Critical HOG Scrog Micro DIY DWC Bubble Bucket, First time. Advice welcome!

Plants still growing a fair bit, wondering when the vertical growth will stop or at least slow down. Looking like there will be a ton of bud sites on this little girl. Bought a little fan to replace my computer fan, pushes a fair amount more air than the previous. Though had to get rid of the clip on it since it was a hassle to keep attached to the tent frame. Also getting super dense between the screen and tops of the plant.

Inline pump was acting a bit slow so I decided to check to see if the roots were making its way to the pump. Sure enough the root were all the way at the pump. I broke the roots from under the plant leading into the water line and then pulled the pipe off the pump. Not only did I find around 8 iches of root that was taking up half the water line, I found shards of broken netpot where she completely broke the pot and the plastic fell down to the outtake. I replaced it all and the seems to be functioning as normal again. Added a bit more water and adjusted the ph was a bit high. Hopefully me playing around in the buckets does not have any effect on the plant.

Considering getting some bloom nuturients for the final month or so. Thoughts?

She's a beast, looking epic

Darkjasper said:

Inline pump was acting a bit slow so I decided to check to see if the roots were making its way to the pump. Sure enough the root were all the way at the pump. I broke the roots from under the plant leading into the water line and then pulled the pipe off the pump. Not only did I find around 8 iches of root that was taking up half the water line, I found shards of broken netpot where she completely broke the pot and the plastic fell down to the outtake. I replaced it all and the seems to be functioning as normal again. Added a bit more water and adjusted the ph was a bit high. Hopefully me playing around in the buckets does not have any effect on the plant.

Considering getting some bloom nuturients for the final month or so. Thoughts?

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You'll get mixed opinions some people vouch for them some people think their gimmicks, most people would agree in flowering they use sugars. I use floranector but its not neccessary

New pics, just got home and decided to take some closeups. Man does she look awesome. Root ball is practically filling the bucket at this point, i use way less water now. Temps are good and looks like ph is right on. Will probably pickup one of the floranector's and try that out. Can't see it doing any harm.

Here is a link to a full size image of one below.
http://imgur.com/RIJ8DCw

Going to be building a ez cloner with the wife today. The genetics on this are to awesome to pass up. I feel like I could grow this in plain water =P

Some new updates, finshed my ez cloner and the cuttings have started to root. Though they are looking a bit sad. They were in just plain tap water so I decided to start adding some nutes and am hopeing for a speedy recovery. Pretty easy setup and was surpised all 4 clones rooted with in a week.

As for the main plant, she is looking really good and starting to show a good amount of sugar on her leaves and the buds are coming together nicely. Growth has slowed down, which is good because I have very little room above the light (maybe 4 or 5 inches left). Started adding the floranectar fruit rush or what ever it is called and she seems to be liking it. Looks like she will be in there for another month+. Hopeing to harvest and have a bit of bud cured by 4/20. Look like shes on track for it.

Trying to figure out my next grow.

Considering getting a little bigger tent, maybe 48x48 one so I could grow 2 plants at a time. Don't know for sure yet. Any suggestions? Was thinking a Jardin DR120 2 but those are about 200.

Well here are the pictures.

And a picture of my cloner.

The clones have got super long roots already, about 6 or 8 inches. They were wilting a bit but they have been coming back to life. Getting really green again and starting to show new growth. Think I am going to put 2 of them in some 3 gallon buckets in a simple dwc setup. The others in some fox farm ocean soil, just to start playing with some soil. Going to try some new picture methods tonight to capture a bit more of the trichs that are starting to show. Everything is getting super white and frosty looking.

Here are the clones as of today, I will be killing off the two smaller ones and using the two bigger ones in a new dwc setup I have made for vegging.

Very interested in this strain, as Critical Mass makes some nice crosses. That's a really healthy looking plant; you can see that you're going to have a nice yield! Anything in particular you can pass along as far as growing tips for Critical Hog, as this is definitely going to be grown in the near future.

Thanks,

Bud

Bud,

Critical HOG so far has been a dream to work with, very tough and has not had any negative effects to anything I have done with it. Just keeps trucking on looking healthy. One tip though, If you notice very close nodes in the beginning it seems to be normal and starts to strech more closer to the end of veg and flowering. And boy does it strech.

Update time,

Been a few days since my last update and have run into a few issues. I have built a new veg chamber out of some shelving units and panda film which is doing a awesome job, just using cfls for the time being. Might upgrade to a 250mh in there down the road. Moved 2 of the strongest clones from the cloner I had made into some 3 gallon buckets. Setup is looking nice I think. Though my clones developed some nasty brown root, though they were still looking very healthy. No drooping or color weirdness. I ended up draining the water and cleaning the buckets with a water/hydrogen peroxide mixture, also snipped off all the dieing/brown roots.

Also added air stones to my veg buckets, thought I would not need them but looks like the water might have not had enough oxygen getting to it with just the water fall from the res pump. Hopefully I start seeing some nice white roots on them again soon.

As for my flowering plant she is looking very good, I am on week 6 of flowering.Had to raise the light to the top of the tent since it looked like a few leaves on the canopy were getting a little bleached. Bought a little microscope and all the trichomes are looking milky though with little to none (less than 1%) that have a hint of amber to them. Hoping to start seeing some of that amber soon since I would like to harvest and have a bit of it cured by 420 =).

Sorry for the wall of text, Here are more photos that I took over the last week!

Ran into some issues the other night with my ppm sitting at around 3k!. I had just been adding nute water with out even thinking that my veg plant might just be wanting tons of water. Seems to be drinking a gallon + a day. Have been adding phed tap water to the res to bring the numbers back down, sitting at 1.7k tonight. Should be good over the next day or so. Also looks like i will need to clean the res out, starting to see a coating of slime on the hose to the pump. Nothing that seems to serious though.

My vegging plants are doing great now, roots are sparkling white and they seem to be doing well for the amount of light in there.
Most of the trichomes on my flowering plant are milky now, some starting to turn to amber. Thinking I might only need 2/3 more weeks before cutting. Should I go one more week with lower nutes then flush the last two weeks?

Thought I would snap some more pictures today. Help be the judge.

Looks amazing buddy, I just started my very first grow and I am loving what you did here. I like the sea of green technique, thinking of maybe going that route but I am a rookie and don't want to mess anything up.

Great job for a starter, rep to you mate

cheeseitis said:

Looks amazing buddy, I just started my very first grow and I am loving what you did here. I like the sea of green technique, thinking of maybe going that route but I am a rookie and don't want to mess anything up.

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This is my first grow as well man, just have to read and try new things. Best of luck!


Haven't updated in about a week but everything is looking very well on my flowering plant. Pistils are now turning amber and I am seeing a fair share of amber trichomes. Tips of leaves are changing colors along with drying out, expecting it to be part of the life cycle and not a ph/nute deficiency. Even seeing some purple hues on some of the leaves.

Thinking she will need 3 more weeks, starting a flush with very low ppm on the first. Or should I start the flush now? Thoughts?

My cloned plants are looking a bit funny but I attribute that stress to the cloning. There are leaves with a single bladed leaf. There also little leaves that seem to be swirling, think this was a nute deficiency and have flushed and reset the nutes. Ill snap some pictures tonight when the lights come back on, don't want to stress them anymore.

Thinking of moving to just bubble buckets next time and removing the res, can't seem to keep the flow even between the buckets.


Here are some more pictures, would appreciate thoughts on harvest and coloration. =)

Hey DJ, hows it goin?
Girls look great. What is the smell like on that Critical Hog?? Is it closer to the Berry flavor of the critical, or the Greasy of the Hog?

First things first..those funky one-blades, they are not a good sign at all. It means that there are significant light leaks in the veg room or simply not enough light. I ran across the exact same phenomenon with Black Russian from Delicious when i tried to veg them with CFL's. It took me 2 generations of cloning to get them back to normal. Get those lights closer and add more light if you can without messing up temps.

Next, after going through your thread, I was a little concerned to see that your vegs are at aroung 1700ppm? IMO thats too high. Im sure your aware of this but with hydro, nutes=money; so use as little nutes as possible early on (300-700ppm) and really spoil the girls in late flower (week 3-7) with carbs and bloom boosters heavy in P & K. This will also help keep the res mostly clean til you start adding those heavy feeds at the end.

Lastly, Im concerned that you may not understand fully the concept of flushing. In a normal capacity (outdoor soil), where there is already a fairly high EC or ppm naturally occurring in the medium, it absolutely is appropriate to flush with damn near '0'ppm. However, in Hydro applications, many growers, myself included, believe that a '0' ppm flush is the wrong way to go. There are a few threads i saw on here a week or 2 ago about this exact topic, but the basic theory is that due to osmotic pressure, you dont want the ppms of the res to be alot lower that that of the internal workings of the plant. This situation will cause the root-ball to leach the nutes back into the res hiking up the ppms and ph, instead of encouraging the plant to simply metabolize what is left internally. Your initial instinct to "flush" with a low ppm (150-250) for the next 10days-2weeks is prob gonna be your best bet.

Happy growing
-ST

P.S. A few products I found that really made the hydro experience more enjoyable for me were House & Gardens Root Excelurator and Drip Clean, along with Great White by Plant Success. If you have the means I would highly recommend all three. 10/10, 8/10, & 9/10 --my ratings for all 3 respectively.

Thanks for the tips toasted!

She has a very pungent sweet fruity smell, you can open the tent and work for a few minutes but he stench sticks on you.

The single blade issues looks to have been taken care of, all the new growth has been normal looking. Roots are healthy as well. Think the problem was me trying to fish the roots into the netpot and them having some spotty lighting during the cloning process. I have since added one of my bigger 105w (true watts) to the veg room.

By flushing I was meaning a lowering of the ppms, I have read plenty of threads going over this aspect for hydro plants. I didn't want to do near 0 because the plants still need some nutrients to continue to plump with out pulling all the needed nutes from the leaves. Sorry if I was using the term flushing loosely in my thinking, guess lowering ppms would have been the better wording for the situation. But she seems to be just drinking water at this point. Have had around 500ppm nutes for a week or so (tap water at 280ppm so over all about 800ppm) ph and ppm holding steady just water loss, bout a half gallon a day at this point. Going to drop it to about 200-300 the last 2 or 3 days and see how that comes out. Again thanks for your info on the flush but I think we were on the same page but I just relayed it incorrectly. Though I will def look into those products, always willing to try something new!

Here is my plant as of this morning. Made a date with the wife to trim on Saturday night.

Darkjasper said:

Thanks for the tips toasted!

She has a very pungent sweet fruity smell, you can open the tent and work for a few minutes but he stench sticks on you.

The single blade issues looks to have been taken care of, all the new growth has been normal looking. Roots are healthy as well. Think the problem was me trying to fish the roots into the netpot and them having some spotty lighting during the cloning process. I have since added one of my bigger 105w (true watts) to the veg room.

By flushing I was meaning a lowering of the ppms, I have read plenty of threads going over this aspect for hydro plants. I didn't want to do near 0 because the plants still need some nutrients to continue to plump with out pulling all the needed nutes from the leaves. Sorry if I was using the term flushing loosely in my thinking, guess lowering ppms would have been the better wording for the situation. But she seems to be just drinking water at this point. Have had around 500ppm nutes for a week or so (tap water at 280ppm so over all about 800ppm) ph and ppm holding steady just water loss, bout a half gallon a day at this point. Going to drop it to about 200-300 the last 2 or 3 days and see how that comes out. Again thanks for your info on the flush but I think we were on the same page but I just relayed it incorrectly. Though I will def look into those products, always willing to try something new!

Here is my plant as of this morning. Made a date with the wife to trim on Saturday night.

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Thats what im talkin about!

Im glad we were on the same page in regards to flushing. Good to see a novice that has done his research well.
Seriously nice grow from start to finish. ++rep friend.