The Skunklab - DWC Stealth Cabinet and 4X4 Tent

Alright so I haven't been logging crucial info as often as I should, so starting another grow journal for motivation.

The Skunklab is a three-part sorta modular system that includes:

600w stealth cabinet. Used to call it semi-stealth but it has passed the test so often that it deserves a proper stealth classification. It's been invisible. See sig for link to the build thread, but in a nutshell: 600w Lumatek digital ballast powering either MH or HPS in a cooltube, mounted in a standard sized metal office supply cabinet. DWC system is a non-recirculating 15gal modded cooler. Includes a fold up scrog screen with 1" squares.



1000w HID + 300w LED 4x4 tent. Pretty much sums it up right there, save for (what i consider to be anyway .. ) a gnarly DWC setup. Two @30-35gal reservoirs in the tent with 5gal size netpots mounted, two per res. Both recirculate to another @30gal reservoir kept kept outside of the tent. All reservoirs are made from totes, doubled up. The ones in the tent are strapped twice and mounted in a "roll cage" made of wire shelving, which helps maintain stability, supports the weight of the plants, provides a great platform for a removeable scrog screen (just another wire shelf on the top) and also makes me feel much better about the next earthquake. This is the first run on the new DWC system. It was previously 5gal buckets, as seen in the sig link.



CO2 in both cabinet and tent is boosted, controlled by a simple EWC-1 mounted inside the cabinet. Not the best setup, but it works pretty well for the cheap. Exhaust cycles every 8 - 14 minutes depending on room temp.

All chambers are exhausted through charcoal filters into the room. Lights draw from the room and exhaust outdoors. Light venting is currently shared by cabinet and tent. This needs to change asap, as it's terribly inefficient.

Room temp is terrible. Currently 88f, which is about max on a hot day. Room has a small AC unit.

Humidity is the lucky draw. Unless it's raining outside, it stays between 40-50%, with 42% being the average.

The lab also includes another stealth cabinet which houses a small veg area powered by 2' x 4-bulb T5, a clone shelf, and the fans and filter for the larger cabinet.

This system is built to maximize the CA state law re: 6 plants per person. The cabinet grows 2 plants, the tent 4.

I am using AN Sensi nutrients as a base, RO in the cabinet, a mix of RO and Tap in the Tent, and a couple of additives in no particular order: big bud, cal/mag, rock resinator, snowstorm ultra, and overdrive.

I brew kick ass bio-tea per the Heisenberg method found here on rollitup. I add a gallon of it to a newly flushed 15gal res in the cabinet, and up to 3gals to innoculate the tent res system. Thereafter, I add 2 or 3 cups to the cabinet every 2 or 3 days, and a gallon to the tent on the same schedule. I tap it right out of the brew kettle into the res for extra awesomeness. Fuck paying $15 for a half gallon of vermi-T.

Current status:

Cabinet is around week 6 of flowering Hindu Skunk.
Tent just flipped to 12/12 two days ago, 3x SFV OG F3 and 1x Blue Dream.
Hindu Skunk and Blue Dream mothers. Taking clones of the tent SFV this week. I don't think we have any more mothers of this strain available so it's a high priority.

Current pics and notes on the current grows later tonight when lights come on.

Questions, comments, etc all welcome.

Hindu Skunk - Week 5 or 6ish haha .. in the cabinet.

ph 6.0, 600-650ppm, res avg. 78f

HS has been awesome in this hot evironment. She hadn't complained at all until getting right up close to the light. She stretches more than anything I've seen yet. Note the really low ppm diet too. She complains about anything over 750-800ppm, and has held steady at just about this ppm from veg through flowering so far.

I'm sure we'll be losing weight and quality with the extreme heat, but all things considered this grow is going very well. This cab has hit what certainly was over 100f one night when I had to turn off the fans but accidentally left the light on. It killed everything up close to the light, which until then hadn't looked nearly as bad as it does now.

Also noticed HS drops more leaves than other strains I've worked with. I've never before hauled off more dropped and shriveled fan leaves during flower than leaves i've cut from beneath the screen after the flip. This really helps in a tight, overgrown scrog like I have going here. The airflow down in the jungle is twice what I usually get in this cabinet.

The CFLs below are just experimenting. Haven't gotten an extension for the left side yet. Hoping this will help keep the undies from getting quite so scruffy.

Notice the damage to the tops of the plants from getting up too close to the light. I tried topping two of them but it didn't help much, like the stuff under the top just wasn't ready for center stage and wham got nasty too, so just letting it ride unless i see any sign of anything systemic or contagious in any way.

One stalk grew right up into the damn exhaust port on the top of the cab! That's around a 6' stretch after flipping a 6" plant to 12/12. Sick. Somebody plant one outdoors and let's see if we can climb up to giant land.



Here's the tent. This was orginally 4x SFV F3 but one just didn't make the transition. I had drippers rigged that I had hoped would help speed up acclimation of the plants to the DWC system. It backfired majorly. Don't do it, period. There was zero root development for several weeks, and two of the four barely recovered at all. Notice the really small one.

After three weeks or so of trying to make the dripper system work I scrapped it. The plants instantly began rooting properly. I yanked the 4th SFV and replaced it with a Blue Dream mother that had been in the veg cab going on almost a year. It developed roots into the drink within 24 hours without drippers, so the key seems to be get the transplanting roots down low into the net pot. No need to fill it completely full, this setup works fine with the plant root base riding down low.

Couple of shots of roots. The pulled up pot is the runt SFV, with the BD roots in the background. Looking damn good for a res system averaging around 78-80f. Everything nice and white, and thick! The goal of this particular DWC setup is to see just how true the saying "more roots, more fruits" is. I want massive roots, fucking huge, and I don't mind adding a couple weeks of veg onto the cycle to get it done.

Speaking of massive, check out that blue dream! Dozens of tops, I've been FIMing anything that grew too tall during veg, well as best I could anyway. Also some LST to try to level it off with the shorter SFV as best as possible. This plant is going to be a champ if I can keep it down far enough under the light. The stretch has just begun, and it's on good. Going to be a fun time the next 2 or 3 weeks keeping it in check.

The SFV on the left side of the tent had been "lightly scrogged" over the last week or so. I took the screen off yesterday, satisfied with where things are at. So simple with this setup. Just stick the top shelf of the shelving unit on and go for it. I pulled it back off so as for better access to the undies, since we need this strain successfully cloned I really wanna get down in there as needed. There's also not much clearance on the back side, there's a 4" PVC drainpipe running to the external res down there, so can't scootch back in there for access.

ph 6.0, 1000ppm, 78-80f res





300w LED is some random noname, probably ebay special that I traded an oz for. Simple 4" filter and inline can be seen in the background.

I don't have a tri-meter for the tent res system so I've been pretty lazy about checking it. Previous run in the tent did great flying mostly blind, but trying to keep more of an eye on this one. I've already had issues with the BD getting nute burn symptoms and needing harder sauce. Looking to get around 1200ppm or so at max flower on this run, lower if the plants will take it. These pics are the first I've seen in here without the HPS on in a week or two, looks a little yellow, so I'll check the sauce tonight and I bet it's drifted downward from my last setting of around 1000ppm. Anything less really pissed off the BD. The SFV is fine either way, she's chill like that.

Hell yeah that Blue Dream is massive. I wanna see what that LED/HPS combo does for you.

The ppm in the tent had indeed drifted down to 850. everything else was fine. set it to just over 1k last night and it's drifted down to 950 in 24 hours, so these ladies are hungry.
looking at you, big fat ass blue dream. buffets shut down when she comes down the block.

took about ten sfv clones tonight. swear my rooting gel (clonex) has become useless. we'll see.

have had great results taking the plastic stakes from home depot and just laying them across the top of the big blue dream plant like a sort of lst scrog thing. i call it weight training. trying to level out the middle of the grow area and let stuff get taller around the edges. i can't hold back the bd forever, but so far so good.

Yeah that BD eats so fast it is unbelievable. Ahahaha, I like your weight training technique. It is an interesting concept I have thought of once or twice, but never tried. You really did have excellent success with it, her stature is really nice.

Clone gel can totally lose it's juice if you pour your old used gel back into the container, or if you leave the container open while you are making clones, you should always remove a small bit into a shot glass and immediately seal your gel back up. It also has a relatively short shelf-life once opened, especially if it was old before it was opened.

The fact that the BD is eating the sauce so fast means she likes the recipe. It's just a labor of love at this point. I can't wait to see what my recipe for my fresh batch of tea does for my plants, I gave some to all of them before lights out because it was fresh out of the bucket. I like to use it while it's fresh, all of it if possible, the rest I refrigerate, and it is still very active when I use it.

oh those pics are pre-weight training. it bushed out like that just after some minimal LST with twisty ties down to the rack. worked great, but it's a pain in the ass trying to do that with 3 dozen tops all growing 2 or 3 inches per day. so i just slapped the sticks down, pinning a good half dozen stalks at a time down. no other way to keep up once the stretch started. BD never stretched more than 3x its height on me. If this holds true this run we'll be fine. I've grown it side by side with og kush before and they stretched just about the same. We should be alright.

I suspect several days of 90f + temps may have cooked the clone gel. Is this a possibility? Saw some facebook ad the other day for free clone gel from .. hydroponix .. something like that. Ordered it, we'll see if it helps.

Yeap same here. I make about 4 - 4.5 gallons with the brew bucket, save 2 gallons direct to fridge, the rest gets pumped and dumped directly. One thing I've been consistently noticing is that, on days where reservoirs get heavy doses of tea, the water level drops remarkably over the next 24 hours. The tea seems to accelerate uptake, speed up metabolism, however you want to describe it. It's a very noticable difference with water level dropping nearly twice as much after tea feedings as other days. The tent system dropped a solid 5 gallons overnight after last teatime, most i've ever seen.

Really need to get after that redesign of the veg cab i've been talking about for like a year now. Springtails like mad in there. Shouldn't be a problem at all but I've put down some DE anyway. No sign of the mystery bugs from a few months ago, which i suspected were small springtails. They were tiny enough that I could very well be missing them, but from what I can tell, nada so far. Maybe they weren't springtails after all.

Made one last run through the jungle in the cabinet, removing anything with a weak, thin stem. Wasn't much to pull. It's super dense in there but it's almost as if the HS is pruning itsellf, dropping leaves as needed. I've just been following its lead, pulling fan leaves as they brown out and prepare to drop. Also topped a few stalks again up near the light, removing clearly damaged material before any mold etc can set in. Also topped a stalk that was attempting to grow into a clip-on fan. This stuff is still stretching. Crazy.

Recipe on the tent sauce is something like:

Initial fill with tap.
Top off as needed with RO.
I'm comfortable adding tea without it being a complete waste after 2 or 3 weeks or after a good amount of RO has been added. I do not flush the res during veg unless big problems.
4ml per gal liquid karma
12ml per gal cal/mag plus (this is the amount for RO. Use less if you're using tap at the moment, which should contain more cal/mag on its own.)
Add Sensi Grow as needed to bring ppm up to desired level.

Super simple.

Note I am no longer using any enzyme products like hygrozyme or sensizyme. I used to be a big user of these products, but I have seen the light. Neither enzymes nor carbs should ever be added directly to your DWC res. This stuff is for other methods, not DWC. Use the tea instead. The microbes in the tea will create all the enzymes they need, rather than dumping in zymes that can and will be used mostly by enemy microbes. Same holds true for carbs. Adding sweetness to a DWC system is just screaming for nastiness to invade the root system, don't do it! Keep that molasses out of your DWC res, again, use the tea. Molasses goes into the tea to feed the microbes during brewing, but you can increase the sweetness of the tea almost as much as you'd like. It's still not the safest thing in the world to add to your DWC res, but I feel good about a shipment of carbs to the res when accompanied by fucking billions of my swarming, valorous horde of 30k+ different types of microbe soliders.

BD is a reliable stretcher so far. The Hydrponix stuff is a new company I believe, but they are gaining popularity fast so I would assume they are good stuff, or at least good at advertising, obviously. 90f+ temps can totally destroy the cloning gel, you should always keep your nutrients stored in a place that maintains temps between 60-80f fairly constantly, with little light on them, or at least no HID light. You will find everything works better for much longer. And everything you said about tea, enzymes, and carbs is all true as hell. But you can get away with using mineral carbohydrate extracts without much risk, but there still is a risk.

Sometimes I use pure tea in my plants, they fucking love it. I've noticed my plants have no need for calcium additives with the EWC. I just need to find a better source of Magnesium, I've been thinking of using epsom salts.

And when are you going to join us in the 21st century bro, I have both a R/O and a dechlorinator hooked up to the outside of my grow room. Screw buying water, and screw tap water!

Bunch of random pics in no order since i'm so tired of wrestling pic formatting in the tiny rollitup editor window. what a pain in the ass.

disagree about the mineral carbs. carbs are carbs are carbs. if the plant can eat them, then so can the bad guy microbes. this isn't so much of a problem anywhere but in DWC. DWC I can almost guarantee you will generate root rot and other nastiness if you add any sort of carbs directly to the res like you would elsewhere. I didn't believe this, did it anyway, sure enough .. that was the blue dream grow that went straight to hell, especially with nasty roots.

Maybe if your res temp was always 60-68f or so. That botched grow, my res temp wasn't nearly as hot as it is now, 70f ish. It was enough.

I love cal/mag plus from botanicare. It has been one of if not the most useful additive I've ever purchased. I used a little less of it to start this grow. I should not have. 12ml per gal of RO is now religion here. More if plants show red/purple stems or praying leaves that aren't near the light.

I will get that filter as soon as I can afford it! I haven't made a dime of my gardening for months now. Next time there's some flow coming in, a small boy is on the top of my list.
It's not too bad though, huffing water from the machine. I do 4x 5gal jugs at a time, and this is usually enough for both chambers and a bucket of tea for a week. The best is when I have to wait at the machines because some guy in a giant tooled up escalade is also filling 4 jugs. Always want to say, "Hey, you need a small boy too huh?" but figure it's bad form.

I've never seen 4 plants suck up 5+ gallons per day in DWC. Last grow in the tent, before adding 300w LED, using 5 gal buckets x 6 plants, external res would deplete by about 1.5 gallons per day. This produced around 8oz dry yield. So if we've increased intake by 333%, should we expect around 24oz this time? Ideally, this tent should pull twice that.

SFV showing strong beginnings of flowers as of today. BD was showing almost immediately. This particular plant has been a mom for nearly a year so I'm sure she was anxious.

Tent has been staying stable at 1k ppm but ph has been trending downward, bottoming at 5.5. Have been pulling it back up to around 6 about twice a week.

Cabinet flushed yesterday, refilled with Overdrive, Liquid Karma, Cal\Mag Plus, and Sensi Bloom. Initial formulation ended up at a hair over 1k ppm (pre-flush it was 600), but I left it overnight just to see how it would do. Ppm rising quickly, as expected, so I'll drain about half out and refill with more RO, should get it about right. Don't know the flip date but we should be looking at pulling in the next 3 to 4 weeks tops. It's getting frostier daily. Hard to see the giant colas to see if they are going to really be giant colas, but what I can see is better than expected. I'm figuring the crazy heat with will produce airy, stringy buds. I hope I'm wrong.

Will add in some Rock Resinator after the ppm gets dialed in correctly. Foliar today in both cab and tent with Snow Storm Ultra. I put about 1ml snow storm to 8oz of water ifor the spray. Would seem like a really heavy dose per the instructions but no problems so far. Will be doing this weekly. Was going to side by side sorta kinda Resinator vs Snow Storm but decided I'd rather see what happens if I use both at once.

9 fingers on one SFV leaf is also new. Breakin new ground yo.

If you get 4oz per plant, I will shit a brick. Not only will bricks be shat, but I'll be buying a 1000w HPS and 300w LED the next day, and immediately build my own RDWC system. I've been looking into either UC or MPB.

5 gal is fucking nuts though.

And the temps are going to effect your nug quality, no doubt about it. Sucks, but who cares, it all tastes great out of the vaporizer. I just ran out of nug (besides what I have set aside for the dispensary) and they don't sell dry ice up here on the mountain so I haven't made hash yet. So I finally knuckled down and put some trim into the vaporizer and gave it a shot. Pretty fucking good. Just as good as smoking nug to say the very least. I didn't think I would be able to do it, but I now I believe I can make it to the next harvest without picking up from the local competition.

Blue dream comes down in 2-7 more days. I need to look at her under the scope, but she has just finished fattening up for the last time, I would say.


...Ugh, I am one hung over bastard.

No idea what UC is, but "med patient buckets" if that's what you mean is what I copied this design from, more or less. Double D's MPB on thcfarmer. Big differences between our setups, his being like 10k watts per plant or something insane like that, but still the premise is working great. wish i would have taken his advice and installed cages over the reservoirs.

and it dropped another 1.5 gallons over the next three hours! topped it off again! Gonna have to setup like you suggested, an RO filter on a float valve.

hate making hash with all that water and ice and crap. i do it the old fashioned way with a screen. simple, quick, great results.

i am certain that this BD in the tent will yeild well over four ounces. barring any serious calamity anyway, there's no way that bush pumps out anything less than that. i'll lay it down now and say it will pull 6oz. let's see.

i think the absolute top end for a perfect run in the tent could hit right around 2lbs. Not going to be anywhere close to that but hey, baby steps.

My friend, have I not told you about Dry Ice Hash yet? It is the same idea as screening for hash but with a bubble bag and it takes less than 10 minutes. You can make a video tutorial in 10 minutes to spare, it is that quick and easy! Youtube it man, you're going to laugh your ass off.

UC (Under Current) was the inspiration for such systems as MPB. I actually read a tutorial by Double D on making the MPB. Looks like you'll be getting some phone calls when I build my system, lol.

Having everything set up on a float valve is fucking magical man, I love it. 1.5 gallons is retarded, how the fuck do they drink that fast? They are loving whatever you are doing to that sauce! And the BD is undoubtedly giving 4oz, no questions about it, 6-8oz is where my money is at. And 2lbs isn't so unlikely. .9g per watt would be fucking tits though!

Ah i get it. My system does not feed and flow from the bottom, probably like under current and patient buckets both. I just don't have enough pump power to make it work, but really, if i'm getting root systems that suck 5 gal + per day, what more do we need?

i would really like to add a chiller someday to compare results. everyone said a chiller would be absolutely necessary in the tent but so far it's been kick ass without it. theoretically, temps should have dropped in the actual plant reservoirs after the retool. tent res temp is usually slightly less than the cabinet res temp also backs this up. going to guess the interior res's stay 76-77f. and for the record, this round in the tent is by far the prettiest, whitest, more pristine roots i've ever seen in any setup.

today's experiment: cloning hibiscus. going to take some cuttings and see how long it takes them to root. supposed to take 6 weeks, bet we can do better. must watch out, aphids love hibiscus.

sure wish we could clone $150 palm trees.

SFV the Nine-Fingered

I love hibiscus. I've been looking into other cloning experiments too, mainly just taking hardwood and softwood cuttings. I already know how to do it, I just haven't really employed it yet. Got a bunch of transplanting done today, dirty work, but I got huge roles of clear plastic laying around, so I made it an indoor job.

I bet that 9 leafer is responsible for a lot of that water drinking. Besides that mega massive BD which I am so excited to smoke

i've gone through almost all of the last sfv harvest straight to my head, so me too! that thing is going to bud like crazy.

multiple BD clones rooted now, and SFV clones looking great. We should not have any problem retaining the genetics.

probably going to stick the other year-old BD mom in a pot outside to let it flower. i'm out of room in the veg chamber. HS clones need a home.

I'm always down to stick a few plants outside. My alternator decided to shit on me the other day, so I need to go get a new one probably. Good thing I just dropped off a qp to the dispensary. Bad thing about it is that now I am out of smoke. Just nasty trim in the vape. It was okay at first, now it is just getting dirty. I did my time dammit! I shouldn't have to smoke trim! I'm thinking about trading some seeds or clones to the local delivery service for smoke, but I don't want to give them anything that is too good. I know the stanky fuckers will do it though. How long is the flower period on the HS?

long i think but still finding out. not writing down when i flipped doesn't help. best guess says longer than anything i've grown before. it's got to be week 7 by now and it wouldn't surprise me if it goes another 3 weeks at least. i dont know again how much the heat is fucking with things though, so a better environment may have faster results.

rooted sfv clones today. that took under a week! guess it's not my clonex .. wtf am i doing better now? the whole clone dome looks great, everything is rooting, swear to god one popped a root out a good two inches within an hour and a half, and i haven't really changed anything. if anything it's gotten kinda dirty in there haha. needed cleaning weeks ago.