First DIY stealth aeroponic cabinet grow, SOG

alright, so this is first update in a while.

The aero system is in full use; i have 14 rooted clones currently getting used to their new home under the 400w hps light in the aero tub. Using 20/20/20 hydro nutes and 3% h202 at 17ml/l. They are doing great, seeing lots of root growth. Some yellowing of lower leaves, but i'm only running a 500 ppm solution right now as they get used to it. Going to move it up by 200 every 2 days till im at 1000-1400, or wherever i start to see nute burn.

I installed a second 50 cfm extraction fan to extract air only, instead of having only the cooltube fan as the extractor. The temp is now steady in the cab at 28-31 C. Still a little high, but shouldn't be too much of an issue, and i may run an intake from the outside -30 C air this winter to cool it a lot more.

I have 15 more clones sitting in the bubble cloner. My bubble cloner takes a while; im averaging 20 days min before any clones are ready for the aero. Still, i had 15/20 last time, to 75% and climbing.

I'm noticing my mother plants are looking pretty sparse in terms of clonable branches. They are currently under very weak cfl light, but they are still showing some pretty cood growth. Unfortunately, none of it is big enough to clone for my system. I have four mothers, and i really don't want to have to keep more then that arround. My next mother plants i will top much earlier to make more bushy, as well as lsting them into wider shorter plants to promote more useable clone branhces.

Im hoping this batch of clones will be ready in 60 days or so. Im going to give them 14 says of veging under the hps to get their roots started and see new growth. Once they're all 10 inches tall or so ill go to 12/12 and hope for 45 days of flowering or so. im going to sog them, removing the lower growth to promote single colas. I'm hoping to aim for an ounce a plant, netting me 13-14 ounces.

Will update with updates lol.

Sick dude, will it really only take 14 days before you start the flowing cycle? I guess you still get growth (size wise) while flowering so you want to make sure they still fit by the time they're done I guess? You have any pics of how big they're getting?

hey another sparse update.

my clones are plants. all are exhibiting new growth and the tallest is 6 inches tall now. They all have developed root systems and are doing well.

Ive had lots of problems with bacteria int he res. mostly resolved that by really keeping the res temp low and adding h202 constantly. If you use the 3% grocery store stuff (all i have on hand) then it needs to be used frequently. Ive resorted to soaking the individual plants roots in almost pure 3% h202 and im keeping up with the problem; all the plants seem healthy.

im at 1000ppm with slightly under 6 ph. im vegging more clones and i can't wait for my first harvest. i've been practicing supercropping on my mother plants and i can say i've seen a big increase in growth from it, so i'll be doing that to the plants at some point. Trimming lower growth too to promote the SOG style plant where it is all one cola. I have hopes

been on 12/12 for 4 days now, and im seeing bud development all over the stems of my hydro plants. The plants aren't as tall as i'd hoped, but i need to flower them to get my cycle going, so i'm hoping they will all reach 10-15 inches- i've allready seen the leaves stop developping and the stems start stretching so i know they are responding well. The mothers are exibiting rampant new growth after having been pruned of much of their older growth, and i will be cloning again in a couple days. The clones i cut 20 days ago all have excellent roots, and i got 6/7 to root. Interestingly enough, i just left the clone res alone this time arround and it worked much better. Ph'd at the beginning with h202 every couple days and just left it bubbling for two weeks, excellent results. I have built a new bubbler box that i will be using to veg the rooted clones in hydroton, so that the top chamber is for flowering only with recovered plants going into it for flowering 30 days after going into hydroton.They should have excellent roots developed by the time they go under the hps. My res temp continues to be the main factor in root rot or bacterial growth, and although h202 clearly helps a lot, keepig the thing cold is the best cure. Im swapping two two litre pop bottles frozen and a couple ice packs every 12 hours and that keeps it down easily.

im going to increase the lighting in the lower chamber substantially once i get the new cloning/vegging box up and running. I finished cutting out the 14 holes for the net pots, and that was a bitch and a half let me tell you, that's one tough plastic lid this container has.

allright so figure i should update. ill get some pics of my successful buds up here at some point.

day 36 of flowering, and my plants have finally recovered from their major pythium infection. They are all covered in bud, the tallest plant has developed a 3 inch cola, the others are mostly just covered entirely in buds. Im using 35% h202 now, and it has eradicated my infection problems. Ill he getting some hygrozyme for my next grow to help with prevention. I'm expecting maybe 1/4 O dry out of these plants, but at least some of it will be great to smoke, and the rest can always be made into honey oil or something. These plants went through a horribel bout of what was essentially the plague, and they have still produced.

I have some young rooted clones vegging in hydroton in my new veg box in the lower chamber, as well as a bunch of fresh cut clones in the cloning box. Im going to be grabbing another larger res so that ill have two large low dwc/bubbler res's with a seperation in between. Then, ill clone in my actual closet and veg on the left of my weed armoire. Ill start flowering on the right hand side and then move them up to the HPS to bud. Hopefully ill be on a month to month harvest before i know it. 30 days in bubbler cloner, 30 days growing into hydroton in bubbler dwc under cfl, then 30 days in flowering dwc under cfl, and then 30 days under HPS to finish it up. This will give 30 days veg 60 days flowering. When i can get a fast blooming strain like shishkaberry i may be able to cut the cycle to 25 days each or something, but once a month would be a fine harvest.

Major mistakes this grow:

h2o2 is a must for keeping pythium away. i have cats and thus the air itself with its dust and hairs is poison. Something needs to sterilize the environment the plants live in.
Res temperatures under 64 F really do stop root growth. Im keeping mine arround 70 now but they tend to dip down to 65 at night. Considering solutions, but dont have one yet.
Don't fuck arround and use shitty nutrients. Just get the good stuff. Im now using GH stuff, still cheap compared to the AN or something, but a diferent world from generic soluable plant food.

Plans for next grow:

Im gowing to recut the lid of my res, repositioning the 9 sprayer tubes because the sprayers i have, although technically 360 degrees, only spray in a line, or slight propellor like fan on each side at the preasures i have.
Get more airstones and maybe another pump.
Grozyme
Styrofoam to cover the tops of the net pots to avoid algea and ligt in the res

We shall see...

shishkaberry seeds; ordered

also good root growth on the plants in the lower bubbler chamber. I let the water level in the cloner get too low, and some of the clones wilted due to lack of water overnight, prhaps a couple small ones even beyond recovery, but most are fine. Been on flush since monday the 15th and will harvest next monday, day 52. The plants are solid and showing amber trichomes under the supermacro of my gf camera. Tiny little plants, i'll be happy to get 5gs out of this. But it has taught me a lot, and as soon as these plants are moved out the new ones can start cegging under the HPS to get much bigger before i throw them into flower. I'll be starting my 30/30/30 day cycle as soon as i can, although i don't know how long this next set of plants will need to veg before i can flower them for 52 days min. Sigh. Sooon. SOOOON. I guess i hope to be harvesting within... wow... 80 days as of monday i guess? eep. So long... but then a perpetual cycle will be in place, and soon it will be growing Shishkaberry. Can't complain too much i guess .

Oh damn, I have that Monday off! Need some extra hands?

lol! sure man, if you want. It won't be the epic event next harvest will be, but certainly there will be picture taking and trimming and such. As well as sterilizing. And lots of water to lug around. And kittens to play with and weed to smoke. Ill clip a popcorn bud on saturday and itll be dry to smoke by monday so we can try the barely dried un cured product lol.

vegging plants doing well, all have roots exploding out of the net pots. The flowering plants are looking nice, amber under the super macro camera and ready to go. Little tiny plants.
One of the clones i have vegging was an experiment; i took a fresh unrooted branch and stuck it into hydroton basically, making sure the stem was close to the bottom of the netpot. With water just barely touching the bottom it rooted within 14 days and wont suffer the transplant shock of being put into hydroton. I was surprised, since i've yet to find someone else who clones directly into hydroton, and yet my results were simmilar to my bubbler cloner. I can't be the only/first one to do this.

I still need one more airpump, some more stones, that reflective tape, some of my friends reflectix P) and some hooks and other hardware, but other then that ive got the whole system ready now and going now.

Also, im using containers that leak and i now have a pump feeding system a la stinkbud, ie with pvc pipe capped and the red misters. The box does leak, as he said it would. I have a peice of plastic sheeting over the top of the res with holes for the netpots. This sheet hangs over the edges of the box, and then gets tucked inside under the lip of the lid. This prevents leaks pretty much; a drip or two but it evaportes off the towel i have wrapped arround the res. It's not perfectly perfect, but it's certainly no problem, doesn't really add any maintenance.

plants growing really fast. huge root explosion in last couple days.

Good luck with this. Pics would be great

sure. got my gf camera, so here are a bunch of pics.

these go back a month at least. The first ones are older.

So harvest is done. Tiny little buds hanging in my tiny little cardboard drying box. I'll still be happy with 7 grams from this, but it was fun to harvest and see my trimmed buds which look a whole lot like amazing weed. I'll get some pics up when they are dry.

The DWC bubbler veg plants have moved up to the aeroponic setup, starting at 720 ppm. I'll move that up until i hit 1200 or until they start to burn.

I cut a bunch of clones from my moms and i'm going to experiment with cloning them directly into hydroton. It worked just fine last time and so i'm trying a full batch of clones with stems close to the bottom of the netpots in hydroton. I've got ph'd water bubbling at about a centimeter above the bottom of the pot. If this cloning run is succesfull ill probably do this every time for simplicity sake.

Can't wait for my next harvest

clones are looking great this morning; i have them under a humidity dome and they are all standing strait up at attention. Hoping on 14 days rooted with minimal to no transplants. I think it'll help the overall time.

The aero system seems to be keeping the vegging plants happy. I'm going to veg until the plants are about a foot high, since i have about three feet to work with before the light would burn em. My last plants didn't stretch at all during flowering, but they were allready afflicted by the plague then, so i imagine all their energy went into trying to make roots and fight of pythium. This round of plants must succeed! I'm adhearing by the 1g/w rule for good growers, i'm going for 400 grams max i guess. i know these plants take 50 days to flower or thereabouts, so maybe 30 days veg and then flower. By the time those are done, i should have my cycle dialed in and will be on perpetual harvest.

i would like all my flowering plants to be at least 60 days old, meaning 90 once they finish flowering. so 30 vegging and then 30 flowering under cfl. Height might become an issue here; i may have to lower/raise the shelves in my closet, but i have a fairly shallow res i can use for the flowering plants, so they can hopefully just about reach their one foot height goal in the vegging area before beginning their stretch in the flowering chamber.

My large aero res has 20L in it. My smaller DWC res that i'm using to root clones in hydroton right now, but which will eventually be a flowering dwc box has 14L in it, . My larger DWC res which will eventually be my vegging res has arround 20L but i havent measured it yet .

For those people with leaking aero tub lids, while i suppose you can screw arround with caulking and sealants and stuff, or industrial garbage bags lining the res, you can also just get some thin plastic sheeting and lay it over your res, then tuck it under the lid. I use reflectix on my lid cause it's black and cause it's an oven under that HPS. With the reflectix the room temperature has less effect then the cold shelf it's sitting on, and my res generally stays under 70 without any help. So now i have a lid, two layers of plastic sheeting, and then a layer of reflectix insulation, all with holes in them for the net pots. Then, when the lid is on, i tuck both the plastic sheets under all four edges of the lid so they are hanging in the res. This prevents the water hitting the lid from beneath runing down the lid and sides and then out of the res. It is easy to replace and can be torn off with an exacto easily. Also, if you have sites on your res that aren't in use, just don't cut the hole for the netpot and it's sealed and u can just throw a peice of insulation on top.

so dried enough to jar; stems just bending still but weed certainly smokeable; we got fucked. 5.3g dried! LOL! I don't care, it's pretty and it's great and it will only get better and better. My current vegging plants are doing excellent, lots of new growth over the last couple days. Tons of roots, all are staying white and happy, ppm at 700 still an holding, clones look great, standing up straight in te hydroton and my dwc clones are finally rooting.
The op, as it stands, is operating well. I know i'll have finished plants within 50 days of flowering them, so it just comes down to how long i veg them for. I am hoping for 30 days or under for them to be big enough to grow me 20-40 grams per plant. Shooting for that 400g ceiling lol. We shall see.

plants look good today, the oldest are putting out their first 5 fingered leaves and the tallest plant is at least 9 inches tall . One of them is actually looking terrible, leaves wilting and looking dying, but its root system is pristine and excellent so i think i just had a fan too close to it, drying it out too much. It was closest to the fan by at least 3inches so... anyway, fan is out and that sole plant is under a tupperware dome to recover.It might loose these leaves but itll probably just grow new ones. Might end up a pygmy plant if it takes too long to recover. We flower at 1.5 feet one way or another.

Clones in hydroton still look imaculate, most are pristine green and some are shwoing yellowing and just the beginning of curling in the lowerlarge fan leaves, so they are just starting to canabalize themselves for their push for survival. If this works well i'll be so happy. Cloning directly into hydroton in a dwc res eliminates an entire system for some people. If it works in dwc hydroton then imho most aero veg units could clone direct as by just leaving the pump on 24/7. Why do we transplant them instead? Doesn't that extra step just add stress and possibly break roots?

changed res today, plants now at 900 ppm , still 30min on/30 min off on the pump timer. Redid some of the cooltube plumbing, now it can be hung lower and moved arround to keep the plants from stretching too much. Grabbing a new higher cfm fan i think for the cooltube; it's not too hot that it can't be within a few inches of the plants, but it still heats the cab to 30C, dropping to maybe 25 at night with the ambient air temp drop. So i'll get a higher cfm fan and keep the two 50 cfm's that i allready have for venting alone. I think i'll be able to drop the temp 5 degrees maybe, we shall see.

Having some issue with res temps, having added 200 more watts of cfl to the bottom chambers, the air coming into the top chamber is allready 5 degrees hotter. Im thinking im going to put an intake vent in the back of the unit for the top chamber. I could always put a fan or something in the bottom if it becomes necesary. Either wa, im back to a frozen pop bottle every 12 hours to keep it below 70, but 2l of ice in a 20l res only drops the temp by about 8-10 C so im keeping it above 60. Below that seems to slow growth substantially.


Clones in bubbler looking sick but all are rooting. Clones in Hydroton DWC are looking pristine and perfect, but no roots yet.

so i grabbed a 100cfm fan for my cooltube, it certainly lowered the overall temp by a couple degrees and the tube itself is much cooler too. I don't have a place to hook the old 50 cfm fan up to use it as a second vent fan- yet. Im going to cut some holes on monday prbly, and i'll take the cooltube fan and use it to pull in external air for the cooltube through a vent in the top. Then illl cut an intake hole in the back of the closet some where for the upper chamber. Finally, i'll increase the exsaust hole in the carbon filter box and cut another exaust hole for the third fan. In the end ill have two 50 cfm fans venting the cab through a carbon filter box and a 100cmf fan running a cooltube external intake venting through a different exaughst hole.

everything is installed now, 100 cfm fan running the cooltube, two 50 cfm's venting the cab, ambient temps maxing at 28 C, but the cooltube is within a few inches of the plants. The plants are looking pretty damn happy about that too, growth is pretty impressive. I'm running the pump at 30 mins on 1hr off, and im using one 2l ice bottle every 12 hours. PPM at 1100 this morning.

Interestingly enough, a bunch of my plants have developed two main stems. I was planning on lolipopping eveything and going ABF style SOG, but i think i'll let them veg out for a bit before i make a decision. I'm still going to have to at least lst the side growth, and i'll certainly trim some of it, but i'm going to see when i run into space issues. I'm on day 8 of HPS veg, and i'm sure they will be ready within the 30 day veg period im allowing them. So if these plants were ready in 72 days, and if my hydroton clones root within 12 days (which would put them at 19 days rooted), then the hydroton plants would have 60 days before being moved to the top chamber. That means i could do 40 days of cfl dwc vegging, 20 days cfl flowering and then 30 more days of flowering under the HPS. So next harvest in 72 days, and then 102 days, then 132 days. If i start my shishkaberry (when they fucking get here) plants within 12 days then within 60 days i could clone them, 60 more for the clones to take and veg. So they would be in the cycle at 162 days. Jesus, 5 months away from shishkaberry

so i've got 82 days before more clones need to be put into cfl flowering. If i want to give them 30 veg and 30 to clone then i need to start those within 22 days, so i don't need to clone again till the 24th.

March 24th- clone
may 13th- harvest
June 12th- Harvest
Jully 12th- Harvest
August 11th- Harvest
September 10th- Harvest
October 10th- Harvest
November 9th- Harvest
December 9th- Harvest

Clones in hydroton still looking great, clones in bubbler finnally rooting, dwc cloning is bad and i'm never doing it again lol. If the hydroton clones root well then i'll have a new cloning proccess, if not then i'll use my bubbler again.

The mother plants look bad, i may have overfertilized them, and also they ended up in higher temps then in the cab. I'm going to replace them this round; ill get a couple of my left over clones and just throw em into dirt. Gonna top them young and hopefully they will bush out and provide many happy clones. I have some room in the cab on one side, so i may go ahead and try flowering a couple of the mother under the HPS. If not, i'll dry em and turn em into honey oil

I'm also going to be doing one mass soil cloning run, i'm going to get a bunch of transplant pots and clone about 50 soil clones under fluorescent light asap. There are plans for them...