience will help me to decide whether or not this is a useful technique.
I am willing to accept mistakes, plant delays, and even death in my quest for the most high quality bud from a tent...
In my opinion and limited experience, defoliation does seem to produce better quality bud - but not additional quantity. Now the question is what are the limits that I can get away with? Where does it start helping instead of hurting that goal? How much does the variety affect the defoliation decision? At what growth stage should I defoliate? I can do a quick search and produce conflicting answers for every one of these questions. In this situation, empiricism rules.
Defoliating too early on messes with the little plants mind, doesn't let auxins do their job to control the plants processing. Some things i've read and tried with defoliation; I tried to never remove more than 30% of the plant at a time, anticipating about a week or so of stress and saw it before my eyes. I ended up defoliating more than that and stunted the growth very bad, bud the girl did bounce back weeks later, I feel a good rule of thumb is the more green removed the more prolonged waiting game for her to feel better, and possibly death if too much is removed. Defoliation will start helping you more in flowering mode, during this time you can defoliate some bigger fan leafs to let your HPS reach down further to lower bud sites, in return giving you some more yield, just by removing leafs! This was information that i've read and in return turned into "empiricism", had to grab the dictionary for that one. Learn more than just MMJ around here 
& and are you referring to your variety in strains vs defol? I think all your girls are going to like different defol techniques, some might not even like being snipped and pinched.. You take great notes already Mr. Great, expect you will see all the up's and down's per plant. Good goin sir, Hope this helps, CA 
& and are you referring to your variety in strains vs defol? I think all your girls are going to like different defol techniques, some might not even like being snipped and pinched.. You take great notes already Mr. Great, expect you will see all the up's and down's per plant. Good goin sir, Hope this helps, CA - Thread starter
- #48
GreatLife4All
New Member
Good to know - and I would say that matches my experience with this run.
Again, I would say that I agree... at this point. It is possible that i wouldn't have agreed before snipping them this time. I also believe that there is a big difference in defoliation between a clone and a seedling. The seedlings just don't handle it anywhere near as well.
I have done lots of defoliation in flowering. This is really the first time I have extended it to veg.
There is no doubt about the value of defoliation at the right time during the flowering cycle. Many people claim that the plant will react better to a defoliation in flowering if you first defoliate during veg. I was attempting to test this particular theory.
I will probably not defoliate during veg cycle again... just so you guys know.
This was information that i've read and in return turned into "empiricism", had to grab the dictionary for that one. Learn more than just MMJ around here
I thought about "dumbing" that down some... but that is the way that I was taught the phrase by a college professor in physics. It has sort of stuck in my head that way ever since. He declared it very loudly (startling the class) one day when he was expounding on theory vs evidential reasoning. Some theory, don't remember which one, had just been proven wrong by a single experiment. And at the end of the story to emphasize his point, he yells "Don't ever be fooled by an elegant theory. Empiricism Rules!"
And I DO highly value experience... always have.
are you referring to your variety in strains vs defol? I think all your girls are going to like different defol techniques, some might not even like being snipped and pinched.. You take great notes already Mr. Great, expect you will see all the up's and down's per plant. Good goin sir, Hope this helps, CA
Yes. Again... claims are commonly made that the timing of defoliation depends a lot on the the strain. Sativa vs Indica vs Hybrid. I was pushing the limits on this since I am currently growing Sativas, Indicas, and Hybrids. Only the indicas liked the early defoliation - every other plant either didn't care or were horrified by my attempts. Again, lesson learned.
Eventually, with enough experience, I will be able to talk authoritatively on this subject. I might look like a fool today by people with more experience - but I accept that; I also highly value their opinions and advice... even if I ignore it and later agree with them. I am not being hypocritical... I am just proving things to myself.
Right on 
Nodding my head to everything your saying, totally agree. You have the most in depth experimental thread I've seen, that I can actually follow along with, love what you are doing over here! Seems like that professor taught you some Great knowledge! I need to start getting myself to class, been procrastinating about getting into the swing of things. I've also read about cutting the tips off the fingers of your leafs, allows more nutrient uptake to your newer chutes growing. I tried this with my first indoor grow but don't really have anything to base what I saw off of, so, at this point I have no good answers and/or experience with it. & most of us are still learning around here bro, no need to feel like a fool, i've made countless mistakes already but again, experience is knowledge, messing up here and there will ensure you won't do it again. Got to love knowledge, right? 
Keep it up Great you are doing awesome!
Nodding my head to everything your saying, totally agree. You have the most in depth experimental thread I've seen, that I can actually follow along with, love what you are doing over here! Seems like that professor taught you some Great knowledge! I need to start getting myself to class, been procrastinating about getting into the swing of things. I've also read about cutting the tips off the fingers of your leafs, allows more nutrient uptake to your newer chutes growing. I tried this with my first indoor grow but don't really have anything to base what I saw off of, so, at this point I have no good answers and/or experience with it. & most of us are still learning around here bro, no need to feel like a fool, i've made countless mistakes already but again, experience is knowledge, messing up here and there will ensure you won't do it again. Got to love knowledge, right? Keep it up Great you are doing awesome!
now i understand why you were defoliating your plants and have a control group as well. please let us know what your findings are as well. experimenting is one of the great things we have as a tool to learn in growing cannabis plants. with fast growing plants it lets us determine if there is a better way to proceed.
- Thread starter
- #52
GreatLife4All
New Member
Thoughts on CO2 Enrichment in a Tent
Ok... I have been running CO2 in one of my flowering tents for about a month now. Playing around and experimenting.
For the first week - I ran everything off of a timer. I actually sat there for hours on end monitoring temperature and humidity levels - and ensuring that my fan would turn on before it got too hot or too cold. With my tent and light set up - the net result was a cycle time of 15 minutes. I would start with the CO2 timer turning on, then turning off 30 seconds later. It would then wait to turn on in another 15 minutes. The exhaust fan was also on a different interval timer. It would turn on for 3 minutes, and then off for 12.
I did lots of calculations to come to these timings and cycles. They have little value since it is very dependent on my environment.
And what did I achieve? For a week I ran the tent at approximately 1450ppm. The temperature stayed at 85 degrees during day time and as low as 70 at night. I didn't (at that point) have an accurate humidity gauge in this tent - but I now know that it was extremely high - probably over 90%.
The plants are scrogged - and were right in the middle of the Bloom Phase when I started supplementing. The change in growth and bud appearance was immediate. There are 2 LOJ and a Super Silver Haze growing in this tent. Before I started supplementing - they filled about 70% of the screen; they now fill the whole screen and the canopy has grown about a foot above the screen as well. Had to move my light up a little due to the extra growth this week.
I weighed the tank at the end of the week to see how much CO2 I used. It was pretty miniscule - at that rate of burn it would last six weeks. So I got much better growth with CO2 by simply using a tank, regulator, two photocell interval timers, and forced coordination between the CO2 and exhaust systems.
My primary issue this week was humidity. It was way too high. And there were nightly timing issues. Because the fan was came on at 85 even at night - and the tent is much warmer than the basement - I started dropping below the dew point and condensation would form all over everything in the tent. I run a chiller - so the condensation was the worst on the bucket system. In fact, I was convinced that I had a leak somewhere during this week because I had water all over the bottom of the tent at all times.
I went to the store to find a solution for the humidity - but humidifers are too large, bulky, and generate way too much heat to use in a tent. I found a "personal" dehumidifier online - and ordered it. Also, at the end of this week I reorganized my temperature sensors so that I could track humidity - and sure enough it was hovering around 94% during the day and 80% at night. So feeling like I had to do something - I purchased Damp-Rid at the local store and put it into the tent. Very successful.
Ok... on to week two. Local hydro shop pushes CAP - so I ordered a CAP Air-4 and it arrived during week one. So I can now upgrade my system to take advantage of the coordinated CO2 and exhaust system. I honestly thought that I would be able to lock the humidity and exhaust system together - but you can't. No biggie - I know electrical so I wire a junction box with an outlet and two plugs - one goes into the humidity control, and one into the fan control. So now whenever either the fan or humdity outlet is on - my one exhaust system runs.
So now I have coordinated my humidty, temperature, and co2. It takes a while to get everything coordinated - as before I sat around for hours monitoring. This time I am using a single interval timer to control the CO2. On for 30 seconds and then off for infinity. So now everytime the fan runs, it turns off the CO2 timer. When the fan shuts off - the CO2 timer is turned on. When the CO2 timer is turned on initially, it runs for 30 seconds and then shuts off until power cycled again.
So I finally settle on setting the controls to 85F for max temperature - and 75% for humidity. The exhaust cycle now became variable - as one would sorta expect. Early in the "morning" while the tent was warming up - the exhaust fan might run once per 1/2 hour. At the end of the day when everything in the tent was hottest and the air very humid - it was running every 7 minutes.
Because of this variance - there is now no way to control the CO2 level in the tent - at least not using an interval timer. Sometimes the fans would turn on for 1 minute and get enough air in to lower the humidity and shut back down - so a lot of the CO2 from the original injection was still there. So now I would turn on the CO2 for a full 30 seconds - even if it didn't need it. And in the morning - I would run the CO2 only once per 1/2 hour or so.
So I ordered a cheap PPM monitor. Since I had the CAP controller - I ordered the CAP PPM 4 CO2 monitor. So now I will have an automated way of monitoring CO2 levels in the tent.
And I still have an issue with condensation on the inside of the tent. It seems that the CAP controller doesn't distinguish between day and night temperature and humidity levels. The ambient temperature is 72F, and the ambient relative humidity is between 50 and 55%. I am running the tent at 85F and RH at 75 - so the exhaust fan rarely runs at night. So I am still hitting the dew point with way too much water in the air.
So now I reset the controller every night and morning so that the exhaust runs all night - which is what I would prefer. But if I am late at night - I still get condensation on the tent. And if I am late in the morning, my CO2 won't come on until I reset the controller to 85/75.
So this one really isn't serving my needs. I had to patch together the humidity and temperature controls to best control my fan. I was still intermittently getting moisture on the inside of the tent. And one "morning" I forgot to reset the controller and lost a whole day of CO2 - but honestly I averaged an hour late each "morning."
Ok... this isn't working either. I give up on the local hydro shop and order an Auto Pilot Digital Environmental Controller. Much better probe... box mounts outside of the tent... same cost as the CAP... but now I can control day and night temperature and humidity. It also lets my tie together the temperature and humidity control functions - so my diy junction box is no longer needed. It also has the ability to control the "deadband" the amount below the target that the system must fall before the exhaust fan is shut off. I didn't realize the advantages that this would have until I installed it and started playing around.
After a day of tinkering with the new controller - it has been running all this week. My consumption of CO2 has dropped off significantly - a tank will likely last five or six weeks (though it is about empty due to my higher burn rate during week 2). The deadband adjustment has allowed me to very accurately time my exhaust cycles. The larger the deadband - the longer the length of time between exhaust cycles. I am now running with a max of 82F/75RH.
During all this - the plants have responded to the added CO2 with incredible growth and vigor. It is almost like they are on speed. I read that CO2 will cause buds to become light and airy - and I have both proof and disproof of that statement. The LOJ buds got much harder and more dense - the Super Silver Haze has sorta stringed out - if you know what I mean. I will take some pictures soon and post them. The SSH might be having troubles because I started CO2 at an odd time during its flowering or something... Don't know.
As a grower, it is going to be hard to go back to a slower growth rate. I already feel the urge to just go ahead and get another system for my other flowering tent. I looks to me like you can slowly blow money by inconsistently using CO2 - or just go ahead and spend the money and get a good system up front - and then make money back by using less CO2 forever.
So here are the pieces and parts that are working so well:
$175 - Digital Environmental Controller with Remote Probe - 4 Outlets for Climate Control Devices - 120V - 14.5A - Autopilot APCETHD
$150 - C.A.P. CAPPM4 Co2 Gas Detection Sensor
$88 - Co2 Regulator & Valve
$160 - 20 lb. Aluminum Co2 Tank Compressed Gas Air Cylinder
This is the dehumidifier that I am using in the tent:
$105 - Eva-Dry Edv-2200 Mid-Size Dehumidifier
And finally, here is the CAP controller that I did not like:
$150 - AIR-4 - Temp/Humidity/CO2 Control
Hope this helps someone else out!
CO2 looks to be magic...
Ok... I have been running CO2 in one of my flowering tents for about a month now. Playing around and experimenting.
For the first week - I ran everything off of a timer. I actually sat there for hours on end monitoring temperature and humidity levels - and ensuring that my fan would turn on before it got too hot or too cold. With my tent and light set up - the net result was a cycle time of 15 minutes. I would start with the CO2 timer turning on, then turning off 30 seconds later. It would then wait to turn on in another 15 minutes. The exhaust fan was also on a different interval timer. It would turn on for 3 minutes, and then off for 12.
I did lots of calculations to come to these timings and cycles. They have little value since it is very dependent on my environment.
And what did I achieve? For a week I ran the tent at approximately 1450ppm. The temperature stayed at 85 degrees during day time and as low as 70 at night. I didn't (at that point) have an accurate humidity gauge in this tent - but I now know that it was extremely high - probably over 90%.
The plants are scrogged - and were right in the middle of the Bloom Phase when I started supplementing. The change in growth and bud appearance was immediate. There are 2 LOJ and a Super Silver Haze growing in this tent. Before I started supplementing - they filled about 70% of the screen; they now fill the whole screen and the canopy has grown about a foot above the screen as well. Had to move my light up a little due to the extra growth this week.
I weighed the tank at the end of the week to see how much CO2 I used. It was pretty miniscule - at that rate of burn it would last six weeks. So I got much better growth with CO2 by simply using a tank, regulator, two photocell interval timers, and forced coordination between the CO2 and exhaust systems.
My primary issue this week was humidity. It was way too high. And there were nightly timing issues. Because the fan was came on at 85 even at night - and the tent is much warmer than the basement - I started dropping below the dew point and condensation would form all over everything in the tent. I run a chiller - so the condensation was the worst on the bucket system. In fact, I was convinced that I had a leak somewhere during this week because I had water all over the bottom of the tent at all times.
I went to the store to find a solution for the humidity - but humidifers are too large, bulky, and generate way too much heat to use in a tent. I found a "personal" dehumidifier online - and ordered it. Also, at the end of this week I reorganized my temperature sensors so that I could track humidity - and sure enough it was hovering around 94% during the day and 80% at night. So feeling like I had to do something - I purchased Damp-Rid at the local store and put it into the tent. Very successful.
Ok... on to week two. Local hydro shop pushes CAP - so I ordered a CAP Air-4 and it arrived during week one. So I can now upgrade my system to take advantage of the coordinated CO2 and exhaust system. I honestly thought that I would be able to lock the humidity and exhaust system together - but you can't. No biggie - I know electrical so I wire a junction box with an outlet and two plugs - one goes into the humidity control, and one into the fan control. So now whenever either the fan or humdity outlet is on - my one exhaust system runs.
So now I have coordinated my humidty, temperature, and co2. It takes a while to get everything coordinated - as before I sat around for hours monitoring. This time I am using a single interval timer to control the CO2. On for 30 seconds and then off for infinity. So now everytime the fan runs, it turns off the CO2 timer. When the fan shuts off - the CO2 timer is turned on. When the CO2 timer is turned on initially, it runs for 30 seconds and then shuts off until power cycled again.
So I finally settle on setting the controls to 85F for max temperature - and 75% for humidity. The exhaust cycle now became variable - as one would sorta expect. Early in the "morning" while the tent was warming up - the exhaust fan might run once per 1/2 hour. At the end of the day when everything in the tent was hottest and the air very humid - it was running every 7 minutes.
Because of this variance - there is now no way to control the CO2 level in the tent - at least not using an interval timer. Sometimes the fans would turn on for 1 minute and get enough air in to lower the humidity and shut back down - so a lot of the CO2 from the original injection was still there. So now I would turn on the CO2 for a full 30 seconds - even if it didn't need it. And in the morning - I would run the CO2 only once per 1/2 hour or so.
So I ordered a cheap PPM monitor. Since I had the CAP controller - I ordered the CAP PPM 4 CO2 monitor. So now I will have an automated way of monitoring CO2 levels in the tent.
And I still have an issue with condensation on the inside of the tent. It seems that the CAP controller doesn't distinguish between day and night temperature and humidity levels. The ambient temperature is 72F, and the ambient relative humidity is between 50 and 55%. I am running the tent at 85F and RH at 75 - so the exhaust fan rarely runs at night. So I am still hitting the dew point with way too much water in the air.
So now I reset the controller every night and morning so that the exhaust runs all night - which is what I would prefer. But if I am late at night - I still get condensation on the tent. And if I am late in the morning, my CO2 won't come on until I reset the controller to 85/75.
So this one really isn't serving my needs. I had to patch together the humidity and temperature controls to best control my fan. I was still intermittently getting moisture on the inside of the tent. And one "morning" I forgot to reset the controller and lost a whole day of CO2 - but honestly I averaged an hour late each "morning."
Ok... this isn't working either. I give up on the local hydro shop and order an Auto Pilot Digital Environmental Controller. Much better probe... box mounts outside of the tent... same cost as the CAP... but now I can control day and night temperature and humidity. It also lets my tie together the temperature and humidity control functions - so my diy junction box is no longer needed. It also has the ability to control the "deadband" the amount below the target that the system must fall before the exhaust fan is shut off. I didn't realize the advantages that this would have until I installed it and started playing around.
After a day of tinkering with the new controller - it has been running all this week. My consumption of CO2 has dropped off significantly - a tank will likely last five or six weeks (though it is about empty due to my higher burn rate during week 2). The deadband adjustment has allowed me to very accurately time my exhaust cycles. The larger the deadband - the longer the length of time between exhaust cycles. I am now running with a max of 82F/75RH.
During all this - the plants have responded to the added CO2 with incredible growth and vigor. It is almost like they are on speed. I read that CO2 will cause buds to become light and airy - and I have both proof and disproof of that statement. The LOJ buds got much harder and more dense - the Super Silver Haze has sorta stringed out - if you know what I mean. I will take some pictures soon and post them. The SSH might be having troubles because I started CO2 at an odd time during its flowering or something... Don't know.
As a grower, it is going to be hard to go back to a slower growth rate. I already feel the urge to just go ahead and get another system for my other flowering tent. I looks to me like you can slowly blow money by inconsistently using CO2 - or just go ahead and spend the money and get a good system up front - and then make money back by using less CO2 forever.
So here are the pieces and parts that are working so well:
$175 - Digital Environmental Controller with Remote Probe - 4 Outlets for Climate Control Devices - 120V - 14.5A - Autopilot APCETHD
$150 - C.A.P. CAPPM4 Co2 Gas Detection Sensor
$88 - Co2 Regulator & Valve
$160 - 20 lb. Aluminum Co2 Tank Compressed Gas Air Cylinder
This is the dehumidifier that I am using in the tent:
$105 - Eva-Dry Edv-2200 Mid-Size Dehumidifier
And finally, here is the CAP controller that I did not like:
$150 - AIR-4 - Temp/Humidity/CO2 Control
Hope this helps someone else out!
CO2 looks to be magic...
I looked forward to finality and especially the ride leading up to it .
Great going on the C02, glad you figured out the problems. I had literally the slimest knowledge on C02, feel like I know quite a bit now 
Man this sounds tricky trying to time everything right.. I just said screw it and left my exhaust on 24/7 to hopefully relieve any issues.. Anticipating your weekly update, can't wait too see how there girls jumped
Man this sounds tricky trying to time everything right.. I just said screw it and left my exhaust on 24/7 to hopefully relieve any issues.. Anticipating your weekly update, can't wait too see how there girls jumped - Thread starter
- #57
GreatLife4All
New Member
I had a super outcome when i lollipopped the bottom 1/4 of my ice plants on my last grow during beginning of flower.(INDICA).
You may have posted in the wrong place - but I will agree with you. Lollipopping is what I have done most consistently - and I believe that it works very well. There was just a little too much popcorn for me using this technique.
- Thread starter
- #59
GreatLife4All
New Member
Great going on the C02, glad you figured out the problems. I had literally the slimest knowledge on C02, feel like I know quite a bit now
I am glad that I could share with you. I didn't know much about CO2 either - and the local hydro guy wasn't much help.
Yes, using timers was a major hassle. However, it was cheap and I did see enhanced growth despite the fact that I didn't use enough CO2. So if this is the only thing that you could afford and had time to watch everything - it would be worth it.
But once I got everything automated using digital controls... life went back to being good for me. Now I can just watch and monitor - instead of actively controlling everything by hand.
I should also state some philosophy of mine... I don't believe that there is anything free in this world. Everything involves a trade-off of some kind. When I increased my lights from 600W to 1000W - I got better growth and yields... but a higher electrical bill and a loss of growing space in my tent (the 1000 runs way hotter in the same system - therefore I have to keep the plants further away). Overall, the benefits exceed the cost, and I am therefore happy with using 1,000W lighting systems.
But all the costs on this one seem to be manual labor vs using automated equipment. I have been extremely happy with the growth and bud formation with each method that I employed... I just don't have to work as hard now and the plants have a way more stable environment.
I do believe that the weird bud formation on the SSH is because of when I started using CO2. But this is a plant that i have had nothing but trouble with historically... so i won't use this plant in my final analysis of CO2.
- Thread starter
- #60
GreatLife4All
New Member
I think your plants are doing well and your attitude is refreshing.I also am going to end up with a digital ballast.I think that is the way to go.
A good digital ballast is absolutely the way to go if you have a choice. I have now replaced my mag ballasts and feel safer (less of a fire risk in my opinion), and have more flexibility (I can use either MH or HPS with only a bulb change).
But I think the best upgrade to my lighting system was using the Hortilux Super HPS bulb - these are relatively expensive but produce great light.