3025Watt Medical Grow - WhiteWidow, Shark Attack, Blueberry, LaBlanca and more

First off a big thanks to all the wonderful, expierenced growers on RIU that took thier time to share all thier valuable information.

Some basic info about my medical grow op first. I am a caregiver for several other people who are unable to grow and I will be helping to provide thier medicine at little to no cost to them. I have three different areas which I use to grow. One area is a 8x10x8 room, the other two areas are closets which are both about 4x4x8. I use one 4x4x8 closet as a SCROG flowering area and the other 4x4x8 closet as my veg/clone/seedling/mom area. The 8x10x8 room is my newest project. I will be using this room a perpetual harvest SOG flowering area. I based this room off of Al B Fuct's "get a harvest every two weeks" thread. Thanks AL B!!

I use 100% hydroponics for all aspects of my grow. I have always found hydroponics to be easier for me. Whenever I grow in dirt I have nothing but problems. I built all of my hydro systems myself except for two waterfarms that I have. All of my self built hydroponic systems are flood trays of various sizes.

Climate control for my grow rooms is based on a very simple system. Each room has its own fan and carbon filter and each room has passive intakes from one common room. This common room is how I control the temperatures in my grow rooms. The air is this common room is kept around 60 deg F which just so happens to keep my grow rooms in a nice temp range of about 75-80deg F. The passive intakes for the rooms are sized smalled then the exhaust outlets. This creates a slight vacuum in each room which keeps the smell of the cannabis in the rooms. My grow is legal but I dont want my whole house smelling like a cannabis greenhouse nor do I want to advertise to anyone who may come close to my house as to what I have in my house. The exhaust from my rooms runs about 80deg F and is exhausted into yet another room which is an unused spare bedroom. I have no humidity issues and dont seem to need any supplemental co2 as I draw in quite a bit of fresh air.

As far as nutrients are concerned I use both General Hydroponics Flora Series and Dutch Master nutrients. My tap water is about 200ppm, 7.1ph from the tap. I dont filter it in any way. For my flowering res's I use the Dutch Master nutrients. I use DM Flower A+B, ADD .27, Silica, Potash+ and Zone mixed to around 1600ppm as per DM's chart from thier website. I use the GH Flora Series for my Moms, clones, seedlings, vegging, etc. The PPM on that mix varies depending on what I am doing. All mixes are adjusted to a ph of 5.5-6.0 after adding nutrients.

In addition to the modifications to each room I ran additional power back to this area to provide power for all the grow equipment. I ran a 40 Amp 220v circuit to a subpanel in the 8x10 room. This subpanel feeds all the outlets for the equipment.

Now onto each grow area.


Flowering Area 1 SCROG Room

This room utilizes a 2x3 flood tray made from a cement mixing tray from Lowes. The stand for it is constructed out of pvc. The res is a 25 gal rubbermaid tote. Inside the res is a 396gph pump and a 6 inch airstone. I found it much cheaper to build this flood table then to buy a premade unit.

Lighting for this room is provided by one 600W HPS powered by a Lumatek Digital Dimmable Ballast. The bulb is in a Sunsystems aircooled hood.
Ventilation in this room is provided by a 440cfm Ecoplus fan and filtered by a CAN 50 Carbon Filter.

Here are a few pictures of this area and the current grow.

On average I have been able to pull 18-20 Ozs every 3 months from this area.






Flowering Area 2 SOG Room

This room is still under construction.

This room is setup with four 2x3 flood trays. Eash tray has it's own 15 gallon res. Each res has a 396gph pump and 6 inch airstone in it. These flood trays are once again made out of concrete mixing trays from Lowes. These stand are made out of PVC as well.

Lighting in this room is provided by two 1000w HPS lights powered by Sunsystems Cropmaster II Ballasts. The bulbs are in Sunsystem Yieldmaster aircooled hoods. These lights are cooled by 780cfm of air.

Ventilation in this room is provided by a 340 CFM Ecoplus fan and filtered by a CAN 50 Carbon Filter.

Here are a few pictures of this room.

The plants you see in the trays are just for testing. They are clones off of my Sativa Bagseed Mom which are not in any way ideal for a SOG grow. It stretches way to much during 12/12. I have new strains which are still seedlings which will work much better in here. More on those later.





VEG/CLONE/SEEDLING/MOM Room


This room has 2 homemade hydro systems in it as well. They are both flood trays, one for the moms and one for the seedling/clones. There are also two waterfarms in this room, one of which is used for my sativa bagseed mom.

Lighting for this room comes from one 250w HPS and one 175w MH. These are not aircooled lights.

Ventilation in this room is provided by a 340CFM ecoplus fan with a Can 33 Carbon FIlter.

So the new strains I have started, finnaly some good genetics, are as follows:

1: Dutch Passion - White Widow FEM
2: Dutch Passion - Blueberry FEM
3: Dinafem - Shark Attack FEM
4: Kannabia - Kannabia Special FEM
5: Kannabia - La Blanca FEM

I have some other seeds left that I havent germinated yet, going to wait until I weed out some of these that I have started in the search for good phenos and moms.

The other seeds I have which I will start later are:

1: Dutch Passion - Orange Bud FEM
2: Dutch Passion - Mazar FEM
3: Dutch Passion - Power Plant FEM
4: Dutch Passion - Skunk #11 FEM
5: Kannabia - Afrodite FEM
6: Kannabia - Power Skunk FEM
7: Kannabia - Big Band FEM


Here are some new pics of the new strains, they are about 13 days old now and looking good so far. Three of them are only 2 days old, that includes two of the Shark Attacks and the Kanabia Special. The LaBlanca is still waiting to pop out of the rooter plug.




The pic on the left is the DP Blueberry which actually has a good bit of purple in its leaves already. Dont think it came through in the pic though.

Is there anyway i could get you to post up how you made those wonderfull flood tables? I have the same tubs from menards but are exactly the same specs as yours, even if you wouldnt mind taking some detailed pics i can just follow from there.

Here are some detailed pics hope this helps you.

The contruction is pretty easy. I set all my 6 " net pots in the tray (15) so i could see where to put the fill and drain holes. Marked the holes and drilled with an 1 1/4" spade bit. I then use ebb and flow fitting from my local hydro shop to put in the holes. I use 3/4" fitting for both drain and fill. The frame is made from pvc. I have the measurments for each piece and the quantity of each piece laying around somewhere. I ll try to find that list and edit this post and add them. Everything else is pretty simple you should get the jist of it from the pics.

Lookin good man ppl will soon show up theres just so many threads out there its hard to find

LOL, thank you very much, i have a space that these will fit in as well. I think you may have just changed my mind on staying with soil.

looks good bro just one idea for you to consider, get some poly/visqueen and cover that carpet it houses pest, mold and all kinds of things you dont want in you grow. Plus you'll save having to pay to replace it whenyour done.

everything looking good

djfloms said:

LOL, thank you very much, i have a space that these will fit in as well. I think you may have just changed my mind on staying with soil.

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Glad I was able to help, Your welcome.

WvMade said:

Lookin good man ppl will soon show up theres just so many threads out there its hard to find

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Thx man.

mrduke said:

looks good bro just one idea for you to consider, get some poly/visqueen and cover that carpet it houses pest, mold and all kinds of things you dont want in you grow. Plus you'll save having to pay to replace it whenyour done.

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Never gave much thought to that, especially the part about housing mold or pests. I am not to worried about the carpet itself as I have laid down wood flooring throughout my house and had intended to do it in here eventually as well. Guess if I start having issues with bugs or mold I'll tear it up and get that wood down real fast lol.

wyteberrywidow said:

everything looking good

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thx man

cool, nice set up

They got this stuff that Looks like wood flooring but its like this spongy material its awsome easy to put down takes just a few min and its water proof so if you spill anything it gets cleaned up with ez

WvMade said:

They got this stuff that Looks like wood flooring but its like this spongy material its awsome easy to put down takes just a few min and its water proof so if you spill anything it gets cleaned up with ez

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Hmm sounds interesting, will look into it. I probably will end up just putting wood flooring down though, maybe ceramic tile.

A couple updates, 3 out of 5 of the Dinafem Shark Attack seedlings have died. One just never got past putting a taproot out and these other two survived about 6 days before dieing. The first one I blame on just a bad seed, the other two quite possibly are my fault. I hadnt been paying as close attention to them and I think the cold air (50ish deg F lights out) from the passive air intake in that closet may have done them in. The air intake directed air right at them. I have repostioned that air intake so it does not drop air right on any of the young plants anymore.

Anyway here are some pics.

damn sorry o hear

Subscribed. Had to check it out after the kind words on my thread so I'll be around.

I have to ask though, with my experience in hydroponics it was a bastard to deal the pH fluctuation that happened rather quickly (or so I thought they were), that was just with my bubbler/drip setup I had going at the time. I'll admit that in growth measures, hydro is superior, but for the sake of "easy maintenance" I jumped back on the soil train last round. Simply because I didn't think I had the time required to deal with the water/etc last round. So my question, on an flood table like yours, you have the nutrients that flood the table drain into the same tub that is flooding the table. How often do you change the reservoir and how bad are your pH fluctuations(or how often do you have to adjust them?)

I have recently acquired the time I didn't have before, and from other postings, coupled with yours I think I am going to spring for a 4x4x6 tent to bang out my next round of medicine. That said I was going to drift back over to the hydro lane and give it another shot if I found something I liked. I really loved the bubbler, and my aeroponic cloner is something from another planet, soil took 3 weeks, cuttings on the aero were ready in 7 days. I was going to set up a tray inside the tent, and use the drain reservoir to catch all my run off from the soil pots I have up top (virtually making soil as clean as hydro in my eyes), but would love to find a hydro route, maybe even an aeroponic setup big enough to hold more then 6 maturing plants.

MonstroniuM said:

Subscribed. Had to check it out after the kind words on my thread so I'll be around.

I have to ask though, with my experience in hydroponics it was a bastard to deal the pH fluctuation that happened rather quickly (or so I thought they were), that was just with my bubbler/drip setup I had going at the time. I'll admit that in growth measures, hydro is superior, but for the sake of "easy maintenance" I jumped back on the soil train last round. Simply because I didn't think I had the time required to deal with the water/etc last round. So my question, on an flood table like yours, you have the nutrients that flood the table drain into the same tub that is flooding the table. How often do you change the reservoir and how bad are your pH fluctuations(or how often do you have to adjust them?)

I have recently acquired the time I didn't have before, and from other postings, coupled with yours I think I am going to spring for a 4x4x6 tent to bang out my next round of medicine. That said I was going to drift back over to the hydro lane and give it another shot if I found something I liked. I really loved the bubbler, and my aeroponic cloner is something from another planet, soil took 3 weeks, cuttings on the aero were ready in 7 days. I was going to set up a tray inside the tent, and use the drain reservoir to catch all my run off from the soil pots I have up top (virtually making soil as clean as hydro in my eyes), but would love to find a hydro route, maybe even an aeroponic setup big enough to hold more then 6 maturing plants.

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Currently I do have a res for each tray. I change the res about every 2 weeks, sometimes a little longer, depends on how things look and how much water I have added or how much of a PPM fluctuation I have had. I adjust my PH every 3-4 days. Doesnt usualy take much 5-10ml of PH down and its back in range. The reason I think I have the fluctuatiins is because of the size of my res.

What I plan on doing here in the near future is getting a 55 Gal Plastic Drum and using that as a res for two of the trays. That should keep the PH changes down a good bit. I run the same PPM in tray 2 and 3. Tray 1 has a lower ppm mix and tray 4 is straight water(for a final flush). This system is designed to be a perpetual harvest system with a harvest every two weeks.

All in all its a fairly simple system to maintain, I spend maybe 2 hrs total working in that larger room per week. That includes everything from res maintenace, cloning, plant care, cleaning etc. I have a hose that I run back into my rooms and a Pump and drain in each room for emptying the res'es , that saved me a lot of time. Eventually I am going to run a water line back into each of my grow rooms with valves and hoses running into each res so I can easily just add a little water when needed.

That 4x4 tent you are talking about should be nice to have and its plenty of room to get a nice size harvest. That is almost identical to the size of my scrog room. I use 8 plants in my scrog system and it only takes 1 week of vegging to fill my screen, with the sativa I am using.

How big are the reservoirs on your tables now? From the pictures they didn't look to large, and if you're only have to adjust them every 3-4 days I wonder what I was doing wrong. I had the bubbler, granted it was only a 15 gallon rubber maid, holding only 10 gallons of water in it needed to be pH adjusted at least every 12-18 hours, hence the reason I didn't go that route again. A set up like yours and I'd be in heaven! I like the 4 tray idea, I contemplated the perpetual harvest idea but would never successfully pull it off with a single table, unless they where in soil so I can feed to my discretion, and just the tub underneath to catch all my run off.

MonstroniuM said:

How big are the reservoirs on your tables now? From the pictures they didn't look to large, and if you're only have to adjust them every 3-4 days I wonder what I was doing wrong. I had the bubbler, granted it was only a 15 gallon rubber maid, holding only 10 gallons of water in it needed to be pH adjusted at least every 12-18 hours, hence the reason I didn't go that route again. A set up like yours and I'd be in heaven! I like the 4 tray idea, I contemplated the perpetual harvest idea but would never successfully pull it off with a single table, unless they where in soil so I can feed to my discretion, and just the tub underneath to catch all my run off.

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They hold 15 gallon. One thing i found really important was to wash the hydroton very, very, very well. When i was just briefly rinsing it, i had alot more fluctuation in the ph.

I dont get crazy over the ph though, i get it to 5.5 when i adjust it and let it get to 6.5-7.0 before I readjust it.

Here are some new shots of the sativa in my scrog room. Looking yummy and packing on the trichs.



I think shes getting close to done. Trichs are mostly cloudy, the way I like then on this strain.

I will start my flush in the next day or so and harvest next weekend I think.

I am going to try something different this time and I am going to harvest all the stuff on the top and expose all the light green popcorn buds down on the screen. I am going to let that stuff go a few more weeks and see how it turns out.

Will post pictures of what I am doing once I start harvesting this room.

Have you not had problems with your clear water reservoirs? It doesn't induce algae growth?

Also appears to have some heat stress in the last pics you posted.

Nice setups though, good DIY room.

Have fun bro.