Al B. FAQt

[HAZEOHOLIC]

Hello AL

I have 2 closets the first one is 88"H X 24"W X 24"D will be use to house the mother plants I know it a small space but 7 plants fits nicely and without touching. My question is will a 250 watt be enough for the mothers? The total height will be 5.5 feet the top shelves will have a ezcloner box with 105 watt CFL. what size intake fan do I need and exhaust fan?

The second closet is 88"H X 60"W X 24"D I could only run 2 trays in that setup I was thinking a 1000 watt is too much for that space and also probable dangerous, I might go with a 600 watt air cooled reflector. I would like to know your input on this, Also again how many what size intake and exhaust fan do i need to vent a space like that?

Would I need to get a switchable ballast from MH to HPS? What would be the best recommended bulb to use? Sorry Al about all these questions thanks again for all your help

 

[Al B. Fuct]

i believe i have to run full strength nutrients now to get rid of the twisting of the leafs,

i came across a chart that makes me believe it is related to not enough zinc i believe..

I often see a little leaf blade twist in my very freshest growth. It's usually seen right after I've introduced new clones into the flowering area. It could simply be rapid growth in response to going from fluoros in the clonebox to the 1000HPS in the flowering area. The leaves don't stay twisted- they flatten out as they develop.

I doubt the Zn deficiency theory. Zn def doesn't cause twisting, rather odd colouration of the leaves.

Today i'm going to the hydro store to grab a couple things but let me know how i'm doing!

From what I can see, they look pretty good.

If you can adjust the white balance on your camera, you can eliminate the orange cast of HPS lighting. You fool the camera into seeing orange-yellow as white. The setting procedure varies by the camera, see your cam's instruction booklet. You may have a setting for 'incandescent' or 'tungsten' lighting which may accomplish this.

I had adjusted the white balance on my cam just before taking this pic:



Note that the 1000W HPS appears almost white. The camera is adding a lot of blue to the img. which makes the green of the leaves a bit inaccurately rendered. It's a bunch easier to see plant detail than in this shot, where I did not set the white balance on HPS light first:


It's long past due time for you to do your pruning, if you are intending to do a SoG grow. All those long branches on the lower 1/3 of your plants gotta go.

Since it takes the first 4 weeks of flowering for the plants to fully stop veg growth, they will keep trying to send out long branches until then. It usually requires 2 passes of pruning, once in the end of wk 1 and again in the end of wk 3 or so.

Learning to prune for SoG may break your heart the first few times you do it, but once you see the results- the larger top colas and lack of fluffy popcorn buds on lower branches- you'll be a convert.

 

[newportbeach949]

I cloned them under my 150 hps and rooted them in 1in rockwool cubes for a week then put them in the 6x6x6 blocks under my 400hps so they have been under them for 8 days now and the smaller plants are fine but the taller plants are doing the twisties a tad ,

today and tomarow i plan on cloning the jungle below , i wanted them to get bushy enough below so i could take 2-3 cutting off the bottom of each . I gotta love my ez cloner , I think i'll start a journal , my original mother that i took cuttings from will be done in 3-4 weeks shes in soil ,

i'll try and dig out my camera manual to figure out these modes

 

[Al B. Fuct]

today and tomarow i plan on cloning the jungle below , i wanted them to get bushy enough below so i could take 2-3 cutting off the bottom of each

Are these plants flowering? If so, that's not the best practise. Don't you have mother plants going somewhere?

Cuttings taken from plants in flower are notoriously slow to set root. If cuttings taken from a flowering plant are to be vegged (i.e. replacement mums), they must be grown out until they are returned to full veg mode. They will need 6-8 weeks of veg and several passes of pruning to get them to that state. Until then, they will grow in a mixed veg/flower habit; they will produce webbed or single-bladed fan leaves, gain height slowly, have large empty seed bracts at the nodes, etc.

Cuttings taken from a flowering plant are themselves already in flower. If these cuttings are to be flowered, they won't get the veg growth spurt during wk1-4 of flowering that plants which have always been kept in veg lighting (mothers & clones both in veg light cycle) produce. The resulting plants will be very VERY short, perhaps not even 2x the height of the clone taken from a flowering plant when it went in to flower.

My question is will a 250 watt be enough for the mothers?

Yep, sounds great.

The total height will be 5.5 feet the top shelves will have a ezcloner box with 105 watt CFL.

Way too much CFL. Clones don't need to be pounded with light, they only need to be convinced it's daylight for 18+h/day. Swap that 105W unit for 2-3 ordinary grocery store 10-20W CFLs, enough of them that all leaves are within about 100mm of a lamp tube. The 105W unit might be useful vegging mums.

what size intake fan do I need and exhaust fan?

A ventilation system needs to be able to shift the room's airmass in about 3 mins. Calculate your room volume in cubic feet and divide by 3. That's the minimum CFM rating for the ventilation system. More is gooder.

If a single exhaust blower (with passive intake/s, which combined are double the area of the exhaust diameter i.e. 6" blower needs 2x 6" dia intake holes) has to do all the work, increase the CFM rating to 1CFM per cu ft of room airmass, i.e. 200 cu ft room gets a 200CFM exhaust.

Remember that axial blowers don't work well into high static pressures caused by carbon filters or long ducts with a lot of bends. Use a centrifugal blower for cases like this. An axial will not get anywhere near its free-air CFM rating when pushing into obstructive loads.

Intake blowers can always be axials. The room airmass will be at a slightly negative pressure due to the exhaust removing air from the room, meaning the intakes are not pushing into a high static pressure.

Intake blowers should be rated at about 80-90% of the exhaust blower's CFM rating. This keeps the room at a slightly negative pressure referenced to atmosphere. Any air leaks in your construction will leak air inward rather than out, so all air leaving the op is going through your exhaust blower (and filter if present), making scents easier to control.

The second closet is 88"H X 60"W X 24"D I could only run 2 trays in that setup I was thinking a 1000 watt is too much for that space and also probable dangerous, I might go with a 600 watt air cooled reflector.

It's a rough rule of thumb but 50W of HPS light per sq ft will do. Calculate the area of your intended lighted floorspace in sq ft and multiply by 50. There's your lamp size in watts (or close to it).

The only air-cooled reflector worth having is a cooltube.



Avoid the box-type 'Euro hood' reflectors. These sometimes don't have intake air duct flanges, may not have a glass cover over the lamp or may only have 100mm duct holes. It's necessary to have a fully closed air path for lamp cooling air and 100mm is too small for anything but a 400. Boxy reflectors are also quite inefficient; they bounce a lot of light right back at the lamp tube.

Double parabola type 'batwing' reflectors put very nearly all reflected light on the plants instead of back on the tube.

Cooltubes encase the lamp in glass, which is thermally resistive. They also keep the airflow smooth and very close to the lamp, meaning most of the lamp's heat is leaving with the airflow instead of being allowed to warm the fixture and lose heat by convection into the room's airmass.

Would I need to get a switchable ballast from MH to HPS?

I don't see where your need for an MH is. If you're going to do SoG, you won't be vegging any plants aside from mums and the 250HPS will do fine for for that.

 

[Al B. Fuct]

Forgot to mention that with cooltubes, the ventilation system doesn't have to work as hard or often.



The vast majority of the lighting heat that in non-cooltubed systems triggers the exhaust blower so often is removed by the cooltubes. Ops with cooltubes can thus get away with less ventilation system capacity. I'd still not run a ventilation system any smaller than needed to shift the room's volume in no more than 3 minutes.

Cooltubes are really a magic bullet for thermal control and stability. The result of cooltubes installed with a closed air circuit along with a separate exhaust (and intake if you like) blower is that the room will stay very close to the 25C setpoint. If your intake air is 23C or less, the room will stay at 25C +/-1C, if your thermostat is that accurate.

Cooltubes will cause aircon systems (where conditioned air is recirculated within the op) to run much less often, saving mucho dinero. They may even make aircon unnecessary in some cases, where intake air is on the borderline of being too warm (25-26C), as the op will run about 2C above the intake air temp even if all is working well. Much above 25-26C intake air temps and aircon might be unavoidable.

I'm rarely as enthusiastic about any piece of hardware you can put in a grow op. Cooltubes make all ops work better but micro and closet grows benefit in particular. Small grows have small airmasses and any serious HPS light will warm them up fast. Cooltubes keep the lamp cooling air and the air used by the plants separate. The effect in my op was immediate and dramatic.

 

[newportbeach949]

nope they have not started flowering, a couple days and then i will probably start 12/12 cycle


i went to my local mj co-op and picked this hindu skunk strain up, vegged for 2 weeks and then cloned her into those plants you see now in the table, the mother has another 3-4 weeks before she is done flowering(I'll post pictures in journal when i create one). I plan to buy some 4 inch mesh pots next cycle with hydroton and putting them in the table, seems a hell of alot easier

edit thats why i plan on cloning the jungle and putting them under some floros for a couple weeks

 

[gvega187]

omg every time u slide an OP pic in there it makes me want to tear down my entire house and start over lol...tear...

I read that you disapprove of digital ballasts. Is there any instance in which they are better? (240 maybe?)

You have also told me before that you use ONE 1000w HPS for TWO of those roughly 3x3 areas.

1-So you put the light about where the two trays meet?

2- is it possible more light would benefit even YOUR MIGHT op?

3- Not all batwing reflectors have that butt like profile you mentioned being crucial earlier. Is there a particular company you prefer? Normally they simply curve downwards instead of up and then down if u follow...I am baffled at the amount of turdball reflectors out there. All good growers only recommend cool tubes with wings.

p.s. i started saving all the awesome info I come across in this forum in a word document I like to call Al b. Not'd thanks for my weekly NOTES!!

 

[MisterMicro]

damn al b faqt, your not messin. Hey newport, are you actually on newport beach?

 

[rifishman]

Hey Al,
I've been following your threads for over a year and have had good results. I am showing a few shots of some buds I have. I just pulled a few plants that were at 10 weeks(due to strain) and I am not pleased with the root mass within the pots.

My ebb and flow is being cycled 3 x a day at 15 min. intervals. I plan to get the digital timer to get the flood time down a bit.

I am using rockwool mini cubes in the pots and in earlier grows i have had a good solid root mass coming out of the pots at harvest.

On a few plants I chopped tonight, I noticed a slight brown in some of the roots at the bottom of the pot.

I want to ask if you think this is root rot and the possible reason why. Could it be the 15 minute (too long) of my flood cycles.

The plants are giving me some fairly decent yields in the past few months. I have some that are around 1 oz (dry) and some less, but I feel part of that was my setup of my cycles and a few other issues that I have figured out and fixed.

What concerns me is that I was expected a fuller root mass and much whiter roots.

Your thoughts and comments.

Here is some of my bangi haze:

Peace out and keep up the great work here.

 

[Al B. Fuct]

nope they have not started flowering, a couple days and then i will probably start 12/12 cycle

Can't tell you how happy I am to hear that!

However, I'm not at all sorry for covering the topic of cloning from flowering plants. There's about 350 other folks reading this thread aside from you and me, who might be able to put that info to use.

i went to my local mj co-op and picked this hindu skunk strain up, vegged for 2 weeks and then cloned her into those plants you see now in the table,

Well done, looks great.

I know you won't be doing it often, but when you do buy in clones, it's smart to take a jeweler's loupe or strong magnifier with you to check for mites. Also smart to quarantine newbs for the first week or so at your place and give them a preventative spritz of a miticide.

I plan to buy some 4 inch mesh pots next cycle with hydroton and putting them in the table, seems a hell of alot easier

Plain ol pots with drain holes, as intended for soil, will do the job and will probably be cheaper than netpots. Keeps the roots in the pots and prevents knitting with neighbouring plants' roots as well, making plants movable.

I see wot you're up to; just cranking the system up. The fun's just beginning.

omg every time u slide an OP pic in there it makes me want to tear down my entire house and start over lol...tear...

Anyone can make an op like mine. As long as you have an 8'W x 9'L x 7'H space which can be ventilated and has safe AC power, you're happening. It's just a rather large grow tent, would fit in a carpark space.

I read that you disapprove of digital ballasts. Is there any instance in which they are better? (240 maybe?)

The only instance I can think of where electronic ballasts might be a plus is in a bigmotherfucking commercial grow op where a large number of ballasts are used. The 9% power savings might make a difference in the max number of lamps that could run on the available AC service to the whole house/warehouse grow op. However, greedhead commercial growers buy the cheapest ballasts they can find, not the most efficient.

Ballasts are current limiters. Inductive aka 'magnetic' ballasts regulate current with coil of copper wire on a laminated iron core. Electronic ballasts have digital control circuits and large transistor-like devices (triacs or SCRs) which do the actual current throttling. At the end of the day, a coil of copper wire is more electrically durable than a semiconductor junction and a bunch of soldered connections. It's not unusual to see 20 year old standard magnetic ballasts. I doubt you'll find a warranty longer than 5 years on an electronic ballast. My 1000W CWA ballasts are about 10 years old. They were good quality off the bat so their iron cored inductors are silent, even now.

You have also told me before that you use ONE 1000w HPS for TWO of those roughly 3x3 areas.

Yep.

1-So you put the light about where the two trays meet?

Yep.

2- is it possible more light would benefit even YOUR MIGHT op?

It wouldn't hurt, but I think the performance gain would be hard to justify against the additional power cost.

If I considered anything, I might put a 600 over each tray. The pair of 'tubed 1000s suck about 2200-2250W out of the AC mains (with ballast loss considered) and each put down something like 80K lux avg over the pair of 900 x 900mm trays, with the lamps at about 300mm above the nearest plants. 4x 'tubed 600s would draw about 2800W with ballast losses and would lay down about 90K lux at a similar spacing. I don't think the yield difference would be significant but the power cost would be.

3- Not all batwing reflectors have that butt like profile you mentioned being crucial earlier. Is there a particular company you prefer?

My batwings are Adjust-A-Wings which have had their slipper-mount lamp socket removed and replaced with cooltubes.

Normally they simply curve downwards instead of up and then down if u follow...I am baffled at the amount of turdball reflectors out there. All good growers only recommend cool tubes with wings.

Yep, you're describing a single parabola, where there's only one curve, not two. You're quite right, these sort point quite a lot of light right back to the lamp tube.

p.s. i started saving all the awesome info I come across in this forum in a word document I like to call Al b. Not'd thanks for my weekly NOTES!!

Probably a good thing. Years worth of my writing went down the shitter when the Canadians went crazy and allowed the US DEA to shut down Overgrow.com, where I was a Mentor for about 5 years.

 

[Al B. Fuct]

Hey Al,
I've been following your threads for over a year and have had good results.

Great to hear it.

I am not pleased with the root mass within the pots.

You're quite right to be concerned.

My ebb and flow is being cycled 3 x a day at 15 min. intervals. I plan to get the digital timer to get the flood time down a bit.

Yep, start by reducing your flood duration to only the time needed to raise the level to the overflow and only 1x/day @ lights on for plants in wks 1-2 and 2x/lights-on for more advanced plants, second watering at lights-on+6h.

I am using rockwool mini cubes in the pots and in earlier grows i have had a good solid root mass coming out of the pots at harvest.

If you got good roots with this medium and flood timing in earlier crops, something was different. The plants may have been more vigorous, using more water more quickly, room temps might have been warmer, increasing evaporation from the pots of media, etc.

On a few plants I chopped tonight, I noticed a slight brown in some of the roots at the bottom of the pot.

I want to ask if you think this is root rot and the possible reason why. Could it be the 15 minute (too long) of my flood cycles.

Yep, classic root rot. Are you using H2O2? If not, you should be applying 50% grade H2O2 at 1ml/L of tank volume, reapplied every 3-4 days.

The plants are giving me some fairly decent yields in the past few months. I have some that are around 1 oz (dry) and some less, but I feel part of that was my setup of my cycles and a few other issues that I have figured out and fixed.

What concerns me is that I was expected a fuller root mass and much whiter roots.

Would concern me too. You should see quite a lot of bright white root development especially down low in the pot if all's OK.

Sorting out the flood frequency and duration along with religiously dosing the tanks with H2O2 should make yields better and more consistent for you.

Peace out and keep up the great work here.

Thanks. Peace on you, too.

 

[rifishman]

Al,

Thanks for all of that. Makes sense, for sure. Had a fellow gardener here with me tonight as we were batting our heads against the wall with what was happening. You explained it very clearly.

I was lacking the h202 component, and I know that had tons to do with the problem, plus the overwatering. WTF was I thinking. I read your earlier post on the 2lbs every two weeks, and know, for a fact, that the H202 issue was well explained.


Al, question:
I only can obtain H202 at 35% at the hydro store. How many ml/l should I use at that strength?



I slacked and am paying for it. The system works. For those of you that are faced with situations that just don"t seem right, you need to stop, analyze it and ask yourself (and Al of course ) the reason for the situation.

Everything can be analyzed, corrected, and you are then officially escalted (whether you want to or not) from Hydro 101 to Hydro 102.

It is a wonderful learning experience and I am proud to be amongst those that enjoy the ride as I do.

Peace all, and thanks tons Al.

 

[rifishman]

and of course Al, there is the harvest that is worth mentioning, never mind the hash from the Hash Press.

Peace all !

 

[Al B. Fuct]

Al,

Thanks for all of that. Makes sense, for sure. Had a fellow gardener here with me tonight as we were batting our heads against the wall with what was happening. You explained it very clearly.

Yep, just break it down to first principles. Cannabis hates wet feet. It likes damp but never saturated, airless rootzone conditions. You can saturate a medium if at least half the water stored in it is going to be removed in 24h, either by a vigorous plant, evaporation or some of each.

Rockwool is highly absorbent, storing many times its weight in water. When it is saturated, there's almost no air in it, even with the RW mini-cubes. If you want to flood more frequently, use a low absorbency medium like pellets. High air to stored water ratio and lots of air gaps between the pellets. The RW mini cubes will behave pretty much like RW floc despite their cubed form.

However, pellets have a dark side. I don't use them because they are heavy, hard to dispose of and while re-usable in theory, not so re-usable in practise. Before re-use, they must be cleaned FULLY of old root matter and sterilised or root disease can be transferred from crop to crop. Cleaning them is a sloppy prick of a job. They might be re-used 2-3 times if you're game to clean them, but then they begin to accumulate nute salts and must be discarded.

I used pots of RW floc for years, worked OK but I could only water 1x/day, limiting the amount of O2 I could get to the roots. I have recently switched to Fytocell, a resin foam based medium resembling crumbled foam rubber. It is about 37% air and about 60% water. The high air content permits frequent flooding while still storing a bit of water, nice in case of a pump failure. It holds much more water than pellets which hold approximately none, so it can't be flooded nearly as often. I am flooding 175mm x 175mm pots of Fytocell 2x/day for plants in wk 1-2 and 3x/day for larger, more advanced plants. Fytocell crumbs will escape the pot drain holes, so I tightly pack a 25-50mm layer of RW floc in the bottom of each pot and fill the remainder with Fytocell. Fytocell also will float, so the wetted bottom layer of RW floc, which holds much more water, reduces the buoyancy of the pots.

I was lacking the h202 component, and I know that had tons to do with the problem, plus the overwatering. WTF was I thinking. I read your earlier post on the 2lbs every two weeks, and know, for a fact, that the H202 issue was well explained.

Details, details, details.

Al, question:
I only can obtain H202 at 35% at the hydro store. How many ml/l should I use at that strength?

Use 35% H2O2 at 1.7ml/L. 2ml/l is close enough for rock'n'roll.

Lemme know how you go next batch. Should have no more brown rootage and more vigorous plants if you rework the watering timing and religously dose those tanks with H2O2 every 3-4 days.

 

[Al B. Fuct]

and of course Al, there is the harvest that is worth mentioning, never mind the hash from the Hash Press.

All very noice work.

I LIKE the kif press, that's on my wish list.

 

[wyteberrywidow]

al b did u ever hear of flowering 10 weeks but really 8 so the last 2 weeks the plants remain in total darkness no light. so the plants can have alot if crystals(thc)

 

[davidgrimm]

Hi there

Question 1:

Will the nutrients build up in a RW/Fyto grow medium for hydro (like they do in soil and then have to be "flushed" out)? And, if so, how do you get them out?


Question 2:

Some time ago you stopped (temporarily ??) using Canna 13/14. What effect, if any, did it have on your grow operation (yield, ease of operation, etc) ?



Sorry if you have already answered these questions. I have read most of your threads here backwards and forwards but, if I missed the answers, I apologize in advance.

Thank you for your dedication and assistance to all here.

DG

 

[HAZEOHOLIC]

(Yep, sounds great.)

Thanks AL your the man will do 250watt for mums

(Way too much CFL. Clones don't need to be pounded with light, they only need to be convinced it's daylight for 18+h/day. Swap that 105W unit for 2-3 ordinary grocery store 10-20W CFLs, enough of them that all leaves are within about 100mm of a lamp tube. The 105W unit might be useful vegging mums.)
Will use the 105w also in conjunction with 250 MH

(A ventilation system needs to be able to shift the room's airmass in about 3 mins. Calculate your room volume in cubic feet and divide by 3. That's the minimum CFM rating for the ventilation system. More is gooder.)

OK Al here the tricky part my closet for mums/clones is 88"Hx 24"Wx 24"D that is converted in feet's 7.33Hx2.00Wx2.00D that will = 29.32 cu ft / 3 = 9.77 CFM ? is that right I don't think so need help in that dept lol also flowering closet 88"Hx 60"Wx 24"D convert 7.33Hx5.00Wx2.00D= 73.30 sq ft/ 3= 24.43????

(If a single exhaust blower (with passive intake/s, which combined are double the area of the exhaust diameter i.e. 6" blower needs 2x 6" dia intake holes) has to do all the work, increase the CFM rating to 1CFM per cu ft of room airmass, i.e. 200 cu ft room gets a 200CFM exhaust.)

So should get for mum/clones minimum CFM rating 30 cfm? and flowering 75 cfm?

(Remember that axial blowers don't work well into high static pressures caused by carbon filters or long ducts with a lot of bends. Use a centrifugal blower for cases like this. An axial will not get anywhere near its free-air CFM rating when pushing into obstructive loads.)

OK centrifugal blowers it is thanks Al

(Intake blowers can always be axials. The room airmass will be at a slightly negative pressure due to the exhaust removing air from the room, meaning the intakes are not pushing into a high static pressure.)

OK so I should get a axials intake blower?

(Intake blowers should be rated at about 80-90% of the exhaust blower's CFM rating. This keeps the room at a slightly negative pressure referenced to atmosphere. Any air leaks in your construction will leak air inward rather than out, so all air leaving the op is going through your exhaust blower (and filter if present), making scents easier to control.)

Wow nice so multiply the cfm of exhaust blower by 80-90% and that the cfm intake I should get?

(It's a rough rule of thumb but 50W of HPS light per sq ft will do. Calculate the area of your intended lighted floorspace in sq ft and multiply by 50. There's your lamp size in watts (or close to it).)

This is the part that sucks my flower closet has a available grow space of 4.57' x 2.0'=9.14 feet x 50= 457 so I guess a 400watter but I want nice big buds can i still run a 600 air cooled tube?

(The only air-cooled reflector worth having is a cooltube.



Avoid the box-type 'Euro hood' reflectors. These sometimes don't have intake air duct flanges, may not have a glass cover over the lamp or may only have 100mm duct holes. It's necessary to have a fully closed air path for lamp cooling air and 100mm is too small for anything but a 400. Boxy reflectors are also quite inefficient; they bounce a lot of light right back at the lamp tube.

Double parabola type 'batwing' reflectors put very nearly all reflected light on the plants instead of back on the tube.

Cooltubes encase the lamp in glass, which is thermally resistive. They also keep the airflow smooth and very close to the lamp, meaning most of the lamp's heat is leaving with the airflow instead of being allowed to warm the fixture and lose heat by convection into the room's airmass.)

Yea exactly that the cool tube I was thinking of getting but in 600 watt I guess for something like that is gonna need a blower also to cool the bulb? and if you would know what size?

(I don't see where your need for an MH is. If you're going to do SoG, you won't be vegging any plants aside from mums and the 250HPS will do fine for for that.

)

Got it Al and sorry about all the inquires is that I just want to get it right the first time thanks for all the help you giving me

 

[archie6214]

Hey Al first off let me say I'm a huge fan of what you do here and am glad you are back from vacation. I'm trying to model my grow after yours and am starting with the mums now which I started from seed. I know I stunted their growth by leaving them in their rockwool cubes too long before transplanting. But they are 7 weeks old today and I can't figure out why these bottom leaves keep yellowing and die off. The ppm is 850, 5.5-6.0 ph, temps 75-80F, RH 45-50%. All I use is GH nova nutes, and 35% H202 @ 1.7ml/L. The burnt tops of some of the plants I'm going to guess and say heat burn and need to move light up. But the yellowing leaves I'm clueless. Also should I top these if they are going to be my mums?

 

[Al B. Fuct]

al b did u ever hear of flowering 10 weeks but really 8 so the last 2 weeks the plants remain in total darkness no light. so the plants can have alot if crystals(thc)

Leaving plants in darkness for some period (the usual claim is a few days, not weeks) to improve potency is a full-on wives' tale. Total and utter myth.

It's not quite the silliest thing I've ever heard... but it's not far off. You can safely laugh your head off at anyone who insists this works; the myth believers are just as much in the dark as their plants.

If it did work, I'd leave 'em in the dark for a year, hoping to come back to a puddle of pure THC.

Will the nutrients build up in a RW/Fyto grow medium for hydro (like they do in soil and then have to be "flushed" out)? And, if so, how do you get them out?

No need to flush unless you have overfertilised (which I'm quite sure YOU will never do, right? ). If you must flush, use a weak (~400ppm @ 5.8 ) nutrient solution and flush until the runoff is the same ppm & pH as the flush solution.

Some time ago you stopped (temporarily ??) using Canna 13/14. What effect, if any, did it have on your grow operation (yield, ease of operation, etc) ?

The yield has dropped off by about 20% and I'm seeing some P deficiency in late flowering. I've just re-started applying PK in wk 6 for 1 wk only. Haven't gotten any plants out since re-starting use of the stuff.

)

Got it Al and sorry about all the inquires is that I just want to get it right the first time thanks for all the help you giving me

Thanks, there's no better time to get it right than at the beginning!

Please don't put your own comments within quote tags- when I try to 'reply with quotation' of your comments, the board trims off everything inside quote tags.

What you see above is all I got when I tried to quote your last post to add my notes. Your comments are also mixed in with mine.

Your comments in your reply should not be within quote tags, ie.

 [quote]comment you're replying to, within quote tags[/quote] your comment, not wrapped in QUOTE tags

Now I have to go copy/paste all your comments manually out of your last post... makes a lot of work for me... so here we go...

Will use the 105w also in conjunction with 250 MH

Adding CFL to HID lighting is like putting a model airplane engine on the nose of your 747 to help out the jet engines. Don't bother.

OK Al here the tricky part my closet for mums/clones is 88"Hx 24"Wx 24"D that is converted in feet's 7.33Hx2.00Wx2.00D that will = 29.32 cu ft / 3 = 9.77 CFM ? is that right I don't think so need help in that dept lol also flowering closet 88"Hx 60"Wx 24"D convert 7.33Hx5.00Wx2.00D= 73.30 sq ft/ 3= 24.43????

Yes, you have some very small spaces. Your figures are right. You will have a hard time finding blowers of the calculated ratings. Just use some 6" axials, rated about 150-200CFM.

OK centrifugal blowers it is thanks Al

You'll only need a centrif for pushing air into a carbon filter or a very long (more than 4m) duct.

OK so I should get a axials intake blower?

Isn't that what I said?

Wow nice so multiply the cfm of exhaust blower by 80-90% and that the cfm intake I should get?

Isn't that what I said?

This is the part that sucks my flower closet has a available grow space of 4.57' x 2.0'=9.14 feet x 50= 457 so I guess a 400watter but I want nice big buds can i still run a 600 air cooled tube?

You could run a 'tubed 600 but a 400 is a fine light and will make good density for you in the small space you're using.

they are 7 weeks old today and I can't figure out why these bottom leaves keep yellowing and die off. The ppm is 850, 5.5-6.0 ph, temps 75-80F, RH 45-50%. All I use is GH nova nutes, and 35% H202 @ 1.7ml/L. The burnt tops of some of the plants I'm going to guess and say heat burn and need to move light up. But the yellowing leaves I'm clueless.

You're going to have to maintain the pH a lot closer to 5.8 than a span of 5.5-6. You need to resolve to 0.1 (i.e. 5.8 +/- 0.1, or a maximum swing of 5.7-5.9). If you are trying to measure pH with a colour-match kit of some sort (strips, liquids), chuck that in the bin and get a proper pH meter. Colour-match kits are simply not accurate. Probably OK for your swimming pool but just won't git it for your hydro op.

Part of what I see is a Mg deficiency (yellow, spotty leaves). This is probably not an actual lack of Mg, rather a nutrient lockout caused by running pH too low. See this nutrient availability chart stolen from St0ney on gardensecure.com:

I also see overwatering. I see you are using RW cubes in pellets. Is your rockwool cube below the flood level, permitting the cube to be saturated? I bet it is. The RW cube must be 1/2" above the flood level. Cubes must not be introduced to pellets until there is a decent spray of several taproots out of the bottom of your cube before putting it in the pellets. Flood your pellets about 5x/lights-on period, but do not allow your RW cube to be saturated. The roots out of the bottom of the cube will find the damp pellets after about a week post planting in the pellets.

Also should I top these if they are going to be my mums?

Yep, take off the growing tips to force branching.