Ok the First Aero grow journel take 1...

Well I didn't really plant on doing ajournel but figured since I got lots of advise on here I'd post what is becoming of it.So here we go . I will tell you this journel will be not in true real time as I dont want the actual grow compromised and figure in regards to when ,where, and how to meet harvets but it will be in order . So let run some basic stuff off here all the way from the mommies to the room to the setup and so forth.
The room I built is 2x 4 framed enclosed with 6 mil black plastic.The door was a simple tarp zipper which is sticky on the back you place it where you want the door stick it on open the zipper and utility knife down the middle instant door 8 bucks home depot.The size of the entire grow are is 8 feet by 8 feet by about 10 feet.Floors got a layer of plastic to help stop dirt spills and what not.Then it got 2 layers of 2 mil gardeners ground cover to help reflect light up.My lights are as follows.I was going to use my 2 1000 watt mhs then 2 1000 watt hps for flower but have been going against this so I wenta different rout here.I have 2 light yo yos that allow me to move the lights up and down 36 inches plus chains so I can get the lights wherever I want.I put in 1 400 watt mh and 1 400 watt hps for the veg time and swicth thier position every 3 days getting both spectrums.I have an 8 inch inline duct fan sucking air out the room right through a home made carbon scrubber and then outside. I have a 6 inch inline duct fan bringing fresh cool air in from outside.I have 1 10 inch ocoslating fan moving the room air around.The walls have reflective mylar from about 2 feet from the fllor to 4 feet above it for light reflection.I will be switching the lights when I go to 12/12 and have decided on using 1 of the 1000 watt hps with over sized reflector on a 6 foot light rail over the setup but thats for the second stage.I have a 20 lb co2 tank with a timer set for solenoid timed release to flood the room with co2.Co2 will be released for 5 minutes every other hour during lights on in flower.Then the hour that doesnt get co2 during 12 on will get a 30 minute fans on room clear right before the next release then fans timed to go off before next co2 release.So actually hour and half in the co2 then 30 minute air refrsh then repeat.Thats that for basic room setup next post will be the grow system break down. I will post some pics as I go here..

Ok now alittle on the actual setup. I decided to build a 28 site aero version of a setup I saw online. They wanted like $80 plus shipping I did it for under $185 with pumps.This is a 28 site aer setup that used 4 chambers for growing. Each chamber has 7 sites with 3 inch net pots to grow in.Inside each chmaber I have 7 aero misters on a pvc line which connects to the water manifold which inturn is connected to a hose that goes to my 1000 gph pump.The pump is inside a filter bad to keep debris out of the lines and sprayers.Each chamber has a drain put in the bottom attached to its own return hose that takes the water back to the res.The res is a 45 gallon tote with lid. It has a hole for the outgoing hose and 4 holes for the return hoses to dump back into the res. I added an air pump with 2 air stones to give extra oxygen to the water.I have a floating glass thermometer to monitor res temp and have a 100 watt tank heater if it become needed ( which it did but has since not been needed).If temp in res is too high I drop 2 cooler blocks in they are plastic filled with water and frozes for beer coolers.Easy chiller.The whole setup is on a pvc platform I built giving the total table like area of 87 feet byt 5 feet and its about 30 inches off the floor to allow gravity water flow to the tank.I slipped a reflective blanket under the setup right under the chambers to help gain some up light. Not as good as mylar but was an after thought and does help and more light is better.The nutes I am going with are Fox Farm Grow Big, Fox Farm Tiger Bloom , Fox farm Big Bloom, and for the clones I have some fish emulsion and clonex rooting gel.The clones will be in rockwool then in the 3 inch net pots then hydroten clay pebbles aroung that in the cup.Ok I think that gets us up to par with what we are going to be working with.My pics are too big for this so I will put links up in this thread..

Hers just some more pictures to get to quick

Ok now about the startup. I will doa quick little background for the moms. The moms are a unknown original indica strain that was named the Ohio Player about 15 or so years ago.It originateed first that anyone can remember with Ohio grower. Hence the name, Its a pure indica strain that creates huge heavy resinous buds that the aroma is like nothing else I have ever seen. The smoke is so clean and smooth with the pungent smell but the taste is almost citric like orange and pineapple mixed as best to say. The aroma is gonna be hard to cover. The plants will cover witrh heavy crystals and the colas I have always seen ebb and flow yeild big most of these plants I have seen are 4-12 oz per plant whioch is just nuts.Ok So I got 7 clones from a guy I begged for 3 years to let me have some and he finally let me so there would be another backup of this strain out there.I got them at a bout 2 inches and after a 8 hour move ended up losing 2 of them leaving me 5.Thats plenty. I potted them in 5 gallon buckets in miracle grow moisture control soil.Put them under 2 48 inch florescent shop light about 1/2 inch from tops for 1 week under 24 hour lights.This got them to about 6 inches in that week. Solid dense ultra green. Then I figure what the hell and tossed them under a 1000 watt mh on 24 hours for the next 3-4 months.These moms are now around 5 feet and have yielded thier babies nicely and keep on going now on 18/6 shop lights again to slow it down.You llk get 2 pictures right here and Ill post 2 more in next thread.These pics show the moms at around a month

Heres some more of the moms at this point they are around 5 feet tall at 4 months old

Ok enough for tonight will gett into the next part later...

Ok back to putting in some journel work.I have taken clones from my mother plants. I needed about 30 so I took 40 total to give myself so extras in case I loose any or some are slow developers I can take the best ones.Ok lets go through this process.I like to take my clones from lower branches as these wont be much good for growing on the mom anyways as they get in the way and get little light. To prepare I like to take my 1 1/2 inch rockwool cubes and put them ina tary of ph neutral water with a very diluted fish emuslsion mix of about 1/8 teaspoon to a agallon of water and let them sit room temp for about and hour.I get a bucket of ph neutral room temp warer aroun 70-73 degrees use my exacto knife with a fresh blade to take my clone cutting of about 2 to 2 1/2 inches.Some people swear by bigger with extra nodes but I look for a good 4 leaf top and a steam thats not to hard or thick. I drop the cutting in the bucket of water.I take my rocckwool cubes and lightly squeeze excess water from them as damp is all you need wet and they take for ever to root.I like to have a bowl of the same neutral water. I take a cutting hold it under water and make a 1/2 inch 45 degress cut on the base of its stem .While still under water I like to make an 1/8 inch slit up that angle cut root to give 2 quick rooting start points. I then quickly dip the clone stem into my olivias cloning gel twirling it around coating it good getting any air bubbles off the stem. The stem should have about a 1/2 of gelon the stalk.I then like to poke a tooth pick into my rockwool cube hole down a little further to about 3/4 the way through. I gently place the gel coated root into the cube all the way down without crushing the cut. I then like to pinch top of cube around the stem.I repeat this for each cutting.I then put the clones in a clone humidity dome preferable a low lid kind so lights can get close.I lightly mist the clones and put the tray on a heating mat. I tend to like to place 4 or 5 pencils between the mat and the tray bottom to allow heat flow evenly and not hot spots to damage roots.I place 1 48 inch florescent shop light right on the dome. These 2 48 inch tubes will stay on 24/7.I then like to mist twice a day once in the morning and once later in the day.Dont over water as this will slow the process just lightly on the leaves as that only part that can intake until roots pop.I do this up til day 3. On day 3 I usualy find my roots starting out the bottom of the rockwool cubes.I then like to just lightly cover the bottom of the tray with a layer of my diluted fish emulsion water mix so cubes can wick what they need and roots search down for it.I keep the lights as close asI can and start to open the dome 10 minutes sady twice a day.Each time I close it a breath into the dome for a little co2 burst.By day 5 or 6 the dome lid is off on these and well ready to go into thier new homes for veg. Hers are 2 pictures of the clones after they were cut and ready to go into veg..

Well we are up to about day 10 at this point from taking the clones to rooting them to getting them into 3 inch net pots with clay hydrton pebbles.I lost 1 of the 40 total clones and took the 28 of the strongest for the grow keep the others going for back up in the tray just in case and will later set them free in the wild if I dont need them and let nature care for them.I learned how important it is to wash the pebbles extra good and not to use powder additives in an aero system with a dry run. My sprayers clogged and required a complete sparayer re vamp. I also added the pump filter bag to filetr out any extra particles.So now I use 3 inch net pots with about 1/4 layer of pebbles in the bottom. I then remove the rockwool paper and seat the cubes in the center so plant is right in the middle of the pots. I slowly add pebbles around each cube then firmly pack them in holding the cube firm and covering it completely.The res has been preped the watre is ph right at 5.9 with nutes in it which to start us out is Fox Farm Grow Big liquid concentrate with a ppm of around 850 and EC around 1.8.The res water temp is 71 meaning at root zone should be about 65 degrees F. The air stone has been pumping for a few days with the system running and primed. The 2 400 watt lights are set for 24 hours of on time at about 14 inches from plants top.The clones are roughly 1-2 inches tall when going into the system for veg. Room temp is varying from 73 - 80 will try to stable it at 78 if possible.Here is a look at the new clones going into the system day 1 veg..Kep in mind this is day 11 from the day they were cut from mommy

Ok lets jump ahead to day 15 from clones being cut and about 4 days in the aero system with 2 400 watt (mh and hps) lamps on 24 hours. I bumped the nutes up to about 1100 ppm now as the plants are growing at and unreasonable fast pace with roots sytems already to big to really pull the net pots out of the chambers without trouble getting them all back in.I would say the plants are showing almost 1 1/2 a day easy growth. They are staying compact and full which is a trait of indicas especially these. I am estimating veg time will be about total 2 weeks and height will be about 14-16 inches at 12/ 12 switch over.I will post pictures of these guys in the system and in the next thread I post will show a picture of the extra clones which are just being foilage feed and light root feedings.I am impressed as these are growing almost twice as fast as the ebb and flow setups my mentors use.They always warned the rate would be fast but also more work involved and bad things if power loss. Lets keep fingers crossed..

Ok I put an extra clone in the picture next to the one in the setup to show size different but heres pictures of clones taken the same day but not in the aero setup

Well at day 6 in the aero setup I wake up every day ready to see what Santa eed has brought me.I have found this sytem very easy to use and by far the fastest ever for me.Im looking now at about 7-8 inch plants after only 6 days in.They are drinking and feeding in perfect ratios.My ph is pretty much steady and not a single line clog.I can no longer take the nets out real because the roots are like footballs.Here is a few quick looks at this stage of the veg. Week 2 will be the on set of 12/12 as these will be roughly 16-18 inches.

Quick update here is day 8 in the aero setup lets see these are around 2 weeks from the day they wer cut as clones now .Anyways they seem to luv this setup and look great.Only 2 smaller slackers but even those are fast growing and compact.

Ok 2 more pics just for fun same as last post just different shot

FILTHY,

Mad props to you for building that aero setup. Before actually reading you journal I was looking at the pics and thought it was just one of those expensive aero setups that they sell at my local hdyro shop. Fuckin amazing dude.
Is there anyway, you can give a more detailed description of how you made it, or maybe some pictures that may reveal how it was put together.... That would be cool...

Yeah Im working on putting it all together either in a setup journel or maybe for the contest.Its based off thos exspensive ass setup but fuck them $600-800 for that shit when it cost like $140 and about 2 days of time for drying otherwise 3 hours to build.I''l post in here this journel to let you know when and where I put the build plans up. Was gonna sell them but screw lets do it for free right lol

Yeah, don't sell it dude... us weed lovers have to stick together!! I'm looking forward to seeing how you made it!!!
The store bought ones are so fuckin rediculously expensive!!! Yours looks like it could be just as good though...
I'll keep checking in...

Ok this is like 2 quick shots at like day almost 10 lo.

Ok been a minute since last post but here is an update. I have just increased the Fox Farm nutes using a combination of Fox Farm Grow Big and Big Bloom up to 1200 ppm then ina week these will be in 12/12 state and being getting the added Tiger Bloom boost.These are under 2 400 wat lights a mix of 400 hps and 400 mh for the veg but will be under 3 400 watt hps for flowering. I will also introduce Sensa-spray and similar concentrate to Nitrozime to inceas flower sites and size.I forgot this is day 14 in the aerosetup

wow, troully impressive, will sensa spray work on dirt plants as well?

yes it should work on all plants in all systems