Xlr8's Hydroponic Adventures & Photos From The Garden - 2012

[Xlr8]

I feel your pain on watering the moms and I also have been thinking of putting the moms in hydro. Just not sure how I'd go about it yet but the thought to do it is there.

How about something like Mr Smith does with his hydro moms? DIY, gravity based controller with flo n gro pots for moms perhaps? Yeah, coco coir is awesome stuff, I really do love it, but I hate it too. Haha. It's such a pain to work with (I buy the bricks) and the whole hand watering thing is for the birds. Airpots are probably not the right choice for moms like I was using them, but for growing a plant through completion of flower or something, airpots with coco coir work amazing (or smart pots).

 

[Xlr8]

LLLLUUUUUUUCCCCYYYYYYYYY!! Damn I remember that one... she was purdy!

Thanks Jandre. I can't wait to grow more Lucy. I have too many things I want to grow, and not enough room, but oh how I miss Lucy! I went OMM for a while with seeds, so it's like I have this candy store at my fingertips, but I can only eat 5 pieces of candy every 2 months...

 

[OldMedMan]

Thanks Jandre. I can't wait to grow more Lucy. I have too many things I want to grow, and not enough room, but oh how I miss Lucy! I went OMM for a while with seeds, so it's like I have this candy store at my fingertips, but I can only eat 5 pieces of candy every 2 months...

Bummer X ! No Lucy!

Tell me about candy stores! Lucky me can do outdoors and grow a bit more at a time. Worry worry though, as you know. I hope you live a long life Buddy with much more growing ahead. Then all you have to worry about is which ones to grow.

 

[Billy420]

Good questions Billy. I'm planning on using it for small, hydro moms. Basically, I'll pull out anything that isn't special when flowered, and replace it with something else. They'll need to be trimmed fairly frequently, including the roots. I'm not sure how well I'll like trying to keep hydro moms, but I'm sick of hand watering plants and mixing up nutrients for them all the time. It's easier for me to automate things a bit, and just manage the extra reservoir each week, along with keeping them trimmed up. I don't plan on ever letting them get very big, and may just replace them frequently with new cuttings to keep things small.

Additionally, I'd like to use it as a way to have veg plants ready to transplant right into the Flo N Gro after a flowering run. Eventually, I'd like to use the Flo N Gro almost exclusively for the flowering phase, using the DIY hydro set-up for vegging before hand.-

As I have it set up, it's probably not big enough to grow plants from beginning to finished flower. Maybe if you went right into flower immediately without vegging them up to size. But, my goal is to keep small veg plants in it as moms or for pre-vegging the Flo N Gro, so that's okay by me. I did make some swappable lids that have room for more plants per plant site, if I want to do that at some point.-

You could use smaller netpots, and more per container, but you might want bigger tubs instead, especially if you want to do a start to finish grow with them.-

My thoughts on the netpot size were that I wanted them to be big enough to hold some roots in them. In straight DWC, you get most root development right at the bottom in a big mat underneath. I was looking to have a little room in the netpots, so that adding floods to the process would allow more root growth in the netpot itself, and higher up (vs. just the bottom part like traditional DWC). I bring this up because, you might have to flood higher for smaller netpots, and they won't hold as many roots. Not that mine are very big or hold that many to begin with. As far as crowding, it depends on how often you trim them up, and keep them trimmed. If you are letting them stay in there long, you'll have quite a nest of roots going, the more plants per site. You might have to experiment to see what you like, but it's all about how long you'll keep them in there and how you plan to use it...

In general, I usually end up vegging for 3-4 weeks before I switch to flowering phase (12/12 etc.). As far as for your lights, feel free to put the plants with the LED into 12/12 if you want, and count the first week with the blue light as part of your flowering. The first 10-14 days of the blooming phase the plant is really vegging still anyway. So, it's okay to do the blue light right at the start of 12/12 if you want. In fact, I switch to bloom phase and keep my white/blueish metal halide bulbs going for first 10-14 days, THEN I switch my bulbs to reddish tints with the HPS bulbs. But, it would work fine to finish vegging that one week with the blue LED's and then start flowering with the redder bulbs the next week. No wrong answer, in other words.-

I was thinking the same , of keeping moms in dwc buckets (water farm) , from what I ve read in the past !!! It looks the best option for hydro setups. This DIY veg bins, look great too, the one and only thing I'm thinking is that they're need to bit higher than the reservoir and you might lose a little bit of height ! But assuming you are not going to keep moms for too long, this won't be a problem.

This is definitely an alternative to flo n gro machine, for flowering also .... lol
I don't see why we can't use this for flowering, maybe with smaller bin in diameter , taller and one plant per a bin !!!!!
.... A cheap and nice working solution !!!!!
(I'm seriously thinking to build one for flowering too and save the 600 plus bucks I need for flo n gro...)-
In a 4 feet tall tent, height won't be a problem, I think ..

Very good info in root development in dwc vs flood, style.
Also to be honest, I didn't know that I can trim leafs of the plant in this stage, I thought I can only do it, at the "known" days ..... lol
This way will definitely help the little jungle !

3-4 weeks of vegging is what I was thinking too, as I'm having the "less plats-more veg time" idea in my mind, as well !!! (9 plants in 4x4)
Very nice tip for the MH bulbs , it's exactly the same with the "blue mode" on the leds. The only think I didn't know, is that I can go straight on 12/12 with the "blue", if you asked me , I 'd say I was going to continue with GLR and the one extra hour in the middle of the "night" ....
Things are very clear now ...!!!

Thank you very much xlr8 for your help, it is really valuable to me ....

Ps: Your plants are just looking sooooo beautiful !!
Well done.
Keep up the good work , my friend !

 

[Xlr8]

Hi Billy --

The system I made would work great for flowering if they were a bit larger containers, but the fact that they need to be above the reservoir is a disadvantage for height purposes.

You said "in a 4 foot tall tent height wont be a problem I think..." Are you sure about the height? 4' is not very tall, and would indeed be a problem flowering most plants. Keep in mind, the lights inside take up at least a foot of space usually, more likely 2-3, depending on the tent and the lights. The plant containers/plant-sites are going to take up at least a foot or two of space themselves. In between is your plant, which needs a foot or so (depending on lights) between it and the lights. In a 7' tall tent, a person is lucky to be able to grow a 3' tall plant once every other height factor is figured in... Food for thought.

Waterfarms are primarily drip-style hydroponics, but you can make DIY versions using their plumbing kit that are essentially a combo of drip/dwc. They work nice, but they'd work better if they were recirculated back to a bigger reservoir, which can be done.

I did a DIY bucket like that with the Big Bang Auto I grew, and it worked really well, but the incredibly small reservoir (the bucket itself) made PH, temps, and top offs a major headache requiring a lot of attention. That said, the combo of drip/dwc is almost unbeatable for growth rates, in my opinion. Recirculate it too, and you have an unbeatable hydro system. Yes, better than traditional RDWC even.

 

[Xlr8]

Bummer X ! No Lucy!

Tell me about candy stores! Lucky me can do outdoors and grow a bit more at a time. Worry worry though, as you know. I hope you live a long life Buddy with much more growing ahead. Then all you have to worry about is which ones to grow.

Thanks buddy, I hope so too. I hope that for us both. I hope they leave you alone outside for a while (rippers). I love seeing you with plants outside again.

I have some more Lucy seeds somewhere, and I'm hoping to grow some more when I can. It's still one of my favorites, and I've been missing it. Though truth be told, I had the best harvest I've ever had last run. In terms of quality, especially. The Chocolope, Super Lemon Haze and Deadhead OG all turned out great, and I was fortunate enough to get a decent yield on them (decent for the strains and my set-up).

 

[Mr. Krip]

Hey, Brother! Glad to hear you had your best run, so far!

I'm sure they'll keep getting better! I've been halfway tempted to go OMM with seeds myself, but I know I'd just want to grow everything out all at once.

As-is, I'm sure getting my money's worth out of the seeds I've purchased. So far, I've rooted something like 100 plants from my first order of 10 seeds! Luckily, I'm happy enough with the quality of the strains I have that I don't really miss not having a large variety of strains to choose from, but there are definately a bunch more I'm yearning to try out!

 

[Alaskan1]

How about something like Mr Smith does with his hydro moms? DIY, gravity based controller with flo n gro pots for moms perhaps? Yeah, coco coir is awesome stuff, I really do love it, but I hate it too. Haha. It's such a pain to work with (I buy the bricks) and the whole hand watering thing is for the birds. Airpots are probably not the right choice for moms like I was using them, but for growing a plant through completion of flower or something, airpots with coco coir work amazing (or smart pots).

never seen his DIY setup.

I may end up with a FEW extra flo n gro buckets after all my new grow rooms are set up.Just won't know for sure until it's all said and done. I like the idea though of setting up hydro to take care of the moms. i would suspect at some point just like soil you'd have to prune back the root system and then there is the issue of keeping the plants short and bushy. i'd be a pruning MOFO lol
I bet I could also get away with only changing the res every two weeks and keep them on a lighter feeding schedule.
I think this is something I'd seriously like to look into...........want to bang heads together to come up with something? Shoot me a PM with your ideas.

 

[shizznizzle]

Cool, great ideas. I might give that a try. I'm wondering if my idea would work in the post I made to Fluffy? Save it in web rbg format, then finish editing for color seeing it as it would appear here, perhaps? Is that option in photo editors like photoshop, etc.? I shoot everything in raw format originally, so I have a lot of editing capability with the files, but sometimes it's not worth the headache. Though, for entering a nug in the nug of the month contest or something, probably worth the trouble to get the color right.

Thanks for the tips!

Yup x you can swap to rgb easily in pshop, that is what i use under the image>mode drop down menu also make sure to change to 8 bit color space if you want to apply any color type effects to save into the document I find effects especially color match among others much more useful than the level controls. Member you can always convert to a higher bit rate later but can not apply any effects unless 8bit.

 

[Heirloom]

Waterfarms are primarily drip-style hydroponics, but you can make DIY versions using their plumbing kit that are essentially a combo of drip/dwc. They work nice, but they'd work better if they were recirculated back to a bigger reservoir, which can be done.

I did a DIY bucket like that with the Big Bang Auto I grew, and it worked really well, but the incredibly small reservoir (the bucket itself) made PH, temps, and top offs a major headache requiring a lot of attention. That said, the combo of drip/dwc is almost unbeatable for growth rates, in my opinion. Recirculate it too, and you have an unbeatable hydro system. Yes, better than traditional RDWC even.

!00% agree with needing a bigger res. I tried the 5 gallon res for, oh, maybe 3 weeks......with two relatively small plants. 30-50 gallon is certainly the 'safe zone' for res size. Not too much nutrient is used and temp and PH are really stable. In fact I am going a full 3 weeks on all of my systems that are 30-50 gallon. PH starts moving in the last week, but not wildly. I top up at about the 10-11 day mark with PH'd water (if the PH is high, if it's low I top with plain water as mine is 7.0) and that's about it, monitoring always of course. The 5 gallon res needed constant PH adjustment and really became a pain. I could not have had all of my systems with small res's. Not enough hours in the day to take care of them all.

 

[shizznizzle]

Speaking of res temps, just a quick question........in my little cloner I have the aeroponics one, how can I control re temps in such a small tank? I am hitting almost 28° c the clones are not reacting to the heat yet but thought they may soon....thanks in advance if anyone has any ideas.

 

[Xlr8]

Speaking of res temps, just a quick question........in my little cloner I have the aeroponics one, how can I control re temps in such a small tank? I am hitting almost 28° c the clones are not reacting to the heat yet but thought they may soon....thanks in advance if anyone has any ideas.

Just a thought - what if you nested inside of say... a cooler or larger Rubbermaid tub, then fill that outer tub with ice or frozen water bottles that you swap periodically. In other words, it would be surrounded on the outside by coldness, so to speak...

 

[SurfBuddy]

Hiya X,

I just saw a video about juicing cannabis and wondered if you have any input. Basically, I don't care about getting high, it is more for medicinal, anti inflammatory and anti cancer purposes. Please let me know if you've seen any research into it other than the LEAF video or have any other info that may be useful (pro or con).

 

[Xlr8]

Hey, Brother! Glad to hear you had your best run, so far!

I'm sure they'll keep getting better! I've been halfway tempted to go OMM with seeds myself, but I know I'd just want to grow everything out all at once.

As-is, I'm sure getting my money's worth out of the seeds I've purchased. So far, I've rooted something like 100 plants from my first order of 10 seeds! Luckily, I'm happy enough with the quality of the strains I have that I don't really miss not having a large variety of strains to choose from, but there are definately a bunch more I'm yearning to try out!

Hey there my friend!

You are getting your money's worth. If you can clone, you don't really need much seed except for variety, huh? Really great having you drop by Mr Krip.

 

[Xlr8]

never seen his DIY setup.

I may end up with a FEW extra flo n gro buckets after all my new grow rooms are set up.Just won't know for sure until it's all said and done. I like the idea though of setting up hydro to take care of the moms. i would suspect at some point just like soil you'd have to prune back the root system and then there is the issue of keeping the plants short and bushy. i'd be a pruning MOFO lol
I bet I could also get away with only changing the res every two weeks and keep them on a lighter feeding schedule.
I think this is something I'd seriously like to look into...........want to bang heads together to come up with something? Shoot me a PM with your ideas.

Hey there A1 -

As far as ideas, this is the best one I've seen for hydro moms affordably:

Check out this thread by Mr Smith. My set-up for my hydro moms uses smaller DIY containers (little rubbermaid tubs) but uses the exact same principles as Mr Smith uses. The only difference is, instead of mine draining completely, they keep a small reservoir of their own after each flood cycle which has an airstone - allowing it to function as DWC between floods. Otherwise, this is how I would do it (did it) if I didn't want to invest in a controller/system. You just need to be able to keep the moms short enough so that they are able to live above the reservoir, as gravity essentially takes the place of the return pump. Because you only need a pump for floods in this set-up, it can be put on a regular $10 timer. The rest is just buckets, fittings, and tubing.

DIY gravity drain multibucket controller

Recently, he updated his hydro mom area, and this info is in another recent journal he did (and I just now found!):

Starting Over - Learning From Mistakes Or Making Them - Ramblings Of A Stoner

If I had the space, like I think you do or will have, I'd probably do something just like Mr Smith. What I made works on same principles only smaller containers, etc. I think Jandre's system works about the same, too.

Yes, the downside to hydro moms is that they grow fast, requiring more frequent trimming of leaves/branches/roots. I'm still betting on it being easier to manage for my situation though (I hope!)

 

[Xlr8]

!00% agree with needing a bigger res. I tried the 5 gallon res for, oh, maybe 3 weeks......with two relatively small plants. 30-50 gallon is certainly the 'safe zone' for res size. Not too much nutrient is used and temp and PH are really stable. In fact I am going a full 3 weeks on all of my systems that are 30-50 gallon. PH starts moving in the last week, but not wildly. I top up at about the 10-11 day mark with PH'd water (if the PH is high, if it's low I top with plain water as mine is 7.0) and that's about it, monitoring always of course. The 5 gallon res needed constant PH adjustment and really became a pain. I could not have had all of my systems with small res's. Not enough hours in the day to take care of them all.

One 5 gallon solo hydro bucket is a huge PITA. They do work though if you put the effort in. Larger reservoirs are so much easier to work with, and have much less fluctuation - the plants can't cherry pick them enough to throw things out of whack fast.

 

[Smurph]

Hey x, I want to thank you for doing what you do. Your journal sets a high standard. They've all been a pleasure to read. After having read hundreds of pages on here (your journals, omm's, 12/12's) I feel like I've read the marijuana encyclopedia. Once I'm ever able to start my own grow, years from now, I hope to be able to share with everyone here as you do. Hopefully my future journal will come at least close to the standard you've set.

 

[Xlr8]

Hiya X,

I just saw a video about juicing cannabis and wondered if you have any input. Basically, I don't care about getting high, it is more for medicinal, anti inflammatory and anti cancer purposes. Please let me know if you've seen any research into it other than the LEAF video or have any other info that may be useful (pro or con).

No, but I recently heard about this too and have been meaning to look into it. Glad you brought it up, as I still want to do that - but I don't have any insights at this point. I just heard about it for the first time a day or two ago. I just watched the LEAF video you mentioned just now. Interesting stuff. Keep me posted if you learn more, and I'll do the same... Thanks for bringing this up!

 

[Xlr8]

Yup x you can swap to rgb easily in pshop, that is what i use under the image>mode drop down menu also make sure to change to 8 bit color space if you want to apply any color type effects to save into the document I find effects especially color match among others much more useful than the level controls. Member you can always convert to a higher bit rate later but can not apply any effects unless 8bit.

Awesome. Thanks Shizzy!

 

[Billy420]

The system I made would work great for flowering if they were a bit larger containers, but the fact that they need to be above the reservoir is a disadvantage for height purposes.-

You said "in a 4 foot tall tent height wont be a problem I think..." Are you sure about the height? 4' is not very tall, and would indeed be a problem flowering most plants. Keep in mind, the lights inside take up at least a foot of space usually, more likely 2-3, depending on the tent and the lights. The plant containers/plant-sites are going to take up at least a foot or two of space themselves. In between is your plant, which needs a foot or so (depending on lights) between it and the lights. In a 7' tall tent, a person is lucky to be able to grow a 3' tall plant once every other height factor is figured in... Food for thought.

Waterfarms are primarily drip-style hydroponics, but you can make DIY versions using their plumbing kit that are essentially a combo of drip/dwc. They work nice, but they'd work better if they were recirculated back to a bigger reservoir, which can be done.-

I did a DIY bucket like that with the Big Bang Auto I grew, and it worked really well, but the incredibly small reservoir (the bucket itself) made PH, temps, and top offs a major headache requiring a lot of attention. That said, the combo of drip/dwc is almost unbeatable for growth rates, in my opinion. Recirculate it too, and you have an unbeatable hydro system. Yes, better than traditional RDWC even.

Food for thought, yeah , I'm not doing anything else the last 6 months , my wife and friends are wondering why I sometimes staring at the walls ...... Hahaha

It was a major mistake by me xlr8, I wanted to say 7 feet tall, but got confused !!! Sorry :/
It's the secret jardin 120 (4x4).
Even at this tent, things have to be organised very carefully in the case of using DYI flood tubs for flowering.
But oh well, I think ll go with the flo n gro for flowering too.
As I'm a beginner , i don't want to risk anything (even if there is not any kind of risk...) and follow your grow, as it is now !!!! lol
To be really honest if you ask me personally, I'm thinking to give my very first try, to my cloner machine for vegging too, as I have allready spent the money for it !
(xtream propagator 36)
There will be only 9 plants for vegging, (more at the rooting stage) which I plan to leave 'em 3-4 weeks as you said, by trimming leafs etc ..
If things don't go well, I will definitely go with the DYI flood buckets, the second time.
I would like very much to hear your opinion on this.

From the other side, I think I'll keep my (2) moms in these DIY flood buckets. So actually adding a couple of buckets later (ill go with seperate buckets, mrsmith's style), wont harm anything.-
Waterfarm seems a great but very expensive option! Specially with the whole kit, acs controller and 4 buckets, is a little bit pricey.
Dunno, I'm still thinking man ......

Your bing bang auto grow, was one of the first journals of yours, I checked ! Great and very productive grow !!!!
But indeed you run into problems, with water temps and ph issues, that was the reason I thought to stay away from this kind of system !! (it is totally different thing to use it just for mums of course, under T5's and not HPS)

Anyway, I strongly believe your DIY flood tubs will control all the above better, both ph and water temps!!!!

Thank you again my friend for your help !!!!
Decisions, have to be made .... lol