looking for a hydro grower!

Thundercat said:

Honestly, if dude is out of town a lot I totally get not wanting to screw around figuring out a new system. So putting his system in another room might be the best option.

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i went from drain to waste, auto feed hempy buckets to now the same with waterfarms for a few years now. i was out of town in Jan for 10 days, no issues. just have to find a stable nute recipe is the key.

rkymtnman said:

i went from drain to waste, auto feed hempy buckets to now the same with waterfarms for a few years now. i was out of town in Jan for 10 days, no issues. just have to find a stable nute recipe is the key.

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I see a lot of people who seem to like blumats and stuff. I grow DTW Organic, myself. Without the heatpad for the winter, my garden can usually go 3-5 days without me having to fuck with it.

and while all those are great options, it bring me back to the money issue! sadly I'm a poor ass mofo lol, I'm a disabled vet, the money I do make is a joke! and I just can't afford things like that, it's taken me about 4 months to save up to get new lights, and I still don't even have enough! I'm praying that this Harvest will cover the bills, and hopefully give me what I need to get my lights, and stop running these dam hps, don't get me wrong I love my hps, but the heat from running 3 of them in he same room is insane! dead of winter, with ac kicking full blast, and I still can barley manage to keep things under 80!

Greenthumbs256 said:

sadly, I don't know shit about hydro, and I don't have any of the equipment, like i said it's a must the the person have their stuff dialed in, even if I was to learn and get everything, no telling how long it would take me to have it dialed in and not screwing everything up!

my whole reasoning behind this, is bc I'm sure you hydro guys Will agree that hydro is a lot faster than any organics! well I may be able to prove that isn't true! been working a an experiment using sip pots, and probiotics! and I'm fairly certain I can beat the growth of hydro, but with the benefits like taste of organics! not to mention it cost me a fraction of the cost it runs you guys! and the absolute minimum amount of work is insane!

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Hey Greenthumbs as much as I'd like to do this I think i will pass, I don't have that particular cut, and I'm from another country and like to stay low key, But I'm not saying I couldn't be persuaded, If I win I get a cut of it, if you I'll give you a cut of my special ones , or straight up for 1000 buck or something, I've been down these roads before lol I'm willing to bet .

your assumptions are off a little though, hydro is cheap as fuck to run and a system is cheap as fuck to setup, I'm also willing to bet that when it is all said and done my hydro system will be far cheaper,faster and i will also wager that the taste and everything else will be as good or better, also if your idea of advanced hydro is buying some nutrients to be put in water your far off, so if your looking for someone make sure they fully understand how to mix their own nutes , and have a full understanding of proper foliar feeding, have a proper facility to control temps inside and out side of the medium, the same for RH, lighting etc etc. because there is a lot of variables in grower to grower.

I seen coco come close to hydro systems but not what I call advanced Hydro, coco got blown away when put side by side with advanced, same as soil and organics, I'm not knocking them at all just my opinion.

how long do you veg for? you said 63 days from sip but whats your total time from start to finish?

Greenthumbs256 said:

and while all those are great options, it bring me back to the money issue! sadly I'm a poor ass mofo lol, I'm a disabled vet, the money I do make is a joke! and I just can't afford things like that, it's taken me about 4 months to save up to get new lights, and I still don't even have enough! I'm praying that this Harvest will cover the bills, and hopefully give me what I need to get my lights, and stop running these dam hps, don't get me wrong I love my hps, but the heat from running 3 of them in he same room is insane! dead of winter, with ac kicking full blast, and I still can barley manage to keep things under 80!

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Where are you getting your intake air from, and venting your room heat to? Are you running a sealed room with only an AC for cooling? Are your lights air cooled?

I'm assuming the new lights your saving up for are LEDs?

I totally get being poor man, I am too. I've built my grow piece by piece harvest by harvest, and its still not where I really want it because of space limitations. But your gonna spend HUGE amounts of money to change lights, but can't spend $50-$100 to run an experiment yourself? Someday I would love to switch to LED because they are always getting better, but its WAAAY cheaper for me to run my 1kHPS in the mean time.

Thundercat said:

Where are you getting your intake air from, and venting your room heat to? Are you running a sealed room with only an AC for cooling? Are your lights air cooled?

I'm assuming the new lights your saving up for are LEDs?

I totally get being poor man, I am too. I've built my grow piece by piece harvest by harvest, and its still not where I really want it because of space limitations. But your gonna spend HUGE amounts of money to change lights, but can't spend $50-$100 to run an experiment yourself? Someday I would love to switch to LED because they are always getting better, but its WAAAY cheaper for me to run my 1kHPS in the mean time.

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yea man same boat, been slowly getting things for years!

and yes looking at leds, thing is, remember how I said it's dead winter and heat is killing me, well that's when it's around 35° outside, imagine when it's 80 or 90! if I don't get these lights I'll have no choice but to shut down! if I shut down, I don't eat! well I'll eat, but it will be Ramen, and cereal with water and a fork!

so yes I can afford the lights but not the experiment stuff lol, I'm sure you can understand that! if you have ever ate cereal with water and fork! then you get what the struggle is, granted I'm still probably better off than like 60% of the world, but that's still not OK with me!

in the past cooling 1k hps, has been a challenge, but I've been saving to expand, and now with 3, there just isn't no way in hell to cool them all during the summer! so it's go leds or shut down, granted I'm still going to have 1, 1k hps running, but I don't wanna slow down, if you seen that video I posted, then u get why this is all finally starting to pay off!

like you I have gotten Lil by lil, harvest by harvest, and I'm finally at the point where im not just breaking even! at least this harvest will be the first!

and yes sealed room well kinda, it's a lil complicated, bc i do have a window ac, that makes it not sealed, I vent heat out the tent, and into the same room, then use a box fan to push that heat down the hallway! so sealed but not really! that's why I say complicated!

and yes cool tubes on the hps!

and technically I don't have any intake! like i said it's complicated, but I've had to work with what I got! after these next few harvest, and thanks to my new method, these single plants will yeild more than my two best harvest ever, if I can keep that up, I should be able to finally move by next year, and more options will open up for me! I've just been making the best out of what I've got to work with!

Good luck man, I would be worried more about fixing your ventilation issues, then expecting the lights to do that for you. LEDs still produce heat(yes I know its less) if you actually run any amount of wattage which I hope you do if you want to replace multiple 1k hps. Or then your yields will suffer and you'll still be eating ramen even though you bought different lights. LEDs also have a learning curve from everything people say.

I just saw your post about your "sealed" but not sealed room. Thats your whole heat issue man. Your trying to run a commercial size grow with 3k watts and no proper ventilation and a window air conditioner. Unless thats a huge window unit it is gonna struggle. You should be venting the hot air out side if any way possible or to a completely separate space so that the air conditioner can actually cool the room the tents are in. Then the intakes in the tents need to be open and allowing that cool air to get pulled in. If your just venting the hot air back into the same room your trying to cool no wonder your AC wont stop and your temps won't go down. A box fan blowing hot air down a hallway is not enough exhaust. Are your lights in the tents in air cooled hoods? That would also help isolate heat and allow it to be properly vented to a second location.

Correcting your ventilation would cost no more then a few hundred bucks and would totally solve your heat issues.

Thundercat said:

Good luck man, I would be worried more about fixing your ventilation issues, then expecting the lights to do that for you. LEDs still produce heat(yes I know its less) if you actually run any amount of wattage which I hope you do if you want to replace multiple 1k hps. Or then your yields will suffer and you'll still be eating ramen even though you bought different lights. LEDs also have a learning curve from everything people say.

I just saw your post about your "sealed" but not sealed room. Thats your whole heat issue man. Your trying to run a commercial size grow with 3k watts and no proper ventilation and a window air conditioner. Unless thats a huge window unit it is gonna struggle. You should be venting the hot air out side if any way possible or to a completely separate space so that the air conditioner can actually cool the room the tents are in. Then the intakes in the tents need to be open and allowing that cool air to get pulled in. If your just venting the hot air back into the same room your trying to cool no wonder your AC wont stop and your temps won't go down. A box fan blowing hot air down a hallway is not enough exhaust. Are your lights in the tents in air cooled hoods? That would also help isolate heat and allow it to be properly vented to a second location.

Correcting your ventilation would cost no more then a few hundred bucks and would totally solve your heat issues.

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the ac I normally use is 14k just about the biggest I can run, nothing bigger will fit, can't exactly vent bc of neighbors, and the fact of them seeing stuff hanging out the windows!

can't cut through the floor bc I rent, can't vent through the heating and ac vents bc they are covered by my grow tent, can't reorganize, bc of size of everything and it only fits one way! like i said it's complicated, and I'm making the best out of what I have to work with! I edited above post btw!

I do vent the tents through cool tubes, and then dump into same room, then use a box fan to blow hot air down the hallway to heat rest of the house!

... Ima have to re read ur msgs, to answer the rest!

well sadly I really don't have any other options, believe me, I've looked for many options over the last few months while expanding! every good solution that can be came up with, there's always something stopping it from working!

but like I've said I've just had to make the best out of what I have to work with! when I am able to switch to led, it shouldn't be any major issues! with 3 hps, I'm hitting 80° max, during summer and going down to 1 or maybe even z if harvest is as good as I hope, heat should be a thing of the past! if that's the case, my next challenge would be running a truly sealed room, and adding in co2, just really don't think I can afford that, and honestly I don't think my yields are lacking! I'm not sure if the ac brings in outside air or just filters the inside air, but I've zero issues with airy or small buds, as you can see from that last video! so although it's far from the perfect set up I really feel I've done the best with what I have to work with!

but with all that said, yeah of course my yields could be increased! they can always be increased, but increase by how much, and how much would it cost to get that!

that's basically where I'm at now! like I said, before this method and running 1 girl covering a 4x4, I've never had yeilds like this, hell, I've never yielded over a pound on a single harvest! this one gg alone should clock in somewhere between 14-18 oz, at least that's what I'm told from the guy who gave me these cuts! he said the bulk up a ton in the last 2 weeks, and I'm sitting on 23 days (I think) give or take until harvest!

I know it sounds like the worst set up imaginable, but it actually works well, with all things considered, yes there would be much better ways, but as I've said, there's always something stopping me from being able to do it that way, wither that be the neighbors, the fact that I rent, it's just like a big ass jigsaw puzzle or something in order for everything to go smooth, it has to be all done in a certain way! I know that sounds stupid, trust me I get it, but if you could see my situation, it would make perfect sense to you!

Hydro, especially using something as cheap and proven to work as MegaCrop, I have a hard time believing you'd be cheaper in Organics with all the inputs you have to replenish and teas you've got to brew up.

Greenthumbs256 said:

if I did that it wouldn't be fair, my sip pots would absolutely smash anything I tried to do! that's really why I'm trying to find a rather advanced hygro grower! since I don't know a dam thing about hydro, or nutes, or even pH for that matter! it wouldn't be a fair comparison! I get Tryin to do this thousands of miles away isn't ideal! but I'm really only looking to be able to compare growth rates from 2 of the same cuts, from x day until x day! actually wouldn't even start comparing until after a good month in! just bc I only care to measure difference between my sips, and hydro, and it take me a good month or more just to get it into a sip.

from what I've learned hydro is always faster than organics and until I stumbled across this method I'd have to agree! I really just wanna see how it measures up, the way I see it, if I can match or get even close to the growth rates, then to me it would make hydro obsolete! once u factor in the cost of hydro, the amount of work, the fact the organics taste better! the only real benifit I see to running hydro is faster growth, and maybe 1 or 2% on thc when testing it!

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Airwalker16 said:

Hydro, especially using something as cheap and proven to work as MegaCrop, I have a hard time believing you'd be cheaper in Organics with all the inputs you have to replenish and teas you've got to brew up.

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lol, I don't use teas, and I use maybe at most a half cup of an amendment, per cycle to re cook soil, it's like 8 bucks for 5 pounds and that last me, well idk been years and it still ain't ran out! so no sorry, but not even close man!

think about it this way, I buy a box of dry amendments between 5 and 20 bucks max, comes in 5 pound bags, I use at absolute most 1 cup per re mixing and cooking! about every be months! how many cups can u get out if 5 pounds, I've got stuff that 4 years old and still haven't used it all!

how many bottles of maxi crop do you go through one cycle of growing?I'm not saying 1 plant, I'm saying a full cycle for all your girls? like I said were not even in the same ball park man!

now let's also consider, after harvest what do you do with left over plant material? stems fan leaves without tricombs? toss it Id guess? right?

well I chop it up feed it to my worms, and recycle it! nothing gets wasted! all those nutrients built up in the plant that you guys toss, I get to reuse it over and over!

I get you guys don't do organics, so plz just take my word for it! I can grow for the next 2 or maybe 3 years, and won't have to spend a single cent! granted if I ran out of one thing, things may not run 100% but I could still grow a top of line product with out it!

think about it like this, the rain forest, or red wood trees, who in the hell feeds them? who top dresses or makes compost teas, for them!

once you have built your life up! it's life man, and it makes a full cycle!!!! hopefully this makes sense if not I'm beating a dead horse!

best part is I don't grow these plants, he soil food Web, microbial life, worms and other bugs grow everything for me, all I do is make sure they have water!

this is the reason I love organics! they grow better than I ever could! trust me I've tried, and I can't touch what the life can do!

but regardless I don't belong in this section, you guys don't understand this stuff, bc you don't want to! and I don't blame ya! but this beating a dead horse, just isn't my cup of tea, if you interested in learning I'd be happy too help, but I'm sure you guys don't care, so as I said I'm in the wrong section!

Greenthumbs256 said:

I know it sounds like the worst set up imaginable, but it actually works well, with all things considered, yes there would be much better ways, but as I've said, there's always something stopping me from being able to do it that way, wither that be the neighbors, the fact that I rent, it's just like a big ass jigsaw puzzle or something in order for everything to go smooth, it has to be all done in a certain way! I know that sounds stupid, trust me I get it, but if you could see my situation, it would make perfect sense to you!

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I don't think it sounds like the worst set up at all and you obviously grow beautiful buds in it man. I've nothing against your system. All I was saying is the way you have your ventilation set up is why you can't keep your temps down. You need to get that heat out of the intake room to really be effective. Have you considered replacing the door to that room with a cheapo one you could cut a whole in. Put a exhaust fan in that hole, and run your ducting to the door. It would isolate that heat in the ducting and send it out to your hallway, and keep the intake room "sealed" so that the AC can actually get the temps down.

Greenthumbs256 said:

but regardless I don't belong in this section, you guys don't understand this stuff, bc you don't want to! and I don't blame ya! but this beating a dead horse, just isn't my cup of tea, if you interested in learning I'd be happy too help, but I'm sure you guys don't care, so as I said I'm in the wrong section!

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and here you go again with telling others they don't understand and acting like we are pushing you out. I think Water only organics is the only organics worth doing. I can't get into mixing fancy soil and then bubbling up teas and all the other cool organic stuff. Properly mixed water only living soil is awesome. I personally just got tied of soil in my house, and mixing it and hopeing you got the ratios right. To each their own. You don't need to run away and act like we care all clueless to organics, or dislike them. Most of us understand them just fine, but choose our growing methods for various other reasons. There are lots of great ways to grow that all work REALLY well. It really seems like your the one who isn't open minded to other options.

Thundercat said:

I don't think it sounds like the worst set up at all and you obviously grow beautiful buds in it man. I've nothing against your system. All I was saying is the way you have your ventilation set up is why you can't keep your temps down. You need to get that heat out of the intake room to really be effective. Have you considered replacing the door to that room with a cheapo one you could cut a whole in. Put a exhaust fan in that hole, and run your ducting to the door. It would isolate that heat in the ducting and send it out to your hallway, and keep the intake room "sealed" so that the AC can actually get the temps down.



and here you go again with telling others they don't understand and acting like we are pushing you out. I think Water only organics is the only organics worth doing. I can't get into mixing fancy soil and then bubbling up teas and all the other cool organic stuff. Properly mixed water only living soil is awesome. I personally just got tied of soil in my house, and mixing it and hopeing you got the ratios right. To each their own. You don't need to run away and act like we care all clueless to organics, or dislike them. Most of us understand them just fine, but choose our growing methods for various other reasons. There are lots of great ways to grow that all work REALLY well. It really seems like your the one who isn't open minded to other options.

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Definitely don't mount an inline fan in a door. It'll shake through to the frame and the walls. Hang it with bungees before the door and use ducting through the hole on the door rather.