Dstroy's first grow journal

Day 3 of flower

no sex yet.

4/7/17
recycled about 4 gallons of runoff today
ph 5.6
ppm 350
added 0.3ml ph up and put it back in the reservoir

I mounted up my carbon filter and 6" inline fan, probably should have done that before hanging the lights up.

My led drivers are hot-ish (150f) because I am pushing them at max, I should dim them but something is up with my dimming circuit and I didn't have time today to check it out.

The three runty plants in the cloner are looking better, the roots on the cutting I took are growing like they should but hopefully one of the two plants in the tent is female so I can just take some cuttings from that because they're much more robust than the other three. (all of my plants are grape ape)

I really need to pump out the buckets more than I am, water is gathering at the bottom and sitting for several hours at least. I'm going to build some stands out of 2x4 tomorrow while I am building the trellis.

There are a lot of branches that are catching up to the top.

temps right on top of the buckets are right around 74f, inside is about the same. I have some insulation if that ever becomes a problem.

I lowered the lights down by about a foot so I could hang the carbon filter and vent fan, didn't seem to bother the plants or raise canopy temps.

4/8/17
Day 4 of flower
No sex yet

Cloner:
Ph 5.3
Ppm 700
Added 0.4ml ph up

Aero:
Runoff ph 5.6
Ppm 280 (starting ppm 350)

They ate a lot of food today.

Other thoughts:
Both plants in the tent are bushing out like crazy. You can see the light burn from when they grew up into the cfl, but all of the new growth looks great.

I need to build the trellis, I'll get that done tomorrow hopefully.

Plants in the cloner look like they should.
The cuttings roots took off today, doubled in size.

I got tired of spending an hour recovering nutrient solution (not as successfully as I would like) so I built a vacuum recovery chamber (pic below) this takes about a minute to fill and it holds almost two gallons. It works really really well.

4/9/17
Day 5 of flower. No sex yet.
Aero runoff:
Ph 5.4
Ppm 250

This was from the overnight runoff and about 1/2hr after lights on. I'll check it again tonight when I pump out the days runoff.

I found my clip on fans and my powerheads, I put up the fans in the tent. I'm really glad I found the powerheads, no more mixing the nutes by hand.

4/9/17
Aero runoff:
Ph 5.61
Ppm 270

So there're some preflowers, will be able to tell in a few days for certain what I've got.
I accidentally sucked up some water into my vacuum pump and had to clean it out, not fun don't recommend doing that. Never got the trellis built, I did tie them up a bit more.

4/10/17
Day 6 of flower 1f 1?
Aero runoff:
Ph 5.51
Ppm 250
Morning/ evening tests same.
Added 5 gallons premix ph5.8 ppm 350

Lowered lights to a little more than a foot.

Root growth is amazing.

One of them looks female to me, going to cut some clones from it.

Other one isn't showing in any place I can get close to easily.

4/11/17
Day 7 of flower 2f

The second plant is pushing out some tiny pistils

I recovered the runoff this morning, I just haven't tested it yet.

I'm still running "grow" nutrients, the reservoir is only half empty. It was important to figure out if I was going to be able to recycle the nutrients after topping them up, since the plants didn't mind it at all I'm letting them eat their way through this res then I'll mix up another one with bloom, same ratios as before until they show a need for more.

To do list for today:
find a bead or something that I can use as a liquid level indicator
build a new dimming circuit
cull the plants in the cloner
clean out the cloner
mix up water for new clones
cut clones
start building the trellis
general cleaning
take a bunch of pictures and explain what everything is doing, there'll be another post from me sometime today.

My cdp 8800 picks up nutes from this 20 gallon reservoir

then it goes through this strainer (the gray thing) 50 micron to filter out any large particles

after the pump it goes through a #10 slim line 1 micron sediment filter

then it goes through two pressure switches, one of these is set to turn on the pump when pressure hits around 75psi and turn off the pump when it's at 100psi, the other switch is a low pressure switch, it plugs into my control box and sounds an alarm and will eventually text me if the pressure is below 60ish psi for a certain period of time.

good ole' manual pressure gauge right near the accumulator

emergency pressure relief valve, this is set to crack open at 150psi, if for whatever reason the line pressure ever gets this high even if it's just a spike this thing opens until pressure drops below about 125, it's also the closest thing to the accumulator because that is the most likely place that a pressure spike would happen. If you have HPA and you don't have one of these you're playing with fire.

all of the tubing up until now has been 1/4" od LLPDE (drinking water tube) but when it gets to the accumulator we switch to 3/8" od tubing because the water demand when all of the solenoids open up to spray (3 nozzles per bucket) is higher than 1/4" tubing can supply. I can shut off the accumulator and replace it if it breaks without taking down the system due to the tank shutoff valve on top of it.

from here it goes into the tent, and gets distributed to the buckets. Each bucket has its' own solenoid and 3 spray nozzles. But what happens to all the runoff water that the plants don't utilize? It collects at the bottom of the buckets and waits to get sucked out by this:

my vacuum pump. the pvc thing on the top is a coalescer filter I built to recover the oil mist that comes out of the pumps exhaust. Speaking of pumps, all of my pumps sit on a piece of plywood that floats from some bungee cords, this cuts down MAJOR on noise that gets transmitted through the floor.

the vacuum pump plugs into the center port, and the recovery line (the bucket drains combine into one 3/8" line) plugs into the larger port. I turn on the vacuum pump and this fills up rather quickly, then I drain it out into a sterile bucket and can recycle it or throw it out.

there is a liquid level indicator on the side and a drain port on the bottom, nothing too fancy. I can unscrew the top to get in there and scrub it out. I use food grade silicone grease on the threads to keep the vacuum in the container.

4/11/17
Aero runoff:
Ph 5.29
Ppm 270

The tent got hot today, 88f. I got a vent adapter so I can vent out a window on the way.

Plants are looking good, all the new fan leaves are 11 blades it looks like. They're bushing out underneath.

4/12/17
Day 8 of flower. 2f
Aero runoff:
Ph 5.18
Ppm 220

I got the temps down to low 80's, which is fine by me. The more water they transpire the more food they eat.

They're looking great. Today I'm going to finish up the trellis.

I finished the trellis, cleaned out the cloner, mixed up some clone solution, cut six clones, and we named the clones this time since we know they're girls.

From top to bottom: (all grape ape)
Big Bertha
Bernice (cause it's burnt lol)
Shelly
Matilda
Mrs. Broflovski
Le Fou


Clone solution: all dyna gro
Per 5 gallon bucket
15ml protekt
15ml kln
15ml grow
15ml mag pro
Ph 5.8
Ppm 550
I cut my clones at a 45 degree angle, dip them in clonex and put them in netpots. This time I used ponicsfarm netpots which are much sturdier than the ones I have the two flowering plants in.

I cleaned everything with bleach today, and added a drain to the cloner.

4/13/17
Day 9 of flower 2f

Aero runoff:
Ph 4.99
Ppm 212

I'm not sure because I dont have a lot of experience with marijuana in hydroponics (or any previous experience with HPA) but it seems to me that as the root mass increases the amount of organic acid they exude is increasing proportionately. I can't prove this definitively because I don't have access to lab equipment, but intuitively this seems like the answer. They never really sit in the runoff for more than a few hours, and the roots smell really pleasant like an earthy goodness. I'm not concerned with the ph of the runoff at this time because the plants are thriving.

Since these plants are doing so well and they weren't treated the best along the way I'm excited to see this strains full potential the next run.

I've still got a couple days worth of water in the reservoir before I switch over to the bloom formula.

There's a leaf growing out of one of my fan leaves, I'm going to try to get a good pic of it.

Cloner:
Ph 5.77
Ppm 580

The increase in ppm is probably from the rooting hormone getting washed off and mixed in with everything else. I'm only pulling and inspecting one plant and I didn't see any white bumps yet (not that I expected to after 12 hours). They're still putting energy into developing calyx, I saw a couple more this morning.

I forgot to mention, pic of the roots in post #71 is the same plant as the pic in #65.

4/14/17
Day 10 of flower. 2f
Aero runoff:
Ph 5.0
Ppm 210

Plants are looking good. I switched over to bloom nutes.
All dyna gro (except the mammoth p)

Per 5 gallon bucket of water:
8ml protekt
8ml magpro
8ml bloom
3ml mammoth p

Ph 5.8
Ppm 330

I'm not sure why the ppms are so much lower with the bloom nutes even though I added 60% more (than the "grow" solution except for mammoth p) across the board. I just didn't want to add too much, so if they look hungry I'll increase the concentration.

Right now both plants are two feet tall and they are one foot away from the lights.

I'll be posting again later tonight with the runoff numbers.

Cloner:
Ph 5.84
Ppm 590
I'll top up the cloner later with fresh water.
The clones are looking well. Their stems are turning purple (expected), it looks like calyx development has slowed so I'm going to take them off of 24/0 and put them back on the timer 18/6.

I included a couple random pictures to my post, one is of my heatsink temperature. The other is of the bucket I use to mix up nutrient solution. The black thing is an aquarium powerhead and it mixes up the water for me.

It's ok to post in my grow journal if you have questions or want to comment.

4/14/17
Aero runoff: (evening)
Ph 5.2
Ppm 230

4/15/17
Day 11 of flower. 2f.
Aero res:
ph 5.65
ppm 323

Aero runoff:
ph 4.77
ppm 200

My res ph crept down overnight, I'm going to mix up a bucket of 5.9 or 6 and add it.

4/15/17
Cloner:
Ph 5.6
Ppm 600

I topped off the water with plain tap water.

4/15/17
Aero runoff:
Ph 4.91
Ppm 213

Aero res:
Ph 5.9
Ppm 320

Cloner: (after topping up with tap water earlier)
Ph 5.8
Ppm 521

4/16/17
Day 12 of flower. 2f
Aero runoff:
Ph 4.75
Ppm 212

Aero res:
Ph 5.75
Ppm 313

Cloner:
Ph 5.8
Ppm 526

It looks like I'm getting a little tip burn, I'm not sure if it was from the different nute formulas overlapping or not. I'm going to give it a few days and see if it gets worse. I measured it yesterday and it's only 1-3mm or less. If it does get worse I'll reduce the concentration by 10% increments until it gets better.

It's supposed to get hot today.

4/16/17
Aero runoff:
Ph 5.1
Ppm 232

It hit almost 90f today outside, temps in the tent were around 77 most of the day. I wasn't able to get a good look at them this evening, so we'll see how they're looking in the morning.

I'm starting to see tiny white bumps on some of the clone stems (Beginnings of roots)

4/17/18
Day 13 of flower 2f.
Aero runoff:
Ph 5.10
Ppm 224

Cloner:
Ph 5.8
Ppm 525

I found some carpet beetles on my clones this morning, took care of them with the shop vac. I've never had them before, from what I've read they don't bother plants. I vacuumed out the grow room anyway even though I just did that yesterday.

If anyone has any experience with them please chime in.

I had to raise up the lights a bit, that plant was only 9" away from the fixture.