1st post/"real" grow

I want to start by saying what an awesome site this is! I think that I have learned enough to start and am ready to try my hand at growing some high quality medicine! Today we started the build out in a spare bedroom and I look forward to any advice that you grow masters can provide!

Here's the scoop:
-10x10x8 spare bedroom with windows on 2 walls that will be covered with panda film
-We built a 6x6 panda wall and another smaller "wall" of panda to make it basically a 6x6 grow area that is easily expandable and gives good access to working around all sides
-12 bucket Ebb and Flow with hydrotron
-1000w Hydrofarm air cooled HPS with the Hortilux "upgrade" bulb
-box fax that will come on with light and osculating fan that will run constantly
-temp and humidity monitors

Tomorrow we are putting together the actual E&F system which should be fun. After that I plan to run everything for 2 days to keep and eye on temps, etc. before putting the babies in there. It seems too simple right now and I feel like I am missing something?

Also, I'll be getting some high quality White Widow clones and would greatly appreciate any suggestions on simple and effective nutrients, tips etc.

Thanks in advance for your help and I look forward to showing off our success!

I like GH Flora series. I use it stand alone and get great results.thats my 2 cents.

congrats on getting started! I just started my first grow! its a great feeling aint it? good luck!

Do you have PH and TDS meters?

ak.fortyseven said:

Do you have PH and TDS meters?

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yes, forgot to mention those. Not sure how I could forget at their cost. We picked up some pen types that don't need to be calibrated. Supposedly simple and effective.

We finished the room, light and E&F set up yesterday, but I forgot to take pics before I left. Everything worked great last night on the test run and there will be another tonight.

Once we do this should we flush it all out before using it? I cleaned the heck out of the hydro before putting it in and was hoping that we could use the 48 hours that the tap water had been in there as "standing" time, but want what is best for the plants.

Also, how much water should I use for the 12 plant E&F set up? Not having any luck finding that. Thanks

There have been a few changes this week and the room is complete. Temps etc. have been great except humidity which has been low and should rise with the pants being added. Correct?

Had to change the strain and get the clones from someone else, long story, but I potted 12 Top 44 clones today with great looking roots (which I just realized that I forgot to take a picture of). Based on the info the breeder gave me when I picked them up, I will be running them without nutes, just water flood 3x when lights on, for the first 3 days, 18/6 light about 4ft above the plant. I am open for suggestions if anyone has had better luck. He also said not to heat the reservoir water and that they liked the cool water. I did add a bubble stone today also.

I still am torn on which nutes to use and would love more input. At this point I am thinking Lucas Formula as it only uses 2 bottles.

I really appreciate the help. There is a ton of info in the many threads on here, but can be hard to find exactly what you are looking for.

Finally time for some updates. Here are some pics after transplanting for 3 days and feeding them only water with 18/6 lights about 4ft above. We had the light lower, but they were burning and look like shit.

Back to back updates since I was lazy last week. The girls have been getting Botanicare Grow which was ramped up from 500ppm to 900ppm during the week (ph slowly rising and maintained around 5.8 ). We were flooding them 4x day until yesterday when they were switched to just 2x, light still on 18/6 and about 3ft above the plants. I hear that they look better today and may have been overwatered, but can't get there to take pics.

There is a lot of new root growth and most are about 2in long and bright white. Starting to see some additional thickness in the stems and new branching, etc., but a few of them still look kinda shitty. Hopefully the lower watering schedule for a few days will help.
Still a few weeks away from even thinking about flowering and wishing we had separate rooms.

Below is the nute schedule that we are using.

Botanicare Pure Blend Pro Grow: 5-10ml/gal, weeks 1-4
Botanicare Pure Blend Pro Bloom: 5-10ml/gal, weeks 3-?
FoxFarm Big Bloom: 5-15ml/gal, weeks 5-?

Looking forward to any input or comments.

You are currently using a HPS bulb. You will get better results (less stretch) using a MH bulb for veg, then switch back to HPS for flower.

You have a "Box fax" for ventillation? LOL. Please explain your entire ventillation system a little better. Also what is your temperature and humididty at canopy height?

Can I just put the MH bulb into the HPS system?

The temps stays constant at 82 and humidity is around 25-30%. It is very dry here and we keep wet towels hanging around. As far as ventilation, we just have the awesome box fan on one corner and the osculating fan in the other and leave the window cracked a little bit. Smell shouldn't be much of an issue for us in this location.

Is the box fan forcing air outside the house? Or is it just moving stale air from one side of the room to the other? Also, if you are using a digital ballast you should be fine just replacing the bulb with MH. If it's a magnetic ballast, you will need a conversion bulb.

No luck finding a MH bulb locally yet, but I'm going to change it as soon as I get my hands on one. It's a digital ballast.

The room gets fresh air from the cracked open windows and gets some venting from the rest of the house, but there aren't any fans that directly blow air in or out of the room.

COgrow said:

No luck finding a MH bulb locally yet, but I'm going to change it as soon as I get my hands on one. It's a digital ballast.

The room gets fresh air from the cracked open windows and gets some venting from the rest of the house, but there aren't any fans that directly blow air in or out of the room.

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A cracked window isn't enough. You need to exchange the entire room air every 1 to 3 minutes. And you need to exchange it with fresh air from outside ... not just move the air between rooms. Plants need fresh Co2 otherwise their air becomes stale (oxygen rich).

I am working on better air exchange and am finding that I need a conversion bulb as my ballast is only for HPS bulbs. Dumb mistake on my part not getting the correct ballast when they are only a few dollars more. Conversion bulbs that I am finding locally are about $175, so I think that I am going to order this one:The Ushio 1000 Watt MH Conversion HiLux Opti-Blue Lamp for about $110 shipped. From what I can tell it has one of the best blue and red spectrum of the conversion bulbs.

More pics and hopefully some LST soon.

I've been racking my brain and looking over a ton of other grow journals to figure out why the initial growth has been slow and realized that the nute schedule I was using is for aeroponics. Not sure if that makes a big difference, but I downloaded the info from the Botanicare website and will just follow it for a nute schedule. Time to bump up the nutes big time.

Have had ppm's around 900 at 7.5ml per gallon and plan to double that over the next day or so per the newly acquired nute schedule.

Lights still the 1000W HPS Hortilux Super HPS which has the enhanced blue spectrum. (Will have to wait for the MH conversion bulb for the next grow)

Pics after the lights come on.

COgrow said:

I've been racking my brain and looking over a ton of other grow journals to figure out why the initial growth has been slow and realized that the nute schedule I was using is for aeroponics. Not sure if that makes a big difference, but I downloaded the info from the Botanicare website and will just follow it for a nute schedule. Time to bump up the nutes big time.

Have had ppm's around 900 at 7.5ml per gallon and plan to double that over the next day or so per the newly acquired nute schedule.

Lights still the 1000W HPS Hortilux Super HPS which has the enhanced blue spectrum. (Will have to wait for the MH conversion bulb for the next grow)

Pics after the lights come on.

Click to expand...

Whoa there! They're still babies!
1. Keep the ppm around 1100-1200 till flower. (if you're starting out with 20ppm RO water)
2. Raise the 1000w as high as it can go 4ft+.

You need to control the environment, and this problem is going to get much worse if you don't take it very very seriously.

3. Get an 8" inline fan (700cfm)
4. Get TV2 temp controller

The fan and the controller are more than you need to solve today's environmental problems, but barely enough to survive the coming storm.

5. Get a Can66 Activated Carbon filter (unless you have no neighbors)
6. You'll need at least: 4 Air-King 12" wall fans (cheap ones are more noise than air), 2 or 3 good box fans and a couple small 6" clip-on fans.
7. A good dehumidifier with NO lights on it.

Off the top of my head.

Things seem to be coming along very nicely for most all of the babies. One is stretching a bit and 2 look like runts, but the other 9 look about the same and good.

They have been vegging in about 1000ppms of BPB Pro Grow this week and today I added 5ml per gal of BPB Hydrogaurd, which maybe should have been there from day 1.

Flooding 3 times per day and 18/6 about 4ft above plants. Room temp staying right at 80 deg and about 20% humidity.

50 gals of water seems to be way too much for the plant needs at this point and will start with 25 for the next grow during clone transition and veg. Now it is a waste of water and nutes as they aren't able to drink up a ton at this point.

smokingrubber said:

Whoa there! They're still babies!
1. Keep the ppm around 1100-1200 till flower. (if you're starting out with 20ppm RO water)
2. Raise the 1000w as high as it can go 4ft+.

You need to control the environment, and this problem is going to get much worse if you don't take it very very seriously.

3. Get an 8" inline fan (700cfm)
4. Get TV2 temp controller

The fan and the controller are more than you need to solve today's environmental problems, but barely enough to survive the coming storm.

5. Get a Can66 Activated Carbon filter (unless you have no neighbors)
6. You'll need at least: 4 Air-King 12" wall fans (cheap ones are more noise than air), 2 or 3 good box fans and a couple small 6" clip-on fans.
7. A good dehumidifier with NO lights on it.

Off the top of my head.

Click to expand...

Most definitely appreciate the input Smoking and not ignoring your comments, just have to put together the cashola to continue to add to the work in progress. In regards to the dehumidifier; do you think I'll need one in CO? It's dry as hell and the humidity is at 20% with a wet towel hanging in the area. It gets to maybe 30% when the towel is put in soaking wet and they are in flood.
Also, is there a flood schedule that is best with the Ebb and Grow?

Much love, got some good meds and a new bong today.

Hi COgrow, Nice set you've put together there. You shouldnt need the dehumidifier if they stay in that range, I dont use one and have never been a problem. But not exchanging the air will hamper growth, particularly when your flowering, so you will probably want to look into that as soon as you have $$$ to do so.

Keep up the good work, I'll be watching with interest

*edit* so many typos, lol......