First grow! Nirvana ice, dresser grow box

Ok guys here is the journal for my first grow. I am going to be posting a lot of pictures and hopefully I will get some feedback from everyone. I'm going to be needing your help learning the ropes here as i progress with my plants.

Now on to the good stuff.







The dresser grow box in progress. I have a light fixture I made from Home Depot parts, turkey pan, and old cord. It's running 4 26w cfls as of right now. Was supposed to be 8 but my hardware store is out of splitter at the moment, I bought the last two. dresser was sealed with light and air tight caulk, then sprayed with 3m aerosol glue and given the emergency blanket Mylar treatment. The Mylar was impossible to get smooth in there and I'm considering just pulling it out and going with white paint. Currently the box isn't vented as I am waiting on a 4 pack of pc fans from amazon for 12 bucks.
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The plants I have growing are "ice" strain from Nirvana. I have been pleased with the purchase so far. I received the seeds in the US less than a week after ordering them and the price was good. I think $37 shipped for 10 seeds. I am kind of wishing now that I had ordered more than 1 different strain instead of 10 of the same seeds but whatever. We will see what happens. The seeds were not presoaked, the were simply planted in pots and dampened, the placed on my vegetable sprouting rack, and we have shoots broken ground in less than 48 hours! The soil is fox farm ocean forest. I have also ordered their nutrient 3 pack to use for this grow. It seems like a lot of people here use this stuff with success and I didn't want to over complicated stuff for my first grow.




My my vegetable rack has 3 fixtures with 2 fluorescent bulbs in each. The bulbs that are currently in them are labeled as t12? I looked up the part numbers and they are 20watt bulbs around 750 lumens each. Are these possibly something that could be useful in a closet grow? Can the bulbs be changed out for something brighter or am I limited on these because of the wiring in the fixtures?

Ive seen people on here talk about t5 and t8 bulbs but not t12 and I don't know what's compatible with what. Alright guys let me know what you think and let's get some constructive criticism rolling here. Thanks

I know you can't change your choice of soil,

FF makes good products I use them almost exclusively.

Some pheno types are hardy enough to handle Ocean Forest as a seedling, not all....

you should start your seedlings in FF Happy Frog, Ocean Forest is for when you repot after the first month.

OF is known to cause Nutrient Burn if you try and add Nutes to the Soil especially on seedlings.

Only give them water, PH correct 5.8-6.1

Buy some happy frog for your seedlings it will make them very happy healthy Seedlings!

you don't need to ad food To either type of soil for at least 10-14 days.

Cabinet looks very good!

I am a T5 user I am not up on new CFLs.

T5 works fine and costs less than T8 or 12 , I know that much!

I would paint the interior flat white use a washable paint like kitchen and bath.

, your light fixture looks well thought out.

I think you have a good start.

happy growing!

Ok didn't realize they could get nute burn just from the soil. The sprouts are going quickly though they have grown about an inch from last night till this morning. They aren't showing any signs of nute burn right now, they are looking great so I don't want to transplant them and possibly damage them. I Did see the happy frog at the hydro store though and I can go get some if need be.

I have gone ahead and placed them under the 4 cfl's in the box now. I have two 6500k and two 2700k in there. Do you calculate actual wattage with cfl's or replacement wattage, ie: my bulbs are 26w 100w replacements. Would this count as 100 watts or 400 watts worth of growing power?


Also how how is the ph of the water adjusted? I have been using tap water from my house and it comes from a well. Is this bad? Should I be giving them bottled water or something?

trying to upload some more pictures of the sprouts but photo upload isn't working for some reason.

here's what the girls looks like after about 36 hours in the soil. These things seem to have sprouted extremely fast.

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Modified my box to have the power strip mounted inside with my plug coming out the back. I had to strip the Mylar out of the box to do this since I got in a hurry, Mylar should have been the last thing I put in the box. I'm also still waiting on fans. I will have 4 CPU fans to install in the box, I'm not yet sure what configuration I will use for them.




This is the closet where my grow will reside. The closet is 8x8x1.5. So pretty big closet but pretty shallow as we'll. eventually the closet may be converted to be the grow room with maybe a veg and flower are and use they box for clones. I haven't decided on this yet either. Also if I convert it it can be vented straight to my attic which is probably 3000 square feet and has a 20 ft ceiling. Huge empty area should get rid of any smell.

Here they are again, about 48 hours after planting.

So I got my nutes, fans and hygrometer in the mail yesterday. I installed 2 of my fans, intake lower right and exhaust upper left of the cab. They are 120mm computer fans rated 44cfm each. I put my plants in the cab for the night and closed it all up for the first time. This morning when I checked them the temp was 102!! I didn't realize I was going to have heat problems like this with cfl's anyone have any suggestions?

Dogenzengi said:

I know you can't change your choice of soil,

FF makes good products I use them almost exclusively.

Some pheno types are hardy enough to handle Ocean Forest as a seedling, not all....

you should start your seedlings in FF Happy Frog, Ocean Forest is for when you repot after the first month.

OF is known to cause Nutrient Burn if you try and add Nutes to the Soil especially on seedlings.

Only give them water, PH correct 5.8-6.1

Buy some happy frog for your seedlings it will make them very happy healthy Seedlings!

you don't need to ad food To either type of soil for at least 10-14 days.

Click to expand...

I disagree, ocean forest seems to only be good for my plants up until the first month, then I need to start feeding. Every seeds ive every started was started in FFOF and theyve loved it.

I will post some pics in a couple hours when I get home but the FFOF has had no ill effects on the plants. They are growing strong and fast with no signs of nute burn.

Ok heres more more pics this is 5 days old. Like I said no nute burn, they appear to be loving the fox farm soil. Don't know if it's particulars strains that can't handle it but I'm glad these ones seem to like it.

Shit looks tight to me man! Nice work with the dresser and yea high temps are to be expected with a cab that small :/ 4 pc fans should be okay although you may wanna have 2 exhaust and 1 intake perhaps? Good thing about small cabs is that with enough tweaking they can be streamlined. Add that with some LST and controlled growing rather than letting everything do w/e the hell it wants could be very productive! People everywhere pull very respectable weights with cfls and homemade cabs so rock that shit!! I used those emergency blankets once also. Didnt much care for em, but white paint would work just as well if not better. Just be sure to let it dry completely lulz. Sub'd and good luck! Ladies look like they're loving that FFOF! I've got a Critical 47 and a Sour Diesel bean crack-a-lackin now. I wanna do soil pretty badly or at least experiment with it...I'm a bubblehead at <3 Nice work with the pics...consistency

Looking good bro, very slick set up.

As for CFL wattage, add d the actual not the equavekent wattage. So yiud have 104. You already know this, but you'll want to double that.

One other thing, ph'ing water is a point of contention for soil grows. Many swear its necessary and have the grows to prove it. A smaller dissenting group posits that soil is a natural ph buffer which makes adjusting your water unnecessary. I havent checked the ph on my tap water once through my grow. I'm also only halfway throw flowering my first grow, so I'm no authority on it, just want to put it into your head to do some research and decide for yourself.

Best of luck on the grow man, I'll keep checking in.

Thanks for the comments guys. I talked to the guy who own the local hydro store where I bought my soil about ph'zing the water and how important it is. He told me the same thigh that soil is a ph buffer so it isn't as critical as it is with hydro grows. However he told me that we also have high ph water here so he suggested doing it anyways. Obviously he's trying to sell stuff since he owns the shop but I got the kit anyway and sure enough, the tap water at my house is between 8.5 and 9! So I'm just using a gallon jug and I prep it to correct ph and use that for a few days before I need to fill it again.

Alright I made some changes to the box today. This is an attempt to add more lighting, as well as get temps under control. The biggest thing I changed was I removed the light fixture I made for my cfl's. I think the turkey tin that I was using for my reflector was holding a lot of the heat under it.

Now ow im using a power strip with the splitters on it. It's harder to adjust but it's also letting off the heat away from the plants. I also added two 65w cfl's one up in each corner. So that should now be a total of 234 watts of awesomeness.



In addition to the extra lighting I removed my lower intake fan and reinstalled it in the top corner as an exhaust fan. I'm now running 2 exhaust fans with a passive intake and it seems to work better. The temps still aren't great but they now stick to about 88 degrees. I think that's still pretty hot to keep the door on but at least I'm making progress...



also here's some pics of the girls today. This should be day 7 I think.

Like the upgrades to the box, bro. How are you planning on covering the fans to stop light penetration?

Well the changes I've made to the fans have done absolutely nothing. The box started getting hot again and I had to remove the door. The new plan is to order two of these.

http://www.amazon.com/Westpointe-Electrical-Velocity-1002-Personal/dp/B000WEIJ7K/ref=sr_1_2?s=home-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1381078679&sr=1-2&keywords=Desk+fan

they were recommended to me on another thread as a way better alternative to the computer fans. I'm going to be attaching a carbon filter on the exhaust side for light leaks and then probably a pc fan dust cover on the passive intake hole to block light from that angle. Also once I get this whole heating issue down the box will be in an enclosed closet so that should take care of most light leakage to start with.
In other news I did my first round of nute feeding today with 1/4 strength ff big bloom and grow big. I'm pretty sure the soil in these 3 inch pots is about done out so I should be good for using the nutes now and not get any burn. We shall see. Also I'm thinking about transplanting to bigger pots today. Any opinions?

Transplanted the the girls to 3 gallon pots, and feeding with 1/4 strength nutes. The root ball from the small cups was just right. It all came out easily together but definitely wasn't root bound. We will see if they get shocked from the transplanting. Hoping to see some good growth here soon.

They look good but a little droopy and leaf edges are curling. Probably too hot. I hope those new fans show up soon.