Blunt's first DWC (closet) grow

Hello all, I am new to this forum and to the art of DWC growing so take it easy on me with my first grow. I would appreciate any informative feedback or advice you can give me but if you are going to criticize please kick rocks. I've read many of the DWC threads on this forum which helped me ALOT so I took what I thought I would need to help get me started so here it is, Blunt's first DWC grow! Also, please feel free to subscribe! Thanks and I look forward to the next few months.

Just a heads up but I don't have a fancy tent, exhaust fans, carbon filters or any of that stuff. I own my house and have to make due with what I have, the only pain in the ass I will have is I have to use a dehumidifier when Flowering when the lights are off and putting up with the smell..even though I look forward to that! I just got through week 1, I am watering the top of the rockwool twice a day and I started the light about 3' above the plant and within the last week crept down to a little under 2'.

*NEWBIES* The main thing I've come to learn as of yet when setting up a CLOSET grow for DWC (almost 5X5) is it has to be a controlled environment, I had serious heat problems when I was testing out what I had and I tried to fix it a few different ways (Evap Cooler, Fans, leaving door cracked, ect..) and I also came across a couple of threads of people running into the same problem. If you're a rookie like me, don't rush it and do what you have to do to make it work, stay away from the short cuts and don't do cheap fixes because I had to learn the hard way! Oh yeah..have PATIENTS too.


DETAILS:

18/6 light schedule
400 Watt MH/HPS light.
RT: 75-78 degrees light on with humidity ranging 44-51%. 71-74 degrees light off with humidity at roughly 63%
Water temp: 66-72 degrees (using an ice pack twice a day to keep temps cool)
Water PH: 5.8
Nutes: GH Fluroduo
PH Meter and a PPM Meter that also reads the water temp
4" air stone
2 Gallon cooler to start, transfer to 5 gallon if needed.
Hydro seed, unsure on strain and PRAYING for a female.



Here are some pics!


Week 1


Not a great cell phone picture of the closet and it makes it look like the light is really high above the plant but it's just to give you guys an idea of what I'm working with. I have a few fans set up but they didn't fit in the picture.












The answer to my heat problems! A 5000 BTU Portable Air conditioner/dehumidifier I purchased on Ebay. I was lucky with the fact on the opposite side of the closet's wall there is an AC closet with 2 exhaust pipes that vent outside through my roof. I just vent into it and boom..no more temperature problems.



HAPPY GROWING!!!

Looks good!

wrap that exhaust tube with insulation and it will make a huge difference. you say nutes are you feeding yet? it is too little.

No, not feeding the nutes yet but I wanted to go ahead and put what I will be using up. Thanks for tip on the insulation!

UPDATE

It's been 10 days exactly since I put my bean into the Rockwool and this morning I had two roots dropping out of the bottom of the net-pot. I flushed my DWC, added distilled water, aquashield and started my nutes at full.



However, I did notice my PPM's were high after I did all this (around 650PPM). I noted from a thread you add nutes when you need to lower PPM so I did this and now they are around 750PPM? Any help would be appreciative!

dude, when you are measuring ppm you are measuring the amount of nutes you put in the water. more nutes equals higher ppm, less nutes or more water equals less ppm. little baby plants with new roots do not like full strength nutes. start at around 250-300ppm and work up.

superstoner1 said:

dude, when you are measuring ppm you are measuring the amount of nutes you put in the water. more nutes equals higher ppm, less nutes or more water equals less ppm. little baby plants with new roots do not like full strength nutes. start at around 250-300ppm and work up.

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Thanks bro.

Just an update on the start of week 2.

I flushed the cooler after I had a problem with the PPMs, straightened it all out and everything seemed to be okay. The last couple of mornings though it has wilted over night but once I get home from it's resting period it's always perked back up, I'm guessing the light was too close so I moved it up to about 24 inches. I've also noticed like a little brown ring that looks like a water line starting to form around the cooler but I always clean when I see it coming back, not sure what it is though?


WEEK 2

Ya man, when I had my seeds germinating about a month back, I actually read the the seeds contain enough to deal with the first 2.5 weeks by itself. I listened to the advice and it seemed sound as a pound. Make sure if you do decide to use nutrients start out with 1/4 of the recommended or even 1/8 since it's so young and work your way up until the roots hit the water. Then you can bump it up, make sure and catch any signs early though so that you can adjust accordingly. From the pics looks like you caught it in time, little bit of nute burn. I remember when I first started I had the problem of not being able to leave the seedling alone, which can stress it out quite a bit. I read you have an air stone but do you have a nice pump to go with it? The more oxygen the merrier I've come to find. Hope this helps =)

Thanks, Dontcough! I noticed the nute burn as well and the roots just hit the water, should I leave the PPM where they are at (300 PPM) until the plant grows more and the nute burn goes away? As for the oxygen, I have a 602 GPH Sun Leaves air pump and it seems to work well, I have it pushing a massive 4 inch air stone right now and I could always add another one to the DWC if necessary. I'm sorry if I am missing it but when you say the seeds contain enough to deal with the first 2.5 weeks by its self, what are you referring to?

You're lookin' good Blunt30. The plant is going to really start to take off now. I am subbed and will be with you for the ride.

looks good blunt let see what u got man..

Blunt:30 said:

Thanks, Dontcough! I noticed the nute burn as well and the roots just hit the water, should I leave the PPM where they are at (300 PPM) until the plant grows more and the nute burn goes away? As for the oxygen, I have a 602 GPH Sun Leaves air pump and it seems to work well, I have it pushing a massive 4 inch air stone right now and I could always add another one to the DWC if necessary. I'm sorry if I am missing it but when you say the seeds contain enough to deal with the first 2.5 weeks by its self, what are you referring to?

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Let's see the nutrient burn shouldn't go away but it should stop once you changed the conditions that caused it to occur. The damaged parts of the leaves will stay like that but as long as you catch it, it shouldn't spread any further. Personally I wouldn't push the ppm anymore than that, you can actually look at my journal to get a good idea since we have similar setups. What I meant about the first 2.5 weeks is that I read that the seeds contain all the nutrients within it naturally for the first bit of time, then it starts to seek more with it's roots when it uses all of it's own supply. I've always read the more air the merrier but what you have should be sufficient, any more and it'll pay dividends. A little bit of nute burn on the tips is ok but it's like the plant is telling you, "hey that dose was pretty strong." When you manage to dial it in just right you'll have lush green leaves without any yellow tips. I wouldn't let it discourage you though and action really isn't needed until you start to see more than just the tips turning yellow. The propagation stage allows your seedling to take a firm rooting in the medium and the root development allows you to add more nitrogen into the mix using your nutrients which is primarily what it'll need for cell division (growth) to occur. Sounds like your doing a fine job though if the you've already got roots hitting the water. Less is always better than too much with nutrients. I personally didn't even use a tds meter until about the 3rd - 4th week, which I don't recommend but the main thing your trying to do is maintain the pH in a range ideally from 5.5-6, a temperature around 75-80, oxygenated water, and also it can't hurt to rotate the plant. Another good thing to mention is to find a journal on here that your impressed with, maybe even one of the same strain and just imitate success. It's amazing how botany can suck you in huh?

Dontcough said:

Let's see the nutrient burn shouldn't go away but it should stop once you changed the conditions that caused it to occur. The damaged parts of the leaves will stay like that but as long as you catch it, it shouldn't spread any further. Personally I wouldn't push the ppm anymore than that, you can actually look at my journal to get a good idea since we have similar setups. What I meant about the first 2.5 weeks is that I read that the seeds contain all the nutrients within it naturally for the first bit of time, then it starts to seek more with it's roots when it uses all of it's own supply. I've always read the more air the merrier but what you have should be sufficient, any more and it'll pay dividends. A little bit of nute burn on the tips is ok but it's like the plant is telling you, "hey that dose was pretty strong." When you manage to dial it in just right you'll have lush green leaves without any yellow tips. I wouldn't let it discourage you though and action really isn't needed until you start to see more than just the tips turning yellow. The propagation stage allows your seedling to take a firm rooting in the medium and the root development allows you to add more nitrogen into the mix using your nutrients which is primarily what it'll need for cell division (growth) to occur. Sounds like your doing a fine job though if the you've already got roots hitting the water. Less is always better than too much with nutrients. I personally didn't even use a tds meter until about the 3rd - 4th week, which I don't recommend but the main thing your trying to do is maintain the pH in a range ideally from 5.5-6, a temperature around 75-80, oxygenated water, and also it can't hurt to rotate the plant. Another good thing to mention is to find a journal on here that your impressed with, maybe even one of the same strain and just imitate success. It's amazing how botany can suck you in huh?

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So much great information for a beginner like me, Dontcough. Thank you! It is amazing how the botany can suck you in, before I got started I thought it was just kind of a start and it takes care of its self thing but now I've realized it's a science along with an art and it's truly an amazing thing. I am sitting on 2 air stones not being used so I think I am going to go ahead and place another one inside my DWC today, why not reap the benefits when I have the capability to? As for the nute burn, will it go away once I flush the system and put less nutes in? I will definitely be more careful in the future when it comes to nutrients, I have noted that "early vegging" is around 300-400PPM and "full vegging" is 400-700. What is a good way to tell when to switch to "full vegging"? The nodes? Also, do you use any food? If so, is it worth getting some? I noticed VO and BigBuddahCheese both use "Sweet".

Anyways, thanks again!!

As for the nute burn, will it go away once I flush the system and put less nutes in?

Let's see the nutrient burn will permanently damage whatever parts of the leaves it managed to get to. Once you flush you should let it run just water for a day or maybe even two so that the nutrients don't do any more damage. If you get it right you'll won't see any more yellow tips. Take the nutrients down a notch, and gradually increase as required. You can use your tds meter to determine how much of the nutrients the plant is drinking in comparison to the water. The more nutrients it is drinking at a time the lower the ppm will be after you refill with water(clean non nutrient assisted water) to get a good idea. For instance on my current grow on day 40 one of my plants drank approximately 60 ppm worth of nutrients over the course of two days after drinking a gallon of water from 565 ppm to 500 ppm. Knowing this I'll add nutrients accordingly. TDS meters also vary in the conversion factors they use. The tables for the nutrients are a general approximation, that can be different depending on which tds meter your using, for instance my chart says my plants in week 6 should be something like 1200 ppm, if I were to put 1200 ppm of nutrients in there my plants would surely stress out if not die if left unchecked. Think of it like a baby, you don't want to force too much milk down it's throat or else it'll ralph and have all kinds of problems.

What is a good way to tell when to switch to "full vegging"? The nodes?

Full vegging would be when you got a good bucket full of roots, which can vary in size according to your net pot. If you got 1/4 to 1/2 of your plants size in roots or even more root size then your plant then I would consider that full veg. It's hard to put a time frame on it because the genetics/environment/conditions can cause it to grow at different rates.

Click the link in my sig if you want to see what I've been doing. I had my hiccups at the start and I am by no means an expert grower but what I've been doing so far has been working for me.

It's definitely a fun hobby, I hope some of this info helps ya out =)

UPDATE:

Yesterday was the mark of week 3 so I just wanted to update some photos. Growth looks good, no more nute burn and roots are white.

RT - 74-78 degrees
RH - 46-52%
WT - 58-68 degrees
PH - 5.8
PPM - 350


WEEK 3

Pics look good, their looking really healthy with a nice root system for it's age.

Dontcough said:

Pics look good, their looking really healthy with a nice root system for it's age.

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Thanks, Dont. I'm working hard on trying to make sure they have what they need to thrive.

your on track. they look good. keep a close eye, you will learn to notice things much sooner.

you really should look into adding a beneficial to the res. pondzyme with barley is the best deal i have found. my roots have never looked so good.