10 Gallon Bubble / Diesel Ryder Auto Fem / 400W HID

[basement grow]

Day 16

Got water on a few leaves yesterday. Didn't notice. Had lights on and burned the hell out of 3 leaves, 4 more got a few drops only. Plants don't seem to mind much, a few leaves look bad, but growth is still amazing. Devising a better refill system for the graduated system I am piecing together.

Chiller should be here within a week. Should make life much easier. Water bottles are a fine solution, but they are labor intensive. Spinning the bottle and then situating it into its perfect spot 4 times a day is becoming a pain.

Still considering raising lights a bit. Plants are very wide, and very short. Largest is about 8 inches across tip to tip, and only 3 inches tall. Not sure if there is a drawback at all to short plants, though. Could be this strain, referred to as a "dwarf".

Every node now has pretty good growth branching out, and even the cotys are showing new growth at the stem behind them. Purple "skin" on the seedling has now all peeled up and cracked revealing the green, woody stem below. Small diameter still, but fairly amazing considering their age. These plants are a lot of fun to watch.

Moved the fixed fan on the floor to a few new locations, testing the effect on the res temps, may have found the sweet spot. Will be a non-issue once chiller arrives, but nice for now.

Will take pics tommorrow.

 

[basement grow]

Not a real update, just wanted to pop in and share my joy. All three are most assuredly girls. Pistils showing on all. Real update and pics tonight.

 

[basement grow]

Day 17

Pistils showing on all 3. Plant 3 has very many. Plant 2 is about half of 3, and plant 1 is about half of 2. Plant 1 still looks the beefiest, but it is growing outward more than the other two. Most likely poor lamp placement.

pH still doesn't budge. Temps are staying more in range now, made a better schedule to make time to get new frozen bottles in. Need that chiller to hurry up.

Burned leaves on plant 2 look like they are going to stick around, even with their ugliness. Does not seem to have slowed her down much at all. Plants 1 and 3 have very little burning, not a concern at all.

Water in res still smells nice and crisp, roots have gotten unruly and large.

Need to learn more about the the plant's lifecycle, and what time frame there is in regards to flowering now that pistils are showing. Expected more time to have passed. Seed bank claims flower in 3-4 weeks. Week 2 just ended.

Had to add almost a gallon of water again today. Will be easier in larger res.

Did not want to mess with camera settings much, some pics look washed out due to the angle of the lamp overhead.

top down

plant 1

plant 2

plant 3

roots

 

[basement grow]

Day 18

All three plants are showing many pistils now. Growth is getting faster each day, seems ludicrous that it can move any more quickly than it has been. Plants are putting on so much weight a day. Baffled each time I go check them. Check them 4 times a day to put these damn water bottles in.

Roots are all over the place now. Water pump has a pool filter bag over it. No roots have infiltrated it. Water fresh and clean. Roots healthy looking. Harder to spin water bottles without hitting roots. Chiller needs to hurry up. Five days til it arrives. At least 20 more water bottle changes. Ughh.

pH has still not moved. Expected it to climb daily. Good thing, bad thing? Air temps still in good range. Water temps better than ever. Rh lower than desired (40-51%).

Nute up tonight or tommorow, with res change. Might be last veg nutes change. Will it be obvious when the switch to flower nutes should occur?

Moved lamp to 8" from tops of plants. Previously at 6". Some leaves had minor rollup, very slight. New lamp height should alleviate light stress.

Random pics from today.

 

[LotzOfTrycs]

 

[ol hippy]

You should remove the water pump from the resevoir ,once the roots get in the water its not needed and will help to lower the temp of your res with the pump gone ...just keep those bubbles goin though...

 

[SanibelGreen]

Looking great my man, agree with hippy on the pumps should reduce your res temps some! Really liking the node spacing so far also. Keep it up man + Reps

SG

 

[basement grow]

Thanks. About the pump, it is still in there because it will be pushing the chiller once it arrives. Did not want to take it out just to put it back in in 5 days, seems like a lot of disruption. I wish I had just bought a chiller at the start, for some reason it never crossed my mind that the water is going to be at least the ambient room temperature.

Any idea if I will be able to tell when to switch to a bloom cycle of nutes? I know I have at least one more week of veg, if the time tables I read are true, but it might be 2 more weeks. Is there some way to know distinctly using autoflowers?

 

[SanibelGreen]

Well my guess would be since they are 65 days from seed or whatever treat it like a 9 week plant? 3 then 6 or 4 then 5. Because the different nutes will help production

SG

 

[basement grow]

Day 22

Res change on day 20. Full strength nutes for veg. Plants are drinking a lot now. Have to refill often. Plants are stretching out a bit more now, light stress seems reduced with lights now at 8 inches.

pH still extremely stable. Climbed less than half a point over 2 days. RH better, staying close to 53%. Res temps still a hassle, but chiller arrives soon.

Roots are solid and crisp, water still fresh. Stems are sturdy and getting fatter. Plant 3 gets less wind than the other two, hopefully strong enough to support extra weight. Possibly resituating fan after chiller set up.

Plants are starting to smell now. Faint, but an issue that will need to be addressed soon.

Pics from today.

top down of res

plant 1

plant 2

plant 3

roots

nice shot of plant 3

 

[SanibelGreen]

Looking beautiful mate, when are you switching nutes over?

SG

 

[basement grow]

Looking beautiful mate, when are you switching nutes over?

SG

Thanks. I will be doing a res change on day 26 (4 days from today). I will either be switching to a transition nute solution with equal parts across the board, and a touch of koolbloom; or, if the plants get ahead of themselves and start to flower on me more than they are now, I will switch to a full flower solution with normal koolbloom amount. I will also switch to HPS if I go full bloom on day 26. I will let them bush out under the MH for one more week if I can get away with a transition week. It is all up to the plants, really. One major drawback with the autos: You lose control of the schedule. Of course, it will be worth it if these turn out nicely and I go from seed to harvest in two months.

 

[scaredeecat]

pretty bushes there

 

[H6251686]

looking good base, can't wait to see the chiller.

 

[basement grow]

Day 23

Chiller is in. Nightmare job. Roots had made their way around all of the plumbing and built nests into it. Finally removed pump and feed lines, ran the 1/2" tubes into the res, resituated water pump and air stones. Sat plants out on some buckets while I worked. Pretty long air bath, but nothing dried out fully. Noticed the new, big, fat water lines went directly into the path of one of the netpots. Switched lid around so the lines are running where the empty netpot was. Removed netpot and replaced cover of hole. Have to check pH now by lifting lid instead of using the feed line.

Plants are not waiting another week for flowering. Plant 3 is in almost full flower mode. Plants 1 and 2 are catching up fast. Plant 3 was the runtiest of the bunch, now its making up for it. Looking forward to the early misty next run, need more control of time tables.

Leaf tips on plant 1 are slightly yellow. Looks like N overdose. No burning on other plants at all. Most likely let the lamp get too close to plant 1, who is a good 3 inches taller, and most likely a hermie, though it would appear only 2 nodes wanted to be male. Removed the balls well before maturity, quite possibly over reacted and clipped off tiny little female parts that had not come in yet. Better safe than sorry. Ball-like growths were only on the two first nodes of plant, which are typically not massive bud sites, anyway. Will watch like a hawk to see if the plant wants to play nice and be a girl, otherwise: off with her head.

Plants are drinking ridiculous amounts of water for their size. Four gallons in 3 days. Putting on massive growth and stretching a ton, hopefully not for much longer. Keeping lights at right height will become problematic if one plant decides to be a foot taller than the others. Another reason to use buckets. Devising a way to use my large res with the chiller and feed buckets from it, almost an ebb and flow setup, but with high volume air pump feeding each bucket. Still on the drawing board. Still have time to decide.

top down of res

plant 1

plant 2

plant 3

roots

chiller (set at 68, it thinks the water is 76, in res therm says 74, dropped 3 degrees in 1 hour, this should make my life a lot easier.

plant 1 leaf tips from lamp or N overdose.

plant 3 not waiting to flower

 

[basement grow]

Day 28

Res change on day 25. Full bloom nutes. Lamp changed to HPS. Plants stretched a ton, and the roots changed drastically once feed lines were removed. Roots tripled in girth and plant got extremely lanky. Maybe more sativa in this strain than I thought.

Plants look healthy overall, but very lanky now. Stretching occurred even at just 7 inches from the MH lamp. Had to move lamp around daily to keep it from the plants that were growing so quickly.

Plant 1 no longer looking hermie at all. Most likely over reacted earlier. Plant 2 is looking runty now, compared to the other two. Budding, but nothing like plant 1, and especially nothing like plant 3.

Res temps are fully under control now. Chiller is a god send. Anyone that is thinking of running a system like this should seriously consider a chiller. Well worth the money.

Net pots no longer stable, had to tie plants 2 and 3 together to keep them upright, added weight to tops of netpots. Have plan in place for next run, using machine bolts and wingnuts.

top down (sideways)

plant 1

plant 2

plant 3

roots

res temps under control

a bud to be

 

[Berry Knot]

Looking good man, I will be following along.

Got a goal on how much you hope to yield?

 

[basement grow]

Looking good man, I will be following along.

Got a goal on how much you hope to yield?

Thanks for dropping by. As for yield, I honestly have no clue. This run was kind of a crash course in education, really. Trying to hammer out the kinks before I try to grow something more finicky.

 

[Berry Knot]

Thanks for dropping by. As for yield, I honestly have no clue. This run was kind of a crash course in education, really. Trying to hammer out the kinks before I try to grow something more finicky.

Ah I feel ya, My crash course was an Aerogarden ROFL..

 

[SanibelGreen]

Plants are looking great mate!


SG