First Ever Aeroponic Grow! Feedback appreciated...

Hello everyone!

This is me and my buddy's first grow and we decided to go with an aeroponic set-up. We decided to build our own since it'd save us money and give us a project that we could work on all summer. We started out with 10 seeds but sadly purple kush, nebulas, and a sour diesel didn't make it past their first set of leaves so we currently have 7 plants.

Here's a quick run-down of our entire set-up:

- Aeroponics
+ 10 - 3 inch pots
+ Clay pebbles
+ 298 GPH submersible pump
+ 40 gallon reservoir (kept at 20-25 gallons)
+ 8 360º spinning sprayer heads

- Nutrients
+ IONIC Grow for vegetative growth (3-1-5)
+ IONIC Bloom for flowering (3-2-6)
+ IONIC Boost for an extra increase in flowering (0-5-6)

- Lighting
+ 9 50w 6500k CFL's
+ 2 120w 2700k CFL's
+ Mylar lining around room and on ceiling

I know the lighting is kind of weak but we plan on upping the number of lamps at least another 6. We're most likely going to add the rest in of 2700k and switch out another 2 of 6500k for 2700k. We also have a fan circulating the air in the room.

We've been running our lamps 24/7 since we've started.

The image attached is about 7 weeks into vegetative. Today was the end of week 8 so we switched our water and nutrients and started a 11/13 lighting schedule. The plants did a much better job at spreading out in the past week than is shown.

This is the only picture that I currently have of them. I'm not going to be around them until tomorrow so I'll snap up a few then if anyone would like.

Let me know what you think of the plants and keep in mind this is our first shot at it!

I appreciate all the feedback you guys can give!

Any particular reason you chose to use 11/13 instead of the "standard" 12/12 lighting schedule?

leova said:

Any particular reason you chose to use 11/13 instead of the "standard" 12/12 lighting schedule?

Click to expand...

We chose to do this mainly because of the timer we had on hand.

It basically worked out to be either 11/13 or 13/11 so we just chose 11/13. I plan on buying a new timer in the next few days and am most likely going to set it to 12/12.

We've also been monitoring the pH daily to make sure they don't have any wild spikes.

What do you think? 11/13 or 13/11 if you had to choose?

enjoi said:

We chose to do this mainly because of the timer we had on hand.

It basically worked out to be either 11/13 or 13/11 so we just chose 11/13. I plan on buying a new timer in the next few days and am most likely going to set it to 12/12.

We've also been monitoring the pH daily to make sure they don't have any wild spikes.

What do you think? 11/13 or 13/11 if you had to choose?

Click to expand...

11 on 13 off will be better than vice-versa.

You should look into HID lighting instead of a bunch of CFLs. Of course, it is up to you. HID will cost more initially, but you will use less power and get better results in the end. Just a suggestion though.

FoxCompany426 said:

11 on 13 off will be better than vice-versa.

You should look into HID lighting instead of a bunch of CFLs. Of course, it is up to you. HID will cost more initially, but you will use less power and get better results in the end. Just a suggestion though.

Click to expand...

Thanks for your input. I originally wanted to go with HID lighting but we started germinating a day or two earlier than we should have so we ended up having to build and set-up our unit in one day.

We germinated our seeds on a ceramic plate with a multi-layering of moist papertowel ontop of a cable box in a 90º closet so they shot out ready to be planted in 48 hours which kinda screwed us up. We were planning on having 72 hours at the minimum.

Since we ended up buying a bunch of CFL's to make sure they didn't die on us, we decided to just run with that for now.

I'm not that well-versed in HID so if you have any suggestions for our next grow (probably going to do 10 100% feminized seeds) I would like to hear what type and how many watts you'd suggest we'd use.

I'm hoping that nearly 1000w of CFL's will get the job done for this attempt though...

enjoi said:

Thanks for your input. I originally wanted to go with HID lighting but we started germinating a day or two earlier than we should have so we ended up having to build and set-up our unit in one day.

We germinated our seeds on a ceramic plate with a multi-layering of moist papertowel ontop of a cable box in a 90º closet so they shot out ready to be planted in 48 hours which kinda screwed us up. We were planning on having 72 hours at the minimum.

Since we ended up buying a bunch of CFL's to make sure they didn't die on us, we decided to just run with that for now.

I'm not that well-versed in HID so if you have any suggestions for our next grow (probably going to do 10 100% feminized seeds) I would like to hear what type and how many watts you'd suggest we'd use.

I'm hoping that nearly 1000w of CFL's will get the job done for this attempt though...

Click to expand...

If you are wanting to go cheap, then check out this link...

http://www.htgsupply.com/growlighttypes.asp?categoryID=1&subcategoryID=155

If you are wanting a light kit with absolutely everything you need, check out this link...

http://www.hydroponicgarden.net/content-categories/cat-381/power_plant_kits.html

These are a bit more expensive, but come with a lot of stuff.

Do a little research and see which one's fit you and your financial situation.

i would go with a hps lamp. They truely do the job have done many dirt grows with cfls and hps nothing beats the hps. If my plants like them yours will two. Nice setup though