40+ lbs with 12 Plants in 2 Rooms on a Flip
- Thread starter Renfro
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dr.tomb
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Renfro,
What size are your drain lines? They are 5gal ebb and flow buckets? You ever have the roots follow the watter and plug your drain line? If not what's your solution?
I have 5gal buckets and I usually put precut reusable furnace filters (try cut to size reusable kind). Last run I had 3 pots cut off from water. The roots jammed themselves into the 1/2" hose causing a dam.
Made sure every bucket now has a bottom layer. I use straight perlite with a dash of Myke added to the mix.
What size are your drain lines? They are 5gal ebb and flow buckets? You ever have the roots follow the watter and plug your drain line? If not what's your solution?
I have 5gal buckets and I usually put precut reusable furnace filters (try cut to size reusable kind). Last run I had 3 pots cut off from water. The roots jammed themselves into the 1/2" hose causing a dam.
Made sure every bucket now has a bottom layer. I use straight perlite with a dash of Myke added to the mix.
Renfro
Well-Known Member
the black 10 gallon buckets have 1 inch lines to the drain. My girls white 5 gallon buckets have 1/2" drain lines. It's a bucket in a bucket setup, bottom bucket catches the runoff and the top bucket holds the media and has 3/8" holes in the bottom for drainage. The roots don't make it to the bottom buckets because of air pruning. Easiest way to name my setup is a top feed soiless drain to waste.
purpaterp
Well-Known Member
Awesome setup man really cool, que that foo fighters song, “there goes my hero” lol
Renfro
Well-Known Member
So I ordered an Apera pH pen from amazon for like 75 bucks as a backup pen because it looked like an awesome deal, 0.01 accuracy, glass probe. They sent me a more expensive model than what I ordered. They sent the one with a long "spear" probe that can be inserted into food or soil etc... pretty bad ass, $250 pen for only 75 bucks. Works fine for liquids but I can also use it for soil! May have to go order a couple more LoL
I ordered this one: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01ENFOIQE/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Got this one: https://aperainst.com/ph60s-premium-spear-ph-meter-pocket-tester-for-solid-semi-solid-sample-ph-measurement-cheese-meat-sushi-rice-soil-canning
I ordered this one: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01ENFOIQE/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Got this one: https://aperainst.com/ph60s-premium-spear-ph-meter-pocket-tester-for-solid-semi-solid-sample-ph-measurement-cheese-meat-sushi-rice-soil-canning
purpaterp
Well-Known Member
That’s awesome man every once in a while the consumer wins one lol when I ordered my nutes and coco they showed as delivered but weren’t here. I called amazon they apologized and sent new orders. The next day a guy from down the street brings the first order. I called amazon and the just told me I could keep it for the inconvenience. I got two huge bags of coco two sets of gh flora trio and two bottles of Cali magic and two times all for the price of one. Couldn’t believe it.
Renfro
Well-Known Member
So I was feeding at a pH of 6.5 and started seeing a few signs of the pH being off. I tested the media and they were at 5.2 in the soil after a watering at 6.5. So I test watered a plant at 7.5 and retested the soil about 15 hours later and it was at 5.7 so it's coming up. Odd that the soil went down so low, it came out the bag at 5.8. Anyways, I am glad I have pH soil probes handy, and now I have three lol.
Thundercat
Well-Known Member
Awesome progression buddy! Thanks for the side by side shots
. How long are they staying in veg for you think?
Renfro
Well-Known Member
Probably another 7 days. We shall see how they are looking. Once I get the full 4x4 area populated with branches I like to give them a few days to shoot those side nodes upwards. The branches start making more branches and it just builds exponentially. Shorting the last few days of veg makes a very big difference in the final outcome.
Right? And to think that some people think adding CO2 doesn't do anything. The plants really explode when moved into the flowering rooms with CO2 and warmer temps and mega lighting.
Renfro
Well-Known Member
Right now I am running 1020 PPM on the GH and the Jacks when mixed came to 910 PPM
I am still using the Si on the GH room. Nothing is different there so I can get a good idea about how the Jacks is doing. Room A is sorta a control, for now at least.
I wanna go as basic as I can with the Jacks and see how it does. Pretty stoked about it.
diggs99
Well-Known Member
Yep, especially rooms your size, i assume nutes are a decent sized expense every month/grow
I am thinking along same lines, i used the floranova bloom only last grow, it was simple to use and results were decent, but from what ive been reading, the jacks/megacrop options are much cheaper and are putting out similar or better results than the nova.
I got the process started for my acmpr,I got the script for 50 plants , so im going to want to cut down costs on nutes as well
SOGs are coming lol
Renfro
Well-Known Member
I did the math in Excel and a full run with GH costs me $998 and a run with Jacks would be about $300 ish from my guesstimate. Of course I have to run it and prove that, plus I am sure some numbers will change a little if I make adjustments, use MPK or whatnot.
Also these calcs are based on one constant that isn't really constant and thats a watering frequency of every other day. I figure that it kinda averages out that way over the run and it's good enough for cost estimation purposes.
diggs99
Well-Known Member
Ya if you can cut cost by 60% and still see similar results , you have to do it.
Did you buy any new lights for this run to try out?
I remember you mentioning cobs for your girl, did you ever end up getting an led for your room?
Renfro
Well-Known Member
Well thats a long story...
We have two of the auto cobs that we plan to use over her plants once they get bigger.
I have a 630 watt DE CMH bulb coming that I can put in one of my 1kW HPS ballasts on 60% so I wanna try that somewhere to see how it compares to the 1kW HPS. 400 watts is a big savings lol.
I also have some special CMH bulbs coming that I am going to test. They aren't on the market yet but supposedly have a better spectrum. So I will figure out where I want to try those. Thing is though, they are 1000 watters, and I wonder if that will be overkill?
The other COB light that I have, the 480 watter, is going to be in my breeding and testing tent.
I wanna learn as much as I can about these new lighting techs. I wish to maintain quality and yields and save as much energy as possible in the meanwhile, at least where the cost of conversion would not make for a long payoff. For example if merely changing my bulbs from HPS to CMH can get the job done at a 400 watt per plant savings, that would make for a savings of 1728 kWh of power each month while reducing the cooling load on the AC unit significantly saving even more energy there. You gotta change bulbs anyways so the only difference there is the CMH bulbs cost a few bucks more. Now if a conversion requires a different ballast then the cost goes way up and it would take a many years to find any actual savings.
diggs99
Well-Known Member
No doubt bro, i love the idea of led/cob efficiency but not if its gonna take me years to pay off lol
As you say tho, if you can run a good controlled side by side and see for yourself with the CMH bulbs and ballasts dialed down, then it may well be worth making the switch.
Ill be honest, ive had this CMH running for about 10 days, id fill a room with these things, they are very powerful lights for sure. I am still running mine without exhaust in the tent and temps still havent hit 80f in there.
diggs99
Well-Known Member
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