ChocolatChunk
Well-Known Member
Hello everyone, as the title says I am going to put together this here journal to show you all what can be achieved under fluorescent lights.
I'm going to post pictures after the initial start is complete. I tried starting a journal last week, wrote so much information down and went to upload pictures from my computer I had snapped that day and everything I spent an hour or so writing had been erased
oh well live and learn right?
So I have a small 4-5 gallon DWC going with 2 dual outlet pumps and one supplies air to two smaller round air stones One of the dual outlet pumps has a 1/4" tee to combine both outlets to 1 bigger round air stone. These pumps are never turned off, and stay outside of the tent to keep them cooler to avoid giving bacteria or other pathogens the ideal temps to bloom in the water with.
Unfortunately, there has been a type of bacteria growing in the system and treating it is really strenuous. First, the problem was diagnosed and looks like a type of cyanno bacteria. Which is like an algae, but it doesn't care if the water is cold. What hurts it is H2O2 and bleach, so yeah that's what I been fighting the past month or so.
I decided to not put food into the system at res change, instead went with a heavy dose of the 3% peroxide from the store. I also added Hygrozyme, Aquashield, and SM-90 to combat this pathenogenic infection. The enzymes helped new roots grow very well, and the SM-90 claims to fight pathogens and kill bad stuff(works great on mites too). To clean the roots I used a 10% bleach and water solution and adjusted the sprayer to a blasting spray and then cleaned the roots off because this slime of bacteria was suffocating them and they were barely doing anything. This saved them! so after they were treated with bleach it was room temp water through the tub faucet to rinse the bleach after they were cleaned the best I could get them. I had also looked into how to overcome issues with DWC and found that EWC tea with added beneficial microbes was the answer. And it was, I made a tea and used this to outweigh the bad life form that's been messing up my roots. The res was always scrubbed clean wit a bleach solution so don't give me anything about being unsanitary, thanks.
Also, people say adding something like Hygrozyme is what's causing the problem. Do you think a company would sell something that only makes problems worse? Like really, some of the things people say on here or other blogs amazes me.
Peroxide is only good for a few days, so it was added religiously. The rate at which I used it was first at 1 tsp a gal, which wasn't enough so increased to 2 tsp a gal, this worked well. For the week I thought it would have been okay, so this is going to save a lot of you money if you decide to use a hydro system and run into a nasty virus like I did. Make sure to add back peroxide everyday at the rate of 25% of what you normally add or else you'll see in less than a week you need to clean everything again.
After the bad stuff was controlled I finished brewing this earthworm casting tea with added Aquashield, Hygrozyme, and a 1/2 tbsp of molasses to 1 gal of water. It was aerated for a couple days. General Hydroponics Subculture B, extreme gardening Mycos and Humboldt nutrients myco madness were all added to this to become even greater in their numbers to fight whatever this bacteria is.
The stuff in Subculture B is specifically fighting whatever the bad stuff is.
Tea was used after a few days of allowing the peroxide to completely breakdown. And yes, I did use tap water, it didn't kill the plants, but perhaps killed the microbes because of the chlorine/ chloramines. For everyone who thinks chloramine will just magically float out of your water if you bubble it overnight or for a few days you're wrong. This new type of chlorine was made because of all you geniuses who found if you set your water in the freezer or bubble it this eliminates the chlorine. Welcome to 2016 where they still say that bubbling water eliminates chlorine but know nothing about chloramine.
Peroxide actually breaks it down, so when the peroxide dissipated off I added my EWC tea like the root rot blog guy said to. At the rate of 1 cup per gallon of reservoir water. After just a fewe days the results were remarkable. A seedling that was transplanted to this system with 4 clones had shot up and grew like a beast with just the minerals and metals from the tap water alone. I think it was the sugar from the tea, but that's my opinion.
This tea is supposed to also be added to the system at the rate of jsut 1 cup everyday uintil the problem is eliminated.
I still have the problem, but I have to say it's not what it was. The bacteria would cover my airstones, the roots and plastics. Now it sort of will, and it continues to grow on the roots but instead of going with bleach now I just do 1 part H2O2 to 3 parts water. Blasting the bacteria off the roots and rinsing them under the tub faucet is saving them. I worked too hard to just let some species of scum get the best of me.
Pictures on this will be provided later.
For anyone interested in what my 2 oldest are in, they are in a mic of coco, perlite and diatomite stone. They are housed in 2 gallon root pouches because the smart parts are pricey, the idea of root pouches is the same except they use recycled materials like jeans and other things to manufacture them.
I put a small layer of diatomite in the bottom of the planter to act as a reserve for water. Since they're in 2 gal pots they tend to dry out quicker. The diatomite seems to save them before it's too late. Sometimes they droop when they're thirsty but they spring back up in no time once they get what they want.
To feed, I have used a little this and a little of that. To be specific, in grow, seabird guano, a little marine cuisine, some floranova grow and once in a while nitorzime. I use floralicious plus in grow and bloom.
I didn't have to add liquid food every week because there was dry fertilizer provided.
Now I'm almost 5 weeks completed in the bloom stage. Yes, its been almost 5 weeks since I flipped lights to 12/12
I give my girls some bat guano every week, just a tablespoon per plant. I was using 2 tablespoons of fish bone meal to each planter too but the smell is atrocious. The guano not so bad, but I found soemthing that has a lot of phosphorus that's also natural and doesn't smell. Humboldt Nutrients Bloom Natural. I cut the guano, FBM and straight up triple dosed the girls with this bloom formula. Triple dosed because I want all the extra phosphorus I can get so I'm compromising. It's a pretty concentrated boost because a 1 qt bottle can mix up to 1,000 gallons of bloom solution.
I almost forgot, the girls in the soil less mix are receiving Carbo Blast it's 30% dextrose(brewing sugar) and 1% magnesium... It's fuel to all of the plant cells whether it's flowers, roots or stems/ leaves. I use what the label says to use which is just a gram to a gallon of water.
Now I have a few decent shots to give right now, but I want to get a few things out still.
The light is a Bad Boy, there's no other T5 like it, these have a ballast housed inside of them that doesn't go to any other light in the market, they don't even sell the fullham racehorse anywhere. I've looked, the nice thing about this power house is that it's going to crank the bulbs to put out 30% more light than the commercial T5's out there. They do say HO but they aren't as strong. A good fighting point is that you can keep plants comfortable within a foot of a cheap T5 and with a Bad Boy you have to keep tops of plants a foot away or else they burn. The do make a VHO T5 now that is 60% brighter than your scrap metal. I had a change to play with one of these lights and the tomatoes blooming under it had nearly doubled in size overnight.
Also, my temperatures aren't going above 90 F I purchased a new fan/ duct work and a thermostat though so this will help with the heat issues I ran into.
Also, for anyone who actually read all that, thank you for subbing in. You probably are also saying what?! no nitrogen what so ever in your bloom? Well, the FBM was 3% but if you followed along you'll also recollect that I cut the FBN so I just used the Floranova Grow at half strength of what it recommended for heavy feeding plants. They wanted more N and more Mg, so that's what they got. They did green up too which was good to see.
For the past month or so an RO filter has been used to treat the water for them, and whenever they get water for food or for just water, they also get General Organics CaMg+ I highly recommend the GO line, it's completely veganic except for their fish lol but hey beggers cant be choosers not saying vegans are beggers hahah you have the choice to use, or not use something so if you're that anal about sh*t than don't use it you tree hugger.
Just a joke, don't take it personal people, the fish aren't harvested in a way that hurts the ecosystem. It's not just fish in the BioMarine, there's squid as well. They use what gets caught in commercial fish nets sop that the injured fish/ or squid aren't thrown back to die.
The BioWeed is really nice too, it's lime green cold processed seaweed so it's the strongest seaweed you can buy.
Now, I'm not going into details with what these products do or how they work because It's not my job to sell them anymore.
That's right, I used to sell all this stuff... Lights, filters for air and water. Ozone generators, lights, tents, reflective material, PH pens, PPM meters, soil, soil less mix you name it. Sold a lot of General Hydroponics waterfarms, a lot of lights and a ton of Advanced Nutrients.
I'm going to post pictures after the initial start is complete. I tried starting a journal last week, wrote so much information down and went to upload pictures from my computer I had snapped that day and everything I spent an hour or so writing had been erased
oh well live and learn right?So I have a small 4-5 gallon DWC going with 2 dual outlet pumps and one supplies air to two smaller round air stones One of the dual outlet pumps has a 1/4" tee to combine both outlets to 1 bigger round air stone. These pumps are never turned off, and stay outside of the tent to keep them cooler to avoid giving bacteria or other pathogens the ideal temps to bloom in the water with.
Unfortunately, there has been a type of bacteria growing in the system and treating it is really strenuous. First, the problem was diagnosed and looks like a type of cyanno bacteria. Which is like an algae, but it doesn't care if the water is cold. What hurts it is H2O2 and bleach, so yeah that's what I been fighting the past month or so.
I decided to not put food into the system at res change, instead went with a heavy dose of the 3% peroxide from the store. I also added Hygrozyme, Aquashield, and SM-90 to combat this pathenogenic infection. The enzymes helped new roots grow very well, and the SM-90 claims to fight pathogens and kill bad stuff(works great on mites too). To clean the roots I used a 10% bleach and water solution and adjusted the sprayer to a blasting spray and then cleaned the roots off because this slime of bacteria was suffocating them and they were barely doing anything. This saved them! so after they were treated with bleach it was room temp water through the tub faucet to rinse the bleach after they were cleaned the best I could get them. I had also looked into how to overcome issues with DWC and found that EWC tea with added beneficial microbes was the answer. And it was, I made a tea and used this to outweigh the bad life form that's been messing up my roots. The res was always scrubbed clean wit a bleach solution so don't give me anything about being unsanitary, thanks.
Also, people say adding something like Hygrozyme is what's causing the problem. Do you think a company would sell something that only makes problems worse? Like really, some of the things people say on here or other blogs amazes me.
Peroxide is only good for a few days, so it was added religiously. The rate at which I used it was first at 1 tsp a gal, which wasn't enough so increased to 2 tsp a gal, this worked well. For the week I thought it would have been okay, so this is going to save a lot of you money if you decide to use a hydro system and run into a nasty virus like I did. Make sure to add back peroxide everyday at the rate of 25% of what you normally add or else you'll see in less than a week you need to clean everything again.
After the bad stuff was controlled I finished brewing this earthworm casting tea with added Aquashield, Hygrozyme, and a 1/2 tbsp of molasses to 1 gal of water. It was aerated for a couple days. General Hydroponics Subculture B, extreme gardening Mycos and Humboldt nutrients myco madness were all added to this to become even greater in their numbers to fight whatever this bacteria is.
The stuff in Subculture B is specifically fighting whatever the bad stuff is.
Tea was used after a few days of allowing the peroxide to completely breakdown. And yes, I did use tap water, it didn't kill the plants, but perhaps killed the microbes because of the chlorine/ chloramines. For everyone who thinks chloramine will just magically float out of your water if you bubble it overnight or for a few days you're wrong. This new type of chlorine was made because of all you geniuses who found if you set your water in the freezer or bubble it this eliminates the chlorine. Welcome to 2016 where they still say that bubbling water eliminates chlorine but know nothing about chloramine.
Peroxide actually breaks it down, so when the peroxide dissipated off I added my EWC tea like the root rot blog guy said to. At the rate of 1 cup per gallon of reservoir water. After just a fewe days the results were remarkable. A seedling that was transplanted to this system with 4 clones had shot up and grew like a beast with just the minerals and metals from the tap water alone. I think it was the sugar from the tea, but that's my opinion.
This tea is supposed to also be added to the system at the rate of jsut 1 cup everyday uintil the problem is eliminated.
I still have the problem, but I have to say it's not what it was. The bacteria would cover my airstones, the roots and plastics. Now it sort of will, and it continues to grow on the roots but instead of going with bleach now I just do 1 part H2O2 to 3 parts water. Blasting the bacteria off the roots and rinsing them under the tub faucet is saving them. I worked too hard to just let some species of scum get the best of me.
Pictures on this will be provided later.
For anyone interested in what my 2 oldest are in, they are in a mic of coco, perlite and diatomite stone. They are housed in 2 gallon root pouches because the smart parts are pricey, the idea of root pouches is the same except they use recycled materials like jeans and other things to manufacture them.
I put a small layer of diatomite in the bottom of the planter to act as a reserve for water. Since they're in 2 gal pots they tend to dry out quicker. The diatomite seems to save them before it's too late. Sometimes they droop when they're thirsty but they spring back up in no time once they get what they want.
To feed, I have used a little this and a little of that. To be specific, in grow, seabird guano, a little marine cuisine, some floranova grow and once in a while nitorzime. I use floralicious plus in grow and bloom.
I didn't have to add liquid food every week because there was dry fertilizer provided.
Now I'm almost 5 weeks completed in the bloom stage. Yes, its been almost 5 weeks since I flipped lights to 12/12
I give my girls some bat guano every week, just a tablespoon per plant. I was using 2 tablespoons of fish bone meal to each planter too but the smell is atrocious. The guano not so bad, but I found soemthing that has a lot of phosphorus that's also natural and doesn't smell. Humboldt Nutrients Bloom Natural. I cut the guano, FBM and straight up triple dosed the girls with this bloom formula. Triple dosed because I want all the extra phosphorus I can get so I'm compromising. It's a pretty concentrated boost because a 1 qt bottle can mix up to 1,000 gallons of bloom solution.
I almost forgot, the girls in the soil less mix are receiving Carbo Blast it's 30% dextrose(brewing sugar) and 1% magnesium... It's fuel to all of the plant cells whether it's flowers, roots or stems/ leaves. I use what the label says to use which is just a gram to a gallon of water.
Now I have a few decent shots to give right now, but I want to get a few things out still.
The light is a Bad Boy, there's no other T5 like it, these have a ballast housed inside of them that doesn't go to any other light in the market, they don't even sell the fullham racehorse anywhere. I've looked, the nice thing about this power house is that it's going to crank the bulbs to put out 30% more light than the commercial T5's out there. They do say HO but they aren't as strong. A good fighting point is that you can keep plants comfortable within a foot of a cheap T5 and with a Bad Boy you have to keep tops of plants a foot away or else they burn. The do make a VHO T5 now that is 60% brighter than your scrap metal. I had a change to play with one of these lights and the tomatoes blooming under it had nearly doubled in size overnight.
Also, my temperatures aren't going above 90 F I purchased a new fan/ duct work and a thermostat though so this will help with the heat issues I ran into.
Also, for anyone who actually read all that, thank you for subbing in. You probably are also saying what?! no nitrogen what so ever in your bloom? Well, the FBM was 3% but if you followed along you'll also recollect that I cut the FBN so I just used the Floranova Grow at half strength of what it recommended for heavy feeding plants. They wanted more N and more Mg, so that's what they got. They did green up too which was good to see.
For the past month or so an RO filter has been used to treat the water for them, and whenever they get water for food or for just water, they also get General Organics CaMg+ I highly recommend the GO line, it's completely veganic except for their fish lol but hey beggers cant be choosers not saying vegans are beggers hahah you have the choice to use, or not use something so if you're that anal about sh*t than don't use it you tree hugger.
Just a joke, don't take it personal people, the fish aren't harvested in a way that hurts the ecosystem. It's not just fish in the BioMarine, there's squid as well. They use what gets caught in commercial fish nets sop that the injured fish/ or squid aren't thrown back to die.
The BioWeed is really nice too, it's lime green cold processed seaweed so it's the strongest seaweed you can buy.
Now, I'm not going into details with what these products do or how they work because It's not my job to sell them anymore.
That's right, I used to sell all this stuff... Lights, filters for air and water. Ozone generators, lights, tents, reflective material, PH pens, PPM meters, soil, soil less mix you name it. Sold a lot of General Hydroponics waterfarms, a lot of lights and a ton of Advanced Nutrients.
Some very potent, and great tasting meds, a small sample was clipped from a lower site and let me tell you, it's tasty! A nice earthy tone, could taste the coconut in it kind of.. about 15ml of coconut water is added to a gallon of water and provided when thirsty. There's a number of reasons to do this, but my main reason was because another magazine recommended it. A flush will be performed this weekend, and because the ash was nice and white, there will only be this final flush. Then RO water with nothing in it( anyone supplementing with ca/mg of any brand, i recommend to ween off of it, the last week you feed just use half the amount you have because this is what can become stored in plant tissue or the flowers and effects taste or overall quality)
