My lil 1200 grow...built my own hydro 6 ladies..11 pics..have a look!!

I started this post for several reasons. First and foremost, i,m on my 4th grow now and i,m smart enough to know that i still know very little about growing the world class stuff that alot of you grow on the site. I'm looking for any comments good or bad. Or maybe some rep if you like what you see. I'm gonna be givin it out to anyone with with a real response good or bad. Everything i know i learned from RIU so i value all of your oppinions.

Got 11 pics for ya. And before you ask yes, thats a hoody im usin as a muffler on my fan. It works pretty well, there was alot of noise comin out of that thing. I have 2 600 watt mh/hps lights with some pretty cool reflectors that i found on ebay. The fan is a 166 cfm inline duct fan from Activair i believe in a 8'L x 5"D x 7' Tall panda filmed sealed room. I think my hydro is a cross between nft and ebb & flow. its like the 4"fencepost aeroponics design but i just have water running continuously. Get bigger fencepost or roundpipe because theres not enough room for roots. there matted tight and all the way across almost from one end to the other in one solid root mass. I had to cut through them with heavy scissors to remove males. And taproots have grown through the sides of the 3" netcups and are damming the channel the water was taking along the sides of the posts over the roots. Other than that it seems like a great system and it looks like it works. I'm lookin forward to any ideas or thoughts anyone has to make it better.

The only plant problems that i really have are some old stuff from takin nitrogen away too quick i think and some heat/dehydration on the tops. I'm pretty sure i included pics of everything im describing. There are 3 time periods in the tent. the tallest are origionals, the real bushy ones replaced males and a couple that died while i was out of town workin, and the smallest(my girlfriend calls (the 'lil happy plant) was just put in cuz i couldn't see killin it. Glad i didnt. Its a pretty little thing! They are all 21-28 days into 12/12. Im using cns17 trio along with cal-mag and floralicious plus(i swear by the stuff) my flowering is:

275ml ripe
75-100 ml cal-mag +
3 tbsp floralicious +

In veg i ppm'd around 700 and moved to 1000 after calyxes started to form. their drinking between 4 & 5 gallons of water a day i think and eating about 70 ppm over a 24 hour period. If that can really be measured accurately. I just ppm avery day as soon as the lights come on. There flushing through tonight and i will re-nute them tomarrow. I do two rez changes a week to keep ph and ppm stability in my 20 gallon rez with 4-4inch airstones and a 4 post airpump. i think the rez a little small for this size system. Oh, i included a pic of my mutant leaf i found a couple days ago. Anyone know anything about that? Like i said i more than welcome any comments questions or criticism so let her rip...Ill also be posting harvest pics and wet weights if u guys are interested....lemme know..appreciate it guys....

What strain are you going with this round? I noticed the leaf curl on a couple of shots, and some leaves with the ends cooked - is that what you were referring to when you said you had some heat issues?

Looks like you are the right track for an nice grow. Looking forward to seeing your progress.

Thanx for your input. Its all bagseed...still tryin to figure out how to get some seeds shipped to me so i can grow real strains. I think i'm gonna post new pics and details once a week or so. The second pic was the heat/dehydration i was refering to. with the leaf fringes turned up and starting to curl in. my room is a little warm and dry and they were the tallest so closest to the light. i moved the lights up as high as i could but i think im a lil too late. Not sure if they'll lay back down again or not....

looks nice priz. really diggin this set up! but what do i know. one question what is that last picture of?

Thanx savo! its roots inside of the fencepost. the solution goes in one end of the fencepost....down over all the roots...and drains back into the rez...awesome signature btw!

I like this idea. I had been thinking about something similar instead of a traditional ebb&flo hydro. I've been looking at stuff Home Depot carries trying to figure out what would be the best way to do it. Can you post any more pics of your setup? Like the res and stuff.

They have this drain material that has grating for a top that is removable I was thinking of going with. I was thinking I could just cut holes in the grate for the netbaskets, hook a pump up from the res to one end and let it flow down the line to drain out the other end and back into the res.

lookin nice!

Dezracer said:

I like this idea. I had been thinking about something similar instead of a traditional ebb&flo hydro. I've been looking at stuff Home Depot carries trying to figure out what would be the best way to do it. Can you post any more pics of your setup? Like the res and stuff.

They have this drain material that has grating for a top that is removable I was thinking of going with. I was thinking I could just cut holes in the grate for the netbaskets, hook a pump up from the res to one end and let it flow down the line to drain out the other end and back into the res.

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Sure! ill have some pics up and an explanation of it all online in a few hours bout 9 pm cst or so. mine pumps into the fenceposts and drains directly back in the rez.

GutterGravy said:

lookin nice!

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thanx alot! im diggin that avatar u have there.

Alright....here are the requested pics of my system and the gitls who are right at or a few days over a month old. the cage is 3/4 pvc, i would recomend usin one inch for the cage to make it sturdier. the waterline is 1/2 inch pvc with two valves. One to shut off water to the kids during rez changes and a water hose valve. A cheap water hose attaches to the water hose valve and the other end is attached to a water pump that put in my kitchen sink to drain/refill the rez. its pretty simple res changes as neither pump gets detached from the hose. Just turn the rez pump off and the sink pump on to fill an vice versa.

As i mentioned i would use a larger diameter fencepost or pipe. I had a radical idea today to get some of that expensive rain gutter for houses and putting a lid on it. Seems the shape of the gutter would allow airstones or tube to go all the way down with plenty of room for roots and water flow. plus you can get custom endcaps for just about any type of gutter you buy. makes that part alot easier caulk and seal.

The rez is a 400 gph magnetic drive pump and 4-4" round airstones. Holds about 20 gallons +/-.

the good lookin normal light pics were taken using my polarized sunglasses that i have for working in the room as a filter. All future pics will be taken the same way.

All questions or comments are more than welcome and +rep to anyone with anything constructive...lol or anything else ...lol....peace...love...an pot

I love the ingenuity here - great example how to grow great stuff without breaking the bank along the way. Do the fencepost have a tight seal on the end cap, or do you seal them with caulking?

Also, I am not familiar with the ScoG method - but I thought the idea was to use the screen to provide a ceiling for the canopy or am I not understanding what you are using that screen for?

Thanx! Had to seal the endcaps. Used some clear special caulking that never gets completely hard so its flexible....I used the mesh to keep the branches from leaning under weight once they got real heavy. Honestly i didnt plan on em gettin that tall.but its too late to put the front rail in an re-do the netting without damage.

Thanks for posting them up. I like it alot and it all makes more sense to me now. I plan on doing a hydro grow once all my current plants are done and will be going ahead with my idea which is similar to yours but uses the drains instead of the fence posts. It's more expensive but it will be very user friendly and they're a little bigger than the 4" posts.

Awesome setup though!! +rep for ya...

You know, your design looks very similar to a commercially available aeroponic setup. Just add some nozzles to the feed line and run it through the fence posts - voila!

Dezracer said:

Thanks for posting them up. I like it alot and it all makes more sense to me now. I plan on doing a hydro grow once all my current plants are done and will be going ahead with my idea which is similar to yours but uses the drains instead of the fence posts. It's more expensive but it will be very user friendly and they're a little bigger than the 4" posts.

Awesome setup though!! +rep for ya...

Click to expand...

thanx! yeah...bigger is better on the posts...if you have any questions dont hesitate to ask. I'm still fairly new compared to alot on here but i'm glad to help where i can

aficionado said:

You know, your design looks very similar to a commercially available aeroponic setup. Just add some nozzles to the feed line and run it through the fence posts - voila!

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Yessir. they are alot alike. I didn't mess with the mister nozzles cuz i could just see them clogging all the time. Inexperiance i guess. Just seemed like the way i did it was the easiest way. I used the flexible caulking because after i harvest im going to have to take it all apart to sterilize. but i didnt think id have to find bigger trenches. So we'll see...

If yall could help me out id greatly appreciate it! Heres a link to my thread in the plant hospitol. thanx in advance!!

https://www.rollitup.org/marijuana-plant-problems/334783-i-dont-understand-all-girls.html#post4216326

with alot of help from other people, A BIG THANKS TO THEM! I think i figured it out. my ppms were too high and one of my plants genetics were meak or more sensitive so the proficiency progressed faster in it then the rest. i went to tuck em in for the night and notices the same first symptoms in other plants in the front trench. strangely the plant that had the most symtoms other than the real sick one was her neighbor to the right. so after seeing that i drained half of my rez and topped off with water and ph'd at 5.9 until i can do a full rez change as soon as they wake up. For some reason botanicare cns17 seems most stable at 5.9. it takes the same amount of ph up to get the solution from 5.9 to 6 as it takes to get the solution from 5.7 to 5.9 or 6.3 to 6. Ill update as soon as i can tomarrow...

I found seeds this weekend and spent the last couple days trying to figure out why. I don't have any hermies (thats ive been able to find anyways. I didn't know that after you kill males they are still capable of opening and dispersing pollen. None of the sacks were open when i killed em. but i looked last night and slot of the sacks apparently came open after they had been cut. I didnt dispose of them promptly and properly because a majot problem i have is trash disposal. I pretty much have to burn everything. and where i live i don't have a place to burn so i have to get it all to a buddy of mines place i can trust. Anyways i'd like to hear what yall have to say about the dead males opening and producing pollen. Could that be it? Or do i need to keep lookin for hermies or intersexual plants?

From what I've read, thats a possibility. The pollen can spread pretty far too just by air conditioners, fans, etc...

Pollenated females aren't a bad thing at all IMO. Your bud will still be good and you can collect the seeds for future grows. I won't be ordering Fem seeds next time around so I can try my hand at collecting pollen from males and pollenating partial plants to get some of my own seeds. I'm sure I'll screw it up somehow even though it looks pretty straight forward but I'll give it a shot.