Delps8
Well-Known Member
Third time's a charm or grudge grow or both?
Strain - Gorilla Glue (autoflower) equal parts sativa and indica
Number of Plants - 4
Growth Stage - seedling
How Long - 1 week in the reservoir
Germination start - 4/3/21
First sprouted - 4/6/21
Into the res - 4/11/21
Water source - RO
Indoor or Outdoor - indoor
Grow Type - hydro
Tent - 2' x 4'
Reservoir Size - 35 gals to bottom of 3" net pots
Reservoir Temperature - 68 (Active Aqua chiller)
Medium - water. Seedlings germinated in Rapid Rooters.
Watering schedule - every other day. Rapid Rooters are moist without top feed. I top feed for a few seconds every other day due to caution to not kill roots. Based on pix, roots seem well developed.
Nutes - Botanicare Kind. Using all "expert" nutes except the Rhizo Blast - not easy to find and, between the other 7 nutes and supplements, there's plenty of other chemistry going on in that res.
Hydro Setup - RDWC, top feed.
Size (Wattage) of Light - Mars Hydro SP 3000, white light LED, dimmable. Current light level is 205± µm/s DLI of 12-13
Temperature of Room/Cabinet- 68 night and 72-74 daytime
RH - 70 - 80%
pH - 5.8
Pests - None known
After a photoperiod grow in mid-2017 that ended in a reveg, I unarchived the grow equipment late last year. It's not that I haven't been busy between last year and now. In addition to figuring out what to keep, what to clean, and what to replace, after I got everything set up I went through two sets of seedlings, so this is a "grudge grow".
The two other sets of seedlings died, as best I can tell, due not enough light. Having proven that I can kill seedlings, I decided to change my approach. I put some time into figuring out what equipment I wanted to use and read up on and adopted and adapted "best practices", to add more over-use to and over used expression.
I put 6 GG seeds in Rapid Rooters in a SuperSprouter with an 18-watt T5 running 24/0. Germination went well, though I found one very dried out seed on the bottom of the tray and another seed germinated but the stem was so weak that it collapsed and had to be held up with a toothpick and plant ties. The sprouts were doing well but the leggy seedling bugged me and the T5 was putting out very little light in the SuperSprouter (PPFD of 50, IIRC) so I put the remaining 5 seedlings in the tent.
As part of my effort to do things quantitatively instead of qualitatively and, having killed off one set of seedlings because of too little light, I read up on PAR and PPFD. As a software developer, I was interested in a software solution that took advantage of the sensors and screen that I'd already paid for when I bought my iPhone. I worked with/tested on solution for the iPhone but decided to use an Apogee MQ-500 instead. Knowing that I could dim the SP 3000 and measure PPFD accurately made it a no brainer to use the environment in the tent instead of in the germinator.
Per above, the plants are now receiving a PPFD of 205± on an 18/6 schedule.
The temp and RH are "influenced", more than controlled. The grow is in an unheated garage in SouthCounty, OC, SoCal. There's a small oil heater in the tent but I've had a devil of a time trying to get heat to where the seedlings are - the top of the res. Even with the heater sitting on the res itself, the temperature would be, say, 78 degrees at 6" above the res and 85 at eye level but only 71 degrees at the top of the res. I tried aiming a fan upwards to blow the hot air into the bottom of the res but that was a dead end. A different approach, and one that's apparently successful, was to "lower the roof". I put up a scrog net just above the light (about 18") and put cardboard strips across the scrog net to trap heat. That allowed me to run the heater less (it draws 650± watts) and the smaller space will make it easier to control the temperature. I've been able to keep the temps between 68 and 74 and will work on getting the temp up to 77 during veg. With Santa Ana winds blowing today and tomorrow, temps are up (92 degrees today) and RH is down to…2%.
Speaking of RH - I'm using Ink Bird controllers, one for temp, one for RH ("Hotbird" and "Wetbird", respectively). The sensors are plugged into a Kasa 6 port smart strip which allows me to set their schedule and, if needed, to do things like turn on the inline fan if something happens and I need to drop the temp or RH quickly.
I have been using Acurite sensors for temp and RH outside the house, in the garage, and in the tent, as well. They're accurate but they're on a 5-minute update cycle. The 'Birds seem to react very quickly. IIRC, Wetbird, the RH sensor, updates every second. The humidifier in the pix is the third one I’ve used. The first one was a small, "personal" size that ran out of water overnight, the next one was Wi-Fi controllable but, once the Wetbird cut the current I had to put the start button to turn it on again so I can't use that one, either. The humidifier in the pix is made for a terrarium and the hoses allow me to put the humidity right at the res level. The hose unit can be removed if when I need humidity for veg (or whatever it's called with AF's).
The instrument that I’m coming to rely on is a PulseOne. The PulseOne provides RH, temperature, light intensity, dew point, and VPD info. I'm not all that interested in dew point or light intensity but the temp, RH, and VPD values are all intertwined and the Pulse One’s fast cycle (it uploads data every 60 seconds) has helped me to average a VPD of 0.8 since the plants when in the res. I've dialed in leaf temperature a few times. It's varied from 0 to 2 degrees which drives changes in optimal VPD.
The water in the res is from an RO unit. I was using pen type sensors for pH and TDS. pH took a while to measure and according to my TDS pen, the RO unit was putting out water at 17 PPM (500 scale). That means that the RO membrane needed to be replaced but it was a new membrane so that kinda meant that the TDS pen was off. I replaced the pends with Bluelab pH and TDS devices. Though I've only been using them for a few weeks, like the Apogee, I see a lot of value in them. In addition to them being easy to calibrate, they're waterproof so I can leave the pH pen, for example, in the note bucket and it will ready the pH in real time. The Bluelab TDS meter gave me a reading of 0 PPM for the RO water and 160 for tap water. The TDS pen measured the RO water at 17 PPM and the tap water at 179 so the RO unit membrane was doing fine - it was the TDS meter reading high. I kept the membrane and tossed the pens.
Per the Bluelab monitor on the wall, the EC has stayed constant at 0.5 and the res temp has stayed at 68, thanks to the ActiveAqua water chiller. The pH started at 5.8 and gradually dropped to 5.5 by the end of the week. A few CC's of Up bumped it to 5.8 and it's stayed at 5.8 over the weekend.
Four issues:
My limited experience is with photoperiods and, after a week in the res, I think they were a lot bigger than these GG AF's. These seedlings appear to have a second set of leaves, but they look…short (my plan was to grow photos but, after tanking two sets of seeds, I was concerned about photos go into flower in July and August, so I switched to AF's). Given that these are GG AF's, are they about the right size and development level?
Another issue - per the pix, one of the net pots had a light white coating on it. Is that algae? When I saw that, I removed the net pot from the res, got rid of the hydroton, and put the seedling in another net pot. The net pot was cleaned in a bleach solution and has been left to dry.
What was on the net pot and what action should I take?
Finally, I'm using nutes at 1/4 strength, including the HydroGuard. It made sense to use nutes at lowered strength but, now that I think about it, it would have been better to have added the HydroGuard at full strength. Which is correct - should the HydroGuard be at a diluted level or should it be full strength? Or am I thinking that adding HydroGuard at full strength will deal with whatever is on my the net pot?
I've done a bit of learning about AF's but still have questions, mostly about growth stages and nutes. I'll ask more questions about AF's but I wanted to do this brief intro first. ;-)
The Pix
Joe - the plant with the funky net pot. There is a tiny light brown/yellow spot on one leaf that appeared overnight
Reynolds - the pix shows that the plant has slight mottling of some of the leaves.
Joe's funky net pot - I wiped my thumb across the side of the net pot to show contrast.
Strain - Gorilla Glue (autoflower) equal parts sativa and indica
Number of Plants - 4
Growth Stage - seedling
How Long - 1 week in the reservoir
Germination start - 4/3/21
First sprouted - 4/6/21
Into the res - 4/11/21
Water source - RO
Indoor or Outdoor - indoor
Grow Type - hydro
Tent - 2' x 4'
Reservoir Size - 35 gals to bottom of 3" net pots
Reservoir Temperature - 68 (Active Aqua chiller)
Medium - water. Seedlings germinated in Rapid Rooters.
Watering schedule - every other day. Rapid Rooters are moist without top feed. I top feed for a few seconds every other day due to caution to not kill roots. Based on pix, roots seem well developed.
Nutes - Botanicare Kind. Using all "expert" nutes except the Rhizo Blast - not easy to find and, between the other 7 nutes and supplements, there's plenty of other chemistry going on in that res.
Hydro Setup - RDWC, top feed.
Size (Wattage) of Light - Mars Hydro SP 3000, white light LED, dimmable. Current light level is 205± µm/s DLI of 12-13
Temperature of Room/Cabinet- 68 night and 72-74 daytime
RH - 70 - 80%
pH - 5.8
Pests - None known
After a photoperiod grow in mid-2017 that ended in a reveg, I unarchived the grow equipment late last year. It's not that I haven't been busy between last year and now. In addition to figuring out what to keep, what to clean, and what to replace, after I got everything set up I went through two sets of seedlings, so this is a "grudge grow".
The two other sets of seedlings died, as best I can tell, due not enough light. Having proven that I can kill seedlings, I decided to change my approach. I put some time into figuring out what equipment I wanted to use and read up on and adopted and adapted "best practices", to add more over-use to and over used expression.
I put 6 GG seeds in Rapid Rooters in a SuperSprouter with an 18-watt T5 running 24/0. Germination went well, though I found one very dried out seed on the bottom of the tray and another seed germinated but the stem was so weak that it collapsed and had to be held up with a toothpick and plant ties. The sprouts were doing well but the leggy seedling bugged me and the T5 was putting out very little light in the SuperSprouter (PPFD of 50, IIRC) so I put the remaining 5 seedlings in the tent.
As part of my effort to do things quantitatively instead of qualitatively and, having killed off one set of seedlings because of too little light, I read up on PAR and PPFD. As a software developer, I was interested in a software solution that took advantage of the sensors and screen that I'd already paid for when I bought my iPhone. I worked with/tested on solution for the iPhone but decided to use an Apogee MQ-500 instead. Knowing that I could dim the SP 3000 and measure PPFD accurately made it a no brainer to use the environment in the tent instead of in the germinator.
Per above, the plants are now receiving a PPFD of 205± on an 18/6 schedule.
The temp and RH are "influenced", more than controlled. The grow is in an unheated garage in SouthCounty, OC, SoCal. There's a small oil heater in the tent but I've had a devil of a time trying to get heat to where the seedlings are - the top of the res. Even with the heater sitting on the res itself, the temperature would be, say, 78 degrees at 6" above the res and 85 at eye level but only 71 degrees at the top of the res. I tried aiming a fan upwards to blow the hot air into the bottom of the res but that was a dead end. A different approach, and one that's apparently successful, was to "lower the roof". I put up a scrog net just above the light (about 18") and put cardboard strips across the scrog net to trap heat. That allowed me to run the heater less (it draws 650± watts) and the smaller space will make it easier to control the temperature. I've been able to keep the temps between 68 and 74 and will work on getting the temp up to 77 during veg. With Santa Ana winds blowing today and tomorrow, temps are up (92 degrees today) and RH is down to…2%.
Speaking of RH - I'm using Ink Bird controllers, one for temp, one for RH ("Hotbird" and "Wetbird", respectively). The sensors are plugged into a Kasa 6 port smart strip which allows me to set their schedule and, if needed, to do things like turn on the inline fan if something happens and I need to drop the temp or RH quickly.
I have been using Acurite sensors for temp and RH outside the house, in the garage, and in the tent, as well. They're accurate but they're on a 5-minute update cycle. The 'Birds seem to react very quickly. IIRC, Wetbird, the RH sensor, updates every second. The humidifier in the pix is the third one I’ve used. The first one was a small, "personal" size that ran out of water overnight, the next one was Wi-Fi controllable but, once the Wetbird cut the current I had to put the start button to turn it on again so I can't use that one, either. The humidifier in the pix is made for a terrarium and the hoses allow me to put the humidity right at the res level. The hose unit can be removed if when I need humidity for veg (or whatever it's called with AF's).
The instrument that I’m coming to rely on is a PulseOne. The PulseOne provides RH, temperature, light intensity, dew point, and VPD info. I'm not all that interested in dew point or light intensity but the temp, RH, and VPD values are all intertwined and the Pulse One’s fast cycle (it uploads data every 60 seconds) has helped me to average a VPD of 0.8 since the plants when in the res. I've dialed in leaf temperature a few times. It's varied from 0 to 2 degrees which drives changes in optimal VPD.
The water in the res is from an RO unit. I was using pen type sensors for pH and TDS. pH took a while to measure and according to my TDS pen, the RO unit was putting out water at 17 PPM (500 scale). That means that the RO membrane needed to be replaced but it was a new membrane so that kinda meant that the TDS pen was off. I replaced the pends with Bluelab pH and TDS devices. Though I've only been using them for a few weeks, like the Apogee, I see a lot of value in them. In addition to them being easy to calibrate, they're waterproof so I can leave the pH pen, for example, in the note bucket and it will ready the pH in real time. The Bluelab TDS meter gave me a reading of 0 PPM for the RO water and 160 for tap water. The TDS pen measured the RO water at 17 PPM and the tap water at 179 so the RO unit membrane was doing fine - it was the TDS meter reading high. I kept the membrane and tossed the pens.
Per the Bluelab monitor on the wall, the EC has stayed constant at 0.5 and the res temp has stayed at 68, thanks to the ActiveAqua water chiller. The pH started at 5.8 and gradually dropped to 5.5 by the end of the week. A few CC's of Up bumped it to 5.8 and it's stayed at 5.8 over the weekend.
Four issues:
My limited experience is with photoperiods and, after a week in the res, I think they were a lot bigger than these GG AF's. These seedlings appear to have a second set of leaves, but they look…short (my plan was to grow photos but, after tanking two sets of seeds, I was concerned about photos go into flower in July and August, so I switched to AF's). Given that these are GG AF's, are they about the right size and development level?
Another issue - per the pix, one of the net pots had a light white coating on it. Is that algae? When I saw that, I removed the net pot from the res, got rid of the hydroton, and put the seedling in another net pot. The net pot was cleaned in a bleach solution and has been left to dry.
What was on the net pot and what action should I take?
Finally, I'm using nutes at 1/4 strength, including the HydroGuard. It made sense to use nutes at lowered strength but, now that I think about it, it would have been better to have added the HydroGuard at full strength. Which is correct - should the HydroGuard be at a diluted level or should it be full strength? Or am I thinking that adding HydroGuard at full strength will deal with whatever is on my the net pot?
I've done a bit of learning about AF's but still have questions, mostly about growth stages and nutes. I'll ask more questions about AF's but I wanted to do this brief intro first. ;-)
The Pix
Joe - the plant with the funky net pot. There is a tiny light brown/yellow spot on one leaf that appeared overnight
Reynolds - the pix shows that the plant has slight mottling of some of the leaves.
Joe's funky net pot - I wiped my thumb across the side of the net pot to show contrast.
