Dstroy's first grow journal

4/17/18
Carpet beetle death toll: 20
I only found 3 in the actual tent. I found three on the floor and four on the clones, the rest were on a window screen.

I'm getting some margin bleaching/roll and the tip burn is showing up on new leaves. It was progressing much faster than I thought it would so I'm reducing the nutrient concentration more than I originally planned.

New aero mix: (per 5 gallons)
5ml bloom, mag pro, protekt
3ml mammoth p
this ends up being
250ppm (0.5 conversion)
5.8pH

I cycled the system several times to normalize EC throughout. I ended up having to add almost 8 gallons of fresh water to get the ppm down to 250ish.

I'm not seeing any root detritus (good thing), hopefully there wont be any.

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It is now four hours after changing the nutrient concentration levels, most of the leaf margins are back to normal. probably a combination of the light being too close and nutrient toxicity. Luckily any changes that I make to the nutrient solution are expressed by the plants rather quickly. It just requires careful monitoring and a caring hand.

Aero runoff:
Ph 5.0
Ppm 230

Remember that the nutrient concentration was lowered. Lower ph than this morning and lower ppm out than in means they are eating something. I'm not sure what is in dyna gro bloom that my ec meter is not picking up but that just goes to show you that EC is for general reference. (Just because my initial solution flower ppms are lower doesn't mean jack)

4/18/17
Day 14 of flower 2f
Carpet beetle death toll: 30
Found more on the window screen one on a clone and two in the tent. They're getting into the tent through the ducting, once I find my window screen material I'm going to tape it over the intake.

Aero res:
Ph 6.05
Ppm 247

Aero runoff:
Ph 4.92
Ppm 180

I'm going to leave the res ph alone for now.

4/18/17
Cloner:
Ph 5.85
Ppm 515

Aero runoff:
Ph 4.95
Ppm 180

4/19/17
day 15 of flower 2f
carpet beetle death toll: 33

aero runoff:
ph 5.2
ppm 190

The plants look about the same as yesterday, with more flower development

cloner:
ph 5.8
ppm 530

The cloner was about 1/3 gallon low when I measured EC so actual ppms are lower than 530

Other stuff:
I enabled the hardware watchdog timer for my control box. If it freezes for any reason for more than 8 seconds the MCU gets hard reset but none of the attached peripherals do. I made it lock up on purpose to check functionality after a WDT reset and everything appears to work as normal. I'm in the process of enabling function calls to write certain things to EEPROM, but more importantly they remain in the state they were in before power off.

4/20/17
day 16 of flower 2f
carpet beetle death toll: 33

aero runoff:
ph 5.2
ppm 190

The plants are expressing nitrogen deficiency (lower older leaves are turning light green) They started doing this after I reduced the concentration of the first bloom nute ratio I tried (10ml each protekt, bloom, mag pro) which caused nute burn and lockout. I changed the initial concentration to use the same ratios that dyna gro's feeding chart indicates.

new formula per 5 gallon bucket is
5ml protekt
5ml mag pro
10ml bloom
3ml mammoth p

aero res:
ppm 290-300 at 70f (old was 230-250ppm)
ph 5.85

4/20/17
aero runoff: (new nute formula)
ph 4.91
ppm 210

The veins in the lower leaves are darkening up again.

Grow Journal Discussion:
http://rollitup.org/t/dstroys-first-grow-journal-discussion.938923/

4/20/17
aero runoff:
ph 5.0
ppm 229

4/21/17
day 17 of flower 2f
carpet beetle death toll: 31
found one sitting on the intake duct

aero runoff:
ph 5.0
ppm 220
The flowers are developing more. Both plants are still bushing out and developing new tops. The plant on the left is growing vertically a little, but the lower branches are catching up and filling in. The plant on the right is much larger (not taller) than the one on the left, the foliage is denser and there are about twice the flower sites. It appears that the nitrogen deficiency is over, but the nutes may be a tad too strong still. I just need to make a note for the next run to try a ml or two less bloom. It'll probably be at least a few runs until I get everything dialed in to the point where I don't need to obsessively check EC/ph several times a day but I can't do that without sufficient data points which I don't have yet.

4/21/17
aero runoff:
ph 4.94
ppm 220

cloner:
ph 5.94
ppm 440
no roots yet, but flower development has completely stopped, the outer stem (in the "root zone") has begun splitting and peeling back and callus (? root buds) is forming up and down the stem. The lowest set of leaves on each clone aren't looking so hot but I expected that. I've just never taken a clone from a plant that was in flower before. Res temps in the cloner are right around mid 70's all the time. Time for a res change in the cloner tomorrow.

4/22/17
day 18 of flower. 2f
Carpet beetle death toll: 33

aero runoff:
ph 5.1
ppm 220

6 hours later
ph 4.83
ppm 215

Some vertical growth. The lights are 10" away from the plant in the front left and about 14" from the one in the back right. I raised the lights a few days ago to around 18" and they grew about 3" so I lowered the lights to 10". (10 cobs @ 540ish watts from the wall according to my killawatt). More flower growth, little poof balls everywhere.

Edit: I moved the plants farther apart, they were crowding each other.

clones:
res change, switched back to clonex. I've got a perfectly good full bottle of clonex so I'm just going to use that until it is gone.
10ml/gal clonex
ph 5.8
ppm 330 (starting water ppms are 80-90)

I also set up my chiller for the cloner again, shooting for 70-72f res temps, trying to get these clones to root.

4/22/17
aero runoff:
ph 4.92
ppm 225

4/23/17
day 19 of flower. 2f
2/6 clones rooted (start date 4/12/17)

carpet beetle death toll: 35
found both sitting on the intake duct screen

aero res:
made 5 gallons of water

aero runoff:
ph 5.0
ppm 223

Clones:
a couple rooted overnight (yay!) all of the other ones look like they're getting ready to as well
I set my chiller at 68f, it sits at 69f. Comes on for 30 minutes and goes off for an hour, along with the pump. There's 10 gallons of plain water with a tsp of bleach (antibacterial) in the cooler (chiller reservoir). It keeps the cloner res right at 70f with the cloner pump being on continuously.

4/23/17
calibrated ph meter today

4/6 clones rooted (last 2 look like they're going to as well, hopefully tonight)

aero runoff: (right before lights out)
ph 4.9
ppm 215

4/24/17
day 20 of flower 2f.
6/6 clones have roots (yay!) (start date 4/12/17)

aero res:
made 5 gallons of water

aero runoff:
ph 5.39 (not sure what's up with the ph, could be I didn't pump it out early like I normally do. There was about twice the volume as normal.)
ppm 209
Some of the lower fan leaves on both plants are turning purple. Looks like only the ones that were affected by N deficiency so far.

cloner:
ph 5.8
ppm 315
Roots look healthy, only a matter of time before these clones take off.

4/24/17

aero runoff:
ph 4.91
ppm 218

clones:
roots are looking good, I'm going to give them some time to get established before I start pinching dead stuff off.

4/25/17
day 21 of flower 2f

6/6 clones alive

aero runoff:
ph 5.03
ppm 201
flower development is continuing, new growth is looking healthy. the plant in the front on the left is stretching up into the lights, going to have to move them again.

clones:
ph 6.2
ppm 315
root development is continuing, I'm going to remove the crispy lower leaves, top up the water with some pre mixed. That should bring the ph down, I'll check it again later.

4/25/17

aero runoff:
ph 4.9
ppm 218

clones:
ph 5.7
ppm 317

Other stuff: I got my nutrient recovery semi automated now. I drilled the bottom drain hole to 1" to put a large solenoid valve in. I had to use it because I couldn't find a really loose check valve that small or I would have used that. I still had to modify the solenoid though, I removed the internal rubber diaphragm and used a much lighter spring. Now all that is in there is the plastic valve disc, which works great at stopping the vacuum and great at opening and letting water out and the plunger. I have it set to actuate the vacuum pump every six hours for four minutes, plenty of time to pump out any runoff. I don't even run it that long normally. Whenever it's off the drain solenoid is open, I don't want it to behave like this so I'm going to change it to only be on for 5 minutes or something, however long it takes it to drain out when it's full. But it works for tonight.

4/26/17
day 22 of flower 2f

carpet beetle death toll: 45 (found a few on the intake duct screen, a few in the cloner closet and some on a window screen)
My wife thought she saw one inside of the tent but it was just a stem that I took a clone from.

aero res:
made 5 gallons of water
ph 5.81
ppm 284 (starting water 80ppm, 200ppm nutes) still 5ml protekt, magpro 10ml bloom 3ml mammoth p/5 gallons

aero runoff:
ph 5.0
ppm 195
Everything looks good, some leaf margins are starting to turn purple, I'm not sure what to expect from this strain.


cloner:
ph 5.8
ppm 310

6/6 clones day 2

I'm not going to be taking the clones out of the cloner to get root shots, they're growing laterally a lot and until they are heavy enough to drop down I'm just going to leave them alone because I broke off a root tip on accident this morning trying to look. I'll still be inspecting them daily, but I'll just pick up the whole table and I can't take pictures while I'm doing that. Once they stop concentrating on growing roots and start growing I'll take some more pictures of them

4/27/17
day 23 of flower 2f
cleaned EC meter with IPA, 2 point calibrated ph meter

aero runoff:
ph 4.70
ppm 190

Fan leaves look the same as yesterday, the purple color is creeping up the plant but other than just being purple I'm not seeing any sort of damage that wasn't already there.

Can't smell anything with the vent fan on, with it off it's a 2/10 outside of the tent and a 4/10 inside of it. Can't smell or hear or see anything outside the house. It's not on constantly (the fan). Runoff recovery is happening every 6 hours, vacuum pump runs for four minutes and the solenoids open the vac recovery chamber for three minutes. My computer desk is downstairs directly below the grow room and I can't hear it running at all, no pumps, nothing. I can hear the vent fan spool up, but that will be taken care of with some bungee cords next run.

cloner:
ph 5.94
ppm 322

Edit: forgot to post pics