Aeroponic/NFT Skywalker grow

So I have been perfecting my system for the past month or so and it is just about ready. It is a small scale prototype for a larger system I am going to build later. It is going to have two tubes with only 3 plants. Two 25gl rezervoirs connected with three 1 inch bulkheads and 1 inch pvc. The system has a 400gph pump. I am going to have this all in a grow tent that I have because the room this is in is too big for just three plants and I can better control the climate and make more use of the light in the tent with this amount of plants. One of the rezervoirs is in the tent and the other is outside. I have an 1/4hp aquarium chiller w/ a 1000gph pump that will take water from the outside rez and feed it to the inside rez. The entire system is insulated with radiant barrier so that the root zone temperatures fluctuate as small as possible and so that the aquarium chiller doesn't have to do as much work. I have a Sentinnel EVC-2 climate controller that keeps everything perfect. I have the temps at a constant 75F and humidity at around 55%(it was around 65-75% during veg but today is the first day of flowering). I have 1000watts of light in a air cooled reflector used with a 425cfm fan. The air that cools the light never mixes with the tent air, it is sucked in from outside the tent and then spit right back out. I have a 800watt portable air conditioner that will keep the room with the tent in it at a constant 70F. To keep it cool in the tent I have a 440cfm can fan connected to a speed controller (set to around 250cfm) and then connected to the EVC-2. For now I just let the air vent out of the top of the ten but later on I am going to install an exhaust.

Pictures:

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Man that is a beautiful set-up. That controller looks awesome. I'm subscribed.

I'm going to build an almost identical system for my next grow. Got a spare water chiller from my Reeftank too.

Isthisnametaken said:

I'm going to build an almost identical system for my next grow. Got a spare water chiller from my Reeftank too.

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Nice man, the chiller is definitely an essential part. No root rot...ever, and also the water holds more DO (disolved oxygen) when the water is 68 or so compared to 75.

very sweet! How does exhausting through the filter work for you? Im thinking about doing that. But it looks like the other end of the ducting is just sucking in outside air?

VaporBros said:

very sweet! How does exhausting through the filter work for you? Im thinking about doing that. But it looks like the other end of the ducting is just sucking in outside air?

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I actually have it set up the other way around. I originally was going to use that fan for two of these reflectors but I am just using one right now so I justput the fan on top of that little filter to cut it down a little, as well as cut back on some of the noise. The air then just comes out the top. I havn't been using it for smell but later on I might put it inside the tent to use as an exhaust/smell controll.

Btw Vaporbros, is that piece in your avatar yours? If it is, that bowlpiece is fucking sick....

yeah its mine. The bowl was done by Opus, he blows alot of the custom ROOR bowls and this one is supposed to be his first one for ROOR. I have more pics if youd like to check it out some more. Thanks!

VaporBros said:

yeah its mine. The bowl was done by Opus, he blows alot of the custom ROOR bowls and this one is supposed to be his first one for ROOR. I have more pics if youd like to check it out some more. Thanks!

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That thing is so sweet, I was looking for a custom bowl for my ROOR, but nothing I have seen has been as sick as that. But yeah for sure just post the pics here if ya want.

cool man. Here ya go..

VaporBros said:

cool man. Here ya go..

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Hah, that thing is even sicker looking than I thought. The artwork is pinpoint perfect from the looks of it, damn you lucky.

Yeah i love it. Im into glass artwork and whatnot. I love good taste hahah

K well I'm still waiting on one more bulkhead to connect the reservoirs for the main system. I couldn't let the plants get any bigger though so I just moved the veg system with them in it into the tent. Everything seems to be working out nicely, and the controller is keeping things relatively steady. Climate is definitely the hardest aspect of growing to perfectly control and yet it is one of the, if not the number 1, most important thing when growing indoors. I'm keeping the outside room at 70 or so with the portable air-conditioner, and the inside of the tent at around 76 by bringing in new air whenever the temp gets too high. The controller has a 2 degree dead-band so that if the temp rises to 78 it will cool it back down to 76 and then turn off and wait until it goes over 78 again. The humidity is being held at around 58-62 percent right now because it is only the beginning of flowering, but I plan on keeping it at 55 and below after the third week. The water temp is at around 69 degrees so I haven't plugged in the chiller yet, I think I'm just going to wait to use it with the main system.

I changed the water yesterday. I use RO water, that comes out at 7ppm. I added 75% nutrients for the base nutrients, and 50-70% or so for the additives. Everything is in ml per gallon.

Aqua Flakes: 5ml
Roots Excelurator: 1.1ml
Multizyme: 2.5ml
Sweet: 5ml
Superthrive: 1 drop per gallon
Drip clean: 0.4ml

This soup brought the water to 840ppm, I plan on never exceeding 1000ppm.

I keep the PH at 5.6 to 6.0 and try and let it fluctuate between that about once every day or two so the plants get the full range of nutrients.

Right now I am only using a 600wat HPS that I have because I didn't want to go from fluorescent to straight under the 1000 watt. I don't think I will start using it until I put the plants in the main system.

So I went ahead and hooked up the chiller this morning when the lights were still on. I set it to keep the water at 68 degrees. I was orginally going to wait but this morning it was a little musty smelling in the root chamber. It has been on for about 6 to 7 hours now and the smell is almost completely gone. The chiller works like a charm. The pump range is 600-1000gph, and I'm using 1000 so I figure it will be working as well as it can.

I will post some pictures later when the lights are on.

Room Temperature: 68-71 degrees
Tent Temperature: 75-76 degrees
Tent Humidity: 60%
Water Temperature: 67-68 degrees

Everything is looking good but I decided to change the water because I changed the amount of nutrients I plan on giving them and if I didn't change the water then I would be way ahead of schedule. I decided not to add the Botanicare Sweet until later too. So with this in mind the first time I changed the water for flowering the ppms were at 840, now with the new water and no Sweet it is at 580. BIG difference, Sweet takes up sooo many ppms and after thinking about it 840 was way too high for the first week of flowering. I probably won't get near that until week 4 or 5 because like I said I plan on never exceeding 1000, maybe even 900.

Anyways, other than this everything is going good. I'm still waiting on that bulkhead fitting to finish up the final system (from the first pictures) though so until then I'm just sittin here.







Funny funny

BTW the two plants to the left are Skywalker, but the one to the right with the bigger fan leaves is Og. They were all topped at about 1ft and are all now about 16inches or so. I finished the trimming/topping a week before I went into flower so that they have as much energy for flowering as possible.

Some people trim when they have already started flowering and IMO this is really dumb. When you trim your plant in terms of topping or big time trimming like taking branches off (not just a few leaves, thats fine) then you should definitely get it done before flowering. Lets say that you top your plants a week into flowering. They will take the next week and a half or so to heal themselves not concentrating on producing bud at all, and if there is any bud development then it will be fairly small compared to if the plant had 100% of its energy. That means that you might as well take a week and a half off your flowering time, a week and a halfs worth of growth that would have taken place during that time that it was, and a week and a halfs worth of more yield that was lost because of it.

Here are some pictures from yesterday, everything is going smoothly.







This leaf's middle blade is almost 2 inches across! I don't have small hands...

Here are pictures from today, just took them. Everything is going good, the plants drank over 2600 ml of water last night and today! They are growing so fast now that they are under the HPS, when I switch over to the 1000watt I can only imagine how fast they will grow.

Jesus man, the bulkhead fittings are still not here, and they won't be coming tomorrow of course because it is sunday. Hopefully they will be here on monday so I can finally throw these ladies into the NFT system, they will be lower down than now and so I'm going to install the 1000watt bulb and ballast.

Also, I installed a Lux WIN100 plug in thermostat that I use with my portable air-conditioner. This way it won't be on all the time making the room way too cold. Plus the temperature gauge on these things are never that accurate because the thermometer for the temperature gauge is in the air-conditioner itself (which is definitely colder than the air 5 feet across the room). It just comes on every once in a while whenever the temperature goes over the set degree on the thermostat...exactly how a regular thermostant works with your air conditioning. Handy for cutting back on the electricity bill too.