George W. Grow / Aurora Indica & AK-48 With PICS.

This is my first post on this site and I know it will definitely not be my last. I have recently just started a small operation with the hopes that I can expand and grow in more space later. I Have growen crops outdoors and in greenhouses. I am for the first time starting indoors. I will continually post my progress to keep those interested informed. As of right now though I have seemed to have run into a little problem and was wondering if any one could help me to solve it.

The plants seem to be showing sings of a mg or N deficiency. This im quite sure of however the cause of the problem still remains elusive. I will explain my setup in as much detail as I can below.

WATER:
Drip system with res beneath. Waters drips from 2gph drippers every day for fifteen min. Water is also enriched with air from an air pump and stones. Now I am using drinking water and b/c I am on well water where I live and it must be softened. The water I am using says it has been carbon filtered and Ozonated. It has a ppm of roughly 120 and a ph of 7.1. My tapwater has a ppm of roughly 400 and a ph of 7.0 after being softened by a softener that uses salt in its process. I have a strange feeling I should be using this water instead of the drinking water.

GROWING MEDIUM:
I am using a mixture of bcuzz hydro mix which is a soilless mixture of Spagnum moss (or Peat i cant remember) and perlite and Vermiculite. 3parts hydro mix 1 part Perlite 1 part Verm.
The plants were started in Jiffy pellets and then placed into three inch mesh pots and topped with the growing medium.
The pots are lined with black plastic in order to prevent the roots from growing through and to help keep soil from drying out too quickly. The bottom of the pot remains without plastic and is completely mesh. My reasoning for the pots is a lower risk of transplant shock into bigger pots when it becomes time by allowing the roots to just grow through the first container

NUTES:
Primary growth Nutes: Flora Nova 7-4-10
Stimulaters: Superthrive and Bcuzz Growth 1-0-.7

LIGHT:
Period: 18/6

I am currently using around 300w of cfl lighting inside a reflector with 2 62w 2700k lights and 4 42w 6700k lights to incorperated as much of the light spectrum as possible.

The lights are roughly 6 inches above the plants at all times

GROW CHAMBER:
The grow chamber is divided into two levels one for seedlings and clones and one for mama which i am working on creating

The walls are totaly covered in mylar reflective material.
There is 1 osculating tower fan
There are 2 70 cfm fans for exaust
There are 2 70 cfm fans for intake
There is one 70 cfm fan for airflow between chambers

There are timers for both the pumps and the lights

One major problem I have with the grow room is heat. Where I live the outside air temp is around 95 this time of year and it is extremely hard to cool a house. I try to keep the temp in the house around 75 degrees however my grow chamber temps have reached as high as 92 degrees with an average temp of around 87. I know this is too high without co2 enrichment and am currently keeping the door to the chamber open as much as possible to keep the temps down around 80 degrees.

CURRENT

I have been growing Aurora Indica and AK-48 for about three weeks now. At first the plants were growing perfectly. I slowly first giving them a nute concentration of around 400 ppm (including initial water ppm of 120) and a week ago I increased it to around 600 ppm total. Soon after that i notices a slight yellowing of the leaves and then what I diagnosed as a mg deficiency. I quickly added epson salt the the res and stated floraly feeding them the a light solution of nutes and epson salt. The problem seemed to stop until I stoped Floral feeding around 2 days ago. The ph has averaged around 6.6 in the res. Now the problem seems to continue and I dont know what is locking up my plants. I feel like there could be just a lack of all nutes because i am now noticing red spots on the leaf stems which I think is an indicator of a p deficiency. I will attach some pics of everything in order to get a better look at what might be wrong. Please Help!

That's a wicked setup, good luck. Reps +

Can anyone read this and tell what I might be doing wrong I know its a lot to read but I tried to be as detailed as possible in order to recieve an accurate diagnosis

man-i like your setup-iis niiice, i liike.
dont worry about those lower little yellowing leaves,just contine with regular feeding and watering and it should go away.
keep up the good work...

Yeah i am a little worried i think nutes are being locked out by some other problem. If you read my description of the growing method you might find something in there that could be causing a potential problem.

George W, I can really tell you have done your research, it looks like you have everything under control.
I know you are worried about the problems you described, but in all honesty, they do look pretty good. +rep man
I have two suggestions for you....
1) temps, get your temps down.... can you get a portable a/c? or maybe try to run fresh air into the grow room?
2) They look a little small for 600 ppm. I would try to cut back a little and see what happens. I dont think it is nute defecincy. Sometimes when I add too much nutrients I get a brown edge on the large fan leaves. Lowering the ppm normally corrects the issue, but damaged leaves sometimes will not heal.

Anyways man, I hope this helps, good luck

George W. said:

Can anyone read this and tell what I might be doing wrong I know its a lot to read but I tried to be as detailed as possible in order to recieve an accurate diagnosis

Click to expand...

You probably over watered because you're concerned about the temps.

Let them dry-out more before watering, and I'll bet it clears up. Also thin your soil with 20% pearlite for good drainage and air circulation.

Green Cross said:

You probably over watered because you're concerned about the temps.

Let them dry-out more before watering, and I'll bet it clears up. Also thin your soil with 20% pearlite for good drainage and air circulation.

Click to expand...

oops I thought you were growing in soil

Must be PH then

Finaly some good advice thank you both jenni and green cross I think you both may be right so i did a water change (now using r/o distilled water) and lowered my nute ppm to 500 and brought the ph down to around 6.2 I will closley monitor them over the next few days now and let you know what happens. I added cal max to the res along with a bio culture to help the plants take up nutes easier. I also switched to fox farm growing nutes instead of flora nova. I have just heard better things about the FF nutes. If you have any more sugestions I would be happy to read them.

Thanks

I have some new pics of the girls. They are looking slightly bettter but little has changed. The spread of the difeciency has stoped I think but im still trying to figure out what caused it. To make the diagnosis easier I have broken down what I was doing before.

Grow room Temps: High 85-90+
PH in Res: 6.7 avg
Nute Strenth: 700ppm (Was using drinking water with baseline ppm of 130)
Medium: Soilless mixture 3" mesh pots
Nutes: Super Thrive, Bcuzz Grow, Flora Nova Grow.
Watering: Every day for fifteen minuets drip system
Now I have changed a few things

Grow room Temps: Better 78-82
PH in Res: 6.0 avg
Nute Streanth: 450 ppm grow (Switched to Fox Farm Grow big)
150 ppm Cal Max
15 ppm Base line
45 ppm Super thrive and bcuzz growth stim
Total 660 ppm
Also added a root culture
Watering: Floral feed daily watering when soil is dry

Please can anyone figure out what I was doing wrong and are there any sugesstions on things i should be doing.

Some people said to flush others said to back off nutes some say mg and cal difficiency others said ph. that just sounds like everything is wrong lol.

I want to know what locked out the nutes from the plants.

i'd say they look great slight nute burn on bottom but new groth looks good. i think u may of slightly locked them at 6.7 ph, then slightly burned them but they look great watch new groth.
if temps are a lil high why not get some yeast and shugger in a bottel to put with them? eazy co2

Thanks for the info. I feel that I know what happened to my plants and now I have taken steps to correct the problem and they are looking better. I think at first my PH was to high and the plants were showing sings of a MG or CL difeciency. I increased the ppm and added epson salts to try and fix that problem. However in doing so I gave the plants a slight nute burn. Freeking out I tried everything to fix it on my own but I owe credit to the people on this sight for educating me on what I was doing wrong. Today I flushed with PH adjusted water only and floraly fed a diluted nute solution. I think the flushing will get rid of any salt build up from my previous mistake. I will also have adjusted my ph to around 5.9 to prevent furthur lock out. Hope the next week will show large sings of improvement.

Thanks to all that were willing and able to help.

Smoke till you Choke

George W. (and by the way in my parts George W. is another name for weed not any political affiliation on my part I dont believe in a goverment that has no room for weed in their agenda)

I wanted to know if a paticular watering scheduel wold work or would it drown my plants. I am using a soilless mixture of 3 parts bcuzz hydro mix, one part perlite, and one part vermiculite. The plants are in three inch mesh pots with a thin sheet of black plastic wraped around the outside side (sides only) and then placed into another mesh pot to hold the plastic in place. The bottom of the pots are still mesh alowing the roots to grow through the bottom. My reason for this is to ease the transplanting process by just planting the pot into a larger container and let the roots grow through. Some of the roots now are coming through the bottom and growing into the res positiond below. The res is aierated however the roots do not sit directly over the bubbles. The cups do not actualy sit in the water mabey a half inch above it. I have been currently watering only once a day and am letting the pots dry out between watering. I was told I should not let the pots dry out bc it might build up unwanted salts in my medium. I have had a problem with either nute burn and a lock out due to a number of things I feel I have under control (or at least a better understanding of now).

What I want to know is when using a drip system with a soilless mixture with plenty of drainage should I water way more frequently or continue to let the soil dry out before adding more water?

I was thinking to water for five minuets every one and a half hours to keep the soil wet enough that when watered there was always a contant drip out the bottom reducing the ability for nutes to build up in the medium. Is this a good idea or a bad on? should the water stream be more constant? Please let me know.

Here are some pictures of the how the Girls are doing now.

Thanks

George W. (and by the way in my parts George W. is another name for weed not any political affiliation on my part I dont believe in a goverment that has no room for weed in their agenda)

Yesterday I Changed the watering cycle to a more continious cycle. It now comes on for 5 min every hour and a half about 11 times a day through the light cycle. I also removed the plastic liner from around the mesh pot exposing the roots on the side of the cup.

I also turned on the second air pump so now ther is a air stone diffuser under every pot pumping O2 more evenly. I knotice that as the air bubbles pop on the surface they splash up small amounts of watter all over the sides of the pots keeping the roots that are not in the res wet at all times. It seems to be working perfectly now and growth has continued as normal.

I also added CO2 to the equation via a soda making kit. I fill up a bottle with plain water carbonate it and then leave the cap barely snug on and place it in the grow chamber. half way through the day when some of the co2 has escaped I unscrew the cap fully to release all the co2 that is left. It takes abour 14 hours for the bottle of carbonated water to become compleetly flat.

The root system is looking great and everything seems to be back in order.

I know I got a lot of people to view this thread and others I have posted but I must say that I am a little disapointed. I thought more people would be willing to offer some help or at least some advice on where to find help.

Thanks to those who actualy took the time to help me out.

George W.

Things are continuing to look good and there are no new sings of my previous problem. I have maintained a ph avrage of 6.0 for the last five days and kept the PPM around 600. Root and plant growth is exceptional. In about two weeks I will be labeling all the plants with individual lables and taking clones from each of them. A week after that I will (assuming clones have taken root and are healthy) I will put the plants into flowering. Because each plant expresses one dominate phenotype from its parrents I will continue to grow the clones while the other plats flower and see what plants traits I like. I will then pick the apropriat clones to remain in th e veg stage and become my mothers. The other clones will be flowered to continue to help raise capital for further expansion.

I will eventualy be using a system that will produce a hp to 3/4 p every 21 days. Each 21 day cycle will yeald a different bud so I never get tiered of the smoke. I also plan to start at the same time as I take the clones two new strands LA confidential and Rocklock from DNA genitics.

Nothing has realy changed in the past few days. Here are some new pics. I will continue to post new pics every few days to show others how large plants should be after time. Today the plants are 30 old from being placed into the napkins to germinate. 28 days from planting. and 25 days old from sprouting.

The plants are growing well however I am noticing some spotting on the larger fan leaves on some of the plants. I have done some research and come to the conclusion that the problem is due to PH. I was keeping my PH around 6.0 and things were fine however a few days ago I noticed the spots. I have been trying to keep my ph down now to around 5.6 to see if the problem goes away.

I also have noticed that my ppm continues to drop daily with the water. Is this normal? I am now keeping it around 750 but I think that might be too low for the size of the plant and this might be why the plants are slowing in growth. Should I raise the ppm to around 1000 or wait to see if the problems correct themselves with the ph adjustment before I add any more nutes?

I am just wondering how much ppm drops from day to day and if its due to consumption by the plant or a buildup in my soilless medium. Please if anyone has any suggestions about what I should do please reply.

The pictures I have posted are full view of both chambers in my setup. The bottom one is for the mothers which I am working on producing now. I use a 250w 6400k CFL that produces around 17000 luminens. It has an inline fan that blows hot air from the reflector out the roof through the ducting. This keeps the temps in the chamber above it lower than it would if it just circulated the air back into the chamber. The fan is small and only pushes 26 cubic feet of air /min. On the wall that is the door is on there are two fans that are the intake for both chambers. A filter is placed behind the intake grill in order to capture any dust entering the chamber. The fins that protrude from the fans help to circulate the air in a counter clockwise direction because I will not be able to put an osculating fan in the mother chamber. The fan located in the back corner of the mother chamber helps to push air up into the veg/clone chamber. At the top of the veg chamber there are two more fans for exausting the hot air out of the grow chamber.

Soon I will be taking clones, 3 days or so, and placing them in the lower chamber. These clones will become my mothers and the origional plants will be put into flowering. The mothers will be grown in soil so I know I will need some help with that in the future.

I am mechanically inclined and am willing to help anyone who is setting up a grow room. I have a lot of experience in construction and electronics so I anyone has a question about the mechanics of a particular setup feel free to ask.

George W. said:

The plants are growing well however I am noticing some spotting on the larger fan leaves on some of the plants. I have done some research and come to the conclusion that the problem is due to PH. I was keeping my PH around 6.0 and things were fine however a few days ago I noticed the spots. I have been trying to keep my ph down now to around 5.6 to see if the problem goes away.

I also have noticed that my ppm continues to drop daily with the water. Is this normal? I am now keeping it around 750 but I think that might be too low for the size of the plant and this might be why the plants are slowing in growth. Should I raise the ppm to around 1000 or wait to see if the problems correct themselves with the ph adjustment before I add any more nutes?

I am just wondering how much ppm drops from day to day and if its due to consumption by the plant or a buildup in my soilless medium. Please if anyone has any suggestions about what I should do please reply.

The pictures I have posted are full view of both chambers in my setup. The bottom one is for the mothers which I am working on producing now. I use a 250w 6400k CFL that produces around 17000 luminens. It has an inline fan that blows hot air from the reflector out the roof through the ducting. This keeps the temps in the chamber above it lower than it would if it just circulated the air back into the chamber. The fan is small and only pushes 26 cubic feet of air /min. On the wall that is the door is on there are two fans that are the intake for both chambers. A filter is placed behind the intake grill in order to capture any dust entering the chamber. The fins that protrude from the fans help to circulate the air in a counter clockwise direction because I will not be able to put an osculating fan in the mother chamber. The fan located in the back corner of the mother chamber helps to push air up into the veg/clone chamber. At the top of the veg chamber there are two more fans for exausting the hot air out of the grow chamber.

Soon I will be taking clones, 3 days or so, and placing them in the lower chamber. These clones will become my mothers and the origional plants will be put into flowering. The mothers will be grown in soil so I know I will need some help with that in the future.

I am mechanically inclined and am willing to help anyone who is setting up a grow room. I have a lot of experience in construction and electronics so I anyone has a question about the mechanics of a particular setup feel free to ask.

Click to expand...

Lookin good homie

It has been a while since my last update but ive been busy and have not had the time to post any new developements. I finaly got the plants out of my veging chamber and into the flowering chamber.

The flowering chamber is about 90% complete with only some minor adjustments and additions left to do. One major one is the addition of co2 but for right now i am a little short on $.

The New setup uses a 1000w sunmaster hps bulb and digital ballest. the light is air cooled by using outside air that is pumped through the reflector and then expelled back outside. this circulation takes place through the roof. There is a carbon scrubber with an inline fan that helps to pull cold air through the bottom of the door and blows it out from the top of the room into an adjacent closit through a grill. I have a small osculating fan on the plants and a stronger box fan that circulats air throughout the room. Timers are all on battery backup and all outlets are gfi and surge protected.

I have also come up with a solution that stops light from coming under the door but allows for the transfer of fresh air into the grow room. it works like it looks by bending the light in different ways since light can only travel in a straight line and air can move around objects. The overlapping reduces light and the setback makes it imposible to see the light unless you are low enough to see four inches below the door jam. I still need to finish the sides but i left them open so people could see how to construct such a device. There is more open area in cubic inches in the opening at the door than there are in the 6 inch exaust tube that cools the room. This allows for maximum air flow into the room without wasted presure being built up at the intake point. You will notice from the picture with the door closed and that there is barely any noticable light compaired to the pic with the door cracked.

The tanks are plumbed with drains on the bottoms and are placed on wood frames with casters to make it easier to move them. There are two air stones in each tank and a 160 per hour pump with a distributer cap supplying nutes through the feeder tubes. each tank is filled to roughly 15 gallons of nute solution and an indicator gage lets me know the water level left in the tank. This helps me to monitor the plants consumption of water during the cycle. the tanks were rigged to allow for them to drain and fill by the use of a pump so doing water changes is a lot less work than it would be if it all had to be done manualy.

I currently have 10 plants in flowering all around 1.5 to 2 feet tall. I am using the humbolt line of nutes during flowering. I currently have 4 ak 48 plants 3 aroura indicas and three seeds of some cross between papaya and ice i made years ago. I have taken clones from each plant individualy and will select the best yeilding plants to be mothers. the others will follow into flowering after a couple of weeks. I have already ID an Ak 48 that is very promising. It roots from clone in a week exactly and is very resistant to nute burns or stress. I plan to be left with only one strong mother from each strain and hope to learn how to maximize the yeild from those good genitics.

In about two weeks I will germinate the LA confidential and Rock Lock seeds i orderd a while back. I will seek out mothers from those as well and hopefully can be on my full time schedual before the end of this year.

Eventualy there will be 6 tanks in the flowering room each on a 3 week cycle which should allow me to harvest 12 plants every 21 days. Included in the pictures is a schedual of harvest dates and appropriat schedualing events.

I would be happy to help anyone with any questions they might have on grow room design or setup as i have overcome some obsticals concerning space and yeild.

Till next time Happy growing

George W.

flora nova stains roots