First Time Grow, Newbie, thoughts!?

Budget Buds said:

I would drop your ppm way down, Auto flowers IMO dont like hi ppm I never went above 6-700 when I was doing autos , What is the temp of the water? If it is the same as your air temp in your room it is to high, Try for 68-74 air and water temp . Does the ppm rise quickly in such a small res? Plants drink alot of water in comparison to nutrients. and they may be irritable because of the high ppm. Fix the light issue in the res, Algae is prolly not an issue YET but you could add a few tablespoons of hydrogen peroxide to add o2 to the res and to help get the roots back to white.

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Really. Wow ok sounds good, I went with the dosing online on grow weed easy that was supposedly half the nutes, but if you had great grows around 700 then I am torching them. I'll have to adjust that right away, I'll check the temp of the water in RES, just not sure I'll be able to adjust that in such a small grow if high, I was debating on the peroxide and I happen to have 35 percent food grade, that I will convert down to 3percent w/distilled then add a few table spoons. Thanks for that tip, maybe why they look a little burned up at the bottom.

Dan.

they look dry and burned because the roots were being suffocated so the plant can`t uptake what it needs

It`s like a solar panel but if its roots aren't working your just cooking leaves under a hot light

If you use oxy then no point using bennies, I use a natural water butt treatment, if your going to go sterile res you may as well use chlorine and tap water, then hotter temps won`t even be an issue, lot of people using "poolshock" and getting results but I keep thinking it`d effect the taste but I mean rot would taste way worse then some chlorine hydro, lol

Yeah that does make sense. A little frustrated because I bought the box and followed instructions and this is how it turned out so I'm going to be sending it back and he's cool with a refund, he can't even figure out why it grows green then turns brown and crispy. I did get the PPM down to 650, but they look sad still I know it takes about 3-7 days to see a good change.

I'll be switching this to a grow tent, looking online now and I think I'm going to get a kind LED 300 and 3x3 or 4x4 grow tent and xfer these guys if they survive and go from there. Do you recommend the best hydro? I know aeroponics gtrow the fastest but I see they have 8 and 16 units only and are small so you can only still plant 1 or 2 at a time. Like the idea of DWC or ebb and flow with res not under light.

What size air pump and how many airstones are you running in your reservoir?

one airstone and not sure of speed of pump but I don't think it's that powerful airstone is 6 inches wide blue. the peroxide did clear the water up nice, this is a small box 18 inched wide, one foot deep and 4 feet high. I think it's just too small a setup and too many things not right. You think getting a bigger pump would help?

No, just hadnt seen you mention any airstones in the system, I am new to this as well and went through something similar when tuning my dwc system. It seems that one of the biggest things is water temp, it affects the amount of dissolved oxygen in the water which helps your plants grow and prevents bad growth (cyano). I keep my res at 65F and would recommend keeping water temps below 70 if possible. Also I am pretty sure that the h2o2 will negate any hydroguard that you put into the system, what i did in that situation was when i was doing a water change i would take the net pots out and place them in a very shallow tray filled with maybe 1 inch of water and would add h2o2 to that while i did my water change and wiped down the reservoir. With a smaller setup small swings will have a larger effect and consistency will be a little tougher to nail down

GrowerDaniel said:

Yeah that does make sense. A little frustrated because I bought the box and followed instructions and this is how it turned out so I'm going to be sending it back and he's cool with a refund, he can't even figure out why it grows green then turns brown and crispy. I did get the PPM down to 650, but they look sad still I know it takes about 3-7 days to see a good change.

I'll be switching this to a grow tent, looking online now and I think I'm going to get a kind LED 300 and 3x3 or 4x4 grow tent and xfer these guys if they survive and go from there. Do you recommend the best hydro? I know aeroponics gtrow the fastest but I see they have 8 and 16 units only and are small so you can only still plant 1 or 2 at a time. Like the idea of DWC or ebb and flow with res not under light.

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In 1.2m x 1.2m I`d run 600w to 1200w, well I`d run over 1200w of led but you are not me, lol

aeroponics is a nice way to grow but when it goes wrong your plants can die fast in hours if a sprayer clogged or a pump shuts off

but it uses less water and can make certain set up`s viable

if I was you and wanted to do hydro I would get dwc under my belt or some kinda dwc with a dripper or flood and drain

It`s mostly just seeing what can go wrong and how things get clogged how much you have to ph and stuff

Hydro can mean constant checking and technical work, were as soil and coco is more about keeping it watered and planing your feeding ahead

a lot of hydro is just down to running monster airpumps and waterfull pumps, ec, ph, temps and keep everything clean

trouble with hydro or aero systems is once you start moving water around it only takes a crack or a clog or a broken pump and you can have a very big flood

plan your system so that if it fails all the water will no flood everywhere and also set it up so if it does fail it`ll fail "roots wet" as dry dead plants you can`t fix but you can always fix or replace the pump that drains the rootzone

depends how much you wanna work on it

but you should get a 60 to 200L water butt and start pre conditioning your water, even if you just grow with coco in sacks if you ph and pre treat your water and ppm then your still growing "hydro" really just you have the hassle of coco to throw away or reuse

Homebox flood and drain systems are good for a low budget buy but I`d probably go with bigger sacks than the ones they give

Yeah high pressure aeroponics (areo 2.0 aka superponics) sounds cool but they are noisey and you need a high pressure pump or air compressor with water going to your sprayers

everyone I`ve seen just use a pump and micro misters did just as well but when areo systems break as I said before you lose plants fast

that being said a small aeroponics set up works great for making clones fast

any thoughts on drip systems like the general hydroponics that are individual drip chambers with 5.7 gallon res? I hear that the drips systems get clogged. So, it sounds like soil is easier but you have to water every few days, I sometimes have to be gone a day or two from the plants, one reason looking at hydro, and using autos for quicker results, didn't expect such a headache out of the box, I read so much before I go started, and part of my problem was I followed the dude's instructions based on his box setup, and then changed to growweedeasy.com nutrient schedule which they were really growing, but notw that I cut back the ppm, they actually look worse than they did when I posted those pictures, so Not only frustrated just want to throw my hands up and say it's a week for Christ sake, I grow plants all the time. I think they just go off to a rocky start and now I'm trying one thing after the other to try and FIX their situation and save them, at some point I want to say screw it and start over but start of week 5 I may as well see it through even though might not enjoy the taste so much lol.

Plants are finally recovering.
PH 6.1
Temps good
Roots Whitening up
PPM is at 650 @ 0.5 scale per my TDS meter btw and that has dropped from 700 yesterday so doesn't that mean plants are eating more nutes than water and need to top off with nutes?

ive got a GH drip system i am using, and yes it does clog

GrowerDaniel said:

any thoughts on drip systems like the general hydroponics that are individual drip chambers with 5.7 gallon res? I hear that the drips systems get clogged. So, it sounds like soil is easier but you have to water every few days, I sometimes have to be gone a day or two from the plants, one reason looking at hydro, and using autos for quicker results, didn't expect such a headache out of the box, I read so much before I go started, and part of my problem was I followed the dude's instructions based on his box setup, and then changed to growweedeasy.com nutrient schedule which they were really growing, but notw that I cut back the ppm, they actually look worse than they did when I posted those pictures, so Not only frustrated just want to throw my hands up and say it's a week for Christ sake, I grow plants all the time. I think they just go off to a rocky start and now I'm trying one thing after the other to try and FIX their situation and save them, at some point I want to say screw it and start over but start of week 5 I may as well see it through even though might not enjoy the taste so much lol.

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I am using a GH drip system (ecogrower) and it does get clogged up but its an easy fix, pull off the top and clear out the debris (30 seconds) and it only ever clogged when I was fucking things up and had a lot of root debris floating around in the reservoir.

disratory said:

ive got a GH drip system i am using, and yes it does clog


I am using a GH drip system (ecogrower) and it does get clogged up but its an easy fix, pull off the top and clear out the debris (30 seconds) and it only ever clogged when I was fucking things up and had a lot of root debris floating around in the reservoir.

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Great to know because I'm about to go buy a couple.

GrowerDaniel said:

Great to know because I'm about to go buy a couple.

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Personally i think the ecogrower would be great for a SOG method

Nice Grow. I looked at that exact unit too online, as well as the eco rainforest 66 3x3 would be a good fit. Hate that I can't find anything locally. Still may just do a DIY DWC with bigger baskets as well just cut save some cost and get a nicer light.

DIY tends to be cheaper but also by putting it together this way you will also become very familiar with your system and hopefully how and why it works. I am putting together a larger system myself after this run

UPDATE! I've attached a few pictures to update everyone, plants are growing like mad, here's my current stats:

Seed: Pineapple Express Auto flower
Week: 6
Temp 78
PH 5.9-6.2
PPM: 700
Hydrogard: YES
LUCAS FORMULA FEEDING

I redid the DWC, now 5 GAL RES, Bigger Pump and 4 Air Stones (thing bubbles like mad), water temp 71. I still am getting some brown rust like leaves, they aren't all over as you can see in the pictures, but still show up, most stems are green with a couple maroon, not many though. Plant not showing any signs of slowing growth. Any tweaks you guys would recommend? I thought topping with Plain PHed water until PPM down to 500. Or am I still getting a Deficiency?