Autohyponic's - DWC SOG Growing 50 Purple Express Auto Fem - 2017

Autohyponic

New Member
Hello everyone. I hope the grass is green on this Christmas day 2017. Currently I am on day 70 of my very first grow counting from the day I started germinating. I decided in the beginning if I was going to do this, I would do it the best way I could with the funds I had. My intent was not to start with a simple set up and build it as I go. I wanted to GROW BIG OR GROW NONE. I knew I was going to use a spot in my basement about 8x8x8. Everything needed to take place in the 8x8x8 room. I knew I was going to do DWC and I would be using 10 - 22 Gal. totes. I made my measurements and verified I could put all 10 of the totes into a 4x8 grow tent. By drilling 5 3in holes in the top of each container, I could grow 50 plants and give them the minimum allowed square footage. Before I go further, I am well aware that 50 plants in a 4x8 tent seems like too many. My idea was to start 50 and see where the end took me. I was more than willing to thin the herd if necessary. However 50 seemed like a nice number. I knew I wanted to do Auto Flower plants. I knew that acquiring seeds in the volume I needed to do perpetual auto fem runs would be difficult unless I had a bunch of money to buy seeds every 3 months. Fortunately for me, a friend just learned how to use Colloidal Silver in order to make an auto flower plant produce seeds from its self. I am not a scientist, but by putting CS on one of the branches of the Auto Fem plant, that branch will turn male. Once it turns male it will produce pollen on a single branch. By pollinating the female sex organs on the rest of the plant with the pollen from the male branch causes the Auto Fem plant to produce seeds that are replicas of the mother. So in the 8x8x8 room I will now need (in order to be perpetual) a seed propagation chamber. This is currently where I am at in my grow as far as set up and hardware is concerned. It is essential to complete ASAP as I will be needing to start my next batch of 50 plants soon. I only have enough reserve seeds from what I got from my friend for one more run of 50 Purple Express Auto Fems. Once the seed prop chamber is complete I should be all set for perpetual auto fem cycles. I recently purchased a nice variety of auto fem seeds from seedsman. The propagation chamber will be growing 4 Auto Fems at one time in separate isolated quadrants with in the chamber (Cant have cross pollination now can we). The goal is to end 1 Prop Chamber run with seeds from 4 Auto Fem plants giving me thousands to continue. I have over 20 strains to do this with so I will be seed propagating for quite awhile before I get copies (seeds) of all my strains.

That is sort of a quick run down of my planning and where I am currently. This journal will start from the beginning. I will be adding to it weekly and it will catch its way up to where I am currently. Before I get this thing officially started I will go through the run down of my exact equipment and set up.

Seeds = Purple Express Auto Fem
Medium = Growstone GS-2
Basket Size = 3in
Nutrients = General Hydroponics for Micro, Bloom, Grow and Cal Mag. I use Emerald Harvest Kola King and Botanicare Hydroguard as extra additives.
PH Up/Down = General Hydroponics for PH Up and KleanStrip Phosphoric Acid for PH Down
Grow Tent = Ipomelo 4x8 Grow Tent.
DWC Reservoirs = Durabilt Heavy Duty 22Gal totes.
Air Pump #1 = 10 - Aqua Culture Air Pump good for 15-30 Gal. (1 pump per rezy)
Air Pump #2 = 2 - Eco plus Air Pumps good for 793GPH. (1 pumps air to 4 rezys, 1 pumps air to 6 rezys)
Air Stone #1 = 10 - 12in Aquarium flat air stones. (1 per rezy)
Air Stone #2 = 10 - 8in cylindrical air stones. (1 per rezy)
HPS Light = Unknown Brand 600 Watt HPS purchased from local hydroponics store.
LED Light = Viparspectra 900 Watt LED
Exhaust System = Unknown Brand 2 - 6in inline fans with filters.
Air Conditioner = Whynter 1080 Watt Portable Air Conditioner Modified
Propagation Dome = Super Starter 7in Prop Dome w/ Heat Pad and Super Sprouter T5 light.


Entry 1 : Building "The Room"

I solicited the help of a legal Appalachian native born citizen to help construct the room. So if its off par, wrong, not square, ugly, stinky, rigged together and ragged then its his fault...:thumb:. The room was to be 8ft x 8ft. The entire project was roughly 16ft long by 8ft wide. This project was an attempt at adding on to my house as well as conceal my soon to be grow room. In my basement the furnace, water heater, and all associated duct work/plumbing (Eye Sore) are located in one area. We needed to build the room in the corner and hide it by including the grow room with the water heater and furnace room. This meant I needed two doors. One to enter the furnace/water heater area and one to enter the grow room AKA Storage Room :shhh:. The grow room would need to be finished on the outside and appear to be a normal wall. The inside of the grow room needed to also be finished but roughly. The room with the furnace and water heater is just an outer shell. The goal was to hide it in plain sight and if noticed, I would use the storage room excuse. I put a lock on the grow room door just in case someone got sneaky.... They would be left to their imagination. I ran electric and plumbing into the room. I mounted a water pump to the wall to assist with water changes. This pump allows me to remove all the water from each rezy cleanly and easily. I ran it into my house plumbing so its out of sight. I also ran a water spigot into the grow room in order to refill the rezys for water changes. I never have to leave the room for for water changes with this set up. I figured this would cut down on accidental exposure. I will end this entry with some pictures of the room before and after. I hope yall enjoy. The next entry will be include the start of germination.

:thanks:


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Entry 2 : Starting Germination and Sewing Seeds

I started the germination of 100 seeds. The seeds were an assortment of good looking and not so good looking ones. I did some goofy research on the internet and seen where people use sound waves to soften seeds prior to germination. I was looking at classical music as well as different variations of white noise. I settled on experimenting with white noise. I exposed 50 good looking seeds to white noise for 8hrs right before I started the germination. I germinated 20 good looking seeds with out any sound exposure. I exposed 15 not so good looking seeds to 8hrs of white noise right before germination. Finally I germinated 15 not so good seeds with out sound exposure. I started all 100 at the same time. The goal was to end up with a minimum of 50 sprouts. 3 days in 20 out of 50 seeds exposed to sound prior to germination sprouted tap roots. 1 good looking seed not exposed to sound out of 15 sprouted. 1 not so good seed exposed to sound sprouted. 0 not so good looking seeds not exposed to sound sprouted. By day 7 I was struggling to get 50 seedlings to sprout. I was sitting at 39 seedlings in my prop dome. I tossed out the sound experiments and started more seeds. By day 9 I had my 50 sprouts. By day 11 I was at 68 seedlings. By day 18 I had all my DWC Rezys ready and full of water. I had my tent assembled and all baskets placed in the rezys. I got the 2 900 Watt Viparspectra LED lights :thumb: in the mail and hung up on either side of the 600W HPS. I got my air pumps mounted to the pole in my tent to supply o2 to the roots. I had fans placed in for air circulation. I modified my portable air conditioner and put a square to circular duct converter piece right over the discharge hole. I placed tape around the piece to ensure no air could escape around the piece. once it was done I ran the cold air directly into my room. I hung both my exhaust fans and ran the duct out of my tent and out of the 8x8 room. I tied the A/C exhaust in with the exhaust from the room right at my chimney. All exhausted room air and all A/C hot air is blown directly out my chimney...:bravo: Once the heat was under control it, it was time to get them in the tent and under the real lights. I will cover the preliminary part of my grow in the next entry. I will start to dabble into my first round of mistakes as well as my first attempts at correcting those mistakes. I hope yall enjoy the pics.


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Thank you for following along @Mosspb. I also appreciate the compliment. It's good to hear that my hard work and ingenuity impressed someone else besides me. My wife and I have a don't ask don't tell relationship when it comes to my grow room shenanigans. I hope you enjoy the future. I am currently about 2 weeks away from harvest on this first run. Some may be ready by the 1st. I will be updating this again here soon with more pics and stories.
 
Lol that's too funny, my wife's the same way with it. She loves that it keeps my interested and busy but doesn't want to hear the deets.

I look forward to your next set of pics, interested to see how that many plants in a tent that size worked for you. I'm toying with the idea of a second tent right now, my issue is space.
 
Thank you guys @pino0911 and @sam Smith. If you knew me you would know that's my M.O. I will be updating again here in a couple days. Don't get your hopes up @Mosspb. As I stated in my entry submissiom, I by no means, had a good run for my first round in this set up. Great news is, round 2 is going to be eerrsurrm (awesome). I learned a shit load this go around and documented everything meticulously. I keep track with excel spreadsheet my PPM, PH, all rezy temps, water depth, plant height, inside tent temp, outside tent temp, and and visual observation I make daily notes on. I do this everyday for all 10 rezys. After a week or 2 its easy to see trends and know if your plants are eating or drinking. I'm trying to be as scientific about all this as possible. I get more of a thrill out of it I guess. It's a crux however, because it leads to dumb ass mistakes such as the ones I've made along the way. I am glad y'all are following along. I will be checking in on the affairs of each one of you, so grow smarter than me. I'm trying to learn as much as I can...lol
 
Entry 3 : First Month of Mistakes

This entry will go over the first 30 days of the plants after their final placement under the lights in the tent. I started out with 56 seedlings once I picked out the weakest ones. This gave me 6 back ups in case I had failures. I kept the extra 6 in the prop dome till I made the decision to terminate what was left and move forward with 50. I mixed my nutes based on a 10 a gallon Rezy. I put 100ml/Gal Micro, 100ml/Gal Grow, 50ml/Gal Bloom, 50ml/Gal Cal/Mag. I did not start off with Z7 or Hydraguard (Major Mistake). I started off having issues with 2 plants. 48 out of 50 were doing really well though. After 1 week I had good root growth and good canopy growth. By the end of week 2 it was time for my first water change. By this time I had trimmed up all plants (Major Mistake). The tops of my Rezys were still yellow (Major Mistake). For the first water change I kept the nute amounts the same (Major Mistake). As procedure, I would pump all the water out of the Rezy, I would add fresh tap water to the Rezy, I would PH the water, I would add nutes, I would ph water again to make sure all was well. All of this was being done while the plants roots were dangling into the rezy (MAJOR MISTAKE). I would repeat this precess 10 times till all rezys were good and PH was between 5.5 and 6.5. My tap water came out at 57 or 58 degrees and at a ph of 8.3. The PPM of my tap water is roughly 150. Once I had everything said and done with the water change the PPM leveled out to between 1000 and 1250 PPM (Much Much too High). I kept things right around here for the next 2 weeks. By the end of the 3rd week in the tent I had already done a 2nd round of trimming (Major Mistake). I eventually got into a routine where I would trim something off them daily if I felt they needed it (Huge Error). I continued to do this because the plants seemed to be redirecting its energy to the off shoots instead of fan leaves. Also by the end of week 3 I was seeing dark spots show up on the older fan leaves. By the middle of week 4 most of the plants seemed to be praying and getting ready to flower. At the end of week 4 I had my 2nd water change. For some reason I thought they were not getting enough nutrients. I thought this is what was causing my leaves to have dark spots (Dead Wrong). I rearranged the Nute mix to 100ml Micro - 50ml Grow - 100ml Bloom - 75ml Cal/Mag. All PPm Levels were between 1030 and 1130ppm (Going the Wrong WAY!!!). Through this entire time my PH Levels have been solid between 5.8 and 6.3. I have kept my Rezy temps great except for water change day. The room temps have been stellar. I was racking my brain to figure out why I was having issues with my plants. After a month things were going so well then out of no where everything seemed to get bad. It wasnt until month 2 when I finally started to figure out the problems. I was nute burning the hell out of them first of all. I had an insane light leak problem which I didnt figure out till the end of month 2. My Yellow Rezy tops were way too bright and allowed light to pour into my rezy and doo terrible things to my roots. To top it all off I was trimming my fan leaves on almost a daily basis. If you look in the pics you can see where the plants look like palm trees. This is from the trimming. I was literally not allowing the plant to tell me it was having issues. Not only was I festering root rot but I was nute burning the hell out of them too. Because of all these mistakes, my plants were permanently stunted. I will have full term plants that are around 9in tall. I may have the world record smallest auto flower plant... its literally less than 6 inches tall and has a bud on it. It may produce 3 grams dried.:straightface: On a good note, the majority of them seem to be doing ok in spite the stunted growth and dumbassness on my part. There are some that will be over 20 inches tall. The majority will probably be somewhere around 20 to 24 inches. They are about 2ft shorter than their cousins grown by a partner grower in a different set up with less light power. So I know mine are off. I hope yall enjoy. Next entry will go over month 2 and how I fixed my problem with nute burn. I will also just begin to realize my roots were rotting. Happy New Years to all and :Namaste:

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Ahhh man so much of that last update really resonated with me. I have a tendency to care way too much for these suckers, instead of letting them be plants and just grow.

I learned early on to rely on the community at 420, even to the point of updating every day. I try to always post my thoughts on what I'm wanting to do and use the few people who follow my thread as a sounding board.

Lastly there are a few autoflower specific groups that are a huge source of info. As we're both learning autos have some very different needs than photos. Check out AGC auto growers club, there's so much good info.

What I can say is this one may not have gone as planned, but you're objective and calculated which means you're soon going to be killing it...

Keep the updates coming!
 
Entry 4 : Second Month of Struggles

This entry will go over my second month of 50 plants in my 4x8 area. The beginning of this month started with a full system flush with PH neutral tap water. I determined that I was giving too much nutes. My goal was to flush and leach the excessive nutes out. When the flush was complete, I added the nutes at about qtr strength. About this time all plants were in to flower for sure. I only had one plant showing signs of complete failure. They started to show signs of purple. Things were going well for about a week. After a week or so I started to see signs of something else going on. I started to inspect the roots. I still had yellow tops on my rezys. I still had insane light leak. It was right about this time I started to get my first taste of root rot. The issue is the plants had been dealing with this issue from almost day one. I was a nube and I had no clue what bad roots looked like. I thought my roots were discolored due to the nutes I was adding. It was not till I started to see moss growing on my roots that I started to wonder. After extensive research I decided what I was going to do. I decided the first step was to add 50ml per Rezy of Peroxide. This would start the process of killing the rot immediately. Over the next couple days I took each o fthe 50 plants and I washed their roots individually in a 3in wide mouth mason jar with straight proxide in it. I went to the local superstore and purchased a new air pump for each rezy. Each pump was good for 15 to 30 gallon fish tanks. My Rezys are at about 20Gal. My next course of action was to go to the local hydro store and purchase Hydroguard. After I did this my goal was to eliminate the source of the root rot. So I bought thick ass gorilla tape 3 inch wide and taped up my lids and eliminated all light leak. After a couple days I could already tell the plants were doing much better. After 5 days I was seeing insane new growth. It was tight about this time I created my 420.com account and began this journal. This is pretty much the end of my second month. By the beginning of the third month I was starting to get a Cal/Mag deficiency. I was not adding enough to my nutes to begin with. Once the plants got bigger and demanded more nutes, I started to see the signs. Month 3 will go over my remedy to the Cal/Mag def. I will make my first harvest in the middle of Month 3. So stay tuned. I hope yall enjoy the pics. :Namaste:

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If you refer to the beginning of my journal I mention where the seeds came from. However, I will save you the time. The original seed was a bought off Seedsman. Its a Freedom Purple Express Auto Fem. My friend @LiveAndLetGro was able to successfully use Colloidal Silver to generate over 30grams of seeds off that one plant. From that 30grams is where I got my 3.5 grams of seeds. I just finished my seed production chamber for my room. My goal is to run 4 auto plants at the same time and CS them all. After 1 run I will have hundreds of seeds for each one of the strains. I have about 20 strains to go through not counting the Purple Express. All of them are Auto Fem. My goal is to be perpetually Auto and I needed to be able to generate the seeds to do so. I have a second journal just started today that shows the chamber and explains my future plans.
 
Hope all is well in your world.

Is this grow still alive?

We would love to be updated with some pictures and info.

How about posting a 420 Strain Review?

If you need any help with posting photos, please read our Photo Gallery Tutorial.

I am moving this to Abandoned Journals until we get updates.

Sending you lots of love and positive energy.

:Namaste:
 
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