sublime42x89
New Member
Hey there 420 mag forum goers! A friend of mine showed me his grow journal on this site the other day and I was inspired to sign up and get one of my own going. This closet operation has been an ongoing project of mine for about ten months or so now. It has been my first experience with hydroponics and really my first legitimate attempt at growing.
The area I'm working with is about 6 ft long divided into two 3x3x2 (give or take) sections. I've lined the floor and walls with panda plastic. I had purchased a SunSystems 400W switchable MH/HPS lamp with a fan and ducting from my friend for the project but unfortunately I made the decision of letting another friend set it up while I was away on vacation and he put it on the wrong setting, destroying the ballast and almost starting a fire. I don't know how well it would have worked in my closet anyway, the shelf above the grow area is pretty low for that big lamp. So anyway, I've been using fluorescents attached to the wall [image] and a hanging light fixture I've rigged up [image], using fishing line to hold it up and adjust the height. I currently have five lights that I got from wal-mart (two on the walls and three on the fixture) as well as two T5 high output lights attached to the fixture. I'm going to be buying a legitimate four lamp T5 fixture soon to replace my ghetto rig. Also debating if I should try to find the money for a new ballast and move it into a larger closet I have, but I don't know if that will happen..
The system itself is a DWC type deal I put together using tub basins, water pumps and panda plastic cut to cover exposed water around the pots. I was using air stones to oxygenate the water, but three pumps have died on me now so I have the water pump output placed to hit the wall on the tub to capture air as it splashes back down on itself. [image] I have a fan in the bottom right of the grow area for circulation [image] as well as an exhaust fan I rigged up inside of a box attached to the top left. [image]
I currently have the following nutrients and additives: Clonex gel and solution; FoxFarm Grow Big (for veg), Tiger Bloom and Open Sesame (for beginning flowering), Big Bloom and Beastie Bloomz (for flowering finish); and recently added Hygrozyme and Botanicare Sweet Citrus to my arsenal.
A little history:
For the first grow I used bag seeds I'd collected from my days of smoking seedy weed. I germed them in paper towels and put the sprouts into a few different media – rockwool, hydroton and styrofoam in a bubbling res with Clonex solution as well as soaked rockwool outside of the bubbler. They all seemed to work pretty well, but I preferred the cups with hydroton over the rockwool. I vegged them for about two and a half months, encountering some newbie problems on the way – over fertilization, algae from letting light get to the roots, light burns and high temperatures – before putting them on 12/12 and taking clones. Of the eight sprouts I had kept vegging, six made it to flowering and five turned out to be males, just my luck. The buds that she made were pretty strong for the poor genetics it clearly had – it was a really slow grower with unhappy looking curling leaves as well as having hermaphroditic parts that did not mature into full pollen sacs – although I didn't get a lot of weight off of it, maybe 8-12 grams or so.. Her clones didn't take well either, only one of six I cut grew roots and survived to go onto the next round..
My second attempt after that harvest consisted of that clone and a couple grapefruit plants, the seeds for which I found at the bottom of a QP and I started when I took the clones. Four of the six seeds germinated and I put those in hydroton in the bubbler with the clone. I didn't have as much luck this time and only two seedling popped up out of the pebbles. After about 2 months of healthy vegging I started taking clones of the three plants using the bubbler hydroton method. I tried cloning them a few times over the next month with absolutely no success. They were getting too bushy for the enclosure so I decided to just put them into flowering. The clone had grown at a much slower rate than the grapefruit trees and she still had some very ugly foliage as she did the first time compared to the two large bushes next to it. In just under a week of flowering the first hairs appeared on one of the grapefruits and about five days after that the other one began to show her hairs. I was pumped as the two started forming buds over the next week, finally had a good outlook for a nice harvest! That was one month ago.
Then, catastrophe hits:
One friday afternoon (12/4/09) before I was planning on going away for the weekend, about two and a half weeks into 12/12 (clone still hadn't showed her lady parts yet by the way, but that's beside the point..) when the lights came on, I went to check on my babies and was horrified to see bubbles completely filling up the reservoir! My heart sank – see I had a bit of a fly problem [image] in the closet the past few weeks and I had put up sticky paper on the walls as well as a detergent based fly trap I had made and stupidly placed under the plants without securing it to the panda covered hard top which I had cut holes into for the net pots.. Awful decision. The trap had fallen into the res through one of the holes while the plants were sleeping. The leaves on the grapefruit trees were just starting the wilt and the clone's were already looking pretty bad.. The next four or five hours were spent flushing the pots and cleaning out the reservoir with a couple of friends. When they were finally in clean, pH balanced water with some nutrients and hydrogen peroxide, I was already pretty late for my prearranged weekend plans but I waited another couple of hours anyway, checking on the plants and making sure the pH was still good. The plants still weren't looking great but they weren't getting any worse so I decided to head out and hoped for the best..
When I came back sunday night and checked on the plants I was very upset to see the clone totally devastated and the grapefruit plants with barely any living foliage on them besides the tops of some growth shoots. I went to work right away clipping off every clone that looked like it had any chance of survival into rockwool this time and threw them into a humidome seedling tray with a heating mat I'd purchased the week before (after all the failed cloning attempts) but had been too lazy and dumb to take clippings for.. I ended up with eleven viable clones from one and eight from the other. The octuplets were apparently very thirsty and, despite my best efforts to keep a close eye on them, I let the rockwool dry up on them about a week in and only three recovered. After about another week most of clones had been showing new growth and roots were beginning to show. I then moved the three drought survivors and the nine best looking little gals of other eleven into hydroton and put them into water.
So this is where I'm at now:
The twelve clones have been in water now for three weeks. Because the clones were taken almost three weeks into flowering, they continued on flowering for the first week and a half or so [image] before shoots finally started growing above the fan leaves. They're growing pretty rapidly now and so far all is going well. I've been feeding the FoxFarm Grow Big and yesterday I purchased and began adding Botanicare Sweet Citrus. Below are a few more pictures of what's going on, and be sure to check out the photos I've linked to above. I'd love to get some input on the whole thing, I'll be waiting to hear what everyone has to say and any advice on what I can do to improve.
The area I'm working with is about 6 ft long divided into two 3x3x2 (give or take) sections. I've lined the floor and walls with panda plastic. I had purchased a SunSystems 400W switchable MH/HPS lamp with a fan and ducting from my friend for the project but unfortunately I made the decision of letting another friend set it up while I was away on vacation and he put it on the wrong setting, destroying the ballast and almost starting a fire. I don't know how well it would have worked in my closet anyway, the shelf above the grow area is pretty low for that big lamp. So anyway, I've been using fluorescents attached to the wall [image] and a hanging light fixture I've rigged up [image], using fishing line to hold it up and adjust the height. I currently have five lights that I got from wal-mart (two on the walls and three on the fixture) as well as two T5 high output lights attached to the fixture. I'm going to be buying a legitimate four lamp T5 fixture soon to replace my ghetto rig. Also debating if I should try to find the money for a new ballast and move it into a larger closet I have, but I don't know if that will happen..
The system itself is a DWC type deal I put together using tub basins, water pumps and panda plastic cut to cover exposed water around the pots. I was using air stones to oxygenate the water, but three pumps have died on me now so I have the water pump output placed to hit the wall on the tub to capture air as it splashes back down on itself. [image] I have a fan in the bottom right of the grow area for circulation [image] as well as an exhaust fan I rigged up inside of a box attached to the top left. [image]
I currently have the following nutrients and additives: Clonex gel and solution; FoxFarm Grow Big (for veg), Tiger Bloom and Open Sesame (for beginning flowering), Big Bloom and Beastie Bloomz (for flowering finish); and recently added Hygrozyme and Botanicare Sweet Citrus to my arsenal.
A little history:
For the first grow I used bag seeds I'd collected from my days of smoking seedy weed. I germed them in paper towels and put the sprouts into a few different media – rockwool, hydroton and styrofoam in a bubbling res with Clonex solution as well as soaked rockwool outside of the bubbler. They all seemed to work pretty well, but I preferred the cups with hydroton over the rockwool. I vegged them for about two and a half months, encountering some newbie problems on the way – over fertilization, algae from letting light get to the roots, light burns and high temperatures – before putting them on 12/12 and taking clones. Of the eight sprouts I had kept vegging, six made it to flowering and five turned out to be males, just my luck. The buds that she made were pretty strong for the poor genetics it clearly had – it was a really slow grower with unhappy looking curling leaves as well as having hermaphroditic parts that did not mature into full pollen sacs – although I didn't get a lot of weight off of it, maybe 8-12 grams or so.. Her clones didn't take well either, only one of six I cut grew roots and survived to go onto the next round..
My second attempt after that harvest consisted of that clone and a couple grapefruit plants, the seeds for which I found at the bottom of a QP and I started when I took the clones. Four of the six seeds germinated and I put those in hydroton in the bubbler with the clone. I didn't have as much luck this time and only two seedling popped up out of the pebbles. After about 2 months of healthy vegging I started taking clones of the three plants using the bubbler hydroton method. I tried cloning them a few times over the next month with absolutely no success. They were getting too bushy for the enclosure so I decided to just put them into flowering. The clone had grown at a much slower rate than the grapefruit trees and she still had some very ugly foliage as she did the first time compared to the two large bushes next to it. In just under a week of flowering the first hairs appeared on one of the grapefruits and about five days after that the other one began to show her hairs. I was pumped as the two started forming buds over the next week, finally had a good outlook for a nice harvest! That was one month ago.
Then, catastrophe hits:
One friday afternoon (12/4/09) before I was planning on going away for the weekend, about two and a half weeks into 12/12 (clone still hadn't showed her lady parts yet by the way, but that's beside the point..) when the lights came on, I went to check on my babies and was horrified to see bubbles completely filling up the reservoir! My heart sank – see I had a bit of a fly problem [image] in the closet the past few weeks and I had put up sticky paper on the walls as well as a detergent based fly trap I had made and stupidly placed under the plants without securing it to the panda covered hard top which I had cut holes into for the net pots.. Awful decision. The trap had fallen into the res through one of the holes while the plants were sleeping. The leaves on the grapefruit trees were just starting the wilt and the clone's were already looking pretty bad.. The next four or five hours were spent flushing the pots and cleaning out the reservoir with a couple of friends. When they were finally in clean, pH balanced water with some nutrients and hydrogen peroxide, I was already pretty late for my prearranged weekend plans but I waited another couple of hours anyway, checking on the plants and making sure the pH was still good. The plants still weren't looking great but they weren't getting any worse so I decided to head out and hoped for the best..
When I came back sunday night and checked on the plants I was very upset to see the clone totally devastated and the grapefruit plants with barely any living foliage on them besides the tops of some growth shoots. I went to work right away clipping off every clone that looked like it had any chance of survival into rockwool this time and threw them into a humidome seedling tray with a heating mat I'd purchased the week before (after all the failed cloning attempts) but had been too lazy and dumb to take clippings for.. I ended up with eleven viable clones from one and eight from the other. The octuplets were apparently very thirsty and, despite my best efforts to keep a close eye on them, I let the rockwool dry up on them about a week in and only three recovered. After about another week most of clones had been showing new growth and roots were beginning to show. I then moved the three drought survivors and the nine best looking little gals of other eleven into hydroton and put them into water.
So this is where I'm at now:
The twelve clones have been in water now for three weeks. Because the clones were taken almost three weeks into flowering, they continued on flowering for the first week and a half or so [image] before shoots finally started growing above the fan leaves. They're growing pretty rapidly now and so far all is going well. I've been feeding the FoxFarm Grow Big and yesterday I purchased and began adding Botanicare Sweet Citrus. Below are a few more pictures of what's going on, and be sure to check out the photos I've linked to above. I'd love to get some input on the whole thing, I'll be waiting to hear what everyone has to say and any advice on what I can do to improve.
Glad to see the light being put to good use. I can't wait to see the new setup up and running!
