Johnny's doing it again - Page 2

JohnnyPotSeed1969 · #11 11-07-2008, 05:59 PM

Update. I ran the system for 24 hours without a problem. Max temps reached 80 degrees, and dropped to around 73 with lights off. Now I'm just waiting for some roots to pop from the cubes before we transplant to the hydro system.

Had a slight problem with pump siphon on my fill pump. Water kept running even after the pump was shut off. I addressed the issue successfully and you can see the results here: Stopping pump siphon

There seems to be a slight issue with this batch of seeds I ordered from Nirvana. Not the best germination rate I've ever seen. Some of the ones that did germ looked like alien babies. See the third pic in my last post. Yellow weirdness crept across some of the young seedling. Some of them simply could not "open" the seed pod all the way. I suspect that this was the cause of the yellowing, which resulted in the cotyledons dying off before they could see the light. Anyways, I started germinating my last 3, anticipating that some won't make it.

jchesmore722 · #12 11-17-2008, 09:52 PM

that sucks about your seeds man. good luck, with the others.

im trying to plan a grow myself, its so much more work than i anticipated, not to mention money. Probably cause i want to do this perfectly and i am trying to make sure nothing can go wrong to kill my plants. i want to be able to raise them in perfect conditions.

its very addicting, i cant stop reading the forums, i learned so much in the past month or two.

this was very detailed and it seems like your setup is well thought out. good luck and keep us updated

JohnnyPotSeed1969 · #13 11-17-2008, 10:37 PM

Thanks man, and good luck with your grow too!

Okay, I've transplanted the young ones into their new habitat. I was waiting for prolific root growth from the cubes before I transplanted because I didn't want them to die off. I've also started them on a 1/2 strength nutrient regimen. Currently, I've got the system set to flood every 4 hours for about 10 minutes. Once the roots reach the bottom of the buckets I'll cut it back to every 8 hours, since there will be some water left in the bottom of the buckets to keep the roots from drying out. Anyways, enough yammering, I know you guys only read these things for the pics. The first pic is of the overall layout. The next three pics are the three seedlings which did not die off. The last three are the ones I germed to replace the ones that did die off. 5 out of the 6 were pretty lanky, so I buried them deeply in the net pots, mostly so the roots would get damp during the flood cycles. Well, that's all for now, more to come in the next week.

yoyoyojoe · #14 11-17-2008, 10:44 PM

This looks intense!!!

JohnnyPotSeed1969 · #15 11-18-2008, 11:36 AM

All 6 of them made it through the night, so their first test they passed with flying colors. I was worried there might be an issue with wilting, but thankfully that was not the case. I've got the HPS about 32'' above them, and will start gradually lowering it after it kicks back on. We're on 18/6 currently. I plan on vegging for about 3 weeks, at which point I'll take clones and put this batch into flowering. I didn't buy feminized seeds, so I'm hoping for a high male/female ratio here.

JohnnyPotSeed1969 · #16 11-24-2008, 03:18 AM

Not much to report here. Just some root growth and the adjustment period to the new surroundings. Tomorrow I'm changing my nutes again, switching over to aggressive vegetative growth formula, so I hope to see quite an explosion of growth over the next week. Thus far, Ph and PPM's have been much more stable than my DWC attempt. Switching methods to allow for a larger reservoir seems to be a smart move. I won't be posting any more pics until after the holidays, and there's not really much to see at the moment anyways.

JohnnyPotSeed1969 · #17 11-30-2008, 09:30 PM

Okay, so for the holidays I went out of town for almost 6 days. There is no one else I trust my grow to, so I did the best I could to fully automate this system to grow acceptable dope with minimal effort. Needless to say, when I arrived home again and checked on the girls, I was pleasantly surprised.

Growth had at least tripled since when I left. There was prolific root growth, and all vegetation appeared to be nice and green, overall pretty healthy looking. Temps maintained an even level, and Ph had only drifted up about .4 points; from about 5.6 to 6.04, while ppms decreased slightly. This suggests that my plants are enjoying their atmosphere.

I was highly nervous about leaving my op unattended for so long, but when I began to design this system, it was so that I could leave it alone for a few days with minimal impact. I'm hoping that the rest of this grow goes this well.

I plan on switching to 12/12 in two weeks at the most, somewhere around 12''. I'm going to clone all the survivors, and separate any boys from girls since I started with seeds. Then I'm going to veg in my propagation/cloning chamber while the first batch finishes flowering so I can get a somewhat perpetual system going here.

Anyways, here's some pics. All 6 are looking better than I could have hoped.

I'll continue to post pics about once a week or so, and any updates if need be.

JohnnyPotSeed1969 · #18 12-08-2008, 11:04 AM

Soo, things have been pretty steady so far. As you can see by the pictures from this week, growth has not been slow. I've just been leaving things alone for the most part. My last grow I smothered with attention, but this one I've been content just to peek in on them once or twice a day.

I imagine that I only have another week of full on vegetative growth to go before I can take clones. At that time, these will be right around 12". My last grow I let go till about 18" before I switched to 12/12, and had they both not been males, it would have been a precarious situation.

Anyways, with only a little more than an hour of "daylight," I have yet to change my tank for the week. This current batch of nutes has been in there two weeks now, something that would not have been possible with my last DWC attempt and yet another reason why I chose to switch to ebb n flow. At any rate, I appear to be developing a slight Nitrogen deficiency so it's time for a fresh tank. I'm running low on nutes, so I'll be putting in orders for a gallon each of General Hydroponics Micro, Grow, and Bloom. Maybe some Flora Kleen and Flora Shield for good measure.

Anyways, the pics are in the same order as last time, so as to make it easy to see who's who. Personally, #5 looks really pretty to me, hopefully it's a female because it's growth is very nice and uniform. Well, that's about it for now. I was hoping to get an upgrade for the grow room, like a nice continuous ph/tds/ec/temp meter for my tank, just to make taking readings a lot easier, but with all the nutes and additives, I'll probably have to wait for a while for an upgrade, but at least I'll have what I need. Okay guys,

JohnnyPotSeed1969 · #19 12-09-2008, 11:36 PM

Okay, so I changed out my tank and thoroughly cleaned it. Ph had drifted up less than half a point over the week. I did some trimming, snipped off the lower 1/3 or so of them in order to force less lateral growth since I have more vertical than horizontal space to work with. Put in my order for new nutes, plus the Flora Kleen and Flora Shield just in case I have issues with root rot or nutrient lockout.

I was almost out of micro and bloom today when I changed, so nutrient strength is much less than I would like, but it will temporarily solve the nitrogen defficiency issue which was just starting to happen. I also switched my pump timers to go off every 8 hours instead of every 4 while root growth was establishing itself. Hopefully the increase in oxygen to the roots will result in even more explosive growth. Anyways, pics are in the same order as always. More updates when my nutes get here.