SunHut 4x8, 2x1000, coco w/ cutting edge nutes, 1st hydro grow, please comment!

Hello everyone!!

This is my first Hydro grow experience. I am legally growing my garden in California under Prop 215 & SB 420.

My "room" setup is:
- Sun Hut 4' x 8' (new silver one)
- 2 x 1000 watts with lumatek digital ballasts
- 2 x Sun System Hood w/ 6" air ducts
- 1 x 6" Dragon carbon filter @ 275 cfm
- 2 x 6" Can Fan @ 200 cfm

The growing medium I have chosen is COCO (Botanicare Ready-Grow Moisture edition which is premixed coco w/ bat guano, seaweed extract, perlite, etc). I have a 45 gallon reservoir tank with an airpump & airstones.

Nutrients that I will be using is the CUTTING-EDGE 3 part solution w/ ph up & ph down.

***Some questions though...

stuck at a temperature of near 80 degrees

As of right now, the ducting is run: duct to the room -> light -> light -> can fan -> ducting to the roof. The can fan is pulling air from the room through both lights and then being pushed out into the roof.

There is another can fan that is connected to the filter, which will be running on a 15 min on/off timer, that is sucking air out of the sun hut.

I thought that this would create enough negative pressure to bring in air but it seems as if it's not sucking in air fast enough to cool the air when both HID lights are running.

Should i buy another small inline fan that is sucking air from the room that the sunhut is in and blowing the air into the sunhut under the 2 4x4 trays? or is that not necessary? please help, the temperature is still in the 80's!

can anyone direct me to some semi cheap UV light safety glasses i can wear when dealing with my babies when the hps and hid lights are on? thanks everyone!

wonderland420 said:

can anyone direct me to some semi cheap UV light safety glasses i can wear when dealing with my babies when the hps and hid lights are on? thanks everyone!

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Subscribed
As to the temps....I am currently battling the exact opposite problem. I had to add a heater to the tent the other day as my lights on temps were barely hitting 70 degrees with lights off temps hovering around 58.

A few Q's for you:
Approx. how many feet of ducting do you have connecting the lights and exiting the room?

Is the ducting running fairly straight without a lot of bends and loops?

I currently have mine running Fan pulling ------> light------>carbon filter until my other 600 comes in at which time I will configure it so that the lights have their own fan and the scrubber it's own so that I can run CO2 without waste.

Post up some pics if you can so we can try and get those temps down.

As for the Alaskan Ice Q from my thread....There aren't problems really.....it seems that they probably could have stabilized the strain more before releasing it. There are a lot of pheno's popping up with very little consistency. I think it is still worth giving it a shot.....I am doing 2 different plantings and pulling the best pheno from each and will go from there. If you haven't bought the seeds yet hold off.....see how my grow goes as well as overmyhead as he is running some in his sun hut as well. Here is a link to his grow.

shipinit said:

A few Q's for you:
Approx. how many feet of ducting do you have connecting the lights and exiting the room?

Is the ducting running fairly straight without a lot of bends and loops?

I currently have mine running Fan pulling ------> light------>carbon filter until my other 600 comes in at which time I will configure it so that the lights have their own fan and the scrubber it's own so that I can run CO2 without waste.

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The ducting that is cooling the lights are all pretty much on the same level plane. There is probably 2-3 feet of ducting intaking air into the first light,then another 2-3 feet of ducting going directly into another light, and then maybe 1-2 feet of ducting into the fan. then probably 6 feet of ducting from the fan to the outside air area.

Also, today i was running temperature checks and for some reason, the temperature is nearly 5 degrees hotter when the filter is running than when it's not.

I plan on getting a 16" fan oscillating on low speed (because i found out that the sunhut leaves a lot of room, enough room to put in a fan) and seeing how that works. im realy hoping i dont have to resort to another 4" inline fan pulling air and then running smaller ducting and pushing that air above the trays and under the light. what do you all think?

wonderland420 said:

The ducting that is cooling the lights are all pretty much on the same level plane. There is probably 2-3 feet of ducting intaking air into the first light,then another 2-3 feet of ducting going directly into another light, and then maybe 1-2 feet of ducting into the fan. then probably 6 feet of ducting from the fan to the outside air area.

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Outside of the house or just the tent?

wonderland420 said:

- 2 x 6" Can Fan @ 200 cfm

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Also ur fans may not be moving enough air. I am using six inchers which move 440 cfm and my XXL tent is around 76 = 82degrees.

Good luck with the temps.
+sub

orzz said:

Outside of the house or just the tent?

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I am pulling from the bottom of the room that the hut is in and the air temperature outside the hut is around 70-72 degrees.

i think i got temperature issue fixed. I bought a 4 inch inline and am pulling air now and pushing it into the room right under a 18" fan that is oscillating.

Right now i have 20 babies. the back 2 rows is white widow (w/ the white plastic thing) and the first 2 rows are hindu skunk. All from the oaksterdam university.

I am wondering about my res. Right now the tap water after running the air stones for 24hours was at 8.0ph. So i added my nutes first which was all at 30% of what they recommended. What they recommended was: Micro 8ml/gal, Bloom 5ml/gal, Grow 17ml/gal

What i did was Micro: (8*30%=2.4, 2.4*20=4 48ml, Bloom (5*30%=1.5, 1.5*20=30) 30ml, & Grow (17*30%=5.1, 5.1*20=102) 102 ml. (These numbers are based on a 20 gallon res.)

i THEN phd my water down to 5.9-6.0.

I then checked my nutes which was at 700-710 ppm, 68 degrees, and 5.9-6.0ph.

I fed this water to my plants and it seems like some of them are drooping. Did i do something wrong?

wonderland420 said:

I am pulling from the bottom of the room that the hut is in and the air temperature outside the hut is around 70-72 degrees.

i think i got temperature issue fixed. I bought a 4 inch inline and am pulling air now and pushing it into the room right under a 18" fan that is oscillating.

Right now i have 20 babies. the back 2 rows is white widow (w/ the white plastic thing) and the first 2 rows are hindu skunk. All from the oaksterdam university.

I am wondering about my res. Right now the tap water after running the air stones for 24hours was at 8.0ph. So i added my nutes first which was all at 30% of what they recommended. What they recommended was: Micro 8ml/gal, Bloom 5ml/gal, Grow 17ml/gal

What i did was Micro: (8*30%=2.4, 2.4*20=4 48ml, Bloom (5*30%=1.5, 1.5*20=30) 30ml, & Grow (17*30%=5.1, 5.1*20=102) 102 ml. (These numbers are based on a 20 gallon res.)

i THEN phd my water down to 5.9-6.0.

I then checked my nutes which was at 700-710 ppm, 68 degrees, and 5.9-6.0ph.

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Sounds like it is fixed.

wonderland420 said:

I fed this water to my plants and it seems like some of them are drooping. Did i do something wrong?

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I am not sure that anything is wrong but I am not as experienced as others. Foe my ebb and flow those numbers are ok but is it the same for soil? I thought soil needed a higher pH.

orzz said:

I am not sure that anything is wrong but I am not as experienced as others. Foe my ebb and flow those numbers are ok but is it the same for soil? I thought soil needed a higher pH.

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im not using soil. im using botanicare's coco moisture mix formula. do you think i possibly overwatered them? that's a sign of drooping leaves right?

wonderland420 said:

im not using soil. im using botanicare's coco moisture mix formula. do you think i possibly overwatered them? that's a sign of drooping leaves right?

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My bad just looked at the pots. lol
I water mine every 5 1/2 hours now lights 24/7.
Yes it could be over watering or just maybe just a little stress with the new nutes.

Day 2.

Fed at 5.9-6.0 ph / 710-730 ppm / 70 deg water.

am i on the right feeding schedule? i only water once a day one hour after the light has come on.

***on a side note. the water im using is tap and after running airstones for 24 hrs, the water is 8.0-8.1 ph / 300-310ppm / 68 deg

wonderland420 said:

Day 2.

Fed at 5.9-6.0 ph / 710-730 ppm / 70 deg water.

am i on the right feeding schedule? i only water once a day one hour after the light has come on.

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Why aren't you running lights 24/7? How many hours are they under the lights?

I think you are under watering.

wonderland420 said:

***on a side note. the water im using is tap and after running airstones for 24 hrs, the water is 8.0-8.1 ph / 300-310ppm / 68 deg

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Your water ppm is high from the tap. I suggest looking to using a RO filter to get the ppm down.

wonderland420 said:

Day 2.

Fed at 5.9-6.0 ph / 710-730 ppm / 70 deg water.

am i on the right feeding schedule?

tap water is 8.0-8.1 ph / 300-310ppm / 68 deg

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The ppm of your solution only contains about 400 ppm nutes.
I would pump the nutes up, what size is your res?

i'm thinking underwatering could be causing this as well, although I'm no expert and am not familiar with coco and how it retains water... I know with rockwool you'd want to water at least twice a day, and for hydroton probably 3-4 times... also may want to get that ph closer to 5.5-5.6 from what I know... 300 ppm tap water is very HIGH, if you cannot afford ro you may want to get a cheap filter to go on your faucet, this should help the tap water...

Nice grow. Is your sunhut completely light proof?

SMOKEDATKU$H said:

Nice grow. Is your sunhut completely light proof?

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My shunhut is lightproof except for a couple of pin holes around some threading that I caulked with black caulk. Just a drop of silicon caulking and no more pin holes.

orzz said:

My shunhut is lightproof except for a couple of pin holes around some threading that I caulked with black caulk. Just a drop of silicon caulking and no more pin holes.

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Hmm. What did you do about the 3 air intakes on the lower part of the tent.

SMOKEDATKU$H said:

Hmm. What did you do about the 3 air intakes on the lower part of the tent.

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Tape 'em and pull air in thru a hepa filter that is plumbed thru a lower round vent on tent with ducting.
Going to build a airbox for the summer that will pull cold, filtered into thru the vent from my window a/c.

SMOKEDATKU$H said:

Nice grow. Is your sunhut completely light proof?

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for right now it is light proof except for the small light leak where the air vents are but luckily for me, the trays are above the vents and the trays stretch out longer than for the plants to sense light so hopefully it'll be fine. i love the idea of black caulk.

jimjones420 said:

i'm thinking underwatering could be causing this as well, although I'm no expert and am not familiar with coco and how it retains water... I know with rockwool you'd want to water at least twice a day, and for hydroton probably 3-4 times... also may want to get that ph closer to 5.5-5.6 from what I know... 300 ppm tap water is very HIGH, if you cannot afford ro you may want to get a cheap filter to go on your faucet, this should help the tap water...

Click to expand...

i thought i was underwatering also but the coco medium seems to retain water pretty well. i water once a day one hour after lights are on, and yesterday, when i had to repot the babies the soil was still wet! i'll definitely update if things change. they are kinda small right now and not drinking as much water.

you are right about the fact that i cannot afford a RO right now but hopefully if this run goes well then i can. my res is a 45 gallon but for the 1st week i only filled it up to 20 gallons. the tap where im at sucks, i know, at 300 ppm but what can i do right now right?

400ppm is quite low right now i agree. i was told that the first week i shoudl start really low (around 25%-30%) of recommended nutes and then slowly build up. today's day 4 so i'll put up some pictures and all my water level ranges.

i also agreed with you in the very beginning that i thought i should have my ph at around 5.5-5.7ish but i took into account that coco is KINDA like soil in that it retains soil properties when all those other additives are added. since soil ph is around 6.1-6.3 i thought i'd go right in the middle at around 5.8-6.0. what do you guys think about this theory?

BTW, thank you so much, all of you, for helping me in this journey. i appreciate the time you all are taking in reading this journal and commenting also. i'm always wiling to listen.

Also, i am running the lights at 18/6, not 24, just cuz i'm copying one of my buddy's schedule and he has the same coco medium and nutes. just thought i'd follow someone else's blueprint before experimenting too much?

Get your PH to be about 6.2-6.5, and bring your lights down a bit. You probably dont need to water that often...maybe every 2 days or so with SOIL. Unless your soil is really drying out because its not coming up high enough to the roots and plant. Why did you choose to do soil w/ the ebb/flow?

Have fun......your setup ROCKS..check out my hydro sea of green