THC Bomb & WW/Skunk - CFL Hood/Veg HPS/Flower

I was able to get my hands on a different camera. Sorry for the coloring, I forgot to turn off the 2100k HPS and use the white CFLs.

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Also, can you determine if we are root bound? Droopy leaves and stunted growth? I'm afraid to pop off the pot to look when I know I won't be transplanting tonight.
 
see if she perks up as the soil dries, if not, she needs a transplant. on the other hand she could be thirsty.
 
I am using rock wool grow cubes and water 3 times during the 12 hour lights on period for a minute each watering. I took the above pics when I opened the closet at lights on. This was 15 hours since the last watering time. Pot felt adequately drained (light in weight) when I lifted it.
 
I say you are fine with just pulling the plant out and checking. I know it seems uncomfortable at first but they never miss a beat, and that's the beauty I've come to find with rock wool.

I only started a 3x a day feed 2 weeks into flowering when I noticed the plant using more water due to another period of rapid growth. I just reduced feed times to 2x day, 3/4 through flower.
 
Are your feeds 1 minute or longer? I'm pretty sure I dont generate any runoff, or extremely minimal if I do. This one plant and minimal evaporation have made about 2 gallons of water become unaccounted for when I changing out the res, so I know she is drinking well.
 
They are 15minutes long. I changed to longer feed times at the beggining of flower after Capn made me come to a realization: The thorough recirculation of you res through you media ensures that the pH of your root area is stable. Remember when I tried to stabilize my pH by completely shutting off the recirculating function, well my pH in my uncontaminated res was fine, but since I knew whatever reactions were taking place in my res previously to raise pH were most likely taking place in my media, the pH of the root are would eventually rise too. Now by recirculating for this long I can ensure that my res pH is rising at the same rate of media's pH, so I have complete control over adjustments and able to stay ahead of pH swings by solely testing my res before scheduled feedings.

Are you watering for 1 minute intervals?
 
The plants look great Sky and IMO looks female.
Judging from the size of pot your using and the size of the plants now I would say that they are probably root bound or very close to it. Transplant when you get some time, and then you'll really see the plant take off in growth.
Good luck.
 
Woot Woot! So happy to finally found a lady. These Herbies freebies (IMO) have made up for my THC Bombs not germing and I hold Herbies Harmless for that act of kindness!

Tonight will start the plant's eleventh day of flowering. At what age do you think I can step u to 15 minute waterings? I am only doing 1 minute waterings now and am under the impression that over watering and under watering symptoms are very similar, so if I am seeing symptoms, then I'd have to lean towards under watering. The digi timer that AG showed me how to operate can go from 1 minute to I believe one week, or anything between, so it doesn't have to be 15 minutes, just more than 1 is what I'd like. I assume the 5 gallon (or 3.7 gallon) bucket would of course require much more water to adequately drench the medium.
 
>>> At what age do you think I can step u to 15 minute waterings?

I think the sooner the better, as the way I understand it leads me to believe a longer watering time leads to more synergy between res and medium status readings (PPM/pH).
 
Whoop Whoop!
Congrats sky, you gots a lady there
Before I got to caps pics I saw the same pistol, nice to see and way to go cap!

So sky I use a similar if not the exact timer AG showed you. I run mine for five times at three mins, I like to get some runoff as I feel it helps with the salt build up in the medium. I am going to try a 12 hour top feed where it will turn on when the light kicks on and turns off when its done. Well know then if its possible to overwater in the RockWool mini cubes. So far I cannot get the plant to show me stress from to much. I almost tried my hand at a side by side one organic hydro one reg. synthetics. To much extra equipment to have a second reservoir under the tray, one day I'll try it maybe soon, not sure yet. I've got to finish up some plants and start tearing down equipment and possibly demolishing the cabin so no others can tear it up for fun. Probably will if nothing else let the critters take it over, see what they can grow in here haha.
I'll try my best to swing by more often sky, im sorry I get so caught up in my own remote life I forgot to check in.
Reps for sticking it out
 
At what age do you think I can step u to 15 minute waterings? I assume the 5 gallon (or 3.7 gallon) bucket would of course require much more water to adequately drench the medium.

Two weeks ago :)

>>> At what age do you think I can step u to 15 minute waterings?

I think the sooner the better, as the way I understand it leads me to believe a longer watering time leads to more synergy between res and medium status readings (PPM/pH).

++1 YES yes yes!
 
Whoop Whoop!
Congrats sky, you gots a lady there
Before I got to caps pics I saw the same pistol, nice to see and way to go cap!

So sky I use a similar if not the exact timer AG showed you. I run mine for five times at three mins, I like to get some runoff as I feel it helps with the salt build up in the medium. I am going to try a 12 hour top feed where it will turn on when the light kicks on and turns off when its done. Well know then if its possible to overwater in the RockWool mini cubes. So far I cannot get the plant to show me stress from to much. I almost tried my hand at a side by side one organic hydro one reg. synthetics. To much extra equipment to have a second reservoir under the tray, one day I'll try it maybe soon, not sure yet. I've got to finish up some plants and start tearing down equipment and possibly demolishing the cabin so no others can tear it up for fun. Probably will if nothing else let the critters take it over, see what they can grow in here haha.
I'll try my best to swing by more often sky, im sorry I get so caught up in my own remote life I forgot to check in.
Reps for sticking it out

The 15 minute cheap timers work just fine too. 3 minutes, or 15 minutes, as long as you have a good flow, it should be fully flushing out the cubes.

Sling, I forgot to tell you, I tried kicking it up from 1 x a day to 4 x a day. They were fine for about 10 days and then in about 2 weeks I started to notice some leaf tips starting to curl down. I know it wasn't my PPM because it's only at 350 and my plants are actually starting to show signs of deficiencies. So right now I'm at 2 waterings, 15 minute a day.
 
Thanks so much for all the confirmations, that takes the weight off if ya know what I mean. I have some more news update wise, but I wrote a good chuck of it on AG's Journal so I'll just copy/paste and further elaborate.

Yeah, I must've missed the 2nd Q. I preemptively added less than the usual 2ml or more to see if prepping the water might assist the buffers in the down to hold on to the downward pull better. The results looked fantastic to start with, all the way up till about 36 hours in, give or take some hours. Then at some point during the night, only being drained for one minute, by 3 times and a night to rest it climbed up to 6.7. The added silica is likely the culprit and next change I won't test the limits again and just stick with the safe 2ml. Adding the drops once again did next to nothing last night. Just at lights on, I checked and it went up to 7.4 so I then added 1/2ml of DOWN, dropped a tenth or two, added 1.5ml came down to 6.8. Added another 1/2 ml and it plunged down to 5.3. Wanting to flush the medium as your explanation made a lot of sense so I went for it with the 5.3. However, while making adjustments, I turned off the "auto" cycle of programmed feed times as adjusting took near 2 hours. Thankfully the Heisenberg Tea had matured this evening at 48 hours and it's pH was 5.4 so I added a little more than 8 ounces, probably more like 12 ounces to really drench the medium and give my new lady friend a nice smoothy of her favorite poison. When I turned the pump on, I cycled the medium as best I can (only outside ring drips or squirts) then changed the cycle to what I thought was the "auto" position, but mistakenly chose the auto that keeps feeding. Still being a little scatter brained from some bong rips that a friend came over and shared with myself and the other 2 stooges, I did not hear the pump pumping. When I discovered this, it had already been 30-45 minutes of on time. I will add just a bit more Heisenberg Tea as I believe the last bit may have washed out and this tea is near peak population or declining and I want to get some bennies in there breaking down some nutes or whooping any ass down there that needs whooping! I left the res to collect it's bearings and checked the levels.

Input PPM - 575
Input PH --- 5.3
Res PPM --- 650
Res PH ----- 5.9

I added my last quarter gallon of distilled water to bring the PPM to between 550 and 600. Now the funny part is that when I go to update my journal, the only news I will have to share is the meter readings after adding the water and a query about some lower branch leaves that I pulled that were yellow with brown and gray necrotic spots because I got way too carried away answering your question. So if you ever want to inform your subscribers of your progress in your grow, please feel free to spill it on my journal and link back because that's my new plan.

I have some pics of my pre scrog training. Once transplanted in a day or two, I will cut a bigger piece and keep this pre scrog training till the canopy gets higher than the screws that holds the shirts up, then I will rest the screen on the canopy as it's light enough, then begin redirecting traffic outwards. Once a branch reaches the outer most square, I will tie it off to the mesh and begin escorting other growth outwards till the screen is filled. If the stretch is too intense, I will shoot some screws to the floor and tie down the screen to control upwards stretch. The res PPM is @ 560 which is great, plus also the PH topped out at 6.0 so I added 6 drops and will call that a night. Next few days will be pretty eventful so updates soon to come. Now the pics;

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Oh, also am having a little difficulty maintaining an optimal RH during lights on. When lights first comes on, RH is always around 50%, but after a little more than an hour with the light on, it dumps down to about 30%, so my leaves are likely being made susceptible to K deficiency which can lead to other problems. This I don't understand b/c the current atmospheric RH is 67%, plus I have two wicking tank tops that leach out about 4 quarts of water in a 24 hour period, so I don't know where it goes unless it's getting sucked off through the light and the ceiling?

Another issue we suffer is that her dark period (my day time) brings her air temps down to as low as 63º, so I added the heat mat to help with that. During dark hours, it kicks on for an hour, then off for a half hour and repeats till lights on then it shuts off till the next lights off period.

After the mistaken long watering, I notice that a shorter top has it's fan leaves standing at attention so I assume the long drink was sorely wanted/needed.

Any thoughts or suggestions are welcomed. TYIA 420!
 
Update, day 57 of life, day 13 of flower,

Once again courtesy of The Capn, I have received kindness in the form of more grow cubes, some fol spray nutrient, cloning solution and another cylinder air stone totaling two. I will dedicate that to the Tea bucket, thanks Cap! Being in a bit of a rush to make it for lights on, I only soaked the cubes in PH 5.5 water for about 30-45 minutes in another bucket. This gave me time to drill all the holes to make a Capn Style DIY air pot from a 5 gallon bucket. I drilled I think 16 holes around the perimeter of the bottom flat of the bucket. I then transferred this dimension up onto the side and drilled holes upwards about 2" apart from one another. There are 5 holes vertical around the cylinder of the bucket. The buckets seats perfectly in the catch basin I made to catch runoff.

In the coming days I intend to redesign things a little bit because when irrigating the new medium with nute water, the res was completely depleted and I had to tip it to the pump to get a little bit more, but nowhere near the volume of water I wanted moved across the medium so I will have to get a slightly bigger res, maybe a 5 gallon bucket, we'll see. Someone got me a humidifier to keep RH good, but I have to use it sparingly as it blows hot steam and don't want to add heat. When I turn it on, I try to keep it back a bit so it can mix with ambient air and cool some. Also concerned about adding heat to the res so I will look into ducting the steam to the floor inlet hole.

Just painted a larger screen that I will use to flatten out her top. Feels so good to say her! Because the screen is wire mesh and slightly larger than my space one way, I will roll it as if over a drum and lay it on the canopy leaving the concave side up to better simulate the shape of the bulb. That's just a wordy way to say I'm not cutting it. I also plan to slowly bind the screen down LA style because adding the bucket to sit slightly higher to accommodate drainage has robbed us of a lot of head room and she is starting to kill it up top and down bottom. My guess is her root ball is developed just slightly before I could say she was cramped excessively. I first recentered the main stem to the center of the bucket, and back filled with a lot of cubes. I first added a 4"-6" base of cubes, then centered and back filled. She looks really happy and has plenty of room in almost every direction to grow and be pruned by air. This will force roots back in to better populate the medium. Can't wait to see what comes next.

After my res problem is remedied, I plan to take clones and germ a pineapple chunk seed to prep for the coming vacancy in the flower room.

Here are the pics!

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Also plan to redesign the dripper halo, this one is pretty inefficient and I need more flow for when I have more res. Current schedule is;
10:00 PM Lights on
11:00 PM water on
11:10 PM water off
02:00 AM water on
02:05 AM water off
05:00 AM water on
05:05 AM water off
08:00 AM water on
08:05 AM water off
10:00 AM Lights off

If I can get a decent sized res with ability to flood 5 gallons of rock wool on command and still have efficient supply, I will adjust the schedule to better work with that. I think I also burned one of the tops. Scrog will help prevent this too. Later dudes!
 
Part 2,

I put my spimp game down and crushed her, literally! I wrenched her down about 3" while jamming to some Do or Die

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I'm glad I got some head room back. I'm hoping I don't have to bust that DIY reflector apart to get some more inches. Before I ever do that, I will first fashion a screen like the one on the plant to keep growth away from the hot zone, but if that levy breaks, I will break the reflector down and just hang the fan at the end of the bulb. Also have to try and get a fan into the top cabinet so I can effectively bleed off all the heat that collects up there. Lots to do, little to do with. I'll jimmy something, still got 2 Capn PC fans to incorporate!
 
PO PIMP!!!! Hell yea dude, that's some ride or die $hit right there!

I love this pic Sky! She is going to flower out beautifully with the branches evenly spaced out like that. +Reps brotha!

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>>>Someone got me a humidifier to keep RH good, but I have to use it sparingly as it blows hot steam and don't want to add heat.

I too use a hot-water humidifier. I place a fan right on its exhaust to prevent any heat from building up in the tent. Placing it in the ambient room won't do much to the RH of your grow cab as cold air holds less moisture. I have mine on for 4 hours a day.

And don't worry too much on the humidity at 25-30%. I realized that I was not facing any kind of K deficiency throughout my last few weeks. And even though my humidity was fairly low (19%), being so late in flowering, low humidity actually benefits cannabis in resin production (*GreenHouse Seeds). After doing some research in fear of my potential humidity related K problem, I come to find that a lot of the cases take place during vegetative growth where Potassium is given in minimal concentrations, so I'm guessing having the little K locked due to humidity will show this effect. But since in flowering there is an abundant supply of K (usually) it is more likely to get locked by a salt buildup. I think 30-40% RH in flowering is PERFECT. Just thinking aloud.

>>>...the res was completely depleted and I had to tip it to the pump to get a little bit more, but nowhere near the volume of water I wanted moved across the medium so I will have to get a slightly bigger res, maybe a 5 gallon bucket, we'll see.

Am I understanding you correctly, are you using the 5 gallon bucket as the actually airpot? IF so, then a 5 gallon res won't be enough to get a continuous recirculation through your res and back through the pump. I have never used a pot as big as a 5 gallon bucket, but when I flushed my 3.5 nursery pot (and even my 5 gal nursery pot) I fill up my spare 5 gallon bucket to the top, and it takes about 3.5-4 gallons to fully get a continuous flow, just at the brink of the water line reaching the pump. I think you might need to look into a slightly bigger res. But who knows, give it a shot, maybe it might just be enough.

Again, everything is coming along nicely. You'll be enjoying some fine home-grown soon!
 
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