1st Hydro - LED Grow With Crop King White Widow From Seed

[Bamalabrat]

Update: (with pics as promised)
I did a res change today. It really did go pretty fast. So I filled up the system with about 24 gal of tap water. It had a pH of 7.8 and is now at a stable 5.8. It took me about 20 minutes to dial in the pH and I only had to use 5mL of pH up. So I was very close with the pH down. I am a noob, but I do learn quickly . I added canna aqua A and B 100ml each. I also added the rhizotonic at 300ml. My starting ppm after the pH adjustments was 230 and after adding in my nutes it was at 456. So I really hope that by keeping the nutes down to such a diluted level will help me get them growing fast. My water temps have been very nice most of the day (average of 74F) but then this afternoon they went up to 81F. I have them back down to 72F right now and should be at 68 until morning. I am going to buy a damn chiller. Ice bombs just are not going to cut it and I really do not want to get a swamp going in my buckets. I really do not want to spend the money but I really really really do not want to lose these plants.
I have to say that I am impressed with how fast these little suckers are growing.

These were from 2 days ago:

These pics were from this morning after the res change:

The last two pics are of the same plant.

 

[Bamalabrat]

I just was out saying good night to the 2 girls and I took a pic of each. Just so proud of these plants.

 

[CronicHempHog]

We Have Lift Off

 

[dabbledo]

Im subbed for the ride. Def go for the chiller. I have seen cool DIY setups with office water cooler parts. If you are gonna be running high res temps I would check out Dutch Master Gold Zone, you can't run a live res with it but it will protect your root zone from the high temps until you can find a better way to cool them down. Your buckets are black and they absorb heat rather than reflect it. You might want to consider insulating the individual buckets or even painting them white. It will drop your res temps a few degrees.

 

[happydude420]

cant wait

 

[Bamalabrat]

Update:
I took some pics. My temps are a little high. I am running in the upper 80's from noon until 2 hours after night fall so about 9 hours. My leaves on both plants have turned up towards the light. I am hoping that is a good sign. Please let me know what you think. Water temps have been 71 - 78 F. I am waiting on my chiller to arrive.

 

[CronicHempHog]

don't have any issues with the temps you got in you res using the nutes I use and
hydroguard
I had temps up to 78 this week in the res

 

[Bamalabrat]

cronic
I may get the botanicare nutes next time. I have to try to finish with these nutes. Hopefully I have not made a big mistake. My chiller will get here soon. So I should have the water temps solved soon. The thing is I will have to redesign my hydro system to be a single res system if I am growing next summer. I do not want to get two chillers for my two res system. I am going with a single res system for right now and will just veg for a couple of weeks longer until temps go down. I should not be having issues come the middle of next month, at least with temps
Ok, after having seen a lot of growth and changes in the plants every day for 5 days straight, I am concerned that the plants in the last 48 hours show, at least to my eye, no changes. Is this shock after changing the res? Adding nutes? Do not like something about the grow space? or am I just over thinking it? I really do not want to kill these last two seedlings (BTW the third RR cube that had the slow seed in it, I checked on it and opened the cube up to see what was going on and the tap root looked like it had broken off, so I had to chunk it.)
If I can get these two little seedlings to start growing I am going to consider poping seeds of a different strain. I have 8 buckets and right now am only growing in 2 of them. I am thinking that I can try out two other strains that have the same flowering time as WW. This way I only take a clone of each one, and if I have any males, which I should not, then I have other seed plants to clone from to fill in the gaps left by removing the males. I am very curious as to what you guys think of this idea. The other strains I would like to try are Dr. Kripplings genitic called "Puff Puff Passout" and the other is "Tutankhamon" from Pyramid Seeds (they are from Spain I believe). PPP is supposed to be a very potent indica dominate strain. Tut had 33% THC at the Spainibus cup a couple of years ago. I am very curious to see if they live up to their marketing.
Thanks for stopping by and again I really am interested in other peoples opinion on this questions.

 

[mussh]

practice makes perfect.

I would try to start a couple more seedlings. I would try one that was a strong indica as I find indica to be more forgiving. out of my four seedlings I would pick the one that had the strongest genetics and make either a mother out of it or make a mother from a clone. you will be able to tell by week three what plants have good genetics. tight node spacing and thick branching.

 

[CronicHempHog]

you could go rdwc and the chiller only has to chill whats coming out of the main res

 

[Bamalabrat]

Thanks for your input guys. I am going to start soaking seeds tonight. I am going to do one of each of the other strains. The problem for me really is the lack of activity of the two sprouts. I want to have a couple of more seeds popped and already going if I lose both of the sprouts. I really hope that does not happen but it does I would like to have a back up already going.
I think that I need to redesign my system. Currently it is 2 seperate 5 bucket systems. 4 buckets are the grow buckets and one res/system. I think I should do one res for all 8 sites and connect them up. Use the chiller to keep the whole grow cool. I just really thought I would be able to keep it in range with out the chiller. But it is just too hot. We will be getting cooler next month and then I should not have a problem with the temps. I am really struggling with the decision to go with a chiller because of the short window of need versus the cost of the unit. I guess that is something that could be said for all of the equipment needed for an indoor hydro grow. I shall sleep on it and make up mind in the morning.

 

[mussh]

you shouldn't lose a sprout.

their biggest danger, other than being micro managed, is temperature. keep the environment perfect and you will have no problems. feed very little nutes, if any at all. keep your ph between 5.5 and 6.2. if they still don't live after you have done those things, then I chalk it up to natural selection.

welp, coco eliminates baby sitting buckets.... I know... I know.... im just saying.

 

[CronicHempHog]

baby sitting? im not in an rdwc im just in bubblers but once I got a root sticking out of the rooting plug its in the netpot lid and in the bucket on cruise control 1/2 nute strength

 

[mussh]

baby sitting?

when I tried dwc, I was always baby sitting buckets. it was like a full time job. constantly wondering what my ph was. what the res temperature was. OMG is that root rot!?? it was a burden. there is a simplicity to growing. coco was my answer.

 

[OldMedUser]

High Bama and gang

Problem I see with having everything off one rez is if anything goes seriously wrong the whole thing goes to hell instead of just half. I hear that the hydroguard works tho I've never tried it myself. Cooler outdoor temps will help a bit but the res and buckets are still picking up the heat in the grow room.

My DIY office cooler nute chiller works so well I have a timer on it so it only turns on for 15 min every hour when the lights are on and 15 min every 2 hours in the dark. Nutes are a steady 17C/62.5F. I could easily do 2 50L tubs or keep a central rez cool to run a system like yours. As I was gifted the cooler and had 20' of 3/8" hose my total cost to set it up was $14 for a small fountain pump to move the nutes thru the cooler tank and back to the tub.

Pails are fine for RDWC or a system like yours but for free-standing single grows they are a PITA because there just isn't enough nute sol'n in them. My smaller tubs hold 37L when full to an inch below the net pots. I call it 35 to make the math easier to do in my head when mixing nutes and the larger ones hold 50L or 12.5USG. When my nute level goes down 10L it's not a problem. When a pail goes down 10L the ppm goes through the roof, pH goes way out of whack and plant stress/death results.

I find DWC very easy and so much simpler that growing in dirt. Soilless is almost as easy for me so I stick to those 2 methods.

Growing is a lot like fishing. When you head out to the river or lake with the attitude that you MUST catch a fish you get skunked damn near every time. When you go out to enjoy the day on the water and get a little fishing in for fun you generally do pretty good. Pot is like that too. When you are too focused on the goal you won't enjoy the trip and miss things that could make the goal easier to reach.

I have a very relaxed attitude to growing. I have no deadline, no quotas to fill and no one's standards to live up to other than my own and I have fairly high standards when it comes to the quality of the final product but none really as to the quantity.

Over-thinking everything and reacting to perceived problems before fully understanding what the problem is kills way more plants than doing your homework, building your knowledge base and then taking little steps and observing the results.

Man who does very little makes very few mistakes. Confucius.

L8r

 

[Bamalabrat]

Update
The second set of leaves are starting to become visible (Just barely). So the plant is still growing and alive. Whoo-hoo . My temps are still on the high side. It is just flat out hot in the afternoons. Freaking nothing to be done about it. The water chiller will solve that issue but just have to wait for it. I will not redesign yet. I will wait until it is time to clone and see what the temps are doing. Maybe can get away with my current config until late next spring. Fingers crossed. That is pretty much it. I did not do a res change this weekend because I did one during the week. I am trying to hold off from doing another until next weekend. So that is that. Thanks to everyone for stopping by.

 

[Bamalabrat]

This morning I went and checked the tent. Overnight both plant's second set of leaves have become readily visible. So I am guessing that I stressed them pretty bad with the wild arsed pH swings last week and now that it is stable, they are starting to grow again. I apologized to them and really hope that they understand. So that is what is going on in my world. everything else looks good in there. So hopefully the chiller gets here with no drama and I can get the setup going easy peasy.

 

[OldMedUser]

Any particular reason for doing a rez change with just a couple of tiny seedlings in there?
Tossing out a lot of good nutes I'd think.

L8r

 

[CronicHempHog]

hydroguard works I use it
my ph in my bloom plants fluctuate daily with my organic nutes but ususally dos it
once its about 2-3 weeks under 12/12 because its starts drinking alot more so I have to
add daily anyway so I check ph daily

 

[Bamalabrat]

OMU,

I have to drill some holes in the res to install the chiller. I also will be adding 4 buckets to it. I have been in the space all evening trying to figure out how to go about this. It seems that I can just add one pump to my res and pump to all 8 buckets and then only have to use one chiller. I know this increases the risk to all my plants having one source, but it is pretty economical at this point. The other thing about doing it this way is I will not be able to do a comparison grow as I wanted to. That seems to me to be the biggest disappointment. I will not have to wait for clones to catch up to the seedlings though. I am really torn at this point about what to do. I am getting the chiller tomorrow, and want to have it up and going tomorrow night. I may hold off on the res change until I have to modify the res with the additional plumbing. I am excited about having more than one strain growing though. I will have three different strains growing at the same time with the same flowering time (supposedly). So that will still give me a harvest in early november (depends on how long I have to veg the plants).