Half a LB a Month in an Aeroponic Tent

[HashAssassin]

Well that is the goal and realistically I will probably end up with more!

Strains: MTF, MK-Ultra, Bush Widow, Afgooey, and Flo (Blue Pheno)

Lights for Veg: 1) 3' 2 lamp T5 and 2) 2' 1 lamp T5HO

Lights for Flower: 1 600W HPS

Medium: Aero/NFT with 3.75" net cups for veg and flower

I use a three part perpetual system. Clone and veg systems are low pressure aeroponic and the flowering system is aero/NFT. Clone and veg systems are the same style I've been using since '98. There a plans for similar units on stinkbuddies and in the DIY section here. The flowering system is 2 stinkbud jr. setups on a single rack with under-mount reservoirs in a 4x4x6.5 tent.

Nutes: Botanicare Pure Blend Pro

This formula is based on 25 gallons. Nutrient costs are based on 1 gallon bottles.

Veg: $5.61
175ml PBP grow
70ml liquid karma
60ml cal mag
premix in milk jug and add first to water.

then add:
50ml silica blast
100ml of aquashield
50ml hydrozyme

Adjust ph to 5.8.

Before each reservoir change drain res and add fresh water with 150ml clearex and run for 24 hrs.

Week 1 and 2 flower: $8.92

125ml PBP grow
125ml PBP bloom
80ml liquid karma
60ml cal mag
80ml sweet
premix in milk jug and add to res

then add 50ml silica blast, 50ml hydrozyme, and 100 ml aquashield

Adjust pH to 5.8

Weeks 3-5: $9.70
250ml PBP bloom
100ml karma
70ml cal mag
100ml sweet
premix and add to res.

then add 100ml silica blast and 100ml aquashield and 50ml hydrozyme
at the beginning of week 4 add 50 ml of hydroplex ($1.02) and 50ml ($1.02) more at beginning of week 5. When using bloom boosters don't be surprised if it takes a lot more ph down to adjust.

Week 6-Harvest(most of mine finish in 56-65 days): $10.71
250ml PBP bloom
100ml karma
100ml sweet
70ml cal mag

then add 100 ml silica blast, 100ml aquashield, and 150ml of hydroplex. NO hygrozyme.

Total Nutrient Cost from Start to Finish: $46.19
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As a medical patient and a provider I am allowed 30 plants total. Since this includes unrooted clones I had to include them in my 4 week rotation.

12 clones
6 veg
12 flower

I may change the clone and veg numbers once the weather warms up but since my veg area is only 50 - 60F (with a heater!) it takes awhile for the clones to root.

Aero Cloner

Aero Veg Tub

Flower Tent

These plants are on day 5 of flowering and the next batch will go in on New Year's Eve. Current strains in flower are MK-Ultra, Bush Widow, and Flo. The next rotation will be MK-Ultra, Afgooey, and MTF. After that I will be going to single strain rotations. #3 MK-Ultra, #4 Flo, and #5 MTF. The Bush Widow and Afgooey will probably be phased out since I'm not too keen on the stock I have of those strains.

 

[Tmac12]

This is going to be very interesting~~

 

[LotzOfTrycs]

I will be watching this one. I tried harvesting once a month and it ended up being way too much work for me to keep up with and I was getting really burned out from trimming. Curious to see how it works out for you. Good luck brotha!!!

 

[Dee House]

sup hash ima tag along

 

[HashAssassin]

Thanks for tagging along. The biggest problem I've had so far is environmental control. Temps and humidity are swinging way too much. Veg and clone is fairly constant but way too cold. Clones have been basically in stasis because the temps are only around 60F. The humidity in flowering tent goes from 25% with the lights on and 98% when they're off. This is no good so I decided to make some changes.

I ripped apart the garage so I could rearrange everything and move the garden to the corner and enclose it. Eventually I will frame some walls, insulate, and sheetrock but for now I will have to suffer with tarps. Inside dimensions will be 5'x9' which will make for an awesome flower room if I ever decide to get out of the tent. With this in mind I will keep a 4' separation between the future wall location and the work bench when I put it back up.

Since temps are the biggest issue I purchased a small heater to go in the veg tent. It has a fan only mode so I will mount it in a permanent position. I already have a large heater for the main room but since it was heating a large area it really was only useful as freeze protection. Now that it is in a smaller space hopefully it will work better.

Next week I will concentrate on the humidity with a fan and some ducting.

 

[BlazinUSA]

Ya damn the environmental control it is difficult to say the least.
Im happy with how well i can control my heat as i 2 am using a heater, but with a few more settings, nothing digital tho lol.
My humidity tho i think is just as important as temp, im having the damndest time getting it above 20%. Check it out if ya like

 

[HashAssassin]

Well I had to increase the size of the room to 5x10. Maintenance would have been a pain otherwise. For the walls I decided to frame up some 4x8 modular panels that will be bolted together so I can move them easily in the future. Two wall panels and one panel with a door in it. Obviously I've got some extra space on the ends so I will just frame them in.

The heater is working great in the veg tent so I will add one to the flower tent as well. Here is a pic of how I mounted it. I will need to adjust it a little since I'm getting a little wind burn.

Tonight I will begin the clearex flush in flower room in prep for the nute change on Friday.

 

[Saturn]

A consistent harvest is very hard to do IMO.

Oh, nice grow BTW.....



I must of missed a few things.....

How many plants per month?

 

[HashAssassin]

Thanks for the compliments.

A consistent harvest is very hard to do IMO.

Agreed. Once I get the environmental variables nailed down it shouldn't be a problem though.

I will be harvesting 6 plants per month. 6 x 1.33 oz = 8 oz. The first harvest might be a little light considering the plants came from soil and have been stressed beyond belief. Once I get to plants that have been in aero for their entire life cycle a 2 to 2.5 oz per plant harvest is easily obtainable. I have seen harvests in excess of 3 oz per plant.

 

[Saturn]

I look forward to seeing your results.

 

[HashAssassin]

Well I was waiting until after Christmas to post just in case I was given any gift cards that I could use to purchase materials for the rest of my room but that wasn't the case so here are the plants after week 2 of flowering.

I went through two days ago and took out a majority of the fan leaves. So far every thing is filling in nicely.

Closeups of the individual strains. Sorry for the fuzzy, color distorted pics.

Bush Widow

Flo

MK-Ultra

The Veg cab is looking good too. Heat issues have been corrected and the clones have finally rooted. In two more weeks these will go into flower and clones will take their place but not before a good cleaning and upgrade of the unit.

I will post pics of the garden walls as soon as I finish them.

 

[HashAssassin]

Finished the walls but decided to skip the pics. After all walls are walls.

 

[Dee House]

Finished the walls but decided to skip the pics. After all walls are walls.

ha ha lol

 

[HashAssassin]

Well I've been having a hell of a time with lighting. I bought a new 600W HPS two weeks ago and have been having nothing but trouble with it. My HID lighting has a dedicated breaker so I know its not the circuit. I think the issue is the hood (Hydrofarm XtraSun 6), since every night I've had to wiggle the bulb to turn it on and the second ballast just crapped itself. The first ballast was an XtraSun (only lasted 3 days) and the replacement ballast was an Advanced Nutrients (7 days). I'm going to give the shop a call tomorrow and see if I can just get my money back. I need to pick up an inline fan and filter anyway. Here's a pic of my ghetto dual 400W bat wing reflector that I put back up.

I know it's only 200W more but it seems to be twice as bright.

Having the heater in the small tent blowing on the clones was a bad idea. The roots love the heat but not the leaves so I took it down.

The heater is on the shelf below blowing into a makeshift chimney that exits into the space above. This should be good enough for now.

The veg plants have insane roots so they have fared much better. They only have another 2" to go before they are ready to go into flower. Scheduled move date is on the 8th so that shouldn't be a problem.

Last but not least I took a couple of pics of the walls since I was already snapping away. The makeshift door is temporary until I find a six panel 2'-6" door to replace it with.

 

[Giovanni831]

Hash...

I decided to come check you out to see what you have going on. I think that it is funny that we are both running very similar setups. What kind of plumbing are you running in the aero setups? In my tubs I am just running a 250gal/hr pump through 1/2" PVC with 360deg. microsprayers from home depot. In my fencepost aero setups I am using the actual hydrofarm 4ft lines out of the aeroflo systems. It was hard for me to build them any cheaper than the $7ea I get them for from my hydro store. the one that I built myself cost me about $20 for supplies and 1/2hr each to build them. I would rather buy them and save the time. I am having to realize that not everything DIY is cheaper than store bought. I will say that 80% of my stuff is okie engineered though .

How is the flowering with 600-800 watts working out for you. I would love to build another setup, but figured that I would have to wait for more lighting. I have a 600w HPS dedicated to 6 plants right now. The other 6 have a 4ft 8bulb T5 on them. It seemed to do just as good as the HPS is doing. Just that the HID plants are taller, but the yield is looking like it will be about the same.

As far as your humidity, I have mentioned it in my thread as well as a few other peoples.... I initally didnt have cash to buy a dehumidifier, so I used the DampRid buckets that you can pick up at any hardware store. I would advise buying the larger ones that are for RVs though. They have a special paper over the top of them that seal in the absorbant, and keep it from being released into the air. I thought this was a better idea, as it would reduce any chance of airborne contaminants. The buckets are like $8/ ea and they have been in there for a while w/o getting used up. I am going to guess that you will get about a month out of them. Since your garage is unfinished, I would suggest using 2-3 of them. Dont put them right by the plants though. Try to get the close to vent outputs so that it will suck moisture as it recirculates.

My outside humidity here is 82% right now and I am at 37% inside my garage. I do have a very small dehumidifier (one quart) inside my growroom too though. It was only $30 at sears. They shipped it in 2 days. If you need the link, hit me up. Before I put that in there, I was able to get it down 7-10% for each bucket of the DampRid. For $8 it is worth it to me.

 

[HashAssassin]

Yes the systems are very similar. In my clone and veg units I use 185 gph pumps and 396 gph pumps for flower. For the spray manifold I used 1/2" PVC and the red EZ cloner spray heads. I used to use the same ones you do but like the new ones much better. More volume, better pattern and NO CLOGS!!

The 600W was nice when it worked and I really like the hood. The dual 400W setup I have works but the hood sucks in the summer because of the heat. I did find an ac hood for $99 that I can put dual lamps in but I will have to wait until I have the cash.

You will notice the difference between HPS and T5 in the density of the buds when they are dry. Bet you will have at least 10% more yield with the HPS too.

 

[HashAssassin]

Day 18

I returned my 600W HPS after having to many issues with it. Having to be home every night to make sure it fired was getting old. The shop I got it from gave me my money back plus gave me the scale and CalMag I was going to buy for FREE! Talk about great customer service. Since the money was from the garden budget I put it all right back in. PPM meter, a NFT1 cycle timer, Clonex, 6" inline fan, and all the material for a DIY carbon filter. I put the filter together in about 20 min with the exception of the outside layer of panty hose. Since I don't have the hose on the outside I couldn't fill it with the activated carbon I normal use, instead I used carbon filter sheets. It's working good now but the real test will be in a couple weeks.

Since I already had the camera out I took a couple pics of the garden. I still haven't figured out how to get the color corrected on the camera or how to take a decent macro. Res temps are good but the pH was high in the flowering tent so I corrected it to 5.8. PPM was 928.

Flo

Bush Widow

MK-Ultra

On deck for next Friday...

 

[Hydrogrown]

Awesome DIY carbon filter man, looks like mine that I bought from the store thats really cool and I bet you saved $$.
The girls are looking good too, I just take pics right when "night falls" for the best light quality when Im using a light that interferes with picture taking but idk if this is useful to you.
The last picture with the 1 footers (Im guessing) are you saying your about to put those into flower? Only reason I ask is I pretty much expect my plants to look very similar in height when I get back in a few days and I am debating on switching them to flower right away. All in all I am enjoying this journal keep it up and good luck.

 

[HashAssassin]

DIY Filter costs about $50 vs $155 for a Can-Filter 66.

Veg plants are almost 12" and will go into flower next Friday. Vegging under the T5's keeps them short and bushy. If I don't get the desired growth when they move into flower or the desired harvest I will let the next batch veg longer. Everyone talks about stretch but I have found that doesn't really happen to me. Must just be my choice of strains.

 

[WeednFeed]

Great looking grow Hash! I really like your approach and your DIY filter is the bomb. I will definitely make those when needed. Would you have a plan for that by chance? Your half lb goal seems to be conservative from where I sit... well done. Makes mine seem like an awful waste of space! I'm looking forward to seeing your end product and yield.