The Munki's Playground

Day 2 is drawing to a close. Had my first malfunction on the control bucket; it overflowed and lost about 2 gallons over the cycle. It had drained itself correctly in the end, but I had a mess to clean up. I will need to protect against that with a catch basin and maybe I can build in a second float as a backup on the fill side.

In the cleanup, I decided to switch the left and right buckets. The left side of the light gives a higher reading under the LUX meter and since the leaves are curling on the one plant, this could be why.

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BlueDog said:
Morning Munki! What do you use to measure out ml's? I need something.
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Blue, to measure out small doses, I picked up a 12ml syringe at the pet store. It's used to give medications to dogs & cats and/or feed small animals. It's perfect since you can draw right out of the bottles without pouring and it really avoids a mess.

Munki, you're plants look great! :welldone:

Sorry to hear about the flood! :surf:
 
Mr. Krip said:
Blue, to measure out small doses, I picked up a 12ml syringe at the pet store. It's used to give medications to dogs & cats and/or feed small animals. It's perfect since you can draw right out of the bottles without pouring and it really avoids a mess.

Munki, you're plants look great! :welldone:

Sorry to hear about the flood! :surf:
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Hey, thanks for the tip and for checking in Mr. Krip!
 
Mr. Krip said:
Blue, to measure out small doses, I picked up a 12ml syringe at the pet store. It's used to give medications to dogs & cats and/or feed small animals. It's perfect since you can draw right out of the bottles without pouring and it really avoids a mess.

Munki, you're plants look great! :welldone:

Sorry to hear about the flood! :surf:
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That's perfect Mr Krip + reps! I'll be picking one up asap.
 
In an effort to address the possibility of another control bucket flooding incident, I rearranged the tent to allow for a flood tray to be below the control bucket. It isn't big enough to have it and the plant buckets together, so the hoses are hanging over the lip of the tray. This may result in a bit higher residual water levels in the bottom of the plant buckets, but I need the margin of safety the flood tray provides. Pics of new setup tomorrow.
 
OK, got pics from the 19th (2 days ago) and some from today. You can see how I now have it arranged.

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Here is from today.

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BlueDog said:
Girls are looking great Munki! The room looks really clean. Is the control bucket the one on the floor in the back?
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Yep, the square one. The round one in the far corner is a fourth plant bucket whose clone did not take so was pulled. I'm leaving it attached but in the basin as it has a similar high water mark.

Mr Smith said:
I am subsribed. I found ur journal late and only had a breif glimspe but I really like what I see. Gonna enjoy this one.
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Hey, long time no see, Mr Smith. Glad to have you around.

:byebye:
 
Looking good, Munki! :goodjob:

When are you thinking of putting them into flower?
 
Mr. Krip said:
Looking good, Munki! :goodjob:

When are you thinking of putting them into flower?
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Funny thing, they are ALREADY in flower mode! I cut the light cycle from 18/6 to 12/12 back on March 17th so today is Day 7. Did not put the plants into an extended dark period for the switch like I've done in the past. The plants should exhibit more flower like characteristics over the next 7 - 10 days.

BlueDog said:
Morning Munki! I love those pics with the LED. Are your plant colors true in the pics? The look a funky almost deep blue-green color, very cool.
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Well, photography is never really true in color reproduction anyways but in my pics here, the light is coming from the LED array. It does not put out equal intensity of the various wavelengths and is especially deficient in green light. I use a custom white balance setting on my camera that compensates for the inconsistencies however those adjustments are selected from a sample shot and then applied equally over the whole picture. Areas where some LEDs are blocked in shadow change the composition of the light there so the white balance does not adjust the color there to a "true" spectrum. The areas of photos that appear to have a strong green light are reflections of florescent tube lighting in my garage. With the shifted sensitivity of the white balance setting, the floros look green.

The human eye will do similar things like the white balance does. Look through "rose colored" sunglasses for a while and when you take them off, your eyes will be relatively desensitized to red making the world tinted blue.
 
1st week of flower complete. Pics from "afternoon" day 8 (today). Added a third water cycle to happen midway between the other two during the day.

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Munki said:
Did a few things today. :thumb:

Lights raised about 2 inches.

Calibrated meters again. I found that I needed to put the probe into the pH 4 and pH 7 solution back and forth a few times, rinsing and turning a calibration knob on each pass until sticking the probe into a solution gave the correct value. Once that was done, the pH of the tri meter and my handheld Hanna meter matched up. Adjusted the TDS meter again as well, calibrating both of my meters as best as I could. They were off by about 20 ppm; not too bad.

Reservoir Change: In 25 gallons I added 200 ml GH Flora Micro, 400 ml GH Flora Bloom, and 50 ml of Dutch Master gold series silica. No pH adjustment needed. Final numbers were 5.6 pH, 910 ppm (1.8 EC), and 64 degrees F.

Pics tomorrow.
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High Munki,

Nice to see you've still got girls playing in the playground ;) I love your stuff, I've got a chair :popcorn:

:peace:
 
HorseBadortiz said:
High Munki,

Nice to see you've still got girls playing in the playground ;) I love your stuff, I've got a chair :popcorn:

:peace:
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Hey, glad to hear from you again, HBO! No expectations from the grow, just trying to keep it fun and test out the ebb and flow system.

:peace:

BlueDog said:
Hey Munki! They sure look happy :tokin:

How long do they get flooded for?
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The timer has notches for time periods to be on or off. One notch is 15 minutes I think. Doing three of those spread out over the day period and no watering in the dark period.
 
xlr8 said:
:popcorn: Plants look really great, Munki. Can't wait to follow along!
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I like to keep my journals up to date with photos, so my readers can feel like they are there with me, sharing in my joys and troubles.

:thanks:
 
Hey Munki! I'm sure you've done it before but would you mind explaining just how your system works again? I go back in your guys old journals and get lost for days and I just don't have the time now, but I'd like to learn just what's going on... thank you.
 
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