1000W Grow Tent/Stealth PC-CFL Autoflower (hydro w/Pics)

How's it going folks?

I've never grown before, I've been around it. I've seen a lot of setups, and I have long-time friends who do. To save money, live a little easier, and have better meds at my side. I'm trying to cut some risk down by staying away from the street market and just going personal.

Stealth PC CFL Autoflowering Grow-

Here's what I've got so far:

1x MrGrowPro PC (He did a good job on it, I will say that.)
This is a hydroponic unit using a small DWC setup in a 6QT. Sterlite tub. Using 2x 2" netpots.
It uses 8x CFL's (4x 2700k for flowering and 4x 6500k for veg. I only use 4 at a time.)

1.5" Rockwool starter cubes
10L bag of Hydroton rocks
1 Quart bottle of General Hydroponics PH Down
1 Quart bottle of General Hydroponics FloraGro
1 bottle of Aquarium chlorine remover.
1 Electronic PH Meter

5x BigDevil Automatic - Fem
10x Mi5 Automatic - Regular
1x Auto Bomb - Fem
1x Auto Northern Lights - Fem
1x Green Love Potion - Fem
1x Black Russian - Fem
1x Cotton Candy - Fem
Unlimited Bagseeds

For the Grow Tent:

1000W Sunlight Systems Harvest Pro Switchable Digital Ballast MH/HPS
4" Sunlight Sun System Yield Master II Reflector/Hood with hanging chains
1000W Ultra Sun HPS Bulb

I have started germing 1x of the Big Devil and 1x of the Mi5 using the paper towel method, it's been a couple of days and the BD is poking through about 1/4-1/2" so far. The Mi5 is cracked but not showing yet. I put 1x of a bagseed from some decent mids in a 5.5 PH soaked 1" rockwool cube and stuck it in the reservoir with General Hydroponics FloraGro the water is just below the bottom of the netpots and will be raised if needed. Small layer of hydroton rocks on the top of the bagseed. There's a 2" neoprene insert in the other while I wait to see one of the BD or Mi5 pop out about 1". The Big Devil is closest to it so far.



Here's what I have left on my list to get. Let me know if I'm forgetting anything important.
Everything will be purchased over the coming weeks in increments.

5'x5'x7' Mylar Grow Tent (will be getting this off of eBay unless something comes up on Craigslist. Anyone know if the quality of the ones on eBay are worth it? I can get something namebrand off of CL. I've seen a lot of Secret Jardines on there.)
PPM/Water/Purity meter
Ventilation ducting and fans for the Grow tent. I will be pumping 2 of them outside of the tent and 2 of them inside.
DiY Ona gel bucket with fan for the tent.
Ona Gel tub for the PC grow
2x DiY 6" Carbon Filters
3x reservoirs for the DWC setup for the grow tent. I Plan on setting up 4x in 1 Rubbermaid tub 4x in Another and 2x in one large one to see how big I can get my girls in the area I have.
Multiple ventilation fans and lots of ducting.
Water enzyme formula.
General Hydroponics FloraMicro and FloraBloom. Also PH Up (just in case.)


Most things will be purchased at Wal-Mart and a local hydroponics store. The markup isn't all that fun but I'm in favor of supporting local business and getting a more personal relationship than going to somewhere like a Worm's Way (the retailer of hydroponics/gardening). I will eventually move my setup into 2 tents. a 1000W in a 5x5x7 and a 2x4x6/7' for a mother/clone tent. I will see what my beginning harvests are like but I plan on starting 1x of the Green Love Potion, 1x Black Russian, and 1x Cotton Candy. Get them into nice size mothers, cut some clones off of them and start 3x Green Love, 3x Black Russian, and 4x Cotton Candy for a first crop. My second round is already decided upon. Going to go with a combination of some Jack Herer, BC Big Bud (simply for extra yield), Super Lemon Haze. I plan on doing 4 SLH 4 Jack Herer and 2 Big Buds. Eventually I'll have a perpetual thing going but for now I'd like to see where I can expect my yields to go and everything.

I have to get my initial grow started, so we'll see what's up come first harvest.

The PC Grow is the only thing started right now. Over the next couple weeks I'll grab the tent and start some DWC Tubs for the big girls. Fat bitches get lots of love from me in this case.

Here are some pictures to help give some ideas where I'm at and where I'm going.

There's a shot of the BD and Mi5 beans, 1 of each germing, 1x bagseed in the RW cube under lights and hydroton in 5.5 PH water with FloraGro and chlorine remover added. Also a shot of the 1000W bulb, ballast, hood. Couple shots of the PC case started as well as humidity/temperature. Also a picture of the area where my grow tent will be going. It's outdoors but inside a building. It's not fully insulated so I expect running the lights at night and dark during the day will work best. I work 3rd shift and will be checking on them before work when the lights are on and sometimes after work int he morning before the lights go out.

I started things today. I will be updating periodically. I'll be letting know when I get the things on my list and I'll keep log of nutes added, ph/ppm records, humidity/temps during light on and light off hours as well as temps at night and during the day. I will try to be as thorough as possible to cover my bases.

Pictures are presently being taken by my iPhone 4S but I have a better camera I can use when we get into some real growth stages.

I have a case of large and small mason canning jars from Wal-Mart for when harvest time comes. I will plan on drying for around a week depending on how moist or not the stems are feeling. I will cure for around 2 weeks if I can make it that long before diving into my womans private parts I have access to mids until then and I will continue to delve into them until my girls give up that forbidden fruit.

Oh check it out, I bought the 1000W system off CraigsList for about a buck 170 it's not even 2 years old and seems to be in fantastic shape, thought it was a good buy.

Time to blaze.

Be seeing you!

Feel free to post on here as you please. I have no problem with posts going into my journal. I'm open to any criticism or anything you see fit to tell me. Thanks, enjoy the shgrow.

sounds like a pretty solid set up all in all. hope it works out for ya.

Here's the BD poking through. Anyone know if it's OK to just throw it into the rw cube like this or should I give it the inch and leaf that's usually looked for?

Thanks.

Went to check on things today. Wanted to get a feel for what the temps will be looking like. It was about 85-90 today outside and things were at 91 inside the PC case, so I took the door off and dropped the temps about 10 degrees. I can leave the door off of the PC case where it's at right now as stealth isn't an issue in my area. Plugged up the ballast, hood, and bulb to make sure everything is still good to go before I get started on the main grow.

With the PC case I decided to toss the bagseed after 1 day of it being in the rockwool cube, I'm just not that interested in bag seed, I have plenty of real genetics beans to get started and I can afford to get more if I want to (and I will for sure.)

More Pics (the temp reads 82 currently, low of 82, high of 91.)

Cheers.

Put hydroton in the netpots, then put the rw in - then fill edges w/ rw mate. The plant will use the seemingly useless medium to latch onto/ grow throughout

Ahh thanks a bunch. I didn't really want to mess with the rw since it says on the packaging not to squeeze it or anything. I used a utility knife to cut a layer off the bottom and the side as well since I accidentally grabbed 1.5" cubes for my 2" net pots lol.

anyone know how much light I would need to properly veg a mother, 10 little ladies, and 12 clones? I was hoping it wouldn't be more than 250W MH/HPS

checked on them this morning were looking good put hydroton underneath filled in the sides with loose rw. temps were at 75F humidity was 56% it was humid this morning during the time. Forgot my phone in my car to take some pictures.

How're you checking your humidity? I've never done it >.< Good luck!

Acu-Rite Humidity monitor, it's also a thermometer. I got it at Wal-Mart for like $9 or so

Stopped to check on them this morning. The BD is now coming through the hydroton rocks and getting started. The Mi5 is about a week behind having just poked through the bean shell. Temps get to a high of 93 which is good for me right now with needing to get the Mi5 going but they will need to get lowered for sure once I get things rolling. I'm thinking of either leaving the door open a little or setting a fan to blow on the case itself, possibly with the door open also.

Other than that I'm happy that I can put a mark on the calendars. Approximately 8 weeks to harvest for the BD and 9 weeks for the Mi5

Woke up from my slumber to realize I need to change the lighting. I set it to 17/7 for now (an adjusted 18/6). I was going to go 18/6 but I decided I want an extra hour of the lights off until I put some more ventilation in there. By the time I start flowering it will be just 18/6 but I'm not really thinking 1 hour is going to make a gigantic difference, it will just help me with climate control for now. I believe it's warm enough and the humidity is high enough that the Mi5 seedling is going to come poking on through no problem.

I would say 2-3 weeks until I'm checking to see if this BD is a little lady or a disgusting tranny. And about a week after that for the Mi5.

I'm stoked, my first grow is officially starting. Even though it's just a PC. The case dimensions are 8.1"W X 26.5"H X 18.6"D (205mm X 673mm X 473mm). With 1 of each of the biggest autos on the market I am hoping to get a decent yield. I can go comfortably about 16-18" in total height of the plant. I also have a sturdy SCRoG fence and will be using that to bush them out. I'll give my hand at fimming if need be, but I'm not thinking they'll get too big being under CFLs and the caregivings of a first time grower.

Stopped by again today because I'm addicted to my babies. Anyway, I realized my lights were near the middle of the case and about 10" from the babies themselves, remembering the rule for CFLs (keep the lights 2-3" from the plants throughout growth.) I lowered the lights. While doing this I also put them right in range of the in-line fans so the CFL's are half-assed air cooled for the time being. Within 5 minutes I could already see the little girl reaching high for the artificial sun in which I've provided her. The Big Devil has started the first set of serrated leaves, I have a feeling I'm going to see some massive growth over the next week. The Mi5 is still a good week behind.

Time to smoke.

Pics.

Early in week 1 of visible life. Serrated leaves are getting much larger than the starter baby leaves they begin as. Hopefully around 12 days until I switch lighting to 2700k.

Something came around this week for me to go ahead and get my tent, a fan, a piece of glass for the Yieldmaster II 4" reflector (anyone know a good way I could DIY one so I don't have to wait on it to come in the mail?). So Friday comes the new shopping list. Grabbing a 5x5x6.5 tent off of Amazon, found one for right around $130 so that's a good enough price for me. Although my tent is going to me doomed to regular daytime heat since it's in a garage taht's not exactly climate controlled. I feel for sure my first grow is going to suffer from heat issues as I'm not prepared to pay for some portable air conditioning (as well as the extreme electricity bill jump. I've read it gets massive when you add an air conditioner to your unit. Anyone know if this can be debunked?). I'm also picking up a 4" active air inline fan 165cfm and some ducting. I know it's more than likely not going to do the job but I've got to hope for the best and work with what I can while I can. Also a 4 output active air pump 15LPM and going to build 4 5-gallon dwc buckets to get 4 started. My first harvest is probably going to suck doing 2 autos, then 4 more autos, and then in 2 more weeks I'll add 4 more autos plus being my first grow and knowing I'm going to combat heat problems the whole way through the first grow.

Anyway, the big devil has a nice long root sticking out of the side of the rockwool and net pot. I filled the water up to the hydroton rocks just below the rockwool cube thinking it will be better if the bottom of the rw cube stays more wet until the roots are long enough to reach the water itself. I could be wrong with this but I believe the idea is to keep the water right up to the range of the rw cube until the roots start to hang a little more and then I want to keep it just below the net pots.

I'm going to flush and put in a new reservoir of water this weekend. Next weekend I'll start adding bloom nutes and switch the lighting.

Anyone tell me if my water level is fine atm? I also poured some 5.5ph water and a small amount of nute solution mixture directly into the top of the net pot to have some of it more directly onto the rockwool cube. We'll see what's up in the morning when I get off work.

I'm going to start 2 more Big Devil and 2 more Mi5 in the morning. The Mi5 I had died because I opened trockwool cube to see if there was any action or not since it had been a few days. Well there was action and I smashed its beginning stage of life by mushing the RW cube back together. Lesson learned... Popped a new one in there yesterday morning, I should see it poking out come Monday. The BD and Mi5 I'm going to start in the morning I'm going to soak 4 RW cubes in 5.5 ph and put them with a red plastic party cup with a small amount of 5.5ph water in the bottom. Then place some plastic wrap over the tops and put the cups on my LST screen above the lights. Within about 5 days to a week they'll be coming through the RW cubes and ready for their DWC homes.

I sucked at germing at home because I couldn't find a good heat medium. It was either way too hot or way too cold everywhere I had to put them. So when I put them into 5.5 ph soaked rw cubes into the net pots and under the lights in my PC case it went really smooth from there so that's how I'm going to germ if I can.

Here's the BD today, the root sticking out of the side of the RW cube and the water level after I adjusted it. Is the water level correct?

Thanks, I know I ramble and it's hard to follow my posts I'm sure, but there it is. I've got nothing creative-inducing to smoke on besides some street schwag until these next 8 or 9 weeks are up.

For some reason I can't attach images anymore.

Here's some links, hope it's not against TOS or anything..


http://i.imgur.com/nxgPk.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/GLL3T.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/GbiMt.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/Q2nI5.jpg

Picked up my tent today.

Got this off of craigslist. Brand new in the box 6.5'x6.5'x6.5' not bad for 160 bucks.

Going in the morning to pick up some fans, net pots, and get everything ready to transplant and get started.

More pics tomorrow when everything is set up.

started germing the Delicious Seeds Cotton Candy Fem. as well as the Green Love Potion. Also started another Mi5.

Accidentaly dropped and stepped on my Black Russian fem costly mistake, I feel like I killed something.


Tomorrow starts 1000W in a 6.5x6.5x6.5

Week 3 for the Big Devil.

Been through a lot of ups and downs in the past few weeks. Got my tent set up but didn't have any fans to exhaust or inline fans for that matter.

I was doing some really stupid things to start off. I was watering with my 1000W HPS beaming down on them and was literally frying them. In some of the pictures you will see my Delicious Seeds Cotton Candy (fem) was severely fried with my very stupid noob mistakes.

I finally got a glass shield and inline fan to air cool my hood. I got a 240CFM booster fan that I'm going to duct as a intake fan. I had no ventilation in the garage where my tent was being kept and that was making temps go even higher. My temps were at 124F one morning when I went in. I did some emergency work that day and got temps back down to the high 90's-low 100's which still isnt' good enough.

I vented the garage yesterday with just cutting a 1.5'x1.5' hole in the top of the garage on one side and adding a small register vent over the door on the opposite side. It's made a tremendous difference just since having put it in yesterday.

Temps were at 81F this morning and I assume were down to the mid 70's overnight. I have my lighting set to 16/8 for now to also help combat temps. I have the lights set to turn off at 11AM and come back on at 7PM.

I've been keeping my PH at 5.8-6.5 every day as I've found a good rhythm to keep it going steadily. I switched from ONLY using GH FloraGro to using the Lucas Formula. I use 5ml/gallon FloraMicro and 10ml/gallon FloraBloom for my autos. I'm using 8ml/gallon FloraMicro and 16ml/gallon FloraBloom for my regular beans (only 1. The Cotton Candy.)

I place a 20oz frozen bottle of water in each 1 of the 5'gallon 2-air stone reservoirs every day to help keep the water ideal. It's not perfect, but right now my roots are all EXTREMELY healthy from what I can see. With all the stress I caused my girls over 3 weeks or so they're looking good underneath the net pots. All of my plants roots are extremely shiny white and tons of little fishscales all over the place.

I transferred my Big Devil from a 3" netpot <1 gallon reservoir into a 6" netpot with 5-gallon reservoir. She drooped heavily at first but I raised the water level to the roots themselves as they lay on the hydroton. She's been drinking up and getting healthier every day. Yesterday I FIM'ed her or at least half-assed it. I Just pinched the top off and hopefully it was correct. No big deal if it wasn't but it would be nice. It's the beginning of week 3 for the Big Devil and she's shown sex. Female (feminized but at least I didn't stress her into a herm). And my god is she starting to stink. It's not an aroma that you can smell until your head is down by her but I have a feeling she is going to reward me even for having screwed up the beginning of her life.

Here are some of the most recent pictures. The bushiest best looking one is Big Devil (fem). The tall fried and horror movie looking one is Cotton Candy (fem). The tiny one is Mi5 (reg). There is another Big Devil germming and 2 more Mi5 already germed and starting in their homes.

you grew auto seeds with hydro? how much did it yield? cause i was going to order 3 1K lights super hps for the auto seeds with a aeroponics system