First Grow, Aeroponic, 2x 250W CFLs, Bubblelicious

This is my first time trying to grow. I decided to go with feminized Bubblelicious seeds from Nirvana – I’ve read some pretty good reviews. I’m growing just four plants in a homemade aeroponic unit. Bear in mind that one of them is about 4 days behind the others because I replaced the previous seedling on account of it looking unhealthy – this was probably not necessary though.

Please post any comments, criticisms, advice, anything. I'm more than happy to hear it.

The grow box:
It's a 2'x2'x4' box I constructed myself. The walls are covered in mylar. There are four PC fans at the back of the box for ventilation. Two fans at the top for exhaust, two at the height of the aeroponic unit for intake.

Lighting:
I'm using two 250W Envirolite CFLs. One is blue, the other red. I'm using the blue one for vegetative growth, and I'll switch them both on for flowering.

Nutrients:
All I have is VitaLink Max GROW, and VitaLink Max BLOOM. I plan to eventually get VitaLink BUDDY at some point.

Attached is a photo of the setup and the seedlings 3 days after being transferred to the unit.

8 days after sprouting:

there looking beautiful i got the same seeds from nirvana as well cant wait to start my grow-op now.
i read in order to get that bubble taste when curing you need to leave them out longer to get the bubble taste.

have you ever tried it before?

13 days after sprouting:

are these plants meant to be growing this fast? they do seem do be going very quickly..

zeta20 said:

there looking beautiful i got the same seeds from nirvana as well cant wait to start my grow-op now.
i read in order to get that bubble taste when curing you need to leave them out longer to get the bubble taste.

have you ever tried it before?

Click to expand...

do you mean have I tried the curing method or simply tried bubblelicious before?
well, I haven't tried either - but I am very interested in getting that much sought after bubblegum taste you speak of. please let me know more about it!

chri5opher said:

13 days after sprouting:

are these plants meant to be growing this fast? they do seem do be going very quickly..

Click to expand...

there growing great except for the last one its weak if it doesnt catch up with the other ones just remove it and keep the other 3 strong ones..

did you get 10 extra seeds with your order?

zeta20 said:

there growing great except for the last one its weak if it doesnt catch up with the other ones just remove it and keep the other 3 strong ones..

did you get 10 extra seeds with your order?

Click to expand...

hmm.. i think #4 will be okay. i mean, it is 4 days behind the others, and the leaves look just as large and healthy as the others did when they were that old. so yeah, i think #4 will be fine.

and yeah, i did get 10 free seeds with my order. i dont think im going to use them though, because i've heard bad things about nirvana's free seeds, and i have no clue as to what strain they are. if this grow goes well, for my next one i'll just try another strain - northern lights sounds good.

15 days from sprouting:

zeta20 said:

there growing great except for the last one its weak if it doesnt catch up with the other ones just remove it and keep the other 3 strong ones..

Click to expand...

They all look good to me if they are feminized they r going to get ya buds

where did ya learn how to make that set up? I got a areogarden...but don't understand aeroponics or know enough about

getrdone said:

They all look good to me if they are feminized they r going to get ya buds

where did ya learn how to make that set up? I got a areogarden...but don't understand aeroponics or know enough about

Click to expand...

yup! they're feminized alright

i learned how to make that setup based on an interpretation of this one:
http://projects.greenmangardens.net/content/view/25/39/
but I have to thank everyone on rollitup.org for the invaluable information i got here on the forums regarding aeroponics, and growing in general.

Wow they're beautiful! How do you get the seeds from online? You just order em up and ship em and everythings good?

55b said:

Wow they're beautiful! How do you get the seeds from online? You just order em up and ship em and everythings good?

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yup. i ordered from http://www.nirvana-shop.com/ and they shipped the seeds in a nirvana branded wallet. so i got a free wallet out of it as well - 100% hemp

Damn, thats some shit! Maybe one day I'll pull my pants up and get the courage to order some. Sub'd I can't wait to see these babies grow

55b said:

Damn, thats some shit! Maybe one day I'll pull my pants up and get the courage to order some. Sub'd I can't wait to see these babies grow

Click to expand...

Me neither!
I'm going to start flowering them by the end of the week. I'm just waiting for my electric timer to arrive.

chri5opher said:

do you mean have I tried the curing method or simply tried bubblelicious before?
well, I haven't tried either - but I am very interested in getting that much sought after bubblegum taste you speak of. please let me know more about it!

Click to expand...

so far what ive read is that during the curing phase of the project you need to let them cure longer than usual to get that bubblegum taste.

i got the same nirvana wallet as well.

i wont be using the free seeds i got with my order after hearing they have a bad rep.

you have 4 plants there you could just make clones of them 2 or 3 of each one would be good.

have you heard of bcseeds?
they have weird strains but are really expensive i want to get orange bud after my grow-op.

ill keep track of your journal to see your yield.

zeta20 said:

so far what ive read is that during the curing phase of the project you need to let them cure longer than usual to get that bubblegum taste.

i got the same nirvana wallet as well.

i wont be using the free seeds i got with my order after hearing they have a bad rep.

you have 4 plants there you could just make clones of them 2 or 3 of each one would be good.

have you heard of bcseeds?
they have weird strains but are really expensive i want to get orange bud after my grow-op.

ill keep track of your journal to see your yield.

Click to expand...

i could make clones, but I wouldn't be able to do anything with them until the plants currently growing are harvested and out of the box. can you store clones? if so, how? and for how long?

i just had a look at bcseeds. they're stuff looks pretty nice - but very expensive indeed :S

does anyone have idea what kind of yield i could expect from my plants? because i honestly have no clue about yield... this is my first grow afterall. as i said before, im going to start flowering them in like six days.

I am now regretting having not topped the tall three plants. I now realize that I probably could have got a much higher yield if I had done so..

I think I may also be running into problems concerning the potential height of the plants. I've just realized that the carbon filter I'm going to have to put in the box can't go on the same level as the lights. Instead, it will have to go above them and waste 6 inches of space at the top. The lights, as you can see in the picture, take up a considerable amount of space as well. So I've come to the conclusion that these plants will not have very much height to grow in. They could probably grow a MAXIMUM of 2.5 - 2.75 times taller than they already are. Does anyone have any suggestions as to how I should deal with the expected growth once I start flowering (by the end of the week)? Is it too late to top/fim these plants? Would it even increase my yield?

Regarding the fourth (small) plant, I decided to experiment since this is my first grow, and so I fimed it. I hope I did it correctly - you can see in the attached photos. Also, do you think this fourth plant will have recovered from the fim by the end of the week and be in an acceptable condition to start flowering with the rest of the plants?

I'd would love to hear what people expect to happen to these plants regarding their eventual height, their height restrictions, fiming the other plants, and the fim on the fourth plant.

The first photo is one of the small fimed plants. The last photo is one of the setup. Hopefully it will give you an idea of the height of the plants and how much space they have to grown in (maximum 2.5-2.75 times their current height).

is it too late to fim the other plants? anyone?

18 days from sprouting:
i will be flowering in a couple days.

yellow/white spots have appeared on the largest plant. you can see them in the last photo. anyone have any idea what is causing these?

20 days from sprouting:

the fim on #4 has resulted in 4 main stems now.