Vero 10 2000k w/ Samsung 3500k Purple Afghan Kush - DINAFEM DIY grow box

nc208

Well-Known Member
Good day everyone,
I have been posting bits and pieces all over and wanted to start a grow journal of my experiment. I wanted to design an area that can grow 1 plant very nicely. Looking at most tent sizes and how many people put plants into I decided on something smaller so I used 18" x 18" x 48". My plan is to do a scrog grow and top it fim a few times in veg to maximize space. I designed the light to be a complete coverage vs just using 1 cob and driving them hard.

Grow cab 18"x18"x48"
made of white 5/8" Melamine
(I picked up 1 - 4' x 8' sheet for 30$ and this was enough material for complete cab and door.)

Light =16" x 12"
4 x 96 pcs Samsung 3500k 80 CRI lm561c 16`` strips, each done in 8s12p beach run at 1400ma which is 116.6667ma per diode.
6 x vero 10 2000k 65 CRI chips being run at 350ma each.
Samsung strips are attached to 1.5" 1/8" Aluminum u channel
Veros are attached to 1.25" 1/8" Aluminum U chanel
Drivers are mounted externally and use quick connects.
HLG-120H-C1400B
ELG-75-C350A

Circulation,
I am currently using 6 x Panasonic Panaflo FBA09A24H which I got for bargain price of 4$ a pop, these things can be run at 24v or 12v .17a and hit around 55 CFM(however at 24v these things sound like a bathroom exhaust fan, 12v they are dead quiet so I run them at 12v for half power).

Carbon Filter,
I built this myself out of 1/8" black acrylic and added two 90mm pc fans running at .25a each one intake and one exhaust, I make my own carbon filter by rolling 10 micron felt covered in activated carbon so its like a sushi roll or ro membrane layered and sealed with some zip ties.

Water is a ro\di membrane with a ph of 6.
current nutes are a growtek Kickstart for the seedling and transition phase, Im going to transplant to the 5 gal smart pot in a weeks time and then I will switch to GH MaxiGrow, I just want a simple dry nute that I can mix myself and adjust strength. For flower I will use Just GH MaxiBloom. Also supplementing with cal mag because of RO.

Strain is Purple afghan Kush by Dinafem. Fem seeds.
so far both seeds germinated 100% using water glass method for 18hrs and then switch to paper towel.
I stupidly killed first seedling by not paying attention to temps and it got real cold and pretty sure I killed the root because it never did anything once i planted it, waited 2 weeks then gave up and germed another.

Here is the 1st pic which is just the 3500k on

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Here is a shot of both the 3500k + 2000k at full power

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And last pic shows just the 2000k diodes so you can get a sense of how different the spectrum are

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Here is some shots of the light so you can see how I made the heatsink, I had the veros sunken a bit so to create a mini refelector using the slightly longer 1.5" channels. I used Arctic illumnia silver paste and nylon screws and bolts to secure the strips to the heatsinks. The samsungs use 18 AWG solid core and the veros use 22 AWG solid core.

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Here is a shot of how the cab looks currently, The area to the right of the light is the Air intake on the cabinet, there are 3 of the panasonic fans setup in parallel blowing air cross the light and down to transfer heat towards bottom of box, Light stays cool to the touch doing this method. The big behemoth in front is temp fix for humidity, I was struggling with 30-38% RH and now get 55-60% so much better for veg but quite big so i think I will put it outside and direct a it towards and intake down below.
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Now for some fun shots of the lil one.

This first shot is Oct 1, this is approx 9 days after seed.

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Next is done on Oct 3rd, not much growth

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Here we fast forward to today 6 days later Oct 9th,

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My experiment so far is using the veros 2000k's for veg as well. I was originally going to use them for a flower boost but then @Rocket Soul suggested trying them in veg because they contained no IR, just heavy on yellow and orange. So far growth has been great but will continue to post progress to see how it vegs and how much stretch, so far it is very compact with only a few mm's to cm between each node.

Hope you enjoy,
Any and all Feedback is welcome, thanks for looking.
NC
 
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nc208

Well-Known Member
Update,
Today's pic was taken Oct 17, 2017. Growth has been very good while remaining quite short, I had the plant way too close to the leds that the plant naturally LST itself. Very weird because I was planning on doing this but the plant did it on its own, I re potted to the final 5 gal pot and adjusted plant to proper light levels

I decided to go with the general hydroponics simple program because it looked easy and fairly inexpensive, only a couple bottle nutes.

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horribleherk

Well-Known Member
good job I love this kind of grow I use gh simple schedule for most of my grows I'm doing single plant grows lately in 3x3 tents it's just simple I'm using royal gold tupur for my grow medium & 3 gal smart pots & a Scrog if it's cool I'll pull up a chair
 

nc208

Well-Known Member
Next update - Oct 23, 2017
So right now total time from seed has been about 1 month. The growth is unbelievable, there is next to none. But the plant is turning into a fat bush on its own. The total height of the plant is around 6-7" off the soil, my original plan was to top this baby around now because I wanted to keep it short but because of the lack of height in the plant I am very tempted not to top it and let it grow and see how it turns out.

First up we have our top down.
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Next i took side profiles from each side to see how short and bushy this thing is. Considering the description of this plant is can get to 2.5m outdoors this should be a taller plant I think by this point.

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Enjoy

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nc208

Well-Known Member
Last Veg update. Oct 30,

I decided to top it a week ago to ensure it stays somewhat short, the plants full height is 12" now with a ton of bush. Tomorrow Ima flip it to 12/12 to start the flower.
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nc208

Well-Known Member
Today is day 7 of the first week of flower, growth this past week has been huge. Plant is showing come small spots on leaves, I've inspected for bugs but seen nothing. I've been using RO/DI water and suspect a deficiency so I started by increasing the cal mag and if that doesn't help my next target will be potassium.

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nc208

Well-Known Member
Nov 13, today is day 14 of flower. I defoliated 2 days ago to open up the canopy and promote lower growth. I also got rid of lots of little tiny growth that wouldn't have turned into much. I'e continued to increase my cal mag because the plant is showing some twisting leaves but the spots I reported on last time have stopped spreading. I think my rodi is the culprit stripping the water too clean.

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RockStarGrower

Well-Known Member
I just popped one of the dinafem purple afghan kush seeds. Going to follow your grow. Cool led set up you did there. I wonder what the light spectrum is on the strip leds? Oh and i got a tweeked formula for the nutes you are using if you want to check it out. Its tested and used by 100's of people that all will swear by it.
 
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nc208

Well-Known Member
I just popped one of the dinafem purple afghan kush seeds. Going to follow your grow. Cool led set up you did there. I wonder what the light spectrum is on the strip leds? Oh and i got a tweeked formula for the nutes you are using if you want to check it out. Its tested and used by 100's of people that all will swear by it.
the strip leds are samsung 3500k, whats the formula?
I'm currently using Maxibloom, GH Rapid Root, GH floralicious, liquid koolbloom and calmag. My last feeding gave her some nute burn so i went half strength today and did half nutes and half ro.
 

RockStarGrower

Well-Known Member
I use the gh3 formula, the tweek weekly sched I got is been my go to for soil, hempy and hydro. It the best I have found/used with out spending alot.

I didnt know the strip lights worked so well. Do they put off alot of heat?
 

nc208

Well-Known Member
I use the gh3 formula, the tweek weekly sched I got is been my go to for soil, hempy and hydro. It the best I have found/used with out spending alot.
I didnt know the strip lights worked so well. Do they put off alot of heat?
They can depending on how hard you drive them, I'm using the heat to help warm up my cab. I'm currently running the light at about 165w out of a max 215w. I use 3 90mm 27 cfm fans as my intake blowing across the heat sinks forcing air down. I have a hygrometer at top of my light so I can see how hot it gets and warmest it shows is around 29 degrees Celsius at this power.
 

nc208

Well-Known Member
update, today is day 21 of flower. Plant is thickening out nicely and already a ton of bud forming. Top of Canopy is approx 18" away from light.

Oh and I started processing photos so color is much better now. No more yellow tint.
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Some close ups

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Ryante55

Well-Known Member
Looking good how high above the canopy are the lights? They look kinda high. I was running my lights around 20-22 inches now I run at 12-18 the growth is way better and they eat alot more nutrients
 

nc208

Well-Known Member
Looking good how high above the canopy are the lights? They look kinda high. I was running my lights around 20-22 inches now I run at 12-18 the growth is way better and they eat alot more nutrients
As of right now top of the canopy is 18 inches away, I'm getting roughly 35,000 lux at that point, what should I be aiming for?
 

nc208

Well-Known Member
I took your advice @Ryante55 and raised the plant up about 6 inches, I adjusted the light down to 120w so not to shock the plant too much and lux is now reading 46000, in a few days I will start to increase/monitor to see light burn. According to some research I was giving the minimum level they needed so plan is to increase to 60,000 lux gradually.
 

Ryante55

Well-Known Member
I took your advice @Ryante55 and raised the plant up about 6 inches, I adjusted the light down to 120w so not to shock the plant too much and lux is now reading 46000, in a few days I will start to increase/monitor to see light burn. According to some research I was giving the minimum level they needed so plan is to increase to 60,000 lux gradually.
As of right now top of the canopy is 18 inches away, I'm getting roughly 35,000 lux at that point, what should I be aiming for?
Not sure about lux I run 12-16 inches during flower and I have 46w/sqft looks like your around 50w/sqft so I would think like 14-18 inches would be pretty good
 
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