LED Without LEDs -My First T5 Grow

Polyar, what fungus are you using?? And where do you get it ??
I mix FFOF with Pro mix BX, earthworm castings, lime, and FF soil amendment, and a little bat guano.
I will be using earth juice, and bat guano tea. And Alaska fish emulsion.
Hyroot that sounds real good, but I am to laze to get that put to gather. Still may try it though.

polyarcturus said:

me too. me and my girl have been looking at places but haven't decided yet.

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We are getting there ourselves... not quite ready to look seriously yet, but probably within the next year we will start arranging things financially.

falcon223 said:

Polyar, what fungus are you using?? And where do you get it ??
I mix FFOF with Pro mix BX, earthworm castings, lime, and FF soil amendment, and a little bat guano.
I will be using earth juice, and bat guano tea. And Alaska fish emulsion.
Hyroot that sounds real good, but I am to laze to get that put to gather. Still may try it though.

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i use great white, but i have had it for awhile and i got it b4 they doubled the price, so i wont be buying it again unfortunatly, but it is some GOOD shit. i gonna make some substrate jar and inoculate them and use the spawn soon i might actually make a thread about how to preserve and control your microbes.

AltarNation said:

We are getting there ourselves... not quite ready to look seriously yet, but probably within the next year we will start arranging things financially.

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same here were almost there, just looking right now, but our funds are coming along nicely here recently

polyarcturus said:

this comes down to your method, but my growth times are outrageous with proper organics. DWC takes time the first month there is like very little to no growth. those clones you saw in the pics in my veg room in the 1 gal bags on the floor where 1 week old and their old 4x4in pots were filled with roots. that huge cucumber plant is 3 weeks old

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What kind of dwc did you use? I get an average of an inch a day. Maybe 3 days of lag while it roots out and adjusts.

some homemade shit. veg in a tupperware for 4 weeks i thing it was like a quart, by the time i tranfered it to a 5 gal with its own 18w air pump and single stone that covered the entire bottom, the root would be tangling with the other plant in the sytem (could fit 4 2in net cups in both my systems) the i would flower got some good results too i just felt it was 2-3 weeks slower, but it was a bigger yield, its kinda of a trade of IMO. yeild or speed. but in all honesty soil or DWC a beginner is gonna get slow times and smaller yields no matter what practice makes perfect, i definitely believe someone out there can grow DWC as fast as i can grow soil, but he is a master like i am soil. so it not really a matter of whos faster its a matter of who can yeild more for the same space/time and that will depend on the skill of the grower not the system.

For anyone that wants to attempt overdriving a ballast. Try this site http://reocities.com/heartland/pines/7557/overdrv1.html it breaks down how to do it with rapid start and instant start ballasts. Just used it to turn my two 2xT8's that were laying around into one overdriven 4' 2xT8 successfully.

unless we start talking about aero then its, the system, building skills and growing skillz

polyarcturus said:

some homemade shit. veg in a tupperware for 4 weeks i thing it was like a quart, by the time i tranfered it to a 5 gal with its own 18w air pump and single stone that covered the entire bottom, the root would be tangling with the other plant in the sytem (could fit 4 2in net cups in both my systems) the i would flower got some good results too i just felt it was 2-3 weeks slower, but it was a bigger yield, its kinda of a trade of IMO. yeild or speed. but in all honesty soil or DWC a beginner is gonna get slow times and smaller yields no matter what practice makes perfect, i definitely believe someone out there can grow DWC as fast as i can grow soil, but he is a master like i am soil. so it not really a matter of whos faster its a matter of who can yeild more for the same space/time and that will depend on the skill of the grower not the system.

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This is true. "Pick one and get good at it." is what I'm shooting for. I grow upstairs in my house, so soil seemed to be a much less appealing option.

i picked soil originally cuz i got sucked up in the "ORGANIC" hype. well i did about a months research bought about 200$ worth of stuff made my perfect mixtures, but it still took me a year to really perfect my method and about several months more of research.

the 3 most important things in 100% organics

big pots
Microbes
3-1 N to P nutrient ratio so you dont risk killing off all your microbes and at the max a 2-1 ratio in flower

otherwise you will have to supplement with chem nutes

AltarNation said:

Hahaha... and there we go in the opposite direction. So many options. What kind of nutes do you use in a DWC setup? I am wondering if I can use the FoxFarm nutes I bought in DWC... I've noticed they have a "hydroponic" version of each of their liquids, not sure about the solids.

I'd like to try DWC eventually but I'm not set up for it yet... still, if I'm gonna drop a bunch of money on soil ingredients I could probably go buy some hydro supplies instead...

*head spinning*

Are you guys trying to play pin the tail on the donkey with me here? LOL

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Ive done soil in the past but had nothing but problems (mostly bugs... I microwaved an entire 5gal bucket worth of soil, in a casserole dish for 10min, one bowl at a time for about 8 hours in an attempt to sterilize my soil, but only succeeded in making my apt complex smell like hot shit) Then I switched to hydro and tried nutrient film, flood and drain, and hybrids of aero/dwc systems and ive fallen on a simple DWC bubblebucket... the only drawback I see is that its a bit more labor intensive as far as maintaining water levels when they can drink over a gallon a day towards the end. I think organics/soil is easier to set and forget for awhile, but has too many variables to go wrong, whereas DWC is easy to correct any deficiencies (never an issue) and I feel it grows them MUCH faster than soil, like a few inches a day quick and faster response to feedings (I feed once a week, refill water level, light feeding, refill water level, then dump/refill with fresh nutes, usually tending them every other day unless they're bigguns, then they need to be re-flled every day) I feed with GH Maxi-Grow/Bloom & koolbloom during last half of flower. I also use in small amounts... SilicaBlast, H2O2, B1, SuperThrive (in Veg only), GH PHdown (sparingly), Hygrozyme (if needed) and Molasses during the last 5 days of flush (I give pure water for the last 10-14days, w/molasses at the very end). I used to use GH Flora 3part liquids but they were too expensive, now its easy Maxi powder, 1-1.5tsp/gal, shaken not stirred

My dwc buckets are admittedly abit more labor intensive, but I love spending time with my girls I think a RDWC like UndercurrentDWC's set up (whereever he went off to...) would be easiest to maintain and perfect with a scrog and T5's but would be abit more $ to startup...

I decided to give SCROG a try so tomorrow Im getting stuff to make screens to fit over 3 of my DWC bubble trays, so Ill have 10 total fems under 3 seperate scrogs in my flower box withing the next few weeks (my 4 BlueBerryGum and 6 FruityChronicJuice clones)

AltarNation said:

Hyroot you're awesome for sharing that with us all. Do you bubble the teas? How long do they need to sit before use?

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I bubble tap water for a day or 2 then add molasses. let it aerate for an hour. takes a little time for the molasses to neutralize any chlorine if left, chloromine, amonia, etc.... Then I add everything else. Brew for about 12 hours and good to go. Sometimes I add earth juice humic acid too. More enzymes, bacteria, and fungi.

Also I use roots organic original soil. Ive tried everything else, ffof, black gold, empire, happy frog, dr earth ( 2 types) and roots coco. Ffof clumps up to much and you have to add a bunch of perlite. Empire runs to hot. The others are just horrible.. The roots airates good. Plenty of chunky perlite in it. Don't have to add anything. Don't have to till it. It doesn't clump up at all, drains perfectly. The roots coco is good too for coco. If you like that sort of thing... Lol hehe

Cool, I will look into Roots Organic next time I buy some soil. I hope my local hydro guy has it on hand. Thanks for that info Hyroot. I agree that FFOF clumps way too much. It can be really hard to get it to take the water at the surface if I am a day late on watering. I've learned to just leave the top of the soil loose and broken up a bit, so I'm always sticking my fingers in the top a little before I water. But I would love to try something that won't give me so much trouble for now. I think I have about 1.5 bags of FFOF left that I am gonna use up first. Maybe I'll pick up a bag of perlite to loosen it up and help with drainage in the mean time.

I will probably stick to what I'm doing for now, maybe try some compost teas to get used to DIYing my nutes... I want to try the earth juice lines anyway, so maybe I will work with hyroot's recipes. I dunno, I still have a bit of time to figure it out. FoxFarm isn't doing bad for me now that I got the nutrient levels dialed in... but I am almost out of Big Bloom so I will probably start replacing the FF products with some Earth Juice products to transition and then maybe work the same juice into some compost teas or something.

and then when I can rearrange my setup, I will give DWC a try. I'd really like to get set up either in or adjacent to a bathroom, maybe in a finished basement room with a floor drain and water lines, haha. I am thinking I could build or convert part of a bigger laundry room. That would be awesome. But that is down the road when we relocate. Plan is to buy a house next, so... FINALLY I'll have the freedom to do exactly what I want to do.

I got a couple of those test batch UVL 660nm's coming. A little pricey, ended up costing me about 30 each shipped. Oh well. I hope they work well.

i use roots too i recommend them too, earth juice makes some good stuff. as far as humic acid goes you can make your own high powered version. brew a tea with 100% peat moss and filter it

Cool... thanks Poly, for all your info! You too Hyroot! And UC! You guys are all frickin' helpful!

AltarNation said:

I got a couple of those test batch UVL 660nm's coming. A little pricey, ended up costing me about 30 each shipped. Oh well. I hope they work well.

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Thats cool. Did they say anything a bout an spd for those bulbs?

Hyroot you got a pm comin

AltarNation said:

Hyroot you got a pm comin

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Altar you have a reply comin

Polyar, is it really that easy to make humic acid??? Wow. I am learning a lot here. I am learning all about bulbs, soil, overdriving ballast,where to buy stuff, and what not to buy.


Thanks guys.