JCool09 Cabinet Hydro Caramelicious 9/2009

[jcool09]

Hello everyone. All of the great information I have seen on this site over the past few months has inspired me to stop lurking and post my latest grow attempt. It's been a while for me and I see that a lot of things have changed. What an amazing forum- I thought I knew a lot but I find myself learning something new every day.

I try to always keep an open mind and welcome your suggestions as I share my successes and failures along the way.

So here are the high-level details:

What strain is it?
Carmelicious

Is it Indica, Sativa or Hybrid? What percentages?
60/40 Indica

Is it in Veg or Flower stage?
Currently waiting for seedlings to germinate. Started on 9/15/09.

Indoor or outdoor?
Indoor

Soil or Hydro?
Hydro

Size of light?
2 x 105W CFL (total 14000 lumens) during veg
will add 150 HPS during flower

Is it aircooled?
No

Room or Cabinet grow?
Cabinet

Size of Cab?
30" x 18" x 6'
Regularly stocked item at Lowe's

Temp of Cab?
Target will be 75-85 degrees

RH of Cab?
Not sure, 40-60 would be my best guess.

PH of media or res?
Target will be 5.8 - 6.2

Type and strength of ferts used?
Canna Aqua Vega A+B / Aqua Flores A+B
25% seedling stage - 100% full veg/flower

 

[LiveTour]

Cool can't wait to see this Caramelicious grow. Hope you get a great grem rate!

 

[jcool09]

The seeds

I ordered my Carmelicious seeds from Amsterdam Marijuana Seeds (AMS). AMS includes 20 free seeds but I will be shelving those at the moment. My original plan was to germinate a few CAR seeds and a few free seeds but hearing Swampgas share about varied growth rates and maturation times in his CAR journal Caramelicious In NorCal I have decided to only germinate 5 of the CAR seeds at this time.

 

[jcool09]

Cool can't wait to see this Caramelicious grow. Hope you get a great grem rate!

Thanks DeadTour09, we'll see. I should have done more research before I pulled the trigger. I have read some really good posts today and wish I had done a few things differently.

 

[boxpipe]

Hi Jcool, I'm in. Let's see some pics of the cabinet!

 

[jcool09]

Security

The is my sixth grow and my fifth hydroponic grow. This is the first time that I will be growing in such a confined space. As I have grown older my priorites have changed from "grow as much as I can" to "grow a small amount of the highest quality". My number one priority in this grow is security. I have chosen to grow inside a cabinet that fits into the decor of the room in which it sits. The design goal is for the grow light/sound/odor to be controlled to the point that someone could be in the room and have no clue that there was anything out of the ordinary. I am the only occupant of the room. The room is locked and I have the only key.

The cabinet

I tried to link to Lowe's web site but they do not list the product online. The cabinet is a 30" wide x 18" deep x 6' high white wardrobe. There is one fixed shelf at the 5' height and the remainder of the cabinet is open space that will accomodate shelves at various heights.

The base sits 4" off of the floor so I was able to drill several 1" vent holes in the front bottom shelf. There is currently a CPU fan at the top rear to exhaust the hot air. This is somewhat noisy and is a short-term solution. The longer-term plan is to install an exhaust duct that enters the wall and is routed to the attic. I will deploy some type of cage fan and air scrubber in the attic to create heavy negative pressure in the cabinet to keep the temps down and keep the odor under control.

I purchased a 25' roll of Mylar and have used double-sided masking tape to adhere the reflective material to the interior walls.

I do plan to post pictures tomorrow but I wanted to get the background information out tonight while I had the time.

 

[jcool09]

The lights

I have done a lot of research on this over the past few months. My main concern with lighting is the heat that will be generated in such a confined space. This can be minimized with good air flow but there is also the 18" clearance required with hot lights like MH/HPS. I am starting with 5' of vertical growspace so things are going to get tight.

After hours of consideration I decided on dual 105W CFL fixtures with grow reflectors. 105 WATT CFL GRO FIXTURE The mfg rates these at 7000+ lumens each. The grow area is 3.75 square feet so with 3,733 lumens/ft2 I should have enough light to grow some decent vegetatation. I was told that I will want to bump this up to 5000/ft2 when flowering.

I have fired these fixtures up in the cabinet and while they are cooler than MH/HPS they do generate significant heat. The temp in the cabinet was about 95 degrees without any ventilation. I added a CPU fan for ehaust today and will check on the temps tomorrow.

I am concerned that I will not be able to create the buds I want with CFL alone. I need to come up with a plan that will allow me to add a 150W HPS light to finish them off right. I am looking to tap into the 420 collective for suggestions so please feel free to post your suggestions on this.

 

[jcool09]

Hydroponics

I have worked with hydro in the past and don't think I will ever do an indoor soil grow. The rate of growth you see right out of the gate is simply astounding. I was reading SouthernWeeds journal today Southernweeds Second - Lets grow a pound where he notes that the hydro plants take off immediately while those in soil take much longer to establish roots, tolerate nutes, etc.

My plan is for a scalable hydro grow. By scalable I mean that I will start off with small pots/reservior and grow the environment as the plants require more nutirents. Each seed is being germinated in 1.5" Sure To Grow Cubes. My past experience has been with rockwool and after reading about the properties of this product I was sold. One of the annoyances I found with the rockwool cubes was the need to "condition" them to adjust their PH prior to use. I never was able to get this right and they would still affect the PH of the reservior. The 1.5" cubes were placed in 2" netpots. Each netpot will host a single plant from seed.

The netpots will stand on their own during germination. Once the seeds sprout they will be installed into 1 gal bubbler buckets, where each bubbler will support up to three seedlings. The bubblers have a 4" round airstone in the bottom, all three are connected to a 4-gang valve that is fed by dual airpumps. The bubblers have a drain hole on the side toward the bottom where a 1/2" grommet and T connector are installed. 1/2" tubing is used to connect the bubblers in serial. The drains allow for the pots to share a larger 3 gal "reservior" of nutrient solution and also keep the water levels even in all bubblers. After a couple of weeks in the 1 gal buckets I will move the netpots to a 20 gal tub to finish. I don't know if starting in 1 gal is necessary but my thought process was to minimize the waste of nutirent solution during the early stages when the plants are not eating much. This is based on the assumption that the nutrient solution is supposed to be changed every 7-10 days.

I was kind of cost-conscious when I ordered my nutrients. I did not go high-end, rather chose a brand that I read did well in DWC grows. I also did not want to have to order 5 products and mix a cocktail every time I filled my reservior. This attitude may change once I hear from you all. I went with Canna Aqua Vega a simple two-part solution for the vegetation stage. I have not purchased the bloom nutes yet so if there is a product that you have used that is outstanding in bubblers then I would love to hear about it.

 

[jcool09]

Thanks DeadTour09, we'll see. I should have done more research before I pulled the trigger. I have read some really good posts today and wish I had done a few things differently.

Germination

I REALLY wanted to get my seeds going and I rushed things here. *its a weed it will grow its a weed it will grow* I put five seeds in a wet paper towel for half a day on the 15th and then I soaked my STG cubes, put them into their netpots, and inserted the seeds (they have a neat X cut in the middle that is designed to allow for the insertion of seeds and cuttings) about 1/2" below the surface of each cube.

I hope that my impatience did not cost me half of my seed purchase. *its a weed it will grow its a weed it will grow please grow* The grow cabinet was not ready so they sat in a kitchen cabinet for a day. Then they were moved around a few more times over the next 2 days until the netpots ended up in a covered germination tray under one of the 105W CFLs that was raised up high to provide light but not intense light. They have been under the CFL on a 24/0 cycle (if you would call "on all the time" a cycle) for the past 4 days. I have read today that 18/6 or 20/4 are preferred light cycles but I always grew under 24/0 then 12/12 and have not seen evidence that 24/0 is bad. *its a weed it will grow its a weed it will grow please please grow*

Anyway I checked in on them this afternoon and there is no love yet. I plan to post some catch-up pics for my prior posts tomorrow and I would love to give everyone some good news. I guess I'll wait until next weekend to see if these germinate before I start the next batch.

 

[Mr. The Ninja]

you sound stressed out Jcool
relax, smoke a bowl, it'll happen^_^
took mine like 5days to split
just wait for it

 

[caesar537]

I'm in J, great info on your grow and sounds like a good plan, can't wait to see your pics! I would like to know too how exactly did you hook up your CPU fan? Do you have an adapter or is it plugged into a power supply?

 

[jcool09]

Hi Jcool, I'm in. Let's see some pics of the cabinet!

Hey Boxpipe, thanks for stopping by. It took me a while to get the pictures uploaded but here we go.

Cabinet completed, doors closed

Interior view

I used electrical tape on the seams and weather stripping on the doors to create a light-proof seal. Holes drilled in bottom for ventilation intake and power.

Bottom view

More views of the sealed seams. Ventilation holes were later drilled in the top rear. I was thinking that invection would cause a natural air flow through the cabinet. NOT. See next pic with CPU fan.

Top view

The smaller holes were sealed with tape and a larger hole was created for CPU fan.

CPU fan exhaust

Mylar pre-install

I used double-sided masking tape to adhere the mylar to the walls and doors.

Mylar post-install

Lights installed

Lights on!

The cabinet seen here in a dark room w/ lights on w/o leakage.

Stealth mode!

This cabinet is available off the shelf from Lowe's for about $168. This has been the most expensive component of the "system" to date.

 

[jcool09]

I'm in J, great info on your grow and sounds like a good plan, can't wait to see your pics! I would like to know too how exactly did you hook up your CPU fan? Do you have an adapter or is it plugged into a power supply?

I have to give credit for this solution to Mr. The Ninja. I asked him about this the other day in another thread and he set me right.

I have a few laying around from old PCs and I had no idea that wiring these fans would be so easy. You can see in the picture that there are three wires - black, red, and yellow (I have another fan that has black, red, and blue. The black and red seem to be consistant). What you need is an old power adapter from anything that used 9-12V of DC power. Look on the back of the adapter to check the voltage. This one was from the base of an old cordless phone. Strip the wires and connect one of the leads to the red and one to the black. If it does not work then reverse the wires, it will only work one way. An interesting side note is that if the yellow wire (or blue on other fan) is connected instead of the red (I think it was red) then the fan spins at 1/2 speed which creates less noise.

CPU fan install

 

[budlover3388]

looking good,i cant wait good luck!

 

[jcool09]

you sound stressed out Jcool
relax, smoke a bowl, it'll happen^_^
took mine like 5days to split
just wait for it

That was good advice, I wish I listened to it.

Good news, bad news
I want these things to sprout and I was not sure that the germination process I used was working. So I just had to take a peek. I picked one of the cubes that looked the least likely to germinate (like I can tell). I carefully cut open cube until I could see the seed... and... THERE WAS A TAPROOT! YAY! It was about 1/4" long and was perfectly happy in it's cube until JC came along and rocked it's (her?) world.

So that was the good news. It is likely that the other seeds are also tapping into the cubes and will likely sprout in the next day or so. The bad news is that the tap roots are very delicate and it is likely that I caused some damage during my invasion and resulting transplant into another cube. I tried to be careful and did not obviously damage it but I have a sneaky feeling that I should have just left well enough alone. I marked the netpot that I "worked" on so we'll just have to see.

Time to chill and let nature take it's course. I'll post some more pics of the setup and supplies later today.

 

[jcool09]

looking good,i cant wait good luck!

Thanks Budlover, you were my first friend in the forum so I appreciate your support.

 

[The Weed]

I missed this yesterday! Very happy for you buddy up and running again!! Great pictures along with awesome details So your using 10 year old seed is that right? Gives me hope for my Collection! That cabinet should sure handle 250 watts! I had almost same size with 400 watts few yrs back. Just get a cage fan for bottom of cabinet blowing up. And or another cage fan on top blowing out there also. We will see?.You also can cut alittle off top of back panel should be cardboard like right? along the top for extra ventation 2-3 inches should do it.Or just lower back 2-3 inches is what I did. I don't know how stealth you need to be.? Exicted for you jcool09, way to go!

 

[jcool09]

I missed this yesterday! Very happy for you buddy up and running again!! Great pictures along with awesome details So your using 10 year old seed is that right? Gives me hope for my Collection!

Glad to hear from you The Weed. Let me clarify that the seeds I am using were purchased from AMS in August.

I hate Mondays
OK, time for idiot move number two today. I decided that the top shelf of the cabinet, originally thought I would do clones up there or something, was taking up too much space and blocking air flow. Shelf came out fine but in the process of re-hanging my fixture I dislodged the bulb from the reflector and *SMASH* it shattered onto the shelf below. So now I am out $40 bucks for the bulb and probably have all kinds of Mercury poisoning. If my posts get more retarded as I go along we can attribute it to that.

Cabinet Modification - Removed top shelf

 

[The Weed]

That should also help temps! Ouch!

 

[PHATBLUNT420]

Hey JCool09 if i learned one this in growing the sweet leaf its
do your set-up correctly the 1st time if you need to fix something, remove the plants and CAREFULLY and PATIENTLY fix the problems

the odds of something going right during initial set-up seems to be higher then after you might think you "fixed" it

never do something just because you feel like its right, always do things strategically

btw good luck