1st Grow - CFL

yep dwc can be as complicated as you want or as simple as a bucket water with nutes and air

hey man you say you got a condensation problem and your using a misting humidifier
um
I think you want a de-humidifier to get rid of moisture
unless im reading it wrong
 
No, let me explain a little better. In order to have the extra lights, I need to have that cool mist humidifier outside the box, blowing into the intake vent, to keep the air temp at 81-82, and such. If not, the humidity stays around 15%, and the temp around 100, lol. Which would kill them, that was my issue before. I couldn't figure out how to keep the climate from resembling a desert. Hopefully that helps.
 
So far to keep the condensation from building up under the unit, I've made a runoff out of cardboard with some duct tape. It seems to be working better than what was going on before, but it's not as good as what I would like. Sorry, my mind goes a million miles an hour, especially since I'm stoned like 24/7 lol.
 
So, the condensation is collecting on the walls inside and then dripping down?
(i'll try and help you with this; but i can't help with your microbes and such)

Condensation occurs when moist air hits a surface that's of a temperature where water is liquid.
I imagine your moist air device is like an air conditioner; it cools the water until it becomes vapour, which goes into the grow room and lands on the hot surfaces.

If that happened to me i'd try:
Instead of pumping the moist air directly inside the grow box, i'd try to have it surround the outside of the grow box with an intake fan (so that some still gets inside) and hopefully if we can cool the walls down, we'd have less condensation.
 
I can try that. I had an inch of water buildup inside the box when I changed the res last night. I originally thought it was just building up on the vent and dripping down, but apparently it was building up inside, soaking through, and then dripping down :( I turned the humidifier down a little, and it seems to have solved the issue for now. If I could surround the box in it, I would, but things are limited to pretty much that box. It'd be kinda hard hiding that from the in-laws, "Oh, what's in that black box with mist and fans around it?!?" lol.

I'm guessing it was a bad idea to try and attempt mixing microbes, lol. I guess there was a battle going on in the res last night, so I changed it as fast as I could. The ppms jumped up by 300 in like 2 or 3 hours.
 
What seemed to be happening was that the lights were soo hot, and the mist was soo cold, that once it got into the box, it kinda went from a mist back to a liquid, lol. There was no buildup on the inside walls, which is why I was really surprised once I was changing out the res last night, and saw the pool of water.
 
are you talking about your water lvl in the res coming out?
if so just drop it down a bit if you fill it too high with the bubbler going the splashes go on the lid and it drips off the rdges
I modify my lid with a ring so when the bubbles splash up on the lid it can only reach the ring and drip back into the res
without it it gets out and the bottom of the tent ends up with water from the buckets
 
I definitely had the humidifier turned up too high. It's been fine since I toned it down a bit. Hovering around low to mid 40s for humidity, and still at 81 degrees. Kinda freaking out because the one in the back just seems to want to just look like that. I cut the bottom 2 fan leaves off of it this morning in hopes that it starts perking up more, like the one in the front. So far, the one that got fucked up is the one that is starting to look awesome. I cut all of their cotyledons off yesterday because they were brown. I kinda want to cut the bottom 2 fan leaves off of the other 2 as well, but I guess we'll see what happens to that one in the back first.

02-16-15a.jpg
 
put them in bloom already
on the normal side I do 3 weeks veg in hydro then it goes into 12/12 right now they are getting a bit longer this weekend will start week 3 but they wont go into bloom till my seed project comes out of the tent
but under normal circumstances itll only go 3 weeks then into 12/12
reson being for me is that way once it gets going I harvest a plant every 3-4 weeks depending on genetics its why I only stick with 9-10 week bloom strains, but it would only be 1 plant at a time I don't have 3 starting at once the most I do is 2 but that's just to fill the space
normally only 1 once in awhile I throw in an extra only if theres a space for it
 
Alright, switched the bulbs to 2700k ones for bloom. I dropped one of the lights onto one of the middle plant's leaves, so it may be damaged :(. But it didn't really look like it broke, so we'll see what happens. After today is over, I'll put them onto a 12/12 cycle and see what happens. Gotta do a res change later as well, since it's been about a week since the last one.

And thanks Chronic. I didn't really know what to expect. I kinda figured that I should only have 1 plant in there, but I figured that since I didn't know what sex they would be, I would plant more and go from there. These 3 were just my first experiment, with the hopes of many more to come. Once I figure out a good way for me to do it, then things will definitely get better and easier.
 
itll start stretching and get bigger and if you don't have a lot of height you don't wanna veg too long
some of my plants get pretty big with only 3 week veg time and the height im playing with is 5 feet
minus the lights hanging and the size of the buckets
right now my diesel seed plant is only in a 2 gallon bucket and its fairly big and it was a clone not a seed plant
if it was in a 5 gallon bucket it would be real close to the lights
if that same plant was grown from seed without pollinating it would easily touch the lights and id have to keep super cropping or tying down branches the area im working with is 4 feet by 4 feet just to give you an idea of what you might have to deal with if you have height issues
 
I don't have that much space. It's 9" x 14 1/2" x 3'. I also realized that I'm a goofball... I was having the air pump into the res shut off with lights out. At least next time I know what not to do, and what to do for things to be better. I have a few ideas for a new res system to fit in the box as well that I want to try next time.

Here's day 1 of flower:

02-22-15a.jpg

02-22-15b.jpg
 
oh yea pumps run 24/7
but the plant look ok maybe for the fact that its small enough without too many roots sucking up the oxygen
but yes pumps don't go off with the lights
 
Yeah, I figured that when I started, but for some reason I thought to have 'em shut off. Pretty much why I used random bag seeds for this grow. Didn't wanna mess up the good seeds I have. My next one will be better, for sure. I'm still waiting to see if these are even ladies.

Now that I kinda know what I'm doing, I have an idea for my next setup. Which I plan to be ideal for 1 plant I guess. It won't be born in a desert, and suffocated at night like these ones were, lol. Oh, and let's not forget about being scorched from the "sun". At least they're still alive, and they don't look that bad.
 
Here's an update. I haven't really had to check up on them to much. Just add stuff to the res really, pH is staying low and awesome. Not sure if I should prune them yet? Or wait to find out which one's are females, and then do that and kill off the others. Getting crowded for the 3 plants. Kinda wish at least one would show it's sex.

02-28-15a.jpg

02-28-15b.jpg

02-28-15c.jpg
 
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