LED RDWC Blueberry First Grow

Putting this journal together after the fact.

I have three 96 quart styrofoam coolers draining to a control bucket via 1.5 inch PVC. I have a 300 GPH pond submersable water pump recirculating to the coolers via 1/2 inch heater tubing and 1/2 pvc pipe. Each cooler has six 5 inch net pot sites. I have 3 "el cheapo" 14" Walmart blue air stones in each cooler positioned under two net pot sites. The air stones are powered by a heavy duty pond air pump. The grow area is lit by three Blackstar 240s and 2 Hydrofarm 150W CFLs. I'm using GH 3 part nutrients (hardwater micro) and tap water that's 220 to 240.

I started with 15 non-feminized blueberry seeds. I sprouted them in rapid rooters inside a seedling dome. All of the seeds sprouted. After about a week, one seedling died.

Here are the plants, transferred into the RDWC 2.5 weeks from seed on 11/27:

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Things were not looking good at this point. I had major temperature issues -- both res temps and room temps. We had our first serious cold front of the year come through and I realized that my air flow design was seriously flawed. When the heater came on, my room got up over 90F. To add insult to injury, I had a fogger in each res. I had no idea the foggers were also putting off massive amounts of heat which my styrofoam coolers were holding in. My res temps were over 85F. To top things off, I was only using air stones in the control bucket. Not surprisingly, I was hit with massive slime and root rot.

Here are my poor plants:

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I finally realized that I had major problems. I completely drained the reservoirs, cleaned them with H202, soaked the netpots in H202. I removed the foggers, bought a high powered air pump, and put enough air stones in each res so that the water was "boiling." I put in a much higher powered fan (Hydrofarm Active Air 720 CFM -- highly recommended). My room and res temps were now under control. I also bought 29% H202 and started adding some on a daily basis.

Here are my poor plants on 12/5 after the emergency H202 treatment:

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Even with the daily H202 treatement and controlled room and res temps, I was hit with a major clear/white slime infestation again. Roots would turn brown and rot as soon as they descended from the net pot to the res water. I looked into res chillers, but I really don't have room for one -- my room is quite cramped already. I stumbled across Heisenberg's tea formula. I cobbled together the ingredients from a local grow shop and brewed my first batch. I was desperate at this point and added the entire 2.5 gallons of tea to my res after only 24 hours of brew time (48 is recommended). Although not impressive, I did see an immediate improvement in root development in all of my plants.

Here they are at 12/14:

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Now that my plants had healthy roots descending into the reservoir, I finally started to see some growth. Five days of Heisenberg tea had made a world of differnce. Here are my plants on 12/19:

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Here's another one from 12/21:

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I also had some plants looking a little less healthy:



Given what I'd been through, I was happy to still have any plants alive at all.

Root and plant growth continued at a good pace. I still had 14 plants left. Two were looking completely ragged. Two more were looking weaker than the rest. The other 10 all looked pretty good and I had one "superstar" that was far outshining the rest. With my root rot issues, I was never sure if I was looking at nute burn or nute defeciency. My plants were chronologically quite old but developmentally quite young so I was continuously wavering between nute burn and nute defeciency. I now realize that my problem was root rot, not nute burn.

I eventually lost 4 more plants in veg. They were small and stunted and never developed roots.

Here's the "superstar" on 12/25. At this point I'm running 5/10 "Lucas" formula:

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Things have been humming along now. I fimmed my plants on 12/29 to promote a more even canopy. Maintaining Lucas 5/10. I have two smaller plants that I want to give a chance to catch up before I go to flower.

Here's a shot of some big girls (I hope) on 1/4:

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After 8 arduous weeks of veg, I finally made it to flower. I switched to flower on 1/6. I ramped up to 8/16 Lucas flower over 3 days. Here's a shot of my plants on 1/9. They are looking quite good, given their extremely rough treatment early on. I did have one plant suffer root rot. It's short and wilty looking at this point. I'm hoping very fervantly that the other plants will continue to shine as their roots look quite healthy.

I'm also keeping my fingers crossed that most of these (at least half please) are female! It will be so brutal to chop down any of "my babies!"

I finally felt confident enough about the sex of my plants today to bite the bullet and cut the males down. My two biggest turned out male. Very depressing.

too bad I am in the same situation, my room looks empty, too many males!! just got the confidence today to take em all out. down to 4 females 12-12 from seeds out of 10 seeds

I definitely "feel your pain." 4/10 left is brutal!