CFL - First hydro DWC grow.

Lights: 8 6700k 100wequiv CFL's and 2 4' T5's currently
Heat: 200ish watt infared bulb on timer to run 15min every 2 hours during light cycle. Keeps room between 75-76 degrees during the day, probably drops to 70-72 at night.
Room: 8x4x7 lined with plastic in basement (movable reflective panels)
Seed: Bag-seed that made me wander around the room haphazardly until the pain relief wore down to a more comfortable level. (Hopefully someone notices something familiar later on and I can get a name =p lol)
Method: DWC Hydro
Reservoir: 5gal totes 4gal of water.
Air: 12" air stone per tote
Water: Tap water @ 320ppm, mixed with store bought RO water about 40tap/60ro.
Nutes: GH Flora series

Backinfo:
I kind of rushed into hydro, as this is only my 2nd grow. First was a soil grow which ended up as a 6 month with a bad turn out from not so good weed. But I've re-done a few things and did a lot of reading on here and other places from the web and now feel I have a better idea on it all.

I started out in a 40gal fish tank DWC with 2 12" bubble stones and used tap water with nutes and the ph was so high i used 2/3 bottle of ph down and prolly a cup or two of vinegar just to get it down to around 6.0. After a week they weren't looking that great so I made some revisions and now they are in what they are in now.

Please comment and leave any suggestions
Here goes!

After switching of them from the 40gal tank to 5gal totes.
(15days)


Day 20/21
Starting to pick up a nice smell inside the grow room.


Day 26
Noticed the PH starting to get high, had to lower it


Day 28 (today)
Getting more and more heavy odor every day, and the smell is lingering outside the room. =) My TDS meter finally arrived in the mail today. They are running at 657 (d.blue) and 620 (l.blue). I still have a low dose of nutes, and haven't changed the water yet. Thinking of changing it tomorrow and uping the nutes to full veg, but they are doing great atm.

Any comments or suggestions are greatly appreciated! Will continue with pics as long as people are interested.

what ahppens when they start to fight for the light around the 5th or 6th week of 12.12? R U going to LST?

The top lights I can raise up, and I was planning on adding lights to the sides as they grow. Also I have a bunch of t5 fixtures I was thinking of using on the sides, or converting them to a multi cfl fixture. Was going to move the plants to a larger tote, but I think the roots are too tangled to try moving them now.

Day 29:
I changed out the reservoirs and went to full strength vegetation mix.

Day 30: added 2 lights to each side, and made 1 of the 2 cfl fixtures i plan on using.

Day 33:

Well, it's day 38 and plants are looking real good. I'm gonna switch them over to 12/12 and hope for some girls to show their skirts. Any advice on the light spectrum combos? ATM, I have 14 slots for cfls (4 top and 10 sides) and have 2 t12 cool white bulbs up top (can change those too.) Also I have an option to put a 4' T12 x4 bulb set up on the back wall, maybe mix those and 2 do 6500k and 2 3400k? Would it be best for all the side CFL's to have the 2700k, and the top fixtures have a 6500 and 2700?

Any ideas?!

Starting to smell the grass grow when I enter my house lol.

Day 39:
Changed reservoirs to transitional bloom nutes.
Bought a 55watt 2700k cfl to add to the top fixture. 4 lights next to larger plants are all 2700k. 42watt next to that is a 6500k, think 1 more 2700k on left and the rest are 6500k. And the top t12 40watt 3100k i think. Pics I had to take in a hurry cause it was almost bedtime for my little green trees, and I just took my medication.

Day 44:
Looks like half of them half ball sacks =/ Can't really tell on a couple, but 2 of the big ones look like they are dudes....

Day 52 (14 flower):
And then there were two... Kind of a waste, but it is what it is. Guess I should have started all 12. Oh well. Time to split up my grow room and get some clones going of some real plants.

Day 26 (Flowering):

Got the oversized room split up. Current grow went down to about 3'x4'. Splitting other half into 2 veg/clone areas. Whats up with some of the leaves curving in? I'm wishing now that I did more of a canopy and switched to 12/12 about 3 weeks sooner. And I never really found out when to prune it much, kinda late now.

A couple pics of my revised grow room turned into 3, and one of my sexy tomato seedling =p
Right now I have my aero cloner running in the top part.

Hey what up drampire!thanks for stopping in my thread! and it looks like a major P deficiancy.what nutes are you running?lets get them buds to get big shale we !....looks like week 3 ? not to bad..got to get some micro nutes with heavy P.I use fox farm stuff and at 3 weeks i would be using beasty buds or like cha ching(usualy for later part of budding bud its high with P),and probly mag.also.You got to get yer lights within 1 inch(or so) of plants for most lumen hit ,for denser buds..
oh and this is massive to to the much needed.lol

I've been using the general hydroponics series of 3 and when I went to flower I switched over to the lucas formula and I was pretty sure I did it right (the 10 to 5 formula for cfl grow) but It was popping up at like 2400ppm, so I had to add like 50% RO to get it under 1700 which lucas aims for. Currently it is still with hard water micro because I have 350ppm tap water. Bought the hardwater before the calcium buildup on my original dwc tank made me switch to the 60/40 RO/Tap. Didnt wanna use full RO water because of having hardwater micro. My last visit to the hydro store i picked up the regular micro. Haven't tried it on a fresh tank using 100% RO yet, on friday I'll clean out the tank and try it.

This grow is a huge learning experience for me. I started out in a 4x8 room, with maybe 200wats of CFL.... They vegged awesome imo, but flowering mode it's lacking a bit even with the jump to 420watts and downsize to a 40" x 35" ish room. After this guy is done in here, I'm going to change the spot it's in and ditch most of the side lighting and get a bunch of lights up top and scrog it for the canopy effect. Seems like that's the best way to get the most outta it. May end up getting a 400watt hps for that room too. Dunno, though. I'm freaking out enough about how hot my T12 4' 4bulb fixture is getting while attached to a couple 1x4's (in my new veg room.) Also the money is an issue right now.

I bought one 55watt 2700k bulb, but seemed to burn the tips a bit when it was a few inches away. I dropped the top lights back down a little bit closer, but theres not much I can do about the side lights although some of the buds are 2-3" from them,

I changed the water again the other day, and went with lucas 0-5-10 GH formula for the low light with CFL but it only puts it around 700ppm. I've got more than 400watts of cfl, so would the normal 0-8-16 mix be fine for me? I think that's supposed to go 1700. They seem to be doing better since the water change, but the bottom leaves that prolly shouldn't even be there anyway are starting to turn light green. (nitrogen?) I might just mix a gallon of the higher formula and add to it.

On a side note, the 4 clones I picked from her about 10-12 days ago are all getting nice roots now. Time to build me a couple bubble buckets and top n scrog them bitches. The other sections of the grow room are about done, and I bought some mylar to cover the walls too.

Added another 55w 2700k light. @ 451watts now... Can anyone remind me why I'm using CFL's again? lol

Day 33 of Flowering:

They look really good except for the fact that they did get a little too high. Shorter would have meant more bud sites but hey they still are going to give ya something. I think we are on the exact same schedule as far as how old our girls are into flowering. i will keep up with ya and see how things turn out for you.

Flowering Day 36:
Haven't noticed any change in the last week or so.. Other than alot of the bottom fan leaves are dying out. My microscope won't be here until around the end of the month, so can't get a close up of the buds yet. They don't seem like they're wanting to go much longer.... I picked up some stuff from the store today for my 2.0 grow with the little bitches. Can't wait to see if I can get it any better.