The klx Way!

[klx]

As promised, Weeks 7, 8 and the moneyshot:

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Had some problems cloning, but it was my first time ever producing and processing clones. Hope I learnt the one thing or the other.
The grow itself was insanely easy thanks to your documentation in here Guess if had to engineer it myself, I would have thrown money down the sink on the whole Canna range including the cleaning hassle afterwards. Saved me some try and error runs for sure!

You nailed it man very well done. Really great result for a first run. Enjoy all that lovely ganja you have now

 

[tschiller]

You nailed it man very well done. Really great result for a first run. Enjoy all that lovely ganja you have now

Couldn‘t be happier frankly, on top it looks like a personal best, will post one final update here as soon drying is done.

 

[tschiller]

525g, record broken by 100g, jeeeez

 

[klx]

525g, record broken by 100g, jeeeez

View attachment 5157814

Boom. I bet you can improve on that too.

 

[desperado63]

Hey man
Youre still here klx?
Really interesting thread!
Been reading it already twice and i have one question left. You said that the stems should be a little above the water level. How crucial you think that is?

 

[desperado63]

And... do you have any tilt angle of your flood table so that the water gets easier back into the rez?

 

[klx]

And... do you have any tilt angle of your flood table so that the water gets easier back into the rez?

Not really. Flood trays have deep grooves so any residual nutrient sits down in them and dont cause a problem. You can have a slight incline back towards the drain but if you use proper flood trays its not necessary.

Hey man
Youre still here klx?
Really interesting thread!
Been reading it already twice and i have one question left. You said that the stems should be a little above the water level. How crucial you think that is?

The reason I said that was during the development of this system I lost a few clones in the first week due to the stems going mushy and soft. I pulled them out and replaced them with extra clones I still had in the cloner if I had enough. But when I raised the plants up a tiny bit that issue seemed to disappear. It may have been that the clones had the pathogens before they went into the trays but raising them slightly fixed it.

You will find there are idiosyncrasies with your environment and you will need to alter things here and there slightly. Use my system as written here as a base and over your first few cycles you will see the areas that need tweaking to suit your environment and climate.

Good luck!

 

[thisusernameisnottaken]

Not really. Flood trays have deep grooves so any residual nutrient sits down in them and dont cause a problem. You can have a slight incline back towards the drain but if you use proper flood trays its not necessary.



The reason I said that was during the development of this system I lost a few clones in the first week due to the stems going mushy and soft. I pulled them out and replaced them with extra clones I still had in the cloner if I had enough. But when I raised the plants up a tiny bit that issue seemed to disappear. It may have been that the clones had the pathogens before they went into the trays but raising them slightly fixed it.

You will find there are idiosyncrasies with your environment and you will need to alter things here and there slightly. Use my system as written here as a base and over your first few cycles you will see the areas that need tweaking to suit your environment and climate.

Good luck!

Did you have any problems with gnats in your system?

 

[klx]

Did you have any problems with gnats in your system?

Zero gnats when mediumless. When I use coco or clay balls then yes sometimes gnats need managing.

 

[desperado63]

Okay thanks! Really interesting thread!

 

[thisusernameisnottaken]

Zero gnats when mediumless. When I use coco or clay balls then yes sometimes gnats need managing.

I want to try your style but a smaller version?

 

[DownUnderDog]

I absolutely love this thread @klx
Thank you from a fellow Aussie!!

Are you still using this mediumless F&D method?

If so, what if anything would you change?

I used DWC extensively in the past but switched to my own F&D system years ago. I created a little controller to do what the ebb&grow does but at the time I thought mine was way better. I had a control bucket with two floats. The top float would stop the fill, but it needed to drop below that float for 5 seconds to turn the fill pump back on. It would stay in fill mode for about 20minutes to allow a level in all pots, even those choked up with roots. If flood every 2 hrs from memory. The 5 seconds stopped the pump hammering on/off.

The bottom float handled the draining and again, had to be activated for 5seconds to ensure the drain pump didn't hammer on/off. There was also a 15 second timer on both to ensure they overshot the float by 15s to further prevent pumps on/off rapidly.

I loved that system but the pots were full of hydroton or perlite and it was a messy affair to clean between grows.

After your thread (and seeing as I'm in a new location now) I'm considering mediumless F&D as well. I'm considering 2 options.
1) using 150mm PVC with two cap ends, effectively making a circular PVC pot. I can make the top cap ends removable so I can get clones established in a clone/veg room set up the same then drop them into the tubes for flowering.
2) going for clone -> flower like you've done and using a table. I love the simplicity. For a lid I'm considering aluminium extruded angle exterior frame + T piece to divide it up into sections. Then cutting the 150mm PVC (I have a bit of that left over here) and using the heat gun to flatten it into PVC squares (light proof too).

I'm still a good 12 months away from having the grow room organised but I've been considering jifi pucks as the only medium to strike clones and grow in. Probably veg for a little too get then a bit more established. So I've been prototyping puck holders with 32DN PVC and a heat gun. I hope it helps anyone else.

I like the one with the skinny fingers, but they are a little long. Probably only need 4x short tabs turned out to hang it in a hole in the lid.

 

[klx]

I absolutely love this thread @klx
Thank you from a fellow Aussie!!

Are you still using this mediumless F&D method?

If so, what if anything would you change?

I used DWC extensively in the past but switched to my own F&D system years ago. I created a little controller to do what the ebb&grow does but at the time I thought mine was way better. I had a control bucket with two floats. The top float would stop the fill, but it needed to drop below that float for 5 seconds to turn the fill pump back on. It would stay in fill mode for about 20minutes to allow a level in all pots, even those choked up with roots. If flood every 2 hrs from memory. The 5 seconds stopped the pump hammering on/off.

The bottom float handled the draining and again, had to be activated for 5seconds to ensure the drain pump didn't hammer on/off. There was also a 15 second timer on both to ensure they overshot the float by 15s to further prevent pumps on/off rapidly.

I loved that system but the pots were full of hydroton or perlite and it was a messy affair to clean between grows.

After your thread (and seeing as I'm in a new location now) I'm considering mediumless F&D as well. I'm considering 2 options.
1) using 150mm PVC with two cap ends, effectively making a circular PVC pot. I can make the top cap ends removable so I can get clones established in a clone/veg room set up the same then drop them into the tubes for flowering.
2) going for clone -> flower like you've done and using a table. I love the simplicity. For a lid I'm considering aluminium extruded angle exterior frame + T piece to divide it up into sections. Then cutting the 150mm PVC (I have a bit of that left over here) and using the heat gun to flatten it into PVC squares (light proof too).

I'm still a good 12 months away from having the grow room organised but I've been considering jifi pucks as the only medium to strike clones and grow in. Probably veg for a little too get then a bit more established. So I've been prototyping puck holders with 32DN PVC and a heat gun. I hope it helps anyone else.

I like the one with the skinny fingers, but they are a little long. Probably only need 4x short tabs turned out to hang it in a hole in the lid.

Hello mate,

I used this room for about 4 years but then I moved out of town and did not have to be as stealthy and could expand a bit. I was pretty happy with this system overall, the transition from the cloner to the F&D trays is the real key. You really need to make sure you have a good spray of roots before they go in and then flood a lot during the first week.

Last few years I have been growing in different styles both indoor and out. Couple pics below. The NFT is mediumless but I think the pots of Coco, top fed, drain to waste, win when it comes to yield.

 

[DownUnderDog]

Hello mate,

I used this room for about 4 years but then I moved out of town and did not have to be as stealthy and could expand a bit. I was pretty happy with this system overall, the transition from the cloner to the F&D trays is the real key. You really need to make sure you have a good spray of roots before they go in and then flood a lot during the first week.

Last few years I have been growing in different styles both indoor and out. Couple pics below. The NFT is mediumless but I think the pots of Coco, top fed, drain to waste, win when it comes to yield.

View attachment 5424352View attachment 5424353View attachment 5424355View attachment 5424354View attachment 5424356

Oh man, glad to hear you got to move somewhere u can expand. I'm still technically in suburbia, but on 5 acres with a 200sqm 3phase shed. I was considering a Polly tunnel as well but for now, I've reserved quite a bit of floor space in the shed. I just feel more secure in there behind a false wall.

I'm interested to hear more about your NFT. That's how I stumbled on your thread, trying to find some info on people using that for MJ. Yours look to be a decent size, any issues with them toppling over? Are you just dropping a rooted clone direct in there? It looks very dialled, nice and frosty. Looks a lot like some bigbud I seen grown quite some time ago but in soil outdoors.

 

[klx]

Yeah man a few acres, lots of trees, and a big shed is the way to go. Im in sub tropics so shed gets hot so its a winter space for me.

Well this was the first NFT grow I have done in about a long time but it was fine. They definitely will topple over, square PVC downpipes are more stable but I used 100mm here and it was fine you just gotta chock the pipe or trellis the plants etc. Algae was minimal as I was dosing the tanks with H2O2 once or twice a week.

The roots of the last plant in the rail closest to the res will grow into the res so you can either leave them or cut them. If you cut them its basically sacrificing the plant as they get stressed, but it blocks all the other plant's roots so its worth the sacrifice imo. Can just leave them if you have a good bit of oxygen in the res.

These were all from seed so I popped em in a rockwool cube then dropped them in as soon as they had a couple sets of true leaves. A big, healthy rooted clone would a better way to go for production but this was a specific request for this strain so needed to go from seed.

It is pretty much the same level of maintenance, ease of use, etc as the flood tables.

NFT buds:

 

[DownUnderDog]

That strain looks bloody delicious!
I don't want to drift the thread away from the klx way, but I hope you do a grow diary of something on it. It's got my mouth watering

 

[desperado63]

Thats exactly right. Thats why you want a really good spray of roots and push the stem of the clone down through the net pot so the bottom of the stem sits just above the flood level.

Hey klx, thx for showing us your way of growing!
Im having the problem, that the roots are turning brown and overall not looking great and some plants are dying... i made a couple of mistakes this time...

1st mistake.
the clones were too long inside the cloner, so that all the roots grew together and by seperating the roots i had to rip off some roots. and by that, there are definitely some ripped off, dead roots inbetween the healthy roots. but since im using h2o2 there shouldnt be a problem with that right? all the bad bacterias would get killed anyway...

2nd mistake
the pump was once not turned on for about 3-4 hours. i did not have any hanging leaves yet but i feel like the roots did take some damage...

3rd mistake?
How crucial do you think is it, that the stem does not come below the water level?
bcs mine go all the way down to the bottom of the tray so they get flooded aswell.

so now i try to find what causes my problem.
some roots are brown, some are almost like transparent, some look like they are crippled and some are white
and some roots above surface level and some stems start to get white mold.
did you never have mold on roots that are above the flooding surface level? i mean its always wet down there...
what would be really interesting is, what were the mistakes you made with this system?

 

[Rocket Soul]

Hey klx, thx for showing us your way of growing!
Im having the problem, that the roots are turning brown and overall not looking great and some plants are dying... i made a couple of mistakes this time...

1st mistake.
the clones were too long inside the cloner, so that all the roots grew together and by seperating the roots i had to rip off some roots. and by that, there are definitely some ripped off, dead roots inbetween the healthy roots. but since im using h2o2 there shouldnt be a problem with that right? all the bad bacterias would get killed anyway...

2nd mistake
the pump was once not turned on for about 3-4 hours. i did not have any hanging leaves yet but i feel like the roots did take some damage...

3rd mistake?
How crucial do you think is it, that the stem does not come below the water level?
bcs mine go all the way down to the bottom of the tray so they get flooded aswell.

so now i try to find what causes my problem.
some roots are brown, some are almost like transparent, some look like they are crippled and some are white
and some roots above surface level and some stems start to get white mold.
did you never have mold on roots that are above the flooding surface level? i mean its always wet down there...
what would be really interesting is, what were the mistakes you made with this system?

Im no expert but some use lactobacillus extract for outcompeting anaerobic bacteria in some situations. Using two pumps parallel can sometimes be a good idea, means your le never completely out of action if there is a failure.

Always like to hear from KLX so hope hell make an appearance, he dont come around this thread too often anymore. Hope all is well with you, Kay!

 

[desperado63]

Im no expert but some use lactobacillus extract for outcompeting anaerobic bacteria in some situations. Using two pumps parallel can sometimes be a good idea, means your le never completely out of action if there is a failure.

Always like to hear from KLX so hope hell make an appearance, he dont come around this thread too often anymore. Hope all is well with you, Kay!

yeah but id prefer to use h2o2 since its way easier/cheaper to use.
i already thought about running 2 pumps. but i could run 5 different pumps...if i dont turn them on it wouldnt matter
but i thought about a raspberry pi and sensors, that would notify me if it doesnt flood within 1 or 2 hours.

lets see... he might will answer. especially if 3 hours withoud flooding could be enough to damage the roots and if the stems always should be above water level

 

[desperado63]

Im no expert but some use lactobacillus extract for outcompeting anaerobic bacteria in some situations. Using two pumps parallel can sometimes be a good idea, means your le never completely out of action if there is a failure.

Always like to hear from KLX so hope hell make an appearance, he dont come around this thread too often anymore. Hope all is well with you, Kay!

but thanks!