Quest for 1G/W: 1K HPS Liquid Cooled on a 6' Mover in a 4x8 Tent

[WheeloFortune]

Re: Quest for 1g/w: 1k hps liquid cooled on a 6' mover in a 4x8 tent.

I am getting just as excited for the aero plants to start as I did when I first started my plants. Can't wait!!

thanks bro, I'm excited to to get them in, but it'll still be a few weeks.

Did mini 420fied just show up in your corner

This looks great WoF, hope the runts turn around for you

lol, thats right. . . props to 420fied's influence.

Thanks bro, if the don't turn around i'll replace them, but I haven't given up on them yet, they are still growing, they just need to snap out of it and grow quicker.

Will there be plants in those pipes??

Yes sir. . . I can't put them in yet, because for one it's not done yet, but also a 4 week veg would make them too big. . . When the EnG plants get bigger (around 2-2 1/2 feet tall) I'll take some clones and clean them up and toss them in the aero. . . veg more till the aero roots, and flip to flower once I think the aero plants have enough roots to handle it. 27 sites in the aero. Should help put me over the top on my goal. . .

We still have a few weeks to see how it plays out.

 

[The Butcher]

Re: Quest for 1g/w: 1k hps liquid cooled on a 6' mover in a 4x8 tent.

Thanks bro. . . Hopefully I have it in me this one.

I know, I always have a lot of different stuff going on in my grows, and that increases my chances of making a mistake, but that reflects my personality pretty well, because I always have a ton of stuff going on in my brain all at once. That's just how I roll, and it's probably not gonna change much.

just gotta pay extreme attention to detail.

Sounds like me..LOL..I swear..and you know what I'm talking about..SImple just isn't enough. Always gotta complicate things somehow. But without experiments, then there wouldnt be an correct answers. If that makes sence. Thats the way I think of it. I've messed up my fair share of grows due to be overzealous. But this grow gives me a good feeling about the outcome. I'm sending as much good karma that I can your way. But something tells me you wont need it this time. I'm watching

 

[WheeloFortune]

Re: Quest for 1g/w: 1k hps liquid cooled on a 6' mover in a 4x8 tent.

Sounds like me..LOL..I swear..and you know what I'm talking about..SImple just isn't enough. Always gotta complicate things somehow. But without experiments, then there wouldnt be an correct answers. If that makes sence. Thats the way I think of it. I've messed up my fair share of grows due to be overzealous. But this grow gives me a good feeling about the outcome. I'm sending as much good karma that I can your way. But something tells me you wont need it this time. I'm watching

I probably couldn't help myself even if I wanted lol. in fact. . . it seems I could use a little extra good karma.

 

[WheeloFortune]

Re: Quest for 1g/w: 1k hps liquid cooled on a 6' mover in a 4x8 tent.

so I went 2 weeks w/o a res change or a top off. they drank very little, and evaporated very little as well, so i pushed it.

The leaves are looking like two negative things have been happening over the past couple weeks.

1)There is some interveinal chlorosis happening probably due to mag deficiency maybe? whatever it was, it was definitely a nute imbalance, and the nutes were old, so I did a change. I was out of AN bloom for the G/M/B schedule the first res, but just used it anyways w/o the bloom. . . and I had these free nutes laying around that have at least a weeks worth of use in them, I figured I'd give them a try while i'm low on loot.

I dumped 4/5 of the first res, and refilled. I have been really busy lately and thats what i could do.

before the res change i was at about 1.0 EC, after the dump and fill I was about 0.450 where 0.310 is my tap. After adding the technaflora veg schedule at about 2/3 strength my EC is now 1.9ish. I ope this isn't too big a jump, they are getting bigger now.

You can also see that I replaced the pH bottle with a bigger 1 gal bottle. I put about 6:1 waterH down solution into it. The doser is now incredibly accurate, and I had to fine tune it again. I have it dosing between 5.8-6.2 as the technaflora schedule advises.

2) I think I have been over watering. . . i can see curling under of the fans, and i think it was due to the 8 floods a day. Stinkfinger warned me that he found it best to start at 4 and go to 6 a day when they get bigger. The STG apparently does not drain as fast as they claim? anyways 4-5 days ago I went to 6 a day and yesterday I decided to go down to 4. Hopefully this will fix that problem, and I correctly diagnosed it.

I have yet to put in any pvc spacers. . . I will do that next when I get some spare time.

 

[WheeloFortune]

Re: Quest for 1g/w: 1k hps liquid cooled on a 6' mover in a 4x8 tent.

also my two meters were reading different, so I got some fresh pH calibration solutions and went to town. They are both dead on now. lovin some redundancy in the grow room.

BTW, while the nutridip tri-meter is effected be electrical fields fairly easy (more in EC than pH and none in temp), this A. Marine controller is a rock. I mean it doesn't even flinch a bit when the tri-meter is going crazy when the pumps are on.

This doser is one of the best purchases I ever made. 300 bucks-ish and It does my job better than I could. thats good technology.

 

[WheeloFortune]

Re: Quest for 1g/w: 1k hps liquid cooled on a 6' mover in a 4x8 tent.

The aero is going slow, but I am slowly getting the stuff I need to finish. I have a nother week or two to finish so its on schedule.

Here are some pics of the EnG to see progress and what I was just talking about.

Day 14 Veg (yesterday) before res change

 

[WheeloFortune]

Re: Quest for 1g/w: 1k hps liquid cooled on a 6' mover in a 4x8 tent.

any differing opinions from the pics?
We'll see what happens over the next week - 10 days.

 

[McBudz]

Re: Quest for 1g/w: 1k hps liquid cooled on a 6' mover in a 4x8 tent.

also my two meters were reading different, so I got some fresh pH calibration solutions and went to town. They are both dead on now. lovin some redundancy in the grow room.

BTW, while the nutridip tri-meter is effected be electrical fields fairly easy (more in EC than pH and none in temp), this A. Marine controller is a rock. I mean it doesn't even flinch a bit when the tri-meter is going crazy when the pumps are on.

This doser is one of the best purchases I ever made. 300 bucks-ish and It does my job better than I could. thats good technology.

I love it when stuff actually works like it should. Nice score!

 

[WheeloFortune]

Re: Quest for 1g/w: 1k hps liquid cooled on a 6' mover in a 4x8 tent.

I love it when stuff actually works like it should. Nice score!

seriously. it was a great buy IMO.

Hopefully I have my res problems sorted out. . . we'll see in the next week.

 

[The Butcher]

Re: Quest for 1g/w: 1k hps liquid cooled on a 6' mover in a 4x8 tent.

LOL..I have that same kit as a back up..Honestly a great kit for beginers or jsut to buy as a back up. 20 bucks cant beat it. Looks like th eE&G is treating you well. whats theat white stuff at the base of the plant, not the stg but on the medium the clone was grown in?

 

[WheeloFortune]

Re: Quest for 1g/w: 1k hps liquid cooled on a 6' mover in a 4x8 tent.

LOL..I have that same kit as a back up..Honestly a great kit for beginers or jsut to buy as a back up. 20 bucks cant beat it. Looks like th eE&G is treating you well. whats theat white stuff at the base of the plant, not the stg but on the medium the clone was grown in?

yeah, thanks for reminding me. . .

Well i got out early today and ate a triple brew brownie I made a while ago.
I've been nice since 4ish. real nice.

Finally time to poke around in the room for a while.

I think the white stuff is salt buildup. I think that they are being dipped into the flood cycle and they are wicking up water an nutes. I hit them all up with a fungicide yesterday when I changed the res because i figured even if it didn't help it cant hurt.

Actually, now that you reminded me butch I wanted to take a STG insert out of the pot and see what was going on in there. . . The news was not exactly to my liking. It seems that even if the STG insert doesn't wick up, it does retain water when it drains.

When I took out the STG insert it released about 12-14 oz of water. . . the bottom inch was saturated in all the inserts. Draining one insert was enough to kick the drain pump on. Now i see why STG wants you to put a 2" piece of pvc in there for a spacer.

Well I dont have enough spare pvc laying around to make spacers, nor the time or the money right now. . . so back to my original plan from the beginning: Use hydroton as an aggregate at the bottom of the pots.

you can see about how much hydroton i added to each pot here. enough to bring th level from the one at the back to the one in the front. 3-4 scoops with a 16 oz cup.

here are some of R2C8. about the bottom inch was saturated. i think i caught it early enough to be good though. . . I think adding hydroton will be better than a spacer because there will be more room for rootspace as opposed to dead space. i'll check on them in a while and see if i like the effects. should have just listened to McB and stayed with hydroton, but I already bought them.

and here are some group shots after the hydroton infusion.

Left Side

Right Side

. . . so after all of this, now I think those grow plugs that I used to clone in are above the flood level and wont wick up any more salts. Also hopefully the STG inserts will drain better. Also hopefully I didnt get any bad huys from the hydroton from last grow. I rinsed with weak H2O2 solution but it still had some little bits of roots in there. impossible to get it all.

I'll get her dialed in by flower hopefully. lol.

 

[StinkFinger]

Re: Quest for 1g/w: 1k hps liquid cooled on a 6' mover in a 4x8 tent.

should have just listened to McB and stayed with hydroton, but I already bought them.

Hey Wheel.

Always nice to see an expert grower using a "new" medium in their grow. Don't give up on em yet. I think you'll see good things to come.

Have a great weekend man!
SF

PS. Wish I could have kept mine so pristine and virginal white like yours!

 

[The Butcher]

Re: Quest for 1g/w: 1k hps liquid cooled on a 6' mover in a 4x8 tent.

Now ths some growth S.F +rep if I can

 

[StinkFinger]

Re: Quest for 1g/w: 1k hps liquid cooled on a 6' mover in a 4x8 tent.

Now ths some growth S.F +rep if I can

Thanks Butch!

And actually those photos were taken probably 6 weeks ago when I culled the males. I'm anxious to see the roots when I finish in about a week or two.

Time will tell.

SF

 

[StinkFinger]

Re: Quest for 1g/w: 1k hps liquid cooled on a 6' mover in a 4x8 tent.

Well I dont have enough spare pvc laying around to make spacers, nor the time or the money right now. . . so back to my original plan from the beginning: Use hydroton as an aggregate at the bottom of the pots.

Hey Wheel.

Last question for my future reference. Did you place the hydroton in the inner bucket, or outer bucket?

Also, I didn't want to make spacers either. The Depot, had 1" coupler pieces that were perfect size. $.29/each.

Thanks again Bro.
SF

 

[bubble grower]

Re: Quest for 1g/w: 1k hps liquid cooled on a 6' mover in a 4x8 tent.

SUBSCRIBED!!..... this is going to be amazing. for sharing your attempt!!

 

[TorturedSoul]

Re: Quest for 1g/w: 1k hps liquid cooled on a 6' mover in a 4x8 tent.

Refresh my memory, please: What exactly was your purpose in going with that particular medium in the first place? I mean, was there some specific problem with a previous medium that you were trying to solve by using them or was it just to try something new? Not that I'm knocking the latter, exactly. But it that was the reason, did you consider doing some that way and some your usual way as a control?

EDIT: Because I've started taking mental notes on what works - and those things you've arrived at to a purpose I wish to make sure that I remember for "potential and hypothetical future use," lol.

 

[Saturn]

Re: Quest for 1g/w: 1k hps liquid cooled on a 6' mover in a 4x8 tent.

Looks like it's coming along nicely.

 

[WheeloFortune]

Re: Quest for 1g/w: 1k hps liquid cooled on a 6' mover in a 4x8 tent.

Hey Wheel.

Always nice to see an expert grower using a "new" medium in their grow. Don't give up on em yet. I think you'll see good things to come.

Hey Wheel.

Last question for my future reference. Did you place the hydroton in the inner bucket, or outer bucket?

Thanks again Bro.
SF

I'm so not scared of trying something new, almost to a fault. lol. They do look awefully purrty all white and clean looking.

washing hydroton is a bitch. I used a weak H2O2 solution to do it, but i still have a small amount of old root matter and stuff in there, and some of it still looks a bit slimy, so it makes me nervous that i could add something undesirable from last grow. These inserts will be really easy to toss at the end, but they should either include some kind of spacer with the product, or just make them taller. They obviously know the problems if they are putting out videos to show workarounds. don't be cheap, if you are going to market something at a specific product, then really tune it so it's as good as you can make it. at $8 each you better make it worth it for me when hydroton is mostly reuseable.

Do you see how the bottom of the bucket was acted like a choke point for your root system? they look great, dont get me wrong, roots that look like that are working at a very high efficiency, so you really can get the most out of them, so nice job.

My hope with using a 3"-4" layer of hydroton inside the inner bucket is that my rootball ill be able to fill out the entire hieght of the flood. . . by using a spacer, the roots are being choked right in the middle of the flood depth by the bottom of the pot. your roots did a great job of coming through and spreading out, but i bet the top half of your buckets are filling slower lately. But obviously you can see that the top half of your roots can take in more food and water than the bottom half that came through the holes. I think the hydroton will let me get dense roots like your top half all the way through. I think it will act like aggregate, like putting rocks at the bottom of dirt to insure good drainage.

If i had money to blow, id put an airstone in every bucket and not car if the roots sit in the water. maybe something i'd try down the line. one of the benefits of an EnF system is how much O2 can get to the roots, with an airstone at the bottom forcing in fresh air, not only would the roots get fresh air, they'd get a breeze. lol. thats a lot of O2. I think it might be very good if you are injecting CO2 and not venting your room. since CO2 sinks, it makes sense that it would displace some O2 from the root zone when the pot fills with air during the drained period. placing the air pump near the top would grab the O2 rich air and push it through the buckets.

Damn brownies have me going again. I ate a brownie 8 hours ago and I'm still done for. Sorry, I'll try not to write novels. lol.

SUBSCRIBED!!..... this is going to be amazing. for sharing your attempt!!

No problem, welcome aboard. off to a shaky start, but we got plenty of time to straighten these things out before it gets to the all important flower stage.

Refresh my memory, please: What exactly was your purpose in going with that particular medium in the first place? I mean, was there some specific problem with a previous medium that you were trying to solve by using them or was it just to try something new? Not that I'm knocking the latter, exactly. But it that was the reason, did you consider doing some that way and some your usual way as a control?

No, basically I read their web page, it sounded like it would work well and be way easier than dealing with millions of little mars balls. I always drop some on my floor and then step on them. no big deal or anything, but if $150 makes my life a lot easier and it works great, I might be down. I bought them when I had cash, a month or so before my last grow finished. then McB was like, why mess with what works, and I was like yeah, seriously. I've done hydroton before and know how to do it well, why am I messing around again when I'm trying to pull more than I ever pulled before? But money already spent, I decided to go ahead and try it out. With such a long veg time compared to what I'm used to, I'm sure i'll figure it out before I go to flower.

I did consider doing some one method, some the other, but then I thought if one needed a different flood schedule that would be bad. I could have used another controller and had them 12 on one and 12 on another like McB, but with all of them on the same schedule, I think its easier for me this way. Plus that frees up the other controller if I want to do something else with it.

Looks like it's coming along nicely.

Thanks Saturn, welcome. Stick around for the good part.

 

[WheeloFortune]

Re: Quest for 1g/w: 1k hps liquid cooled on a 6' mover in a 4x8 tent.

a note on the plants.

after transplanting them basically, or repotting them might be more accurate, on top of the hydroton, they all showed some wilting and stress. after about 12 hours they started to look up again, and now they look fine.

I can't tell yet whether the res change and increased nutes are fixing the interveinal chlorosis or not. they are not yet lush and dark green, but obviously it takes more time. Fortunately since they have quite a bit of veg time left, most of the current growth will not ultimately be bud sites, so I have time to get it down before it effects yield at all.

It sill looks like one or two of them don't want to grow fast enough. R2C1 and R1C8 are the slowest.

I moved the light up and set it to 1kw. . . It's time to get thing poppin in there, and it's cold here this week, so it was good timing with the weather.

I need some new powerheads. at least (2) 1000 gph+.