R
redfoxx
Guest
Greetings everyone, I would like to begin by saying how much I've enjoyed this site and how helpful most members are. A great community here. So without further ado, I'd like to say that I'm an absolute newbie 1st time grower who has started educating himself and setting up the system about a week ago. I have found a lot of helpful and at the same time misleading information on the web and found this site particularly helpful and enjoyable. I would like to help everyone like myself and people who decided to go with the StealthHydro Bubbleponics system. I know that Roseman has a great article here about it, but some of the information is not detailed enough for newbies, so here I go. I had a bad experience with my original 6 seeds which I tried planting in the system b/c I didn't know enough about rockwool and that you have to soak it and TDS/PPM/CF control. Plus i had really bad freebie seeds from nirvana and half of them didn't sprout. So anyway, they rotted.
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That's just some background. Now here's my setup. SH Hydroponics > Dual Spectrum Bubbleponics Complete Kit with 2 DualSpectrum II CFL lights, grow and bloom spectrums @ 85W each. Plus I bought an additional hydrofarm 125W grow light for when the plants get taller. I'm growing in a closet and ordered mylar and will post pictures about how I will modify it and make it light proof. I also bought a powerful little circulation fan for later stages from Homedepot and a thermostat heater to have exact control during the colder months. Also equipped myself with 12 gal of spring water. I've also ordered the 6-in-1 water monitor kit a couple of days ago and a heated mini green house for seed germination/sprouting. Now I realize that I overspent, but this hobby is eating me up and I'm enjoying it more than I ever thought. So you can see why I got a little paranoid after my freebie seeds rotted and I ordered all the extra gear.
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Now here're the grow details finally. I have started over on Sept. 17th and have received new Nirvana Afgaani seeds which looked absolutely great compared to the Shiva seeds I got earlier (they were a little green and the freebies were 10-15 yr old durbanxskunk1). I will make this journal VERY detailed because I feel that a lot of newbie growers are not given enough details about germinating and most importantly sprouting the seeds in the first crucial week.
1) I germinated my seeds using the simple paper towel method with some room temperature, Brita filtered tap water placed between 2 plates on my router inside my computer desk. That worked very well and there were very large (1/2 inch
tap roots showing from both seeds (i decided to do only 2 for this hydro grow until I get my water monitor in case I screw this up).
2) That same evening I prepared a 5.5Ph adjusted water with a tiny trace amount of StealthHydro's Bloom and Micro nutrients. By 'trace' amount i mean the tip of a teaspoon per 1/2 gallon of water which I then left sitting overnight to evaporate any chlorine which might be left. I did not soak the rockwool cubes overnight. Just dropped them in in the morning, kept them in for a minute and squeezed out excess water. From all the video's online, this is enough. The reason you want to a tiny amount of nutrients is because the rockwool is completely neutral and has no nutrients of its own.
3) I have placed the germinated seeds, tap root down into a little hole i've made in the rockwool cubes(really just big enough to completely insert the seeds) and brushed the hair fibers gently over the seed. I have then moved these cubes on to a plate and covered it with a clear plastic dome I've bought at HD to create a mini greenhouse and wait until the seeds sprout.
The 3rd step I'm still a little unclear about as most people say that the germinated seed should be sprouted with no light in warm darkness and others say that they sprout them with light as soon as they put the seed into the grow medium. I guess the temperature you desire also plays a role here. If it's cold in the room and you want higher temperatures, put them under the lights, if not, keep them in the dark. I simply put them on my router in my computer desk where it's pitch black. I will post pictures of my setup tonight. What might be interesting to note is that I have also decided to germinate 3 more seeds this morning and plant them in soil, just to see the comparison and double my success of sprouting. (hopefully also making mother plants).
Another reason is that I'm now slightly paranoid of rockwool and have experience previously growing plants in good 'ole soil.
Please feel free to ask questions, give tips, hints and generally add comments as you see fit. I'll be very happy as I want this to be a journal, but also a helping tool for newbies to hydroponics. And who better to make a newbie guide than a newbie since I'll be making and correcting mistakes as I go along (hopefully not too many). Also I believe that I can make this more helpful to newbies because a lot of guides skip very important details about sprouting for example which seems to be automatic, but is yet to happen for me. Good luck everyone!!
============================
That's just some background. Now here's my setup. SH Hydroponics > Dual Spectrum Bubbleponics Complete Kit with 2 DualSpectrum II CFL lights, grow and bloom spectrums @ 85W each. Plus I bought an additional hydrofarm 125W grow light for when the plants get taller. I'm growing in a closet and ordered mylar and will post pictures about how I will modify it and make it light proof. I also bought a powerful little circulation fan for later stages from Homedepot and a thermostat heater to have exact control during the colder months. Also equipped myself with 12 gal of spring water. I've also ordered the 6-in-1 water monitor kit a couple of days ago and a heated mini green house for seed germination/sprouting. Now I realize that I overspent, but this hobby is eating me up and I'm enjoying it more than I ever thought. So you can see why I got a little paranoid after my freebie seeds rotted and I ordered all the extra gear.
==============================================
Now here're the grow details finally. I have started over on Sept. 17th and have received new Nirvana Afgaani seeds which looked absolutely great compared to the Shiva seeds I got earlier (they were a little green and the freebies were 10-15 yr old durbanxskunk1). I will make this journal VERY detailed because I feel that a lot of newbie growers are not given enough details about germinating and most importantly sprouting the seeds in the first crucial week.
1) I germinated my seeds using the simple paper towel method with some room temperature, Brita filtered tap water placed between 2 plates on my router inside my computer desk. That worked very well and there were very large (1/2 inch
tap roots showing from both seeds (i decided to do only 2 for this hydro grow until I get my water monitor in case I screw this up). 2) That same evening I prepared a 5.5Ph adjusted water with a tiny trace amount of StealthHydro's Bloom and Micro nutrients. By 'trace' amount i mean the tip of a teaspoon per 1/2 gallon of water which I then left sitting overnight to evaporate any chlorine which might be left. I did not soak the rockwool cubes overnight. Just dropped them in in the morning, kept them in for a minute and squeezed out excess water. From all the video's online, this is enough. The reason you want to a tiny amount of nutrients is because the rockwool is completely neutral and has no nutrients of its own.
3) I have placed the germinated seeds, tap root down into a little hole i've made in the rockwool cubes(really just big enough to completely insert the seeds) and brushed the hair fibers gently over the seed. I have then moved these cubes on to a plate and covered it with a clear plastic dome I've bought at HD to create a mini greenhouse and wait until the seeds sprout.
The 3rd step I'm still a little unclear about as most people say that the germinated seed should be sprouted with no light in warm darkness and others say that they sprout them with light as soon as they put the seed into the grow medium. I guess the temperature you desire also plays a role here. If it's cold in the room and you want higher temperatures, put them under the lights, if not, keep them in the dark. I simply put them on my router in my computer desk where it's pitch black. I will post pictures of my setup tonight. What might be interesting to note is that I have also decided to germinate 3 more seeds this morning and plant them in soil, just to see the comparison and double my success of sprouting. (hopefully also making mother plants).
Another reason is that I'm now slightly paranoid of rockwool and have experience previously growing plants in good 'ole soil.
Please feel free to ask questions, give tips, hints and generally add comments as you see fit. I'll be very happy as I want this to be a journal, but also a helping tool for newbies to hydroponics. And who better to make a newbie guide than a newbie since I'll be making and correcting mistakes as I go along (hopefully not too many). Also I believe that I can make this more helpful to newbies because a lot of guides skip very important details about sprouting for example which seems to be automatic, but is yet to happen for me. Good luck everyone!!
but I feel pretty good about using this system so feel free to ask questions, I'm by no measure an expert, but have done quite a lot of research myself and I really REALLY love this plant 
since I save so much by simply growing my own. 
one of these days I'll figure out how to post pictures on here and I can show some pictures of my babys, this last grow I've been able to mostly take a picture a day since they sprouted to document everything. Happy growing!
