dont want to mess with hyd til i have a little more experience handling the plants. any suggestions or advice for a smooth start would be greatly appreciated.
My best suggestion is to get over your fear of hydroponics. If you use inorganic nutes, regular dosing with H2O2 and run plants in pots of some sort of media in tray-based flood systems, you will succeed the first time and will continue to do so. Yes, there's some startup costs involved in doing hydroponics- you must have EC & pH meters (about $100 ea) and must acquire the bits for a watering system (tray, tank, air & water pumps, about $50-150 depending on how good a shopper you are), but other than that, there's no difference in the startup cost for a soil based system and hydroponics. A soil grow still needs proper HPS lighting, ventilation and temp control. Soil grows are always slower and less productive than hydroponics.
Yo Al, How the hell do I get this Clue like stinkyness off my fingers? After handling the plants, I wash my hands with soap and water, and makes not difference, should I where gloves?
Cannabis resin is highly soluble in ethanol. Use a squirt of methylated spirit aka denatured alcohol (95% ethanol) on your fingers for cleanup- job done. Also great for cleaning your bong.
And is this all the THC, and is there a way when touching them especially during harvest where you wont take it off the plants onto your hands?
Unfortunately, there's no way to manicure your buds without
some THC-bearing resin winding up on your fingers & shears. No worries, you can roll the sticky resin off your fingers (before removing the remaining resin with methylated spirit, of course) and smoke it later.
The stem seems to be a little spendally it almost makes an S shape. Is there anything I can do to correct this situation.
How wet are you keeping the medium you are starting the seeds in? Overwet media will cause excessive stretch in seedlings.
I thought I heard you say when you add nutes to change your water every time is this even as you are raising the PH levels to desired amounts?
Tank maintenance is easy. Add nutrient concentrates to plain tapwater (
only- never add concentrates to an existing tank of mixed nutes), check pH. Most nutes include pH buffers, which when you mix for an adequate nute strength, will set the pH very close to 5.8. If the pH doesn't quite come down to 5.8, use a phosphoric acid based pHDown sauce to correct to 5.8.
Tapwater will normally be 7.1-9, you'll almost never have cause to raise pH unless you have added too much pHDown. It takes about 10ml of pHDown to drop my 125L tanks from 6.1-6.3 (where pH sits after adding nutes to my tapwater). If you overshoot below 5.8, you'll need some pHUp sauce (potassium hydroxide based, usually) to fix it. pHUp solutions are effective in VERY small quantity, use it 1ml (or less) at a time. You will want a 10ml syringe for measuring pH adjustment solns.
Hey al, whats up mate?? I was hoping you might be able to lend me an opinion on my setup, and anything i may be doing incorrectly, you are 'DA' man when it comes to flood and drain. My main questions if you dont have time to look at my journal are:
1. Im going to fire up the MH over my seedlings in about 2 days, so they will be 14/15 days old, and they will also be in the hydro system, does this sound ok and how high would you start the hanging, im using a supernova reflector with no glass and it isnt aircooled, temps aren't a problem always 24-26c ??
Yes, you can introduce them to your (unspecified power) MH when they have their 2nd set of true leaves. Start with the lamp about 3-4' above the newbies, drop the lamp 1' after 3-4 days, if all looks well, drop it another 1'. Spacing depends on what size lamp you have.
2. I know you only flood twice a day because ur medium retains some solution, but as i will be using clay pebbles how many times should i flood the tray, i was thinking 5 times a day, 1 at lights on, 1 5 hours into lights on, 1 an hour from lights off, and then twice while its dark evenly spaced out, does this sound ok or too much???
NEVER flood in lights-off. Transpiration all but stops when the lights go out. There will be enough water in the rootmass to get them through the dark period. If you water in lights-off, the water will just sit in the rootmass, which can encourage root rot. Start clones in pots of pellets by watering 5x/lights-on, assuring your RW cube is 1/2" above the flood level. When plants are larger, they can get watered every 2h beginning at lights-on,
avoiding watering in the last 2h of lights-on unless the plants are very vigorous and would otherwise wilt before lights-off.
3. If you dont mind having a look at some of my pics, i have some reddish/brown spots on my leaves,
Your closeup photos are too blurry for me to be able to tell you anything.
I'm not sure why you have put your 40mm cubes into larger RW blocks. This isn't necessary and makes overwatering very likely for a new grower. Once they have roots out of the small cubes, they can go into pots of pellets.
4. 70% Humidity for vegging and 50% for flowering,does this sound correct??
70% is too high, will encourage powdery mildew. 30-50% is ideal.
5. Do i need to rinse new clay pebbles and if so what with, ph'd water or some other cleaning solution??
Flush new pellets with copious quantities of plain water to remove any dust from manufacturing.
Al, could you please direct me to a pic of yours showing what your pots look like? I cant seem to find one and I am wondering what exactly to get.... If you keep the majority of the roots inside, do the pots just have holes in the bottom?<----how long does it take to flood them then?
Have a great night!!
The RW cube must never be saturated. It must be damp but never wet. 
