First Grow 2015 - 1 x WW - DWC - 240W LED

[DreamsOfGreen]

Hey everyone, I'm just going to jump into the details right off, I apologize for everything I leave out as I'm really new to this:
Strain: nirvana white widow, fem
Age: 5 weeks (Veg)
Lights: dorm grow 240W G8 LED (18/6)
Nutes: GH grow/bloom A&B, roots XL, calmag, hydroguard
Medium: DWC, w/ air pump and stone, hydroton in baskets, seed started in rockwool
Water: RO, pH'd to 5.5-5.9 AFTER nutes added
Conditions: air temp 73/69 day/night; RH 40, res temp: 70

Since I'm starting this so far into the grow I'll backfill a bit:
I popped the seed in rockwool with pH'd water. About one day after it emerged above the cube I had to go out of town for three days. I had it under CFL but the humidity dome was only a couple inches high. I was worried if I left it the baby would grow into the dome and hurt herself. In hindsight that would have been better than removing the dome a couple of days into life and leaving town to let her dry out. I came back to a seedling which had yellowing on her seed leaves...oops. In any case she made a full recovery.
I have been changing out the res every week to give me an opportunity to maintain cleanliness since the temps are higher than I prefer in the res and am terrified of rot, but as of yet I don't have the means to cool it.

I have a few concerns and would really appreciate input:
1) The lady isn't tolerating any more than 350ppm in the res. Im assuming this is pH issue, so I have a second pH tester and cal solution on the way. I kind of skimped on the first.
2) location is in a 1.5x3x5' tent in a closet. Problem is there is no ventilation in the closet. I can't close the tent up because temps spike up to mid eighties. I have a 6" 240 cfm fan for exhaust, but it isn't cooling enough. I believe I have too big of a carbon filter on it to efficiently change out the air, but even if it didn't, that fan would be venting into a closet which itself doesn't have ventilation, effectively meaning the intake air would be the same hot exhaust air. I'm going to chock this one up to piss poor planning on my part. In any case I need to think of something before flower cause I can't have an open closet door and tent during dark hours.
3) she is ridiculously compact and bushy. At two weeks old she had 5 nodes and was shorter than my hygrometer, at about 3". I've been LST to open up lower nodes because she is so dense and bushy that light penetration is terrible. I know that dense and bushy sounds good, but I'm worried it's hurting the efficiency of my light. Against all experienced growers' wisdom (me being a new grower) I defoliated at the end of the fourth week to try to open up some light, but a couple of days later the newly exposed parts just bushed out and shaded out yet other parts lol.
I've only got a few pics, but I will get better since I started the journal, and start taking them under daylight colored lights instead of purple LED. I'll try to figure out how to post pics here as a reply to my own post as soon as I do!
Sorry for the novel and happy growing!

 

[DreamsOfGreen]

 

[ShiggityFlip]

This is a good start. Beginning small is a great idea as you will be able to give her your full attention. Subbed for the ride.

 

[Rifleman]

Hey DoG, Shiggity invited me over to have a lookie lu. As long as you keep the reservoir aerated, changed weekly, and use Hydroguard as directed I don't think you have to worry about rot at 70°. Mine runs warmer than that, knock on wood, no probs yet. I don't have any experience with that strain but it could be it's a light feeder. pH should be around 5.8 optimum. I use the AN pH Perfect nutrients and gave up trying to adjust it last month. I have since just trusted the nutrients and all is well. I definitely recommend them. However when calibrating your pen be sure to do it at both ends of the scale. A really good one will have you calibrate it at three points usually. Also calibrate it often. Every two weeks. Once a month at least. As to ventilation, I have a 25ft section of thin coiled air ducting attached to my fan outlet. It takes my warm air to another place. In the Winter it comes back into the house in another room, during the Summer it goes out the top of a closet to the attic. Be creative, lots of ways to vent it inexpensively. Bushy...bush is goooooood. LOL Seriously, I haven't used an LED ...yet, but how close is your light? You might not be giving it any reason to stretch. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, depends on how you want to train her.

I'm subbed up but if you need any help or have questions don't hesitate to shout at me on my journal. I'm subbed to over 600 threads so it is easy to miss a question unless it is in my face. Good luck, can't wait to see you harvest your own crop.



Edit: I don't remember which thread, but just this week someone posted a video about growing with LED and temperature needing to be in the mid 80s range. Hopefully someone else can point us to that video if I don't stumble back on it soon.

 

[DreamsOfGreen]

Hey thanks for the input. I think I'm going to run some ducting from the tent to just outside the closet, leaving that door cracked so the intake can be ambient temp instead of exhaust temps.
If LED grows should run warm that might be perfect, but the only hangup would be that my res IS the DWC bucket, so how warm can I really let it get accounting for weekly res change outs, plenty of aeration, and hydroguard? It's pretty much stuck at just below ambient without a chiller.
Light distance started at about 10" but after seeing how compact things were I tried pushing it up to 18". Nothing really changed, so I'm thinking it's either something I'm doing (pretty likely) or just a really compact pheno. However given my inexperience I'm hesitant to call anything in my grow genetics.
Aside from being a new grower, I'm also new to posting on forums so if I'm breaking etiquette or not doing something right feel free to point it out.

 

[DreamsOfGreen]

Wow this is way harder to do when medicated than I thought...I keep getting distracted. In any case, these are from tonight. She's looking pretty happy, but her darn bush is so thick lots of to-be bud sites are in the shade.

 

[DreamsOfGreen]

Ah I forgot, I also tried running a flexible duct from my 6" in-line in the tent to outside the closet and temps are stable at 75 and I too read that LED grown plants will respond better in higher temps so I'm not worried about the few degrees. I would go higher but I'm still kinda spooked for the res. So thanks for the heads uprifleman! Alright I'm done this has literally taken me an hour.

 

[ShiggityFlip]

Hey I am already subbed. Cool. Your sig link works Dogr. For Led you want temps in the 79-83 range. Your reservoir needs to be colder. I have read threads where they put the bucket inside a tub of water and put frozen bottles of water in the tub to cool the reservoir down.

 

[DreamsOfGreen]

Right on, thanks shig. I'll have to get a bucket to fit the dwc in it with room for ice and water. As an emergent temporary fix I'll rotate 20oz bottles of frozen water in the res itself. I'll do two before work, one after, and two again before bed. That should be okay for just a couple days. I appreciate all the help guys, keep 'em coming!

 

[ShiggityFlip]

Don't put the bottles in the resevoir they will burn the roots!

 

[DreamsOfGreen]

Ahhhh good save!

 

[ShiggityFlip]

Phew so glad you read that before doing it. I would have felt terrible if I didn't catch it.


If you have space outside the closet you could have a tub with lines going to and from your bucket. It would increase the size of your resevoir and you could put frozen bottles in there etc. Just have a small pump that would keep it circulating back and forth to the bucket. Most of your water would be outside the hot growing area.

 

[DreamsOfGreen]

Yeah I was thinking something like that would be good, but that's a "this weekend" project. Temporary fix number two is to nest the dwc bucket in another bucket with a buck of ice in the bottom. That ought to keep her happy till Saturday when I can give it some time.

 

[DankWolf907]

Welp, seems i cant offer much help, being a soil guy with HPS..
No worries youre in good hands! And i can still follow along and learn more goodies win win!

 

[OlderGrower]

Coolcool I see your signature worked.
Grabbing a chair in the corner and going to enjoy the show

If you are looking for more stretch move the lights up away from the plant some. start with just a few inches per day until you start to see some stretching.

 

[arteekay]

Soil-less with LED, but I'll grab a seat next to DankWolf and copy off him, if nobody minds.

 

[DreamsOfGreen]

Oh no you don't arteekay! I've got a second little girl, fem delahaze from paradise seeds just showing her first true leaves now, which I'm trying in 50/50 coco/perlite. So your soil-less experience may be just the thing.
This is addicting, I'm completely hooked on the whole process. I want more space so I can tinker and experiment with everything, try every medium, training style, lighting, feeding, atmospherics, etc. Gotta find my sweet spot, my groove....then grow the hell out of anything I can get my hands on!

 

[DreamsOfGreen]

Alright, update time! Before I go further, I just wanted to thank everyone for their time and support. This community is seriously unreal; I can't believe how passionate everyone is and I hope that someday I can help some newcomer looking for guidance. Cool, done with the sappy stuff, onto the fun part:
Today before I left for work (at 3:30am) I noticed a few weird spots on the WW's leaves. Like extra glossy patches. After 15 hours away from home I came back and noticed some of the patches had turned to what looks like dead tissue. I'm gonna pop a pic in, so if you know what it is, please chime in.
The water level was extremely low, my air stone had dissolved enough that the connector portion came out and there was just a mild stream of huge bubbles (not helping dissolved 02 levels at all), PPM was less than my tap water before I run it through the RO, and my temporary ice bath was a very balmy 78 degrees.
Needless to say I felt like a surgeon in the ER! Swap air stones, get another bucket ready, stat! Add my reserve container of RO (the installed holding tank is only 1.5 gal), drain the reserve into it as well. Quickly but carefully measure out nutes, additives, etc. Dump a bunch more ice in the bath, calibrate the new pH meter which just arrived today, and adjust pH. Doesn't sound like a lot now that I'm writing it, but I felt pretty frantic when I was doing it lol.
I think I figured out my solution for the res temp thing. I'm going to get a used mini fridge from a local university student ($75-100), drill some holes in the side, careful not to hit any expansion side coils, and run a small aquarium pump to move water from res through holes in fridge along a meandering path (to allow heat xchange time) back out the second hole, and into the res. $100-125 DIY project for results mimicking what you'd have to pay $250-300 for with an aquarium/hydro chiller.
Anyhoo, onto the pictures!

 

[arteekay]

It is a bit surreal, no? Spend a few minutes reading YouTube comments then come back here, the difference is unbelievable.

Hopefully other, more experienced growers will chime in, but it looks like nute splash to me. Any change of a slip?

Humidity would be my next guess, got a fan moving leaves around a bit all the time? Stagnant air can cause all kinds of problems.

 

[DreamsOfGreen]

Hmm let's see, pretty unlikely to be nute splash since I have two buckets I swap out, so when I bring Nutes into the room they're already diluted with water, and that water is placed on the ground next to the plant, I.e. No pouring. I also have two desk fans inside the tent to make sure there is plenty of air circulating.
Could be burns from water magnification, but I didn't think LEDs were powerful enough to do that. In an attempt to pump up humidity a bit I spritzed her with some plain H20.