Journal of my attempt at the "Mr Green" hydro setup (with influence from Al B Fuct)

unity said:

Sounds like a way to do it. Don't get freaked out if it reads high
If it is above 6.2 I would bring it back into balance by recirculating and adjusting the ph in the res until the run-off reads below 6.0. Do this with your normal nutrient soup, not just ph adjusted water.
But let's see where you are at first off all.

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Hmm, Are you using rockwool in your system, or just pellets? I have the "Mr Green" combo going, and am a bit afraid to run that much water through the rockwool for fear that it'll get over-saturated/over-watered. Am I freaking out over nothing?

I checked my res a bit ago and it was at 6.0 - I lowered it to 5.8. Seems to be staying mostly sane for now.

knucklehead said:

How old are your plants here?
did you cut clones to sex or veg them until they showed?

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These were all started from bag-seed and have been in the dripper tub for just about 5 weeks. I haven't done any clones yet, maybe in the next week or so, but found signs of preflowers while still in Veg. Apparently once the plant is sexually mature it'll throw out these preflowers, therefore you can often determine the sex of the plant before forcing it to flower.

Perfextionist420 said:

nice set up things seem 2 be going well i plan on a similar set up good luck to you

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Thanks, and good luck backatcha!!!

Ahzweepay said:

Hmm, Are you using rockwool in your system, or just pellets? I have the "Mr Green" combo going, and am a bit afraid to run that much water through the rockwool for fear that it'll get over-saturated/over-watered. Am I freaking out over nothing?

I checked my res a bit ago and it was at 6.0 - I lowered it to 5.8. Seems to be staying mostly sane for now.

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I use rockwool as medium, but have it coverd with hydroton so algea won't grow. Rockwool will hold in its most saturated state between 15% - 20% oxygen, so you can't realy drown them in rockwool unles you flood them for extended periods of time. Also, as long as your medium is in balance with your res. there is realy no need to flush anything out. I just meant to keep you alert to what is going on in your medium, not just your res.
If Al was around he would tell us that it is not a good idea to mix rockwool with hydroton as medium, since hydroton requires a more frequent watering schedule. Don't ask me how I know that.

Unity

seems odd i mix rockwool and hydroton and i only feed every 12 hours with no problems yet to my plants, and i also use drip irrigation

Great thread bro. Love the way you are covering your logic and the way you express your development of knowledge and how you apply it to the grow.

I had a question about your first post on your page there. Looks like you had a white flange for your flexi duct to attach too. I was wondering where you could get those? I'm looking for like 4 of those.

Thanks and keep up the great work.

flamdrags420 said:

Great thread bro. Love the way you are covering your logic and the way you express your development of knowledge and how you apply it to the grow.

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Thanks a lot man!
I'm hoping that "working it out aloud" will help me keep track of things better, help any other newbs figure this all out, and the feedback of the people here is invaluable!

flamdrags420 said:

I had a question about your first post on your page there. Looks like you had a white flange for your flexi duct to attach too. I was wondering where you could get those? I'm looking for like 4 of those.

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If you mean the flange on the ceiling in the attached picture, that's actually a 1 way air damper - it only allows air to flow through it one way. I used 1 for each side since both sides vent into one common exit line (which will eventually have a filter on the end). I'm not positive, but I believe they were a couple bucks a piece and I found them at Mendards (think I've seen them at Home Depot too). Look in the section with the ducts - especially near where they have the "through the wall vents".

I am curious on how your ladies are doing after you topped them. Have then begun to split off yet?

prnkstr said:

I am curious on how your ladies are doing after you topped them. Have then begun to split off yet?

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Actually yes they have - I guess I forgot to mention that...
Overall I think I did it properly - just wish I had done it a little earlier, but live and learn... The attached pictures show the new sprouts pretty decent - you can see them on either side of the little brown spot (where they were snipped).

I topped up my tank tonight (1.5gal after 3 days, they're drinkin now) and noticed that in general the plants seem to be looking a bit more healthy. I think the Cal-Mag is helping. I also decided that since they're drinking more I'd up my drip time by 5min, so it's now 3x per day for 15min each time. (hopefully that wasn't a mistake)

Made some modifications to my Flower side ventilation (cut the sagging intake hose so it was about a foot off the floor rather than 3inches - it "settled" a bit since it was installed), and that got the room to steady at about 87 degrees. Next up - new intake fan...

Ahzweepay said:

If you mean the flange on the ceiling in the attached picture, that's actually a 1 way air damper - it only allows air to flow through it one way. I used 1 for each side since both sides vent into one common exit line (which will eventually have a filter on the end). I'm not positive, but I believe they were a couple bucks a piece and I found them at Mendards (think I've seen them at Home Depot too). Look in the section with the ducts - especially near where they have the "through the wall vents".

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I saw some of those. When I looked, they only had 4 inch ones. It's kind of difficult setting up the venting systems. I know what I want. But since I'm not a HVAC guy, it's hard to know what it is you are looking for because I don't know the nomenclature etc.

I think I'm going to get some of these for my exiting exhaust for my lights.

Thanks for the reply. Keep up the great work.

flamdrags420 said:

I saw some of those. When I looked, they only had 4 inch ones.

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Yep - the one's I have are the 4 inchers. My space is pretty small, so I did all my ventilation with the cheap 4" dryer ducting.

My job has been bleeding into my "fun time" a lot lately - grrr.
Managed to sneak away for an hour this afternoon and went to the hydro shop to picked up an intake fan and fittings for it. Now I just have to hope I can find an hour or so tomorrow to put it in...

Plants are looking pretty good - 8 continues to be somewhat ugly, but is definitely growin like a weed! It's also very obvious that it's a girl now, no close ups necessary

Today (yesterday now) was a busy day in the grow rooms.

Started the day changing out the nutrients (clean/rinse/rinse/refill). Decided that since the plants seem to be drinking more that I'd go with 10gal in my tank rather than the previous 5gal. I also upped the nutrients to the level I'm considering using for my mothers.

6ml grow + 3ml Micro + 1.5ml Bloom + 5ml H2O2 + 5ml Cal-Mag per gallon

When I had the tank all ready to go it was at pH 5.7 and 1008ppm (my tap water is usually about 170ppm). Does that seem a little light or about right?

The second, and much longer part, of the day was spent upgrading my ventilation.

Added a blower to the flower side air intake line. Hoping this will help keep the temps a bit more stable when the 400w is running.
Been noticing a bit of a skunky scent coming from the basement lately, so figured it was time to get that carbon filter in place before the wrong people caught a whiff.
I modified my common exhaust line adding a Can-Filter to it (the exhaust from both rooms goes into it). Since the filter is not the inline type I had to cut the exhaust line that dumps into the laundry room. I didn't think it would be good to let the exhaust bottle up in that smallish dead space it empties into, so I added a cheap little inline duct booster to the exhaust line to help clear the space.
...and yes, that is a wonderful fan hanger fashioned out of white duct tape

Attached are a few updated pictures of "the kids" and todays remodeling.

You are doing a fine job mate, they are looking great! Do yourself a favor and post always the EC number, instead of the ppm. The ppm numbers vary due to different conversion factors (.5Hanna/.64Eutech/.7Truncheon)
Again, looking great!

Unity

Well, I've been presented with yet another "opportunity" in the ventilation arena. The addition of the intake blower did nothing for my flower room temps - still topping out over 90 degrees (the 87 degree run I spoke of previously was a fluke in that it was an extremely cold day).

The only options I have, as far as I have been able to come up with, are to go to a smaller wattage light or install an air cooled hood/tube. Any other ideas?

What a pisser. I plan to call the grow shop I got my reflector from and see if they will allow me to exchange it for a cool tube, otherwise I'll be left with a useless reflector. Then I get the lovely ordeal of figuring out how to get another air intake line and exhaust line in there - yikes!
Just when I think the expenses are done another $100-150 comes outta the woodwork. Oh well, at least I'm finding out now rather than when I have my first plants in there...

I moved #7 up to the front of the tray today, and noticed the root loop that appeared when it was just starting out is now a huge knot. I've attached a picture of it. Pretty crazy! The plant is also kinda growing sideways, and is a bit smaller than the average. I think I'm gonna use it for my first clone attempt - to happen in the next few days...

Yesterday afternoon I picked up my cool tube. I didn't get around to putting it in thanks to work.
This afternoon I started to get the pieces together and came to the quick realization that it was gonna be too long for my room CRIPES!!!
I was able to get to the hydro shop about 10min before they closed, and exchange it for a Super Sun Reflector. So far it seems to be fitting a lot better.
Will have a picture update tomorrow.

everything looks real real nice, excited to see the final product.

unity said:

You are doing a fine job mate, they are looking great! Do yourself a favor and post always the EC number, instead of the ppm. The ppm numbers vary due to different conversion factors (.5Hanna/.64Eutech/.7Truncheon)
Again, looking great!

Unity

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Thanks for the encouragement Unity - much appreciated!
I haven't really run into much info about EC (mS/cm) values related to nutes - most of what I've seen has been ppm related. Good to know about EC being more standard - I like standards
Anyhoo, I checked my EC the past couple of days.
Yesterday my tank stats were pH 5.8/854ppm/1.19mS/cm
Today they were pH 5.8/868ppm/1.21mS/cm
How does that seem - high, light or just right?

Finished up the installation of my new vented reflector - see attached photos. I noticed that while the temp directly under the light was 87 that the rest of the room was actually around 75 down low and 82 near the ceiling. The amount of heat coming off the glass is pretty low overall (hand barely warm a couple inches from the glass) while there's plenty of heat coming out the light's exhaust line (in another room). Am I asking for trouble with temps in this range? The info I've gotten on Flower room temps has varied wildly, but generally it appears that anything from 75-85 is "good" while above 90 and below 60 are "bad" (I believe Al B Fuct prefers 78.8 ). This is assuming no supplemental CO2 which I do not plan to use for this grow. I also don't have a clue how a tray full of hydroton and plants will affect the overall temp.
Any opinions on where I should place my thermometer to get the best reading from the space?

You'll also notice the "fancy" new double zipper door I put in today (the door is rolled up and held in place by a red bungie cord in the attached photo). Makes accessing the space and keeping it light tight much easier than the old flappy door.

I have a batch of rockwool cubes stewin in some pre-use juice overnight and will be making my first attempt at cloning tomorrow (I have Al B's cloning thread bookmarked and ready too) - wish me luck!!

Took the plunge this evening and did up a batch of clones.
I started out with the knotted stemmed #7. I've attached several pictures of the process I went through to take my clones. I took a total of 18 clones, at least 2 from each plant, although I took 6 clones from #8 since it's showing female preflowers. I hope to veg one of those clones into a new mother. I figured #8 was big enough to get a decent number of clones from so, if all goes well, I should have at least a few plants to run through the flowering process and give me something to try out

Speaking of #8 - it's roots are amazing! They formed themselves into one of the channels in the bottom of the tray (image attached). So much so that when I took the plant out to work on it I noticed it won't sit flat. Schnikes!!

I put the tray full of clones on a heat mat on the lower shelf in my veg room for the night (not complete darkness as Al B. would do, but close enough). Tomorrow I'll move them up to the top for a bit more light (see last photo).

I also topped the hell outta my "mothers" and trimmed them back, removing any gimp leaves and some of the small undergrowth to make it easier to get drippers in place.

Had my 1st and 2nd dripper failure today too. I got all the "mothers" reset in the tub with drippers in place and fired up the pump. Noticed 2 of them weren't dripping at all I have 4 extras, so just swapped them out. Will have to figure out an easy way to soak these clogged guys clean - any suggestions?

The final 3 pictures are of the tray before, after, and the whole room just before closing it up.