First indoor stealth grow for fun

So I don't want this to be crazy detailed or anything. I have had lots of experience outdoors and recently moved to a new place. I just bought a house in the same town as my parents and both of my adult sisters. This means that I have a lot of traffic in my house that is not grow friendly, i like to keep it private. I sacrificed outdoor space for a nice house in the city and had to move my production indoors. I have not done indoor since 1999 which was a pitiful attempt to flower some nice kush in my bath tub with fluros and nothing special. I was not prepared at that time and did not have the knowledge or experience to know what I was doing......so 9 years later I am back inside and so far so good.

I wanted to say thanks to a few individuals that I have been lurking around for some time: fdd2blk and P@ssword have unknowingly helped me a great deal with research and info and I wanted to say I appreciate it.

So now to the info:
Strain: Lowryder 2 dwarf mix straight from the Joint Doctor himself
Medium: 70% Ocean Forrest 30% Light Warrior
Nutes: Grow Big, Tiger Bloom
Control: RO/DI water, Digital PH meter, cheap moisture meter, custom humidity and temp control.
Light: 250 HPS Agromax in a Floralux all in one unit, un-movable bolted to roof.
Ventilation: 1 4'' Inline duct fan to aircool the light and ballast. 2 4'' Muffin fans for internal circulation. 1 4'' inline fan to intake air from cooled basement.
Odor: 12'' by 6'' diameter carbon scrubber with 4lbs activated carbon. 1 big jug of ONA for the atmosphere
Closet: Custom converted grow box approx 2.5 feet tall by 2.2 feet wide and 1.5 feet deep. Lined with 3mm Mylar and completely sealed. Stealthly hidden in my 4 foot tall sealed basement 30-40 feet back where you have to ride a skateboard on your ass to get anywhere near it,

My temps run from 76 at night to 83 during the day. I am running a constant 18/6 schedule germination to harvest. I am at day 12 from seed right now with 3 nodes and rapid growth. I have not fertilized yet and am not sure what I will do for veg/flower nute schedule. This is my first autoflower strain and I am interested to see how it turns out. I will also be pollinating one plant based upon the strongest male I find. If I don't get a male I would be shocked and maybe even a little sad because i don't want to travel again to get more seeds and I am scared of the mail.

One final point: Although this system does not pull that many amps I wanted to touch on electrical safety. This entire grow is on a dedicated 30 amp circuit with a 20 amp breaker acting as a safety and a custom built 20 amp surge protector that will trip on 16 amps. I have noticed countless electrical hazards while researching on this site and I wanted to offer a word of advice. Electricity is a dangerous mistress that most of the time does not cause trouble. There are many people on here walking a dangerous line with all their extension cords and cfls hanging everywhere and they will most likely never have a problem. However, don't be careless because you could loose your house or your life in a second if you dont respect her power.

Anyway
Here are a few pics:

Technically it is still day 12 but now its morning for my little ladies. So there are a couple of questions I have:

1. My PH is at 7.1-7.2 is that too alkaline? If so what is a good safe and cheap way to slowly lower it, lemon juice??

2. Anyone with autoflower experience: they are starting to stink real bad. No problems here on the smell as its under control, but I have never experienced the skunk on day 12 is this weird or autoflower traits?

So here are some more pics. I don't have a digi cam only my iPhone so sorry for the UV lines in the daylight pics. Rep Sector 9 for giving me a great way to get to my cabinet.

have a good night everyone,

that looks like a good setup..im going to try and get some lowrider seeds and start my own grow..Good Lucc

So I am not updating regularly, and since there is nobody subscribed I did not really care that much, if you want pics ask and you shall receive.

Day 18, crazy odds everybody showed sex from day 15-17. Germed 5 at the start and got 4 girls, Yay!!!!!!

Decided to kill the boy and germ three more for good luck. The pics are of some of the girls close up and group shots. The one of the leaf is this freaky looking spotted leaf that looks seriously damaged and scary, if you have an idea of what this is please let me know.

looking good !

Ill be watching this

DWR- This ones for you dog

Day 25 for the ladies, day 4 for the new girls. Had to improvise a scrog screen out of bamboo sticks and stuff. The two big girls have exploded and now need to be LST'd away from the heat zone. The two smaller girls are growing good but slow. One is real short and bushy, the other is slightly taller and not as dark or wide. I have included fan leaves from the three distinct strains in this mix (note the weird mutant leaf in the top right corner!!!)

Ok, so this is about 1 week of flower. I've got bud shots of the two big girls and the smallest, darkest, thickest little girl I got. Then there is the field of buds from the big girl and a few other pics like the fan leaves and such. I should be trimming fan leaves in 4 days and expect massive growth for next weeks update.......oh and pray for my little girls that they grow strong and big.

So, I had a fungus gnat issue in the early stages of this grow. Used some awesome natural pine oil based stuff-goGnat to kick it in the butt. A week ago the remaining eggs hatched and I did another treatment. Now that I am into flower and don't like spraying I am stuck with no other options than to call in the troops.....Lady bugs. I found some aphids flying around this morning and know from experience that they can multiply in a few days so I went out and got me some soldiers.

Pics of my supplies including new soldiers. Note the diatomaceous earth in the mix for a last resort on the bug front. A few fun pics of the lady bugs in action and a decent size nug that I am working with from my supply. have fun out there

Looks good mang. I also have a cab about the same sixe as your. just built it and am running it empty to find out my temps. I also have a 250hps running in a diy cooltube, and a squirl cage to vent the room. I'll be watching!

mexiblunt- Thanks for the kind words man, the temp thing is a crazy monster but once you get the variables straight it works itself out. I'm actually running a lot cooler now that my girls are bigger because the ambient temp from the 3 gal buckets keeps it cool most of the day.

I'll update later tonight when I can take more pics.

So I have been looking around at other LR2 grows and think that I am about a week ahead of schedule. Also, there has been a crazy development on one of the plants at the 2nd node that looks like either INTERSEXED/HERMED/POLLINATED?????? someone please help.

Otherwise, the rest of the pics are pretty self explanatory. Note the small girl in the front of the pic. She will not grow vertically past this 6 inch mark, but has the closest node spacing and thickness I have ever seen. The lady bugs have destroyed the bug population.

Finally, when can I TOP these little girls is it 3 or 4 nodes?

So I have not updated in a while, been working a lot and just letting them flower. I now know that I have two distinct strains with one strain showing two separate phenotypes. Of the 4 girls I have flowering there are two that are like twins. Then there is one that is very similar to the twins but more like a runt with less thickness and dense flowers. Finally there is one plant that is absolutely a different strain much shorter both in height and node spacing. Dark dark green fan leaves and crazy dense bud.

I also have two females that are 26 days from seed, both strong examples of the two separate strains I have right now. Out of the remaining 4 seeds I had purchased 3 were male and one did not germ. Out of the three males I chose the one that had the fastest sign of flowering (13days!!), strongest stem and node growth and hardiness. I let this male grow for a little while in the cab and then moved him outside. I have collected good pollen off of him and still have more to harvest. I pollenated one bud on the small dark strain and one bud on one of the twins.

I am not too hopeful for viable seeds since I was a little late in pollenating, but the two girls that are 26 days old are going to be used to produce large amounts of the two strains mixed with the same father. I know that this is not the best genetic starting point since I am breeding F1's with no way to back cross. All I can hope for is that I get some good results and strong F2's with a large amount of seeds to last me for a while. Since I only grow 4-5 plants at a time a couple of hundred seeds will be great. I also think I could get about 10 of the dark short strain in my cab for an awesome scrog grow.

Anyway here is some bud porn at 44 days from seed. The one that looks younger, first pic, is the small dark green strain and the rest of the pictures are from the twins and the runt.