First grow ever!! Indoor hydro continous drip, Serious AK-47 & Sensi NL#1
- Thread starter JJFOURTWENTY
- Start date
JJFOURTWENTY
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Thanks for the kind words jdro, and your grow's looking good there btw!
JJFOURTWENTY
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Haven't updated in a while. During that time I revamped the setup quite a bit. Ditched the top-feed drip system in favor of ebb and flow. Now I'm running Supernatural Fearless Gardner air tables all around... two in the Power Grow cab and one for the BCNL Producer. Man what a difference for the better imo...
LoadedGreen
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Nice work man! 
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JJFOURTWENTY
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Unfortunately I almost killed my plants during the transition. Initially put them in 1/2 gallon Air Pots, and because the flood only reaches a height of about four inches, I believed the roots weren't even hitting that. It's difficult to discern the difference between over and under watering initially, but after the second time they were drooping in under a week I had decided to ditch the Air Pots in favor of just your standard five inch NGW net pot - which fits the flood tray like it was supposed to, and will be able to fully load up twenty in there for Sea of Green which I eventually plan to implement.
JJFOURTWENTY
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The drip system seemed to be pretty decent, but I wouldn't go back to it. Thing is that it's complex. A lot more tubing to deal with, 1/8'' ID spaghetti tubing and drippers that clog with salt buildup all too easily. Plus the air pump which was running 24/7 and began to slowly drive me crazy with its noise. What I did like about drip was how it kept its pH and ppm's in check with very little variation. That's not the case with ebb and flow. The pH rises .1 every other day or so and ppms are always on the rise. So to keep things in check I set the pH level down to 5.7 instead of 5.8 and always try to keep the ppms 100 below my target. Demands a lot more attention than drip, but then again the plants grow a helluva lot faster and fuller!
Using a Fearless Gardner air table, I've got my flood times dialed in to 4 minutes on and 3 hours, 56 minutes off - around the clock day and night. The table takes nearly a half an hour to drain, so it's really a 30 minute flood time if you look at it that way. The Eco Plus Commercial Air 1 is a perfect fit btw for the air tables. Just one of these guys is more than enough for powering two tables. Highly recommended!
Flipping the switch to 12/12 tonight. It's time!!!
Using a Fearless Gardner air table, I've got my flood times dialed in to 4 minutes on and 3 hours, 56 minutes off - around the clock day and night. The table takes nearly a half an hour to drain, so it's really a 30 minute flood time if you look at it that way. The Eco Plus Commercial Air 1 is a perfect fit btw for the air tables. Just one of these guys is more than enough for powering two tables. Highly recommended!
Flipping the switch to 12/12 tonight. It's time!!!
JJFOURTWENTY
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Thanks guys! Update: This morning I awoke to find water on the floor. Couldn't figure out where it was coming from until I looked at one of the lines leading up to a table and noticed that it was filled with water... all the way back to the air pump and spilling out of it. Shit! What happened was water got siphoned back into the pump. Amazingly enough the pump still works fine and needless to say, I made a trip over to my LHS this morning and pick up a few check valves. If you're running an air table, one bit of advice - use check valves. I didn't have any problems for a couple of weeks and then bam, it happens without warning. The EcoPlus Commercial Air 1 is freaking amazing by the way. How this thing gets a bunch of water sucked back in it and still continues to run just fine is completely beyond me. Here's a pic from the back of the newer, much cleaner setup:
Also been working on the cabinet's ventilation. Need to keep that light out yet minimize airflow loss now that we've entered into flower!
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JJFOURTWENTY
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Switched the bulb ratio 3:1 - 3000k/5000k before lights came on this morning. This afternoon the first good signs of the plants showing their sex appeared(wow was that fast! just two days into flower... although I had been vegging a bit long). Three obvious males were culled and quickly discarded.
Let me say right now that I will not be ordering anymore Sensi Seeds. Of the ten NL #1's, half failed to germ right off the bat and then all of the others except just one look like fucking hemp plants! Big thick stalks and that's about it. Luckily one is squat and bushy and female. Fingers are crossed that it turns out okay. Here's a pic of one of those shitty NL hemp plants I'm talking about:
Let me say right now that I will not be ordering anymore Sensi Seeds. Of the ten NL #1's, half failed to germ right off the bat and then all of the others except just one look like fucking hemp plants! Big thick stalks and that's about it. Luckily one is squat and bushy and female. Fingers are crossed that it turns out okay. Here's a pic of one of those shitty NL hemp plants I'm talking about:
JJFOURTWENTY
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Gonna be taking some clones real soon once all of the sexes have been positively identified. Bought a Turbo Klone T-24 w/ dome for the occasion plus an added three head ultrasonic fogger I got off CL for some extra kick...
JJFOURTWENTY
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Update: All of the males have since been culled and what you're now looking at is a total of (5)AK's and (3)NL #1's in the group. Unfortunately I'm gonna have to euthanize one the remaining NL's because it just keeps on stretching with no apparent end in sight. Grew another three inches last night and is now past the bulbs and about to hit the ceiling...
Luckily all of the other plants have quit stretching. I've gotta say that I am extremely disappointed with Sensi's NL# 1 offering. They seem to take forever to start flowers, they're definitely for outdoors, and most of it is just a couple of big fan leaves attached to a super thick stalk... definitely not the kind of good indoor SOG type of plant I'm seeking. OTOH the AK's are doing wonderfully...
Luckily all of the other plants have quit stretching. I've gotta say that I am extremely disappointed with Sensi's NL# 1 offering. They seem to take forever to start flowers, they're definitely for outdoors, and most of it is just a couple of big fan leaves attached to a super thick stalk... definitely not the kind of good indoor SOG type of plant I'm seeking. OTOH the AK's are doing wonderfully...
JJFOURTWENTY
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Also, I've put together a nice little clone/mother station during the last week:
Still need a lamp though for the eventual mothers. I'm looking at a Supernova UFO and a nice stand or something to hang it from. That's still a ways down the road though...
Btw I ended up taking my first clones last night, 24 in total from four good plants that are heavy on the bud sites. Luckily one of them is a squat and bushy little NL, so maybe my 200 dollars or whatever I spent on those fucking seeds won't all be going to waste!
Still need a lamp though for the eventual mothers. I'm looking at a Supernova UFO and a nice stand or something to hang it from. That's still a ways down the road though...
Btw I ended up taking my first clones last night, 24 in total from four good plants that are heavy on the bud sites. Luckily one of them is a squat and bushy little NL, so maybe my 200 dollars or whatever I spent on those fucking seeds won't all be going to waste!
JJFOURTWENTY
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Thanks jdro! The mothers are going to be put into a Botanicare Aero 9 machine which has been converted into ebb and flow. 3/4'' fill & drain fitting and an extra riser was used on the overflow. Water Pump is a Sedra G300 needle wheel.
One thing about the TurboKlone, or probably any aero cloner for that matter, is that using a recycling timer is an absolute must! I'm still in the process of dialing the optimum on/off setting at the moment. I saw a post in another forum from someone who's using a near identical setup(his is the 48 site version though) and he had found the optimum time to be 3 minutes on/7minutes off. I tried that and it worked for a couple of hours until the water temp started to rise. Kept watching it on and off until it hit nearly 89(yikes!) and then I made the call to shut it down. Played with a few different setting and now I'm at 45 seconds on/3 minutes off*. It's been about an hour and I'm down to 80 and steadily falling. Shooting for a target temp of 75 degrees. A three disc ultrasonic fogger is also inside running in conjunction with the water pump. Clonex Gel and Solution as directed were used for the cuts.
*timed on my stopwatch it actually came out to 45 sec. on/2 min. off
Slight update: Looks like the the temp has been holding steady for the last hour or two right at 75. BAM!
JJFOURTWENTY
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With much regret I made the decision to chop down the tall NL plant. The stretching seemed to have no end in sight and it had about a 1/4 inch until it was going to touch the ceiling. Maybe could've LST'd it or whatever, but it didn't look like it was going to be a real producer anyways, so out it came...
JJFOURTWENTY
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Rethought the amount of Clonex solution going into the TurboKlone. Emptied out the res and scaled back on the stuff, this time to approximately half strength(20ml in total) which brought my ppms down to 400 from the nearly 800 as recommended by Clonex.
JJFOURTWENTY
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JJFOURTWENTY
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My Philips Alto II bulbs came in about a week ago, one case of each - 3000k & 5000k. Since I'm well into flower I decided to make the switch since there was no idea how much life was left on the old ones.
