Dontcough's First Hydro Grow (2 Plant Closet DWC) White Widow & Critical + Automatic

Hello everyone! I'm new to this forum & growing, so I decided to post my grow journal here on rollitup.org. I have 0 experience in botany besides basic gardening skills. I am very receptive to advice, so feel free to point me in the right direction if I start screwing up. Hopefully any problems I encounter can be dealt with more efficiently with the photo journal I'm posting here.

I've been consuming information regarding growing, but after I had already bought the things listed below. So yes I understand there are cheaper alternatives then what I used but oh well, I hope the end result is the same.

So anyway let's talk

Equipment.

150W HPS Light ($100)
tweezers
some string ($2)
pair of scissors ($3)
timer ($16)
foam cups
hanging hooks ($3)
thumb tacks
sharpie
a roll of reflective material ($23)
General Hydroponics Floragrow, Florabloom, and Floramicro
2 General Hydroponics Powergrower Individual (includes drip system, nutrients, hydroton, air bubbler) ($75 each)
General Hydroponics PH Control kit. ($20)
a sponge like rapid rooter looking medium for germination I bought at a hydroponics store. ($5)
2 box fans ($30)
Burpee seed starting kit ($3)
feminized seeds Dinafem's White Widow and Dinafem's Critical + Automatic ($50)
a heating pad that I borrowed from my gf (priceless)

Environment

Closet grow in my place, temp kept in house between 75-78.
Room has access to two windows, for the occasional fresh air it's also facing a highway (co2?)
Closet is a polygon with 12' ceilings and about 2' x 6' I'll be using half of it, maybe all of it on the next grow if I'm successful

Procedure

It's funny, this actually started as an attic grow and as you all can imagine what ensued to cause this to be moved into my closet....

The seeds I'm using now are actually the free seeds that came with the ones I bought.

Now I'm not sure and maybe you guys might know but I did happen to leave the seeds I'm using in the attic for a couple days before I got them out, it gets up to 100-115 in there. Hopefully this has no impact on germination or the plant.

I had some tap water that had been left out for a couple days poured it into a couple foam cups, labeled them with a sharpie and dated appropriately. The white widow seed I put in the foam cup on 6/5 and crit + I put in on 6/6. I let both sit in there for 24 hours, unfortunately they didn't sink but I read from a couple different websites that sitting in the water for longer than 24 hours can cause rot of some sort so I pulled them out.

I immediately took the seed starting kit I bought from Home Depot and took out the jiffy peat pellets because I heard the PH is too high for canny seeds. I placed the rapid rooters in the humidome filled with 2 cups of the filtered water that sat out for a couple days, placed the rapid rooters inside. I transplanted the seeds into the upside down rapid rooters, used a chopstick to dig a small 1/4 inch hole and dropped the seeds in there. Placed the plastic lid on the top and placed the heating pad under it as well as placed it under the light immediately so it can start getting used to the 18/6 light cycle. Less than 20 minutes later there was condensation on the top of the plastic lid.

I covered the closet in the reflective material I managed to get from Lowe's used thumbtacks to secure it.

Once the seedlings break ground I will allow them to propagate and allow them to develop a good root system before I transfer it to the Powergrower. I'm pretty scared about the transplant and also worried about creating the nutrient mix in the buckets. I will only be growing two plants so I hope that the 150w HPS is sufficient. I do plan on adding a small CO2 generator. Now I'm going to just chill and keep my fingers crossed.

I will journal regularly with new developments =) Happy toking!

setup pic 4.jpg

setup pic 3.jpg

setup pic 2.jpg

setup pic 1.jpg

germ day 2.jpg

The Critical + Automatic was showing signs of nutrient burn, obviously I added too much nutrients too early. I flushed out both of the reservoirs today, refilled, and adjusted pH accordingly. I think I will hold off on nutrients for now, I'll start them until around week 3 or so. Fortunately, both of the plant's second set of real leaves are taking form. The genetics on both of these Dinafem seeds seem strong enough to resist my noobness.