Dozer's First Hydro - Purple Urke - Medical Marijuana

Greetings Everyone,

I recently decided to dive into the very complex world of Hydroponics. I hope this journal will allow others to learn from my mistakes, and maybe even take something I did that works into their own garden.

Without further ado:

I present to you, my garden


Comments and suggestions are welcome!

When I started thinking about this project, my biggest concerns with growing in this area were space and heat. The closet I was going to use was cramped (16"Wx76"Lx84"H). I drew up a plan of the space and ran down to my local hydro shop. I wanted to create the highest yield system I could cram into the space, so I decided on a galaxy digital ballast with a 600W MH bulb for veg and a 600W SuperHPS for flowering. For the system, I bought a General Hydroponics water farm with four pods and a controller, a 70lb activated charcoal “Can filter” with 6” baffle, a vortex 6” inline fan. For grow medium, I’d heard good things about Hydroton clay pellets, so I went that way. I asked the guys at the shop for recommendations on a high yield nutrient package. They all used Advanced Nutrients of one kind or another, and suggested I do the same. It was a bit more complicated to mix, they said, but the yield increase was sick. So, I ate the cost and settled on Sensi grow A&B for the nutrient base during veg, and connoisseur for flowering.
[FONT=&quot]Plan complete. Next stage, implementation[/FONT]

One of the four people in my “circle of trust” is a contractor, so I enlisted his help to remodel the closet as necessary. We decided we were going to need to add electricity, and cut a 6” vent hole in the closet to vent the air into the adjacent closet. . This was going to heat up the room, but it was my only real option. We wired some power in there, leveled out the floor with some plywood(the watergarden needs to be level to fill evenly), and screwed anchors into the stud to hang the lamp from. After the wiring was in place, we hung some black-back, white-front polyethylene film.According to Jorge Cervantes, the black side of the film is anti-fungal. Fungus is bad m’kay. Once that was in place, we moved in the water garden, connected the hoses, ran 6” ducting through the hole into the adjacent closet, and added a vent cover in there(it’s up high in another closet. You can’t see it unless you know it’s there). Once the ducting was in place, we hung the light, and connected the ducting. At first I tried using duct tape which fell off. Do yourself a favor and get metal ducting collars(the kind that screw down) for $2.00each, it is much more secure that way. Once the light was hung, we brought in the carbon filter/fan assembly, and connected the ducting to the fan. Eventually, I ended up replacing the original foil ducting with fiberglass insulated ducting. It’s a LOT quieter when you have a powerful exhaust fan. Noise with a fan this big is substantial. Be prepared for that if you’re going to try this. After all this was done, We hung a door, cut a bunch of holes in the bottom of the door to allow for air to get in, stapled egg crate to the inside of the door, and built a book shelf on casters to place in front of the door.

I procured some Purple Urkle clones from my local dispensary. They’ve had nothing but stellar medicine since I’ve been going there, and the chance to grow one of the most coveted strains in North America was too good to pass up. I brought them home, plopped them in, and immediately added nutes, burning my girls pretty badly. I realized my mistake the next morning, after frantically searching this forum and others. It was flush time. I flushed the system with pure RO water several times, and managed to get the PPM down to under 500. This would work until my girls actually needed nutes, if they survived. I noticed it was very hot in the growroom, and the clones were now showing signs of nute toxicity, AND heat stress. Great. At this point, the temperature in the room adjacent to my grow space rocketed up to 85-90. Inside the growroom was averaging 95F. Waaaay too hot. I thought my first round of clones were not long for this earth. I ran down to Home Depot, and bought a 9000BTU floor standing AC unit for $300. This brought the temp in my room down to 75, 80 in the space itself. This was acceptable. The damage, however, had been done.

I realized a little late, that my hydroton was too low. I needed to raise the level of the medium to avoid nutrients splashing on the leaves. I ran down to the hydro shop and bought another bag. After rinsing it out with tap water for 30-45 minutes, I raised the level of the clay significantly. About this time, the nutrient damage I had done seemed to begin to mend, and the pro-biotics, beneficial bacteria, and rooting hormones seemed to do the trick, as big fluffy white roots started sprouting out of the rockwool(I peeked). I added some nutrient s to the water. NOTE: If you are using Advanced Nutrients for the 1st time, DO NOT USE THEIR CHART TO DETERMINE PPM. I’ve had to QUARTER their suggested mix to achieve the correct EC/PPM.

Here I am in week three, and my girls have started taking off. Last weekend, I decided not to use the reservoir until my girls get thirstier. I flushed the system completely, wiped it out as best I could given the space constraints, and mixed a brand new batch of nutes up. I decided to move the outermost plants inwards to allow them to get some more light, and moved the inner, better performing plants outwards. This seems to have amused them greatly.
PH seems to want to stay at 6.1 for some reason, and no amount of PH down will make it stay at 5.5-5.8 for more than a couple of hours. At this point I've been six drops of PH down in the morning, and six in the evening to bring the controller PH down to 5.4. I figure this will give the rest of the system up to four hours a day of fluctuation for maximum nutrient uptake. They seem to be happier plants now.

Hey I really like the hidden grow room! great idea with the movable book case. Im sure you plants will really start to grow in the coming weeks.

Thanks Purfect!
I'll keep updating this weekly with progress reports and pics. Checking out your grow now.

I'm considering topping the girls. The girls on the end are starting to really take off, and I want to ensure even vegetative growth. What do you all think, is it too soon?

Thanks in advance,

D0z3r

I decided to top three of my four plants. two days later, and I'm glad that I did! My space is kind of tight, so I'm thinking about screen training as soon as the girls bush out a bit more. What do you guys think? Scrog?

On a side note,
My PH has stabilized in the system to 6.0. EC 1.0 PPM 700

Man, that looks like a very nice set-up. That shelf could almost hide your grow from a raid.

I say almost cause those bastards would probably tip it over just to be asses, and then find the door. Course it's not for the cops I'm sure - just to keep prying eyes from seeing the op and dropping a dime, right?

Are you planning some LST? How's the AN nutes working for ya?

My girls are recovering from topping nicely. I was a bit nervous about topping this early, but I wanted to create lateral growth early in the veg stage. I am very happy with the progress they've made so far.

I added nutes on Saturday. I'm still running 3/8th strength from the recommended recipe on the AN calculator. EC is reading 1.0, PH is stable at 6.0 The PPM is dropping a lot more rapidly now, so if my EC is too low when I get home, I'll probably add nutes up to 1/2 recommended strength and see if they last me all week. So far, I've just been adding nutes weekly, then topping off with R/O to keep the fill line steady. This is one place where most guides I've read have been a little in-precise. Do you guys add nutes all week, or once a week, and top off with water as necessary?

These pics are from Monday (day21)
Enjoy!

Hey Tom,

The bookshelf is just there to avoid any uncomfortable questions from friends and guests. I'm a medical cannabis patient, and nobody I know IRL knows what I'm up to, so law enforcement isn't really an issue for me. on LST: I've been tossing that idea around in my head for a while now. Right now, I'm trying to prune them in such a way as to allow all the branches to reach a parallel before letting them grow up. Once parallel, I will have to decide whether to LST/trellis/SCRoG, or to try FIM'ing all of the parallel colas-to-be and seeing if I cant make something sick happen. I've found pruning cannabis to be very similar to pruning bonsai, only I get to do it every few days.

Thanks for the feedback!

Dan

So, there's green stuff growing on my hygroton. At first, I thought it was my nutes staining the ricks green, but alas, I now believe it to be algae.
(see the pics)
I'm sure those of you who use hydro have seen this before.

Should I worry about it, and if so, how do I kill it? I've heard about people covering their rocks with white styro-foam plates to block out the light.

hmm... Guess I'll call the hydro shop and see what they think.

Yeah, that is 99.99% sure to be algae. Looks like your Hydroton is getting too wet too high.

Keep the top layer either dark or dry (or both) and you won't grow algae. Obviously, with a top-feed system like yours the dry part can be tough. I'm pretty sure one of the beneficial bacteria type of products would kill it - start eating the algae (turning into food for your plants) and since it's alive it multiplies and keeps going.

Assuming I'm right on that... I haven't tried it on algae myself.

The plates sound like a good idea. Just cut to the center, round out a hole for your stem, then slip it over the top of the pot. You might want to go with a thicker plate or several plates - if memory serves they're not exactly light-proof.

I've got a bit of the poly film I used to doll up the grow room left over.
I think I'll be making some film 'skirts' for the girls after work today.

Thanks Tom!

No problem, glad to help!

Everything looks to be coming along nicely,

I've got some algae issues that I intend to address this weekend, but otherwise everything looks pretty good. I'm pleased with the results of topping the girls, and plan on FIM'ing them pretty soon. I added some beneficial Bacteria and Fungus today(1/4 AN's suggested concentration) Bringing the EC up to 1.2-1.4 PH is fairly stable at 6.0 with a slight drift toward 6.1. I've been adding four to six drops of PH-Down to bring the controller PH down to 5.0 in an attempt to bring the overall PH down to 5.6-5.8, but so far, I've had little success overcoming the system's natural bias.

Here are four pics of the girls from today.
How do they look?

Hey all.

One of my plants has some strange behavior in a few of the fan leaves. The tips of the leaves are turning yellow and the whole leaf is 'clawing' downward.
It seems to be mild at this point, but I want to address it early if it's something problematic.

Thanks in advance guys and gals,

d0z3r

It's day 24 of this little project of mine, and things are getting interesting. I now have 3-4 tops on most of my girls, with 5-6 additional branches rising to the surface. Just before snapping these pictures, I gently bent the tops apart to show the development at this stage. I'm going to give them a few more days, and if they continue this rate of growth, I'm going to need to start training the branches down to keep the growth horizontal. I've noticed a lot of people in this forum use run of the mill garden trellis netting to keep the jungle at bay. Maybe I'll give that a go.

Pics from today: