Hey guys, i decided i might as well start a journal on my first real grow ever. This is my first attempt at really growing anything and learning hydroponics and botany. I started this setup on 11/04. Tried to do a lot of research before starting, but I'm open to anything. Thanks for reading.

I dont have an exact amount but the amount of money i spent on starting this operation from scratch was somewhere in between the 400-500 range.

I will be growing 8 out of the 10 Skunk ( yes skunk right next to a fed building i know.... maybe I'm looking to get caught I'm crazy. ) femenized seeds as well as 2 out of the 5 mystery extra seeds the bank has supplied. 10 in all.

My closet is around 4' x 2' x 6' closet made from particle board bought at home depot for $109

My local hydro shop sold me one of their own brands of nutrients.

I am using 4 plastic tubs from lowes (2 top 2 bottom and 5 pots in top 2) for the medium and the reservoirs. I decided to cut holes out of wood instead of using the plastic top for the medium because the plastic coverings that come with the tub would not be able to fit 5 pots. The wood will be waterproofed to prevent warping by the end of tomorrow. To make sure no light will get in the tubs after i waperproof the board, weatherseal will be around the bottom perimeter of the wood. I cut one of the diameters for the pots too large and am going to need to find something to stick in there to make it so that the light dosen't get through.

2 submersible pumps i got to fuel both systems ( mj 250 )

Lights are 6x CFL running at 24 watts each ( 1400 lumen's ) I will be adding more lighting after the plants grow a little more. The reflector is made out of 2 flat pieces of ducting i found at lowes.. (4" dia. each) i connected them together and ghetto rigged it with some duct tape... its a temporary reflector until i figure out how to keep it together permanently but truthfully it isnt that bad.

The growing medium is not rock wool, its some weird stuff they had at the hydro store but the woman there swore by it and so far so good. I wish i could remember the name but i didnt keep the packaging.

Airflow: some beast that sucks out like 800 cubic FPM or something huge. Probably more than i need. The carbon filter is being built and will obviously be finished before the smell gets too bad. Oscillating fan will be installed to strengthen the plants soon.

Using a lot of weather seal to keep light in and out depending.

Had to cut the top section off of the closet for more room. Ended up being nice because now i have 2 mini shelves to work with.

The shelf with the plants of right now is what i consider the germ shelf cuz its where the plants started. That will be removed when the plants are transferred to the medium.

I screwed up the first few buckets i bought for the system because im a newbie at growing and didnt think about a few things like how high the pots were going to go and where to put the overflow pipe. But live and learn. Going to go buy new buckets tomorrow.

Im not sure if im going to be painting the inside to make it more water proof so that i can use a sprayer with more ease, or if i even need to spray much at all.

The general temp in there right now is about 87 which i hear is too hot for the seedlings so ill be moving up the lights a little so they can breathe.

As you can see right now 5 seeds have sprouted... all of them are the skunk i got. Theres a 6th skunk that isnt going anywhere but ill wait a few more days before deciding to discard it... i mean thats like 10 bucks lost right there . So in summary if your looking at the pictures.. the corner 4 havent sprouted but the seeds on the right (skunk) have some nice roots going and i see the msprouting very soon. The 2 seeds on the left.. i dont know if there going to sprout at all.. i might be working with 7 plants when i thought id have 10

PH is around 5.8.-6

PPM is around 320

and thats about all i got now folks... ill keep updating when i install new items.

Attached Images

	1109090023.jpg (39.4 KB, 28 views)
	1108092231.jpg (47.7 KB, 30 views)
	1109090031.jpg (31.2 KB, 31 views)
	Nutes.jpg (39.1 KB, 27 views)
	1108092236.jpg (47.5 KB, 28 views)
	1109090033.jpg (35.9 KB, 25 views)
	Full_View_Before Starting.jpg (38.0 KB, 29 views)

that wood is going to warp.... the temps will make it happen first.. then the moisture will set in and it will swell and crack, even if you use water seal products.
you should have kept the plastic lids, it seems alot of people have had problems with condensation leaks around the edges of homemade lids...
you have big shiny brass balls doing this in full view of a fed building tho hats off to you for that
good luck with the grow, i hope the lid works for you!

__________________

OK... today i installed pretty much everything else possible besides the pumps. Medium pots installed in the buckets along with all holes drilled for ebb and flow to function properly. support beam separating the 2 upper bins from the lower nutes bin has also been installed. Medium has been PH neutralized. Only thing left will be the pumps on the timers. I understand that the wood might warp, but if that starts to happen ill be switching back to the bins or something plastic that i can use instead. i planted 10 seeds, only 7 have sprouted. Hopefully the other 3 will find it in themselves to start growing. It seems like the plant doing the best right now has the only root out of the medium and into the nutrient enriched water.. it makes me wonder if the medium for germination is PH off or soemthing.. what i did to solve that problem was ti squeeze the water out of the medium the injured plant was in and let it soak up the water from the bottom of the tray instead.

Attached Images

	Babies.jpg (34.2 KB, 13 views)
	Babies 2.jpg (44.6 KB, 9 views)
	Overview.jpg (38.6 KB, 14 views)
	Setup.jpg (36.4 KB, 13 views)
	Ebb and flow Setup.jpg (30.8 KB, 11 views)

After dry running the setup i have now, i have concluded that the buckets are just too deep. The pump cannot sustain 8 gallons of water above it because its just not powerful enough. So instead of going and buying a stronger pump i have decided to cut the buckets to a much smaller size. This worked out great except for the fact that the cut wasn't perfectly even so some light will now probably get into the flood bucket... no real biggie, ill have to deal with it for now. This actually soothes another worry i had which was if the upper level could sustain 133 pounds of water as well as medium and the plant. Now itll be a lot less pressure on the flood buckets. I have only done this to one bucket right now to test it out but i plan on doing it to the other one shortly. I still need to go to the store and get a few more lights to replicate the lighting on the left side of the closet, to the right side. The reason the medium is so low in these pics is because thats about as high as i could go until the pump couldn't do any more.

Attached Images

	1112092015.jpg (25.9 KB, 5 views)
	1112092016.jpg (36.0 KB, 5 views)
	1112092015a.jpg (48.4 KB, 5 views)

OK guys its been a little while since i posted. Nothing too new now that the whole setup is pretty much done. I need to get some h2o2 in the next day to battle what could be in the future. I will also be building the ghetto rigged carbon filter that has been posted for 10$ , though i cant find the post again it made glad cloth, activated carbon,thread and string, aluminum strainer, and a 4" diameter folgers can into a decent filter. If this turns out not to work i got another higher end carbon filter ready, but everythings worth testing once.

I got some pictures of my babies getting a little older. You can see the roots have now extended through the medium into the bucket, niice . And i still need to get a damn oscillating fan which i keep forgetting about when i pass lowes. I still haven't cut the 2nd bucket yet because im truthfully not sure if i want to. Even though the plants are not getting a total flood of water, they are doing fine and the roots are growing quite well anyways. Id say the water is flooding about ... 20% of the pot. This doesn't mean im not going to be cutting the box for next grow though because i will be.

So far so good on the warping of the wood. Seems like the polyurethane worked out quite nicely. Only problem i had pertaining to wood is the right side of the closet on the particle board support shelf when testing out the newly lowered flood bucket. It seemed some of the remaining water in the bottom of the bucket somehow made its leaky way right into the particle board rendering it even more weak, im assuming. Brainstorming some ways to fix this.

IT seems like my 1st grow, where i wished i was going to have 10 plants might just turn into having 5, sadly. Tomorrow ill be making my 2nd light setup even if im not growing on the right side of the closet this time, just a replica of what you see on the left. Lastly, i now have some more cash in my pocket. Do you think its worth it to switch over to HPS for flowering? How much yield do you think id miss out on if i stuck with CFL?

If anyone has any input on the plants themselves from the pics please let me know. I wanna know if they're truly looking healthy, they are in my eyes.

PH: 5.8
PPM: 400
Temp: 85-90 (too hot?)
Humidity: 30% ( hydro wont need as much humidity as soil will, correct me if im wrong)

Attached Images

	Roots.jpg (33.5 KB, 6 views)
	Little weirdo.jpg (57.7 KB, 6 views)
	Little Warped.jpg (78.8 KB, 6 views)
	Best Plant.jpg (49.8 KB, 7 views)
	Crack! Water Dmg!.jpg (23.4 KB, 6 views)
	Overview.jpg (37.1 KB, 6 views)

OK heres a quickie after taking a close inspection of the plants looking a little warped im seeing whats i nthe current pic on the underside, any ideas? My Best Guess is its just too hot, and if so im goign to be removing 2 of the 6 lights to cut down on heat untill i find a better solution.

Attached Images

1115091933.jpg (60.1 KB, 6 views)

well imma hope its nothing to big for the plant... OK, new update, i just ordered a new MH/HPS lamp and ballast and decided to switch over from CFL after grow stage is over to HPS instead of more CFL. Hopefully it will help with yield. Ill have pictures when its all setup. In the order i also grabbed myself a few sprayers, and another timer for the lights because i only have a timer for the flood and drain as of now. Looking at the root system it looks as if the roots are shriveling up, maybe due to lower humidity? It only looks like it for one plant in particular. I'm assuming it'll be solved when i get my sprayers and put the right solution in them. I turned off 2 of the CFL's as of right now because the temp was just too high I'm afraid it will hurt the plants but they seemed to be doing excellent even with the higher temps. When i walked in today i, for the first time, smelled a little skunk and was happy.

PH: 5.8
PPM: 390
Temp: 79
Humid: 33%

Attached Images

hopefully normal.jpg (39.0 KB, 4 views)

Haven't posted in a while but i just topped my plants off. Man does it feel weird taking off the top section of the plant. I feel like I'm killing it lol. Heres some Pics. Nothing really to report as of now... the HPS was supposed to arrive today but it didnt. Not cool. I increased the medium now that the plants are growing above it so that it fills up more light cracks to the nutes.

Attached Images

	cut1.jpg (57.6 KB, 4 views)
	cut 2.jpg (44.2 KB, 4 views)
	cut 3.jpg (62.9 KB, 4 views)
	not cut yet.jpg (59.4 KB, 5 views)
	Bout 3 days ago pic.jpg (41.9 KB, 4 views)

SOOOO... low and behold the HPS/MH arrives at my door 10 min after i post. I have decided to 1. setup the light, which since im still in the grow stage is MH, DONE. 2. setup the right side for my extra 3 plants that were late risers, DONE 3. cut out a hole for an intake to keep it a little cooler in there. working on that. Now that both ebb and flow systems are active theres going to be 100+ pounds of water applied the the support board. I need to monitor this board to make sure it can take the pressure when it starts filling. The 2x4 support beams should be enough backup to make sure nothing happens. If it dosent hold the beam and it somehow breaks well theres 20 gallons of water on my floor, AND my whole 1st setup is pretty much ruined. ANYHOW i wish myself luck because im not sure if anyones keeping up wwith my journal or not.

EDIT: The Temp without the intake is 85 , which is a little high, i dont know if the intake will solve this problem. i hope so! Edit again: The support held up through all the pounds of weight.... ITS ON NOW!

Attached Images

	1123092003a.jpg (37.6 KB, 1 views)
	1123092003.jpg (44.7 KB, 2 views)

Yea, I am staying tuned Rec wanting to go ponics myself i am on my 1st grow real grow as well but useing soil and cfl's 5 tangerine haze plants in it's 13'th day right now looking for all the info i can get found your post now i will follow til harvest looking good man good luck with the beams" but" it should be good lol