400W Alaskan Thunderfuck SCROG

Well.... had this post all but previewed when Micro$oft decided to initiate a spontaneous reboot! Of course I hadn't saved a thing yet... dammit, was good too! (better than this one written only under the influence of coffee) All the pics are reduced to 800x600 to respect RIU's courtesy in hosting the pics, etc. Please let me know if you want to see any particular one in a higher res.


This initial post is to catch up as I wasn't aware of these forums until I'd had a problem, wish I'd found it sooner... After this initial post I'll continue real-time as they grow. Hope my mistakes can help others, please feel free to comment, praise, suggest, poke fun at, or generally abuse my grow as I learn too. Grower for quite a while but this is my first scrog and I've already made a bit of a mess of it.

This grow is populated with clones taken from a plant which was grown from a single seed, paper towel germinated and grown in Fox Farm Ocean Forest (don't forget a calcium supplement if you use this, thought my baby was gonna die!). Due to her height and my lack of space she was sadly sacrificed to the gods of knowledge and experimentation once the clones proved viable.

Started with 6 cuttings taken when she was around 6 weeks (she didn't clearly display her sex until week 5). Four went into the grow, one was saved as a mom and the other I managed to drop a small fan on! She survived with a little tape and a stick to prop her up but I culled her before the transplant.
TIP: Do not perform construction around your babies! Someone could get hurt!

SYNOPSIS:
Alaskan Thunderfuck from clone
4 plants total (2 per screen/tub, 1sf/plant)
400W HPS @12/12 (vegged under 400W MH)
Hydro (bubbler)
Technaflora "Recipe for Success" nutes @ 100%
supplemental CO2 (via yeast/sugar generator)
13 days into flower (6 weeks from cutting)

This is the conceptual drawing for the cabinet. I say conceptual as it didn't end up quite like this and I've "tweaked" it a bit to correct flaws that emerged, the next one will be a little different... I think the materials and equipment ran about $800 after all was said and done, more than I wanted to spend, less than I thought I would. Not the prettiest thing I've ever built but have to admit I was sort of excited to start my first scrog.

cabinet_front.jpgcabinet_side.png

These pics are from the end of August when I transplanted the girls to the flower room, 16 days from cuttings. At 12 days they had no visible roots emerging from the rock wool so I added 1/4 strength Root66 to the 1/4 strength nutes I was using (1-1-1), tons of roots in about 2-3 days. Probably just impatient...

I don't know what you'd call the hydro setup - SWC maybe? Got the idea from Overgrow (thanks Tick) many years ago but life happened and it's taken 8-10 years to get around to trying scrog. The containers are 10 gallon as I recall but are only about 6" deep. A large piston-style air pump delivers TONS of oxygen to the containers via a 4' flexible air stone arranged in a figure "8" in each tub.

Started with 1/4 strength nutes and increased by 1/4 each week to 100%, ran 24/0 the first week until I saw roots emerge from the net pots then switched to 18/6.

IMG_1409_8-29.pngIMG_1431_8-30.pngIMG_1433_8-30.pngIMG_1425_8-30.png

WOO-HOO! Roots emerging from the net pots, it's on now...

IMG_1444_9-3.png

The cabinet is situated in a basement with little ventilation and limited access to fresh air. Under the 400W MH the girls began to show signs of heat stress so I added CO2 until I can resolve the heat issue. I'm working on a chiller and if it works out I'll post it here as well. This was accomplished by sugar/yeast CO2 generator(s) - 4x 1 gallon jugs injected at the forced air intake (red arrow) Not going into detail there, plenty of threads on that subject already. These pics are 6 days from transplant and they seem to be recovering from the heat stress.

el_cheapo_co2_gen.pngIMG_1447_9-4.pngIMG_1460_9-6.pngIMG_1457_9-5.pngIMG_1458_9-6.png

These pics are the following week, no sign of heat stress and they really seem to be digging the CO2 and hydro! The small potted clone in the pics was rooted at the same time, I'm working to "bonsai" her and keep her around for a mom, would hate to lose this strain as I really like it. The clone room is big enough for her also and she's doing well under 3x 18" under-cabinet florescents I had laying around.

I drain & refill the containers each week with fresh nutes and flushed w/ Clearex and H2O2 before switching to bloom nutes, switched to 12/12 a few days after these were taken. I keep a calendar also if anyone wants the actual exact number of days, what day I switched, etc. Let me know if you want more detail.

In retrospect I believe this is when it started to get out of hand, should have topped and started training by now...
IMG_1462_9-12.pngIMG_1463_9-12.png

These pics are the following week, I've been training them to the screen every day and they are really filling out. I was a little worried at first, as after training they always look to me like a hail storm hit them, but they recover in hours - amazing to watch.

IMG_1465_9-20.pngIMG_1464_9-19.png

The rest of these pics are after the switch to 400W HPS as you can tell by the color. I've appended the date to the pics so you can see the progress. As of today the canopy is still getting taller and I'm concerned I just won't have enough room for the colas. Once this journal is posted I'm planning a major training session to get the canopy height back under control as well as removing the remaining veg under the screen. I'll post pics of that later.

IMG_1475_9-23.pngIMG_1474_9-23.pngIMG_1484_9-25.pngIMG_1477_9-23.pngIMG_1488_9-26.pngIMG_1476_9-23.pngIMG_1478_9-24.pngIMG_1485_9-25.pngIMG_1471_9-21.png

That's it for the moment, I just heard the cooltube fan come on, time to wrestle that canopy! I'll follow up later with some pics of the results as well as the BEAUTIFUL little pistils emerging every where! Looks like 20 or so bud sites / square foot right now.

Yeah, real nice "little" setup yourve made yourself there