Big Bomb - Coco - CFL - LED CXB3070

I thought for the hell of it I will share my little hobby. So here I am with a good old fake internet name, a little 80x80x180cm tent (2.5 x footer), nutes and big dreams of filling my vape again in a few months. This is my 5th grow but unlike other green tipped people in my family, I am more challenged in that department. SO you're all welcome to throw your 2cents in, laugh at the laziness I manage to display and anything else that you think will stick.

I have made some journals of my past plants but as these 5 grows have taken place over a 10 year span, I'd be buggered to know where they are. Most of the "good" pictures are lost somewhere on the interwebs.

My first ever grow, K2, was outside in soil on the balcony of my flat. I bought 5 seeds and grew 3 of them. 2 were male. After going on holiday for 3 weeks and just making a cheap feeding machine .... I got 250 grams of beautiful cured bud.

Second was moving house and moving indoors. I popped 2 fem seeds AK-48 from narvana seed bank and grew them from seed at 12/12 in coco under 400watt HPS. They grew well and gave me some great bud. Nothing magical but enough to keep me happy.

My third and fourth grows haven't turned into great grows. Both were big bud grows which had to put up with constant neglect. My first grow of seeds wasn't the greatest. Some didn't pop and one was a shrimp. To top it off, in the first few week in flower I was sick in hospital and couldn't check on the plants. My wife feed them so they didn't die but sadly a male had been born and like all good men ... spread his seed. I kept three plants that I hoped weren't old enough to get knocked up and continued growing. In the end I managed to get some sick looking plants to the end. One of them went to seed.

On my forth grow I used the seed I made myself. I made the mistake in this grow of not watering enough. In coco when I don't water enough I get mag and cal lock out. Well that is what I think today anyway I believe I had some heat issues as well, including some light bleaching for the HPS .... I still pulled 120grams dry. It was average smoke at best but it has given me motivation to improve. I managed to find a shot a few weeks into flower of one of the group of plants. Grown in 12 by 12 from seed.

So My Current Grow
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CFL 125watt bloom and veg light (I use for veg of plants)
Cree 4 x CXB3070 AD with arctic alpine plus11 coolers (still needs to be built) I have my 400w HPS as backup
50 by 50 perlite/Coco mix
Hesi coco nutes
home grown big bomb bag seed
80x80x180 tent.
moved to cellar for better heat control. stays in the 20 - 25 degree range.
planned self watering system.

My plan with this grow is to test out a few ideas in growing. While like everyone, I enjoy good smoke, I can't really afford to drop 10 euro a seed when I still am not growing very well in the first place. So since I have bag seed, I decided that I would use this grow to .... learn a few things. I want my next grow to be trainwreck and blue dream, grown in a scrog. To get there I want this grow to practise topping, LST along with better feeding and temperature awareness. I am aiming to finished by the end of August so I can get my next grow done by Christmas. It's my first time doing two grows right after each other. Normally I grow and a year or two passes and then grow another so I hope this turns out better.

Here are the plants at about 2weeks veg. 1st week outside and second in. I have topped them all. Some at different node points. I mainly have topped to the 2nd or third node. I want to see when I LST which would be smarter for me (in my sized tent).


I am feeding them Hesi coco right now at half strength. I water once every 2-3 days making sure to have some runoff. PH is 5.8. I do have some funky leaves which I not sure why. I just picked up an ec meter to test my tap water. It is reading at 700ppm and the ph ranges from 7.5 to 8. Is that something I should worry about?

That's all I have for today.

Repotted the plants today and covered the top with sand. I hear this is a great way to prevent fungus mites. Never had an issue before but, not going to risk it anyway (stole the kids sand).


My cobs arrived for my LED light as well. Can't build it tonight as kids are in bed. Tomorrow is the plan if all goes well.


I would love to know how to tell if these are the cxb3070 ad bin. there is no labels so they could send you any bin really.

Didn't get to finish my light tonight. I'll work on it tomorrow if I have time. So far I have made the frame, bolted everything down, tapped holes for the cob holders. Tomorrow is wiring everything up. The cobs are placed in a to 39cmx38cm (about 16 inches square). I have another afternoons work before it is finished.

Looking good. I'm subbed

Finished my light. Now I just have to learn how to use it correctly. Right now I have it about 36 inches from my plants. I think I can get it as close as 16 inches but I will work my way down so I get no light stress.

I also started some LST on my babies. First time I have ever LST. Lets see how I do. The two on the left a rants and if the other 4 turn out to be female they are going to be cut.

Spider mites. Little fuckers! My runts have them and some others too. Serves me right for keeping them out doors for a start.

So now I have remove the bottom right plant with the largest infection and on to the rest of the plants. I hope I can kill them as it is my first time dealing with them.

Looking more .... thrips as well. This is going to be fun

Fighting the bugs. Looks like the sand I used in the first placed has killed most off and with the bio spray I have .... die you little buggers.

Today I installed my watering system. bought it ten years ago for my first ever grow but never used it since. My first grow was a good one so I hope the luck keeps going. I have it all linked into a 30-litre black container.

Found some pictures from my first ever grow back in 2007.


out on the balcony ... few weeks into flowering.

and finally what it gave me in the end.

today I removed the string and tried wire to hold them down. Just testing things out. I wanted it to be flat to get more main branches coming up.

To watch how it works, if at all I attached my gopro to the top of my lights and then used an old phone charger to keep it going. I love strong velcro. I'll be able to see if the wire method works at all. It is only going to go for about 10 hours before lights out. It will be interesting.

how it looked before pushing it down


I tried it the night before to see if it work. 1 second = 1 hour.

A week later and growth is coming along slowly. One of the runts I am thinking of removing as it does seem to want to grow fast enough. It has something green growing on top of the sand. I only want 4 plants anyway ..... just I hope my biggest 4 are all female


I have a leaf issue on one plant. Does anyone know what it is telling me? I've never had this before.

I just changed my nutes levels as well.
I have been running the HESI full coco setup at 50% and just changed it to 100% I also added an air stone to my 30 litre water container (about 10 gallons).

Hesi tnt now coco


water temp 22 degrees (72f)
lights on 24 degrees (77f)
off 22 degree. (72f)
humidity = ~50%

My experiments continue. I really wanted to try mainlining and I really should have started earlier. But as always, I dithered around as I couldn't decide what to do.

Anyway I went ahead and started with a few forms of mainlining. I am watching them as they grow to see what I like the most. In a week, I will be transplanting 4 of my favourite plants into 4-gallon smart pot (root pots). From there they will get another 2 weeks of veg. In the end on two will remain as the others I am going to throw away. My tent is just too small for so many plants.

Here is what it looked like after I attacked the plants



10 hours later at lights off they are like this. I have cut more leaves of the most bushy plants. There is lots of experimenting going on here. Some with more leaves, topped earlier in it's life, one side with fan leaves, broken into 4 so not really mainlining.


I currently have my gopro taking pictures every minute and I am going to continue doing this for the week so I can see the progress over time easier. It helps me see what is really going on.

Monday - 23 June
Lights on


Lights off (30 minutes before)



updating as I go for future reference.


today I flushed the plant on the top right. It's leaves were getting rust on them so I flushed to see where the PPM was at. It came out at 5.6 so I shouldn't really be having an issue. I'll keep an eye out.

currently drinking 300ml of nutes a day with about 5-10% runoff.

I've also completed 3 days of timelapse. Makes it interesting to watch as I go.

experiment started
I've been on these forums long enough and come to understand that there is no right way of doing things. While there are better ways, if they don't match the grower, then things will end poorly. My lack of experience and some really poor grows has lead me in the search for improvement. Luckily though in on of my past grows I made a ton of seeds when I stressed out a plant through poor growing in the medium I used. I've decided to grow 6 of these seeds to teach me more about the veg cycle and how I can speed it up. I will not be flowering any of these plants as I am only looking to keep them alive for about 4-5 weeks. They are just going to be used for practice I don't need so many plants as I only grow for myself but I also don't want to waste a grow cycle on a failure.

Yesterday I threw a few seeds into a glass of water and 20 hours later (today) I planted 6 of them in 50% coco and 50% perlite. When they pop I am going to put them under CFL lights.

For 2 of them, I am going to start feeding the hesi nutes right from the start (with Epsom salts). The next 2 I will start feeding when the first leaves are formed while the last two will be feed when I see the next set or when the plants look like they need it. From there I will experiment with different topping times and when I cut back of the leaves for better mainlining. I'll see where this heads.

go pro threw a fit and crashed. Only have three days of film. New firmware and no battery in to see if that works better.

A week later. On thursday last week I cut the plants down to 4 and put them in 16 litre root pouches. Now they just have to grow. I am giving them one or two more weeks before I put them into flower. Not sure how I like this mainline idea as it is going much slower than expected. I guess we will see after a few weeks how it grows.

one week later. getting very busy

On sunday I flip. Starting to grow faster now which is better.

I have two that are mainlined, The one on the top left and the other is on the bottom right. The top left I topped on the third node and is growing better while the bottom right while growing really well at the start slowed right down. You will see in the video above the same plant on the bottom right. It's leaves went really dark which I think stunted its growth.

The other two have 4 branches and have grown very nicely. Enjoying watching them grow but I feel I need some flowers now. Going on T breaks between grows gets a little old sometimes, especially on beautiful days.

I have down some slight super cropping to keep the plants in check.

DAY 1 Flower

At last the day has arrived. It is time to flip. Soon I will find out which plants are male and which are female. Fingers crossed that the two in the back are female but I guess I will see in a week or two. Exciting times at last. veg is bloody boring.


Still thinking if I should go 1 or 2 plants .... not sure if my space is big enough for two. Does anyone have an opinion?

tick tack toe said:

DAY 1 Flower

At last the day has arrived. It is time to flip. Soon I will find out which plants are male and which are female. Fingers crossed that the two in the back are female but I guess I will see in a week or two. Exciting times at last. veg is bloody boring.
View attachment 3458167

Still thinking if I should go 1 or 2 plants .... not sure if my space is big enough for two. Does anyone have an opinion?

Click to expand...

Looks like you'll be fine with 2 plants

Good news already. I decided to have a proper look to see if any of my plants were mature and showing their sex with pre-flowers. My plant that I had mainlined correctly (one I wanted to keep) has shown female traits. Very happy. Now hoping the other at the back will do the same.

Both plants on the right now have show female pre-flowers. still holding out hope that the plant in the top right is also female. The bottom right plant will be removed in a few days and feed to my rabbits. They love some leaf.