Need help setting up room SO CONFUSED

[Here To Learn]

No one has addressed your question about the fan. you should defiantly have an exhaust fan running to exchange the air in your grow room. Your plants need CO2 to breath and if you don't exhaust the oxygen they breath out the plants will suffer.

Btw you will not be able to sex your plants until they become sexually mature. You will know because you will see alternating branches on the main stalk and/or pre-flowers with pistils sticking out of them at the nodes.

 

[Propa Gator]

Gator,

The ballast takes a 1000w bulb and is dimmable. U flick the switch and the intensity decreases increases.
I have a meter hooked up to light to calculate how much elec. I am using but u can clearly see the wattage change when u flick the switch.
I hope I'm not mistaken but I think u just always use the 1000w bulb. Dunno why I would want the 600 or 750 setting? Any ideas? I thought the more light the better? I have it on the 1000w setting right now.

Though I know that 600, and 750 watt HIDs are standard, I don't know if they are dimmable.
Find out if doing so changes bulb performance expectations.

 

[labradoodle]

So i did the transplant into Promix soil and bigger pots (around 2 gallon i think) they are pots with plenty of holes in the bottom. The promix said you can use it directly and thats what i did. I added some veg. nutes and some fertilizer to help with the transplant shock.
After doing the transplant and watering them i noticed the soil took up quite a bit of water and there wasnt any draining going on thru the bottom. I have heard that its good to have good drainage for flushing etc. I am not seeing any going on here... maybe its just because the soil was new and so dry. OR maybe i packed it into tight ? nonetheless i would love to hear from the soil growers. I probably should have added some more perlite or done a hempy bucket style or something.. like i said i am just learning!!!
Before the transplant that plants looked pretty good, now after some are looking pretty bad. I have a few issues going on... some of the leaves are looking droopy (over watering) and some leaves are curling up.. also notices a little bit of leave burn... and even some black areas on a couple leaves. That being said, some plants look great and some look like they are gonna die
here are SOME pictures of the issues... they are of 3 plants i beleive and the pics are taken 2 days apart, you can see the label. and what is going on with that one real bushy plant ? i need some help guys.. some direction.. i dont want to do anything drastic. I waited 4 days until soil was a bit dryer and just watered with a bunch of plain water to help neutralize the nutes and pH. look forward to hearing from you guys.. Thanks and enjoy!

 

[SSNUGS]

Looks as though the soil may have been to saturated, let it chill an extra day before you water again, when you check for moisture check where the root mass is. Topping so early caused a lot of stress also. I personally don't add nutes to my transplant until the 3rd watering but I also use a different soil mix that has a initial amount of nutrient base in it for less stress transplanting. They will snap out of it though the real droopy one may not survive but with this plant I would not be surprised to see it pull out of its funk and be your strongest one.

 

[Dee House]

good job on the flush they shouldnt need veg nutes for 3 or 4 wks ...super thrive would b good...helps root growth..i have grown in soil & have plants n soil & hydro now ..

 

[labradoodle]

good job on the flush they shouldnt need veg nutes for 3 or 4 wks ...super thrive would b good...helps root growth..i have grown in soil & have plants n soil & hydro now ..

Thanks for the suggestions. I put the light up higher and did water with only plain water and will continue to do that for the next 2-3 weeks like you said.

With the soil, i am noticing it is not draining out of the bottom and i heard that the roots can rot if there is water sitting in the bottom of the pot. I turned the put even upside down and no water came out. I think the soil is just very well saturated... what does this mean ? is this normal for soil grows? the promix did say it was ready to use right out of the bag... perhaps next time i am going to add more perlite anyways so i can do a proper flush... learning lots everyday.

I am not worried as much as i was before ... the plants are looking a little bit better and are growing which is nice. When i was turning the pots upside down I already noticed the roots were poking out of the bottom of the pots! IN 3 DAYS! wow that's crazy.. well it is to me anyways.

I want to do your suggestions of perhaps using the super thrive and i was thinking of using Cal-Mag in the next watering.... Any thoughts. ? the leaves curling up are really concerning me... I thought also the fan might be blowing too hard on the leaves and could be adding the shock... so i'm turning the fan off for at least a day ?

hopefully with moving the light up, setting it on the 600w setting instead of 1000w, using some cal-mag, and turning the fan off (or decreasing its intensity) will help alleviate the problem of leaves curling up... THANKS again guys, I'll keep working hard, monitoring and posting updates.. I'm having lots of fun actually

I think the way to go in the future is COCO with a waste reservoir on the bottom... I believe its called a HEMPY BUCKET ? i would love a good tutorial on this method because i have heard of it and they say its good for NOOBS like me

 

[Dee House]

glad to hear the plants are doing good..i use the lift method when watering ..lift a pot full of soil...feel the weight...then water it & check weight...water if needed..

 

[labradoodle]

so i finally bought a digital moisture meter and a digital pH soil meter.

The pH of the all the soil varies from 6.0-6.5

The moisture meter is very good, the deeper you put the probe the higher the moisture reading... so there is definitely moisture sitting at the bottom of the pot. I still cant believe the roots are poking out of the holes in the bottom of the pots only 4 days after transplant out of party cups, simply amazing.

The leaves are still curling upwards and i am noticing it a bit more, they are mostly on the higher leaves... new growth looks good tho, color looks good.

I also bought some Cal-Mag supp. and superthrive. I added those at full strength and watered the plants. The moisture meter is showing 8.0-9.9 now because they are fully watered. On the chart, i am going to use tomatoes as the guidline to follow (is that a good comparison plant ?). For tomatoes it says do not water unless the meter is showing 3-4 or lower.. so i will follow that. I'll keep you guys updated on if this does anything, OH and i also raised the light up even more to about 28 inches....
It will be interesting to see how long it takes for the moisture meter to go from 9 to 3-4... i will follow that from now on... unless anyone has any other suggestions. I'll post pics in a week or so

 

[Dee House]

sounds good lab ..id lower the light to about 15 " u dont want them 2 stretch...y do u need cal mag ...id add the perlite on the next transpant...lets c some pics ..lol

 

[labradoodle]

sounds good lab ..id lower the light to about 15 " u dont want them 2 stretch...y do u need cal mag ...id add the perlite on the next transpant...lets c some pics ..lol

Yes, i want to add more perlite on the next transplant ?

how would i go about doing this ? just keep the soil i have in the pot now and all the new soil i add to the 5 gal bucket will be the soil with extra perlite ?? suggestions would be appreciated.

I am doing some LST right now.. dont know if this is a lot of extra stress for the plant... but the lower new growth did explode once i started doing this, very interesting.

Lab

 

[labradoodle]

Ok guys time for another update with some pictures. I am on day 44 since sprouting. I haven't watered my plants since 6 days ago... the water meter is still showing 5-6 when i poke in the probe all the way. It says to water tomatoes when you get to 3-4 so I will probably wait a day or 2. I was wondering since i used fertilizer, superthrive, cal-mag last time... what should i water with this time ? I am thinking just plain water since i was having some problems with my leaves.... You guys look at the pics and please let me know what you think.

There are 2 plants that are really lagging behind... they are growing waaay slower than the others... should i yank these? or what would you guys do with these 2 buggers?

Also, being at day 44 i think i am about 16 days away from being able to determine sex or clone these guys?

My pH of soil is 6-6.5... I have some pH down so what should i have the water set at before watering these guys ? any suggestions. Other than that, everything is going well... the leaves curling up is still concerning me but new growth looks good... i am keeping the light about 24-26" away for now..

The bigger plants are now 8-10" tall..... (plants 5 and 7 are the scraggly stunted looking ones)

I also got my hands on some Attitude fem. seeds. I have a bag of 5 (indoor nirvana mix) and one fem. seed of Kannabia La Blanca... i dont know anything about them... but i have germed them and put 3 in soil and 3 in coco and will start my second batch and look to not make the same mistakes i did on the first batch.

Comments, suggestions are welcomed! thanks guys.