Night Queen in RDWC 2014 - My First RDWC

Subbed, looking for to seeing your progress MedFarmer!! I would love to try Hydro but I want to master coco first.

Thanks man. I did a grow with coco earlier in the year, my first one. I've got about a dozen plants outside in coco and they are doing very well and I'm expecting a lot from them. They get very thirsty very quick and demand a lot from me lol. Hydro isn't miles away from coco you know. Your still providing everything they need but instead of making small batches of nutes you're just using larger batches. Your still bound by pH and EC.
 
Here is the roll-call of my outside girls. These are just the potted ones. There are also 11 in the ground in the greenhouse which I cannot photo for privacy purposes.

From left to right we have
Iced Widow
White Rhino
KC45 Auto
Royal Caramel
KC45 Auto
White Rhino
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From left to right we have
Blue Cheese
White Russian
White Rhino
White Kush
White Kush
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From left to right we have
KC45 Auto
KC45 Auto
White Kush
Chronic
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The greenhouse girls are 8 x Blue Cheese, 2 x Purple Haze & 1 x Frisian Dew.
 
Out with the old.
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In with the new.
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I found out the hard way that my buckets were not light tight. I thought that as they were thick plastic all would be fine. Got my new pump and bubbler tubing running. I'm not impressed by the bubbler tubing and will probably go with the 6" air stone like on my 'White Russian' journal.
 
Hey MedFarmer,

You look good in black. I'm a noob, but I have 6 months of vegging in RDWC under my belt and if I may share something I learned about heat transfer. Water effin sucks as an insulator. As sailor and special olympic sailing coach you become very intimate with how fast water can suck the heat out of the surrounding air, hull, human in the drink or even wet on the deck. I'm looking at those fine looking black buckets you're sporting and all I see is surface area for heat transfer. But I'm weird, I had issues.

My chiller went from a mostly full time service item, to only running 15-20% of the time after I insulated my buckets and lid tops, To be totally fair I did raise my temps a few degrees because I went from pure synth to forgoing the DutchMaster Root Zone in favor of the Compost Tea and Aqua Shield. The water was 68F/20C and is now 72F/22C. And the air has been a steady 78-81F 25-27C.

Prior to insulating the chiller couldn't handle the load, then insulated, it ran 75%, now it only runs 15-20% of the time!! Nerd that I am, I sat and figured the cost of the electric vs the tea and the tea is cheaper AND the chiller does nothing for the slime. The tea is letting me run the rez hotter and even with all the shit that it my fans my girls are bouncing back fine at the higher temps. Like I say, I have been vegging for six months and the growth is the most impressive I have ever seen and they are wounded plants.

Can't wait to try a full run with the beneficials. Teen to Toking
 
Hey MedFarmer,

You look good in black. I'm a noob, but I have 6 months of vegging in RDWC under my belt and if I may share something I learned about heat transfer. Water effin sucks as an insulator. As sailor and special olympic sailing coach you become very intimate with how fast water can suck the heat out of the surrounding air, hull, human in the drink or even wet on the deck. I'm looking at those fine looking black buckets you're sporting and all I see is surface area for heat transfer. But I'm weird, I had issues.

My chiller went from a mostly full time service item, to only running 15-20% of the time after I insulated my buckets and lid tops, To be totally fair I did raise my temps a few degrees because I went from pure synth to forgoing the DutchMaster Root Zone in favor of the Compost Tea and Aqua Shield. The water was 68F/20C and is now 72F/22C. And the air has been a steady 78-81F 25-27C.

Prior to insulating the chiller couldn't handle the load, then insulated, it ran 75%, now it only runs 15-20% of the time!! Nerd that I am, I sat and figured the cost of the electric vs the tea and the tea is cheaper AND the chiller does nothing for the slime. The tea is letting me run the rez hotter and even with all the shit that it my fans my girls are bouncing back fine at the higher temps. Like I say, I have been vegging for six months and the growth is the most impressive I have ever seen and they are wounded plants.

Can't wait to try a full run with the beneficials. Teen to Toking

Thanks for the input Dahbig Kahuna.

I was having issues using the same buckets in my DWC grow but things have improved plenty since the canopy has stopped the light getting down to them. They currently run at 19-20C. They were reaching up to 25C in the early days and with the hot weather we've been having. What kept my girls on track was good aeration of the roots.

Armed with your advice I will cut some black/white sheeting to wrap around the buckets and to lay on top of them to reflect some of the light away until the canopy fills the room. Watch this space my friend.
 
Day 31 from seed.

On the advice of Dahbig Kahuna I covered the lids to reflect the light to reduce heat build-up. I need to wrap the buckets too which will be soon.

Dopey.
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Sleepy.
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They are very dense and short and it's down to the light I'm using. Once they go under the Mars II for flowering at a later date they will stretch a lot more as there is more red in the Mars II LED.
 
Just a quick update of pics.

Dopey & Sleepy
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Dopey close up
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Sleepy close up
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They are very dense in there due to the LED being lower in red. That's good for me as I wish to make these girls participants in my first proper scrog.

Does anyone know when I should start training? They are very dense and I wonder if they are even fit for training.

All advice welcomes maties.
 
MedFarmer, >> I'm a noob so take my advice with a gram of wax but... I started training my girls very early. I wanted to see how low I could keep them (watch my vid just beating the girls). I kept them low alright. Problem was too low. I retarded growth this way. Next time I will top a few times and let them grow up until they are more likely to fill half the SCROG when I knock them down. I would do some "semi-LST" to open them up a bit, but would not take the branches lower than 45 degrees for a while. My limited experience has show me the plants grow faster when they are reaching to go tall than when I am forcing them to grow flat. On the other hand, my plants are bushy as hell if you like that sort of thing. I would check in with other growers though. BTW your girls are looking great and I am sure that some topping would be in order for them.
 
MedFarmer, >> I'm a noob so take my advice with a gram of wax but... I started training my girls very early. I wanted to see how low I could keep them (watch my vid just beating the girls). I kept them low alright. Problem was too low. I retarded growth this way. Next time I will top a few times and let them grow up until they are more likely to fill half the SCROG when I knock them down. I would do some "semi-LST" to open them up a bit, but would not take the branches lower than 45 degrees for a while. My limited experience has show me the plants grow faster when they are reaching to go tall than when I am forcing them to grow flat. On the other hand, my plants are bushy as hell if you like that sort of thing. I would check in with other growers though. BTW your girls are looking great and I am sure that some topping would be in order for them.

Thanks for the reply man.

I do intend to top but with it being so dense it doesn't lend itself to obvious topping or fimming sites as of yet.

I've just gone and got some more pics which I'll upload in a moment.
 
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