First grow ever! 5x5x7 tent grow. help

Hey what's up everyone,

5x5x7 tent
600w light
Carbon filter
Air cooled hood
6 inch inline fan 430 CFm
All on pully system
A homade 2x4 table that sits in the tent. It's a platform that's is 4'9" x 4'9" covered with black 3.5 poly film and then a barrier of 2x4 around the edge forming another square, with a cut out on one side for water drainage. Lifted on the opposite side by another 2x4 scrap piece for gravity drainage.
The pots are 5gal smart pots and there is 5
5 auto flowering femenized white widows( figure good for first grow since I won't have to worry about topping or scrog on first run)
Medium is promix ph

Problem
Added 5 tablespoons of granulated dolomite lime (garden lime from Home Depot) to 2 gallons of ph balanced 6.0 water and watered it into each pot and let soak over night.
( though it was 1 tsblespoon per gallon of medium, not water)

Next day watered with more 6.0 ph balanced water and run off was coming off at 7.0... What went wrong? Too much lime? What should I do next? Keep flushing till it goes down to 6.0 ph runoff? Let it dry out? Did I mess up the medium? Any advice would help a lot...

Also humidity was at 31% so threw a bucked full of water under the light and put a humidifier in so it's up to 43% now. It's that good enough or is 50%-60% really matter.

Also temp running at 79... Is it crucial to get it down to 72-76? Will it produce more of the crop.

I haven't germinated yet because I want the set up to be as good as I can get for a first time.

And on germination I was thinking soak in water cup, wait till they drop to bottom, pick up with sterilized tweezers, and place directly in moist 5gal pots about 1/2 inch to 1-
/4 inch in the soil with pointy end down. Anyone think I will get better success another way and if so why?

I know it's a lot but have had a lot of questions and have read lot before posting this.

Thanks for all future advice and hope in the future I can do the same.

Well the dolomite lime you added should have a pH of around 7 so yeah, that's probably why the runoff is coming out @ 7... and pH adjusting plain water without any buffers won't really have any impact on the active pH of the soilless mix (the existing buffering of the mix + lime buffering would trump the pH adjustment of plain water by a lot). You could try flushing it out really well - I'm not familiar with Promix but maybe if you washed out enough of the lime you could get the pH back down if the Promix started acidic at least.

79F is fine in practice.

Soaking in water first works fine as long as you don't leave them submerged for too long.

Might want to look into starting them in smaller pots (lots of threads on this) than 5 gallon.

SableZen said:

Well the dolomite lime you added should have a pH of around 7 so yeah, that's probably why the runoff is coming out @ 7... and pH adjusting plain water without any buffers won't really have any impact on the active pH of the soilless mix (the existing buffering of the mix + lime buffering would trump the pH adjustment of plain water by a lot). You could try flushing it out really well - I'm not familiar with Promix but maybe if you washed out enough of the lime you could get the pH back down if the Promix started acidic at least.

79F is fine in practice.

Soaking in water first works fine as long as you don't leave them submerged for too long.

Might want to look into starting them in smaller pots (lots of threads on this) than 5 gallon.

Click to expand...

So would germinating in the medium right now be a bad idea if it's coming off at 7.0 ph or should I get it down to 6.0 ph run off first by flushing the shit out of it first?

If it's ok now should I just keep watering when needed at 6.0 ph water and let it go down gradually...


Thanks for the ok on temp... Actually got it down to 75 by turning up the fan and having the carbon filter set up higher...

thanks for for the germination ok as well. I'll make sure to pull them as soon as they "sink"

The reason I wanted to put them right into 5 gal pots is because they are auto flowering so they say the less stress (transplant) the better for maximum yield, otherwise I would be doing in solo clear cups so I could see the root growth

Bump, any info will help

Here's my tip for germinating seeds:

Invest in a tray, 2"dome, root riots plugs, root riot plug insert for tray(just goes in tray and holds the plugs), and a heat mat.

Don't use paper towels, don't soak seeds in water.

Moisten plugs with water ph'ed to 5.5-6.0, put seeds pointy end down about 1/4" into plug, and stick in heated propagator under t5's or Cfls(i like 20 on 4 off, but any veg cycle will work)

I have long tap roots emerging from the bottom of the cube and healthy sprouts in 2-4 days max.

Here's an extra bonus: I know your growing autos, but if you also buy a 7" dome then you use this exact same set up for clones. Take your cut, dip in root hormoe, stick in a root riot plug, and striaght into the heated propagator. The whole set up costs less then $50.00 and is easily the best way to germinate seeds.

Stick seed in plug, place in heated propagator, check on them once a day to make sure they don't completely dry out. I use to have so much trouble sprouting seeds, I used paper towels, total darkness, rockwool, no heat mat, no dome, etc. etc. etc.

After I discoved this method I've been nearly 100% germ/sprouting seeds in less then 3 days! The pics are 3 headband seeds. I put the seeds(no soaking, no cracking in paper towels) in the plugs mid afternoon friday. The pics were taken late Sunday night. That's a little over two days! I always have results like this with this set-up.

I struggled with the phase of growing for a minute! Like is said, I tried everything and this set up rocks! Best investment, second only to a HID light, for growing IMHO.

Also, great idea getting your tent up and running before you start anything! I am currently in a new space(and using tents for the first time) and I'm really glad I decided to experiment with some bag seeds first.

First I didn't have fan speed controllers and it was like a wind tunnel in my tent-couldn't keep temps or humidity up(im in a cold basement)
Then even with fan speed controllers on my exhuast and intake my humidity still wouldn't go above 25%, and I had to buy a cheap humidifier.
Then I realized I was only checking the temps/humidity when I could physically monitor them, and I was concearned it was getting to cold or arid at night. I bought a digital thermometer/hydrometer with a 24hr min/max setting so you can see the min/max for each over a 24hr period. It was getting about 5 degrees hotter and colder then I thought throughout the day!

All in all it took me about a week or two and a couple trips back to the hydro store to get my environment dialed in. Now my ladies are LOVING IT! Ba da ba ba ba!

Squidbilly said:

Also, great idea getting your tent up and running before you start anything! I am currently in a new space(and using tents for the first time) and I'm really glad I decided to experiment with some bag seeds first.

First I didn't have fan speed controllers and it was like a wind tunnel in my tent-couldn't keep temps or humidity up(im in a cold basement)
Then even with fan speed controllers on my exhuast and intake my humidity still wouldn't go above 25%, and I had to buy a cheap humidifier.
Then I realized I was only checking the temps/humidity when I could physically monitor them, and I was concearned it was getting to cold or arid at night. I bought a digital thermometer/hydrometer with a 24hr min/max setting so you can see the min/max for each over a 24hr period. It was getting about 5 degrees hotter and colder then I thought throughout the day!

All in all it took me about a week or two and a couple trips back to the hydro store to get my environment dialed in. Now my ladies are LOVING IT! Ba da ba ba ba!

Click to expand...

Man this is some great advise thank you....
i really like the cloning/ germination station idea... Reminds me of this thing I was gonna buy on amazon

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B008NRQJC0?pc_redir=1395648547&robot_redir=1

didnt know it was almost the same thing and used for germination too...


also i actually was doing that for the last week. Got it so the temp is always between 72-78 throughout light time and drops 10 degrees when lights off and the humidity is 45-55 at all times cuz added a humidifier and a small oscillating fan to pull air in set p right by vent, perfect height for hitting plants too. All things running good now. And consistent everyday. Just dropped seeds to day at 420 am about a seed length in depth with pointy side down then covered lightly and sprayed lightly with water bottle.... Soil was moist and ph meter read around 6.5 for soil reader but 6.9 for ph water run off so in good range. All number and data being recoded so I can learn what works best. Hoping 5 out of the 6 take but I feel like the set p is ideal for starting off so fingers crossed.


If anyone has anymore ideas or advice on what I'm doing I would really appreciate it cuz thinking of doing a scrog grow with holy grail in a little so this is a test run for that.

Again thanks for the feedback and advise