First HID grow, 600w MH/HPS

Hello RIU! I'm here to share my first HID grow with you and hopefully gain some knowledge from you amazing growers!
for this grow I have:
600w Apollo cooltube with wings
6in VenTech inline fan/filter combo
3gal dirtpot brand cloth pots
5gal " "
Very fine coco
Very coarse coco
RootsOrganic Master Pack

The beans I have come from some Mexican brick that goes for ~$20 a quad here. Real low quality bud, however I have seen at least one girl from the same type of bagseed that was worth the effort to grow. The rest come from some pretty good mids and one or two cannatonic bagseeds as well. I'm choosing not to buy good clones/beans due to a tight budget and a desire to dial in my setup before I put in some good genetics.

I have chosen to follow nugbuckets style I mainlining on this grow and have one sexed girl pruned for 4 heads so far. The rest are still wee baby's so I've left some foliage on the girl to clone later just in case I get too many boys! I've been following a few of you guys very closely and have given a couple people praise on their skills because I hope to emulate their results! So feel free to chime in with questions on why I'm doing things the way I am or to give me other ideas! I'm still new at this so I have alot to learn!

Good luck!

Your going to be fairly happy with your light and hood. I have the exact same one and it out performs the other one I got for the same price. Good Luck.

I am so far! It's running a little but hot in there right now, stays at ~84F in there :/. Ill add a booster fan and do a dedicated exhaust system for the lamp and one for the grow area if needed tho. Only thing is the plants don't seem to be affected by the slight overheat? Anyways I saw a bit of nute burn on the girl in the 3 gal so I did a straight RO watering today in hopes that'll help a little but but she's throwing a new leaf set a day at this point. So stoked!!The pics are of the two mid grade beans and the picture of four is the Mexican brick stuff. All put into peat pellets on the same day. All my Mexicans are growing fast and vigiourus. Just like before when I tried growing it! The last is of course my girl topped for four mains. You can see the burn a bit :/

looking good. good luck.

Just an update for you guys, things are going a bit slower than I had hoped but it might be from high temps? Lights on dances from 80-83F. It doesn't help being on for the hottest part of the day.

Would I stress the plants by giving them an extended light period and changing them to a different lights on time and keeping the 18/6 on/off schedule? Basically changing lights on from like 6am to 9pm? This way I can try to battle the heat by running at night more!

Also a quick group shot from the day I got the light set up till this morning!

That is a good question. I expect that you would want to
make a series of smaller changes, but I have not done this.

I also moved my "day" to 8 PM to 8 AM, but I without changing
when the "day" started. (basically when I flipped)

Good luck,

JD

Thanks for the invite Bleez, I'm subbed. You look to be off to a great start.

Low 80s is a little higher than optimal but should not cause any issues on its own but make sure there is plenty of air movement. Light schedule changes have less of an impact in veg than in flower and even less early in veg. Personally, if I were in your scenario I would just skip the next dark period and start the light schedule with the next dark period at your new desired time. I agree with JD that later in veg and certainly in flower, light schedule changes should be gradual. I run my veg lights from 7am - 2am (PL-L bulbs, low heat) and run my flower room 9pm to 9am (HPS). For me, its more important to run the flower lighting when the outside temps are cooler.

Yeah I figured ill just give em a longer lights on and then set my dark time from there, thanks guys and nice to have you all along for support and advice

Have a good day everyone!!

A funny side-effect of using day for night is that you do SO much less
poking and fliddling with the ladies. LOL. I miss this. They seem to love it. Ha!

I am a too-attentive lover it seems. :0)

I get up up in time to give them a check, but often forget in all the other things
going on. Growing in five gallon buckets means that they do not need water very
often and I have room to relax a bit.

JD

JD I'm the same way! At least on my other attempt at growin I was! I've made an effort to let them be as much as possible and so far this grow has been somewhat smoother in comparison.

I am feeling like the growth is somewhat slow? I will try to update tonight with fresh pics and do individual plants.

I wrote the post before I uploaded the pics so the pictures are in exact reverse order!

The biggest plant is now trained for 8 heads! however I do believe I was impatient and went to quick and too close to the hub on my cut for 8!! Oh well, we will adjust and go from here.


The rest of these I do NOT know the sex of yet and are aprox. 2.5 wks old.


They have been feed daily for the most part with one day missed here and there.
The feed consists of Buddha Grow, Trinity, Ancient Amber, and the past two waterings I've added Amino Aide. Everything is added at 1/6-1/4 strength to R/O water that's been bubbled for at least an hr and then I bubble the solution for another 6+ hours trying to get some microbes going.
At this point I water all my plants till about 10-25% run off.
I want a way to recollect the runoff and keep it bubbling in a res. go kinda hydro I guess... Why do I always choose to learn something new, JUST as I'm starting to get everything I've learned already down. Haha time to read!


#2 was just up potted the other day to a 3gal bag from a hard container that's about 24oz. No training has yet to be done.


#3 was just up potted the other day to a 3gal bag from a hard container that's about 24oz. No training has yet to be done on this one either.


Both of these will be topped and cloned, clones sexed, and mainlined to 4-8 tops and then flowered.


The picture with four plants goes like this.


Top left is another plant that just got repotted but it was stunted very badly and was yellowing so I kinda wrote it off and set it aside but it's been gaining size and color the last two days. So I'm going to keep my fingers crossed that the clone shows female on this one!


Top right is a plant still in its hard container that's been topped, cloned, and awaiting roots/sexing. Soot to be in a 3 gal.


The bottom two are the only two beans that I KNOW are from some chronic, and they are the slowest growers BYFAR this round.. If they don't show me something soon ill be pulling them both.

Questions and comments welcome

Subbed......

Thanks for stoping by, Great to have you sir!!

I was always curious how some reggie seeds would turn out. Usually sativas from what I understand. Althought its not to hard to get good clones around here. ($10-15 a clone).

Pulling the light of the closet will probably help immensely if possible. I found mine not to be insulated enough nor have a good fresh air flow for 600w. Ended up putting in the main room and was able to keep it at better temperatures. Good luck with your grow, thankfully the summer is almost over!

rckjames said:

I was always curious how some reggie seeds would turn out. Usually sativas from what I understand. Althought its not to hard to get good clones around here. ($10-15 a clone).

Pulling the light of the closet will probably help immensely if possible. I found mine not to be insulated enough nor have a good fresh air flow for 600w. Ended up putting in the main room and was able to keep it at better temperatures. Good luck with your grow, thankfully the summer is almost over!

Click to expand...

I take it your in the Valley?! Thanks for stopping by.

my plan is to drill holes and vent through the wall into a hall closet that shares the wall with the walk in. Ill vent the light on its own with a simple booster fan for like $50 at the hydro store here. From there ill vent the inline and filter through the same wall into the same closet. I have already ordered some Mylar and will be building a makeshift area for the plants so Mylar is on all sides of them for best reflectivity.. Just waiting on the tool to make the holes and $ for the booster fan!

Fortunately I can run my light at ~13-15 inches from my plants and only hit 81-82 at the most but run around 79F with lights on. Is that close enough for my light? Ive seen higher and lower? Should I raise it?

I also run my AC in the low 70's no matter what so that helps with temps ALOT!

I would love to move it to the main living area but I have a 2 yr old and roommate has a dog, till she finds it a home. So I'm stuck in the closet :/

and I've ran clones before as well but this was a bare bones budget so I ha to go with what I had! Once this set up is dialed in ill get Somme clones an order seeds! I plan to try some sativas and test my skills once I've got the hang of this. With your guys help of course!

P.S. I know my posts may be wordy at times but I truly love growing and this community here. I want to learn as much as possible and contribute if I can. When I get the time I even plan to become active in NORML or something similar here in az. I love this plant/community/lifestyle... Please share with me how you roll and ill try to show you how I do... Peace and love RIU..

I run my 600w at about 8-12" from canopy.... Some strains get a little bleached at the 8" thou.

I would say 82 max is a respectable temp especially during the summer. I was experiencing 85+! But then again I keep my AC on 78 at all times. Electrcity is so expensive out here!

Sounds like you have a handle on things then, just gotta keep feeding them and let it run its course.

Bleezyboy1990 said:

JD I'm the same way! At least on my other attempt at growin I was! I've made an effort to let them be as much as possible and so far this grow has been somewhat smoother in comparison.

I am feeling like the growth is somewhat slow? I will try to update tonight with fresh pics and do individual plants.

Click to expand...

In the beginning they seem to be growing so slowly, but when they get bigger and want more and more water...you will sometimes wish they were growing just a bit slower! It's Einstein's theory of relativity.

rckjames said:

I would say 82 max is a respectable temp especially during the summer. I was experiencing 85+! But then again I keep my AC on 78 at all times. Electrcity is so expensive out here!

Sounds like you have a handle on things then, just gotta keep feeding them and let it run its course.

Click to expand...

Yeah I really need to get this vent system going, it's acceptable as is but will perform much better with dedicated vent systems.

I sure hope I got this under control. I have a bit of $ running on this and I need it to pull at least six oz.
I hope the summer winding down happens sooner rather than later. Thank you for the comments on the grow please make yourself a regular on this thread, I enjoy knowledgable ppl!