Anonurse's Soil - Grow Tent - Sour D - 2015

[Anonurse]

Strain - 7/8 Sour from Loud Seeds
History - I have 3 seedlings about 2 weeks old, showing some problems. They were germinated, put into rockwool cubes, and then transferred to SOLO cups.
Lights - 4 23 Watt CFLS, 80 CRI, 1600 Lumens each, 6500K (during veg and flowering will transition to 400W HPS that is enclosed in air cooled tube.
Medium - 70:30 FFOM/perlite.
Circulation - during seedling stage am just using small fan pointed towards tent opening to vent heat out.(during veg will use 190 cfm inline fan vented to top of tent, wont use carbon filter until flowering). Fan will give me 3 air exchanges per minute.
Watering - using RO water, 10PPM every other day till it drains from bottom. (want to use rule to allow 20% to drain but don't understand how to do that).
Nutrients - Will be using Earth Juice bloom, grow, catalyst mixture according to instructions and manufacturer feed schedule.
Environment - During day cycle, temps are as high as 83 degrees F, humidity is ~50. During night cycle temps drop to 72 and humidity rises to 70.
Grow tent - 36"x20"x63". 5.1 ft².

CFLs are suspended from HPS housing for time being, they are about 14" away from seedlings.
Plant A:

Plant B:

Plant C:

 

[Anonurse]

Oh yeah... and costs to this point...a whopping $700. I've been trying to keep it as low as possible, but my first seeds failed to germ etc...

 

[Papageno]

Subed

 

[DeanB]

subbed

 

[DeanB]

If you're going to run just those cfl's for now, get them like within 3-4 inches of the tops. You don't need to water every other day. When my seed sprouted in my soil(peat based) I didn't water for 5 days. After that they went another 5-6 days until water again. They are 3 weeks old and watered twice.

 

[Anonurse]

K. I originally had them stacked on some books, within about 4" away from the lights. When plant A's leaves started to curl up and turn yellow I thought it was due to one of following: pH, heat, excess light, or wind damage (fan was pointed at plants at that time). So I adjusted all of the above in hopes that plant would recover...which has yet to happen lol. I'll put them closer towards the lights, will water when soil is dry 1" from surface. On another note, i read that seedlings require a max lux of 4000=1895 lumens for my square footage. I can only accomplish this when I add 2 additional CFLs, but this raised the heat to about 90 degrees. Will current 4 CFLs suffice or should I add bulbs and figure out how to vent heat.

 

[Anonurse]

seedlings are now 5" away from bulbs. Plants were last watered on 11/25. And something I forgot to mention in intro, lights are on a 16/8 cycle.

 

[DeanB]

I still think 3-4", the stem is going to keep stretching the farther away the cfl's are. If you get too long of a stem they could fall over, so keep that in mind. You could go with the 18/6 cycle to give the soil more time to dry. For now you could get the fan up higher and point at the cfl's, while blowing the hot air out the door. Otherwise your are just recirculating the hot air and the temps will stay up. Stack the fan on something, stick on non rotating and point at the bulbs/ballasts out the door. Put your hand down by the plants and it should feel cool. If it doesn't adjust the height of the fan lower.

 

[Anonurse]

So it's Thanksgiving and I'm a bit buzzed lol. I meant to say I'm already on a 18/6 cycle. I've just positioned the fan as you suggested, thanks.

 

[Papageno]

18/6 is my fav...Ed is correct in that 24 will work "best" but I like to give my babies the most "natural" fake environment I can create. And as I am a personal grower time is irrelevant.



Oh and um...I only would use CFL for getting clones to root... But that is just because I try to get the best I can out of things. With all the time and effort I put into a grow I try to get it primo. The $10-$15 a month to run a good bulb aint no thang to me.

Maybe you ought to consider turning on the big boy and adjusting it up to the height that doesn't sunburn the plants?

 

[Anonurse]

18/6 is my fav...Ed is correct in that 24 will work "best" but I like to give my babies the most "natural" fake environment I can create. And as I am a personal grower time is irrelevant.



Oh and um...I only would use CFL for getting clones to root... But that is just because I try to get the best I can out of things. With all the time and effort I put into a grow I try to get it primo. The $10-$15 a month to run a good bulb aint no thang to me.

Maybe you ought to consider turning on the big boy and adjusting it up to the height that doesn't sunburn the plants?

I decided to add 2 more CFLs. I'm using the "Marijuana Horticulture: The Indoor/ Outdoor Medical Grower's Bible" book and it states that seedlings require max LUX of 4000 with equates to 1895 lumens in my tent, with the 6 CFls, plants should be getting 1882 lumens. The book also states I need 50watts/ft². CFLs are only providing 138 watts, so the HPS with balast set at 50% would provide the exact wattage needed.

 

[Anonurse]

Will the HPS at 50% provide too much lumens? It is 56,000 lumens, so 50% power would be 28,000.

 

[Papageno]

So those babies don't need a lot of light right now anyway. Since you are learning your setup you can raise it up high and turn it on and see what happens. Then after a few hours if it doesn't look like they are getting sun burned you can bring it in closer. You have plenty of space in there and the reflective surfaces will help make it nice at the bottom even if they are far away.

If you have enough ventilation My gut is telling me you could raise that about 1 foot and should be fine.

I noticed the filter is on the floor. Typically people hang that from the top so the hot air is evacuated and not that it matters but CO2 is heavy and will sink to the bottom of the tent if the air flow is not vigorous enough...but in a small tent like that CO2 is irrelevant you just need to be exhausting at a rate that keeps the temps good which will be too fast for CO2 to build up anyway.


And you really need to look up the PAR rating on those bulbs. Lumens do not matter now that people can measure PAR. Lumens are a measure of the light intensity in the ranges humans like. PAR is a measurement in the frequencies plants use. You can have all the lumens in the world that are in the wrong spectrum and they wont account to diddly. Are those CFLS designed for growing plants? I think some do exist but I would double check we are taking about grow lights here. If it doesn't say grow light on them...then they are in the wrong frequencies. Not saying it wont work but if it doesn't have a PAR rating on the box then they probably are not great for growing. So the lumens you are getting are in a frequency that the plants are not using so those lumens do not count.

 

[Anonurse]

I just transitioned to the HPS per VilliageIdiot's recommendation. The plants are 27" away from the light. It hasn't cycled yet so I don't know if this will be too close or not. I thought 6 CFLs would work but temp climbed to 89 degrees and the leaves started to look like tacos, causing me to use inline fan anyways. So I said "Ahhhh to hell with it, may as well use HPS too". I have the ballast set to 50%, and I will adjust fan to keep temp close to 73 degrees. Also, my pH pen is now perfectly calibrated to neutral ::

 

[Anonurse]

@VilliageIdiot: There was no conceivable way to hang the carbon filter fan at the top of the tent without adding more right angles in the ducting (reducing efficiency). I would have also lost space that could be used for plant height, so opted for the ground position. And even with it on the ground, there's only 4 ft of room between floor and bottom of light.

 

[Papageno]

Ground is fine just not optimal.

You are doing great. But yeah the vent speed must go up to clear out that air. It will be difficult to get the hot air out and when they get closer to the top of the tent. You will want to have figured something out to remove the hot air not the cold air...but you got time.

Efficiency is a great thing but not at the sacrifice of the plants right. If you get great power efficiency and the plants wilt and die or hermi from heat that isn't all that great right?

I have done this on a budget for a long time then I spent some cash... then I did it on a budget again and now I am back to in between. To get optimal results we need to optimize the environment. For about $120 you can get an awesome carbon filter that hang very easily at the top and with some flex hose you will be fine. But I have done the DIY thing too... and I never say never. I am an engineer so there is nothing I wont figure out how to do. I believe if you put your mind to it you can make it happen.

I was walking my dog a few hours ago and I was thinking about that filter (seriously) and there are things I think you could do to relocate it. PM me with some pics of how you built that if you want to take this out of the Journal and we can design you something cheap that still gets the hot air our. Even if all we do is add straight ducting from the top of the tent to the filter and encase it at the bottom so the feed is from the top it will still work.

 

[Anonurse]

Well I curved the exhaust ducting so it points out of the closet and opened a second port at the bottom of the tent to draw in more room air. My house temp is at 71 degrees. With the inline fan on ~75% the temps have stayed between 77-81. I didn't notice any improvement by turning the fan up all the way. I think I'm happy with this range. The plants like the HPS bulb and environment.

I watered again yesterday with 10PPM RO (no nutes) H2O with pH of 6.3. Drainage pH was 6.55 and PPM was 670.

I need to know what PPM range is good for each stage so I can determine when to feed. I found this on another forum:
-Seedlings, Early Sprouts 100 to 250
-Early Vegging 300 to 400
-Full Vegetation 450 to 700
-Early Blooming 750 to 950
-Full Mature Blooms 1000 to 1600

Seem accurate?

 

[420Brother]

good stuff, subbed

best of luck

 

[Papageno]

Well lets take an aside to talk about nutes real quick.

The food for the plant is the light. The nutes are like the microbes in your gut that make the food you eat usable and accessible. Really they are more like Vitamins allowing for the sugars your body creates from food to be turned into stuff not just fat.

So the amount of nutes you need depends on the level of photosynthesis going on. So now that you have a good light running and good temps and good ventilation you probably will soon have some great photosynthesis going on. But my point is there are a lot of variables so no one can tell you precisely exactly the numbers.

However just like people these plants are robust and can live under feed for a long time before falling apart. So what people typically do is start a slow regimen and look for signs of deficiencies or abundance and adjust as they go. Under feeding is easy to recover from...over feeding can be irrecoverable on the leaves they burn. So you can't go wrong really running the entire grow at half the strength on the bottle and most people start at 1/4 full strength for the first few weeks. It all depends on the maturity of the plant when to up the levels. So depending how big it is you may decide to run up the nutes.

Some people try to run the nutes as high as they can without burning the plants and as long as they don't burn that is fine but it isn't helping. There are some additives that are nice to run high but excess nutes are just excess and don't help. Again the food is the light. More light can help and then you will need more nutes. That said I have been able to double nute uptake in Hydro by adding stuff that a good super soil creates.

So the real key is understanding what is good and bad and responding to it. People ask this type of question all the time because they are laser focused on the nutes thing and it really is not nearly as important as they are thinking it is. Especially since you are in soil. We can get you entirely through bloom without nutes with a much healthier stronger fatter plant if we start with a good super soil and use not extra nutes. My plants right now have half way filled the SCROG and look wonderful and I have only added water and some Potash / silica and some Cal/Mag.

Your current mix is not bad and even if you stuck with that you could make it through at least half of veg without nutes probably. If you are in soil you really only need to consider nutes in bloom.

I recommend a web search on super soil. There are a ton of videos and such on them. When you have done some reading up on that I will explain why I do what I do.

 

[Anonurse]

This is some good stuff, and I like how you broke it down and used a human biology analogy so I can better understand. You know it's funny, I was thinking yesterday that my science degree prerequisite courses have been more useful in growing cannabis than in my actual career.

And I know I'm "laser focused on the nutes thing..." but I'm trying to fine tune a system that can be repeated, and provide consistent results for subsequent grows. I know there is more to it than numbers; however, general guidelines or recommendations are useful for new growers.

I will use the last of my FFOF first. The super soil sounds advanced lol. I think I'll use the last of my FFOF for at least one more grow before taking that next leap.

Oh and this is another reference range for TDS I found on this forum:
 500-600 ppm: established Seedlings & well rooted clones
 800-900 ppm: during peak vegetative growth
 1000-1100 ppm: during transition from early to heavy flowering
 400-500 ppm: during final 2 weeks of flushing