More Money Than Brains - a water cooled cab build

What have I been growing all this time? TGA Timewreck @ 40 days:





what do you think, about a pound??




*insert pac man getting caught by the ghosts sounds here*

Yeah, so I'm the slowest grower of all time. I waited a long time to grow out the mothers, cut and flip them to determine sex. Then 4/5 plants were male. I made one cut of the remaining female but when it didn't show roots after two weeks I cut four more. By the time this next round of cuts were ready to go the first cut was showing roots, of course, after 27 days. So now I have five cuts of Timewreck transplanted last week and getting ready to go into the flowering chamber soon. Some day I will have a harvest larger than one little nug. I hope.

The two best cuts went into these dollar store specials that have 5L of media (4L perlite, 1L vermiculite.) Scrog nets are held up with staples and 9" dowels fixed into the corners with zip ties (Velcro's sexy sister.)




...and in the mother chamber I have three more Timewrecks in quart-ish containers which will go into flower soon. I want to see how big they get in them with just topping. Also, you can see the next round which just broke ground yesterday: five Mr. Nice Critical Widows.




what is currently the more exciting half of More Money Than Brains:

So it turns out I have been starving my plants! At my first feeding I gave them what I intended to be full strength Lucas (8ml FloraNova Bloom per gallon.) However, I thought my watering can was 1L but actually it was 0.5L so I gave the plants a double dose and burned them. I scaled it back to 1/4 dose and never upped it because the plants seemed to be growing. All the lower leaves would turn yellow and shrivel up but they kept growing.

So now I'm giving the flowering plants full strength FNB and I have picked up some Dyna-Gro Grow for the veggies. They didn't have the Foliage Pro and this is just a little bottle.




With Lucas strength FNB, the yellowing stopped on the last fan leaf on my teeny little flowering plant and new fan leaves are sprouting out of the lower nodes again.

Has being starved for most of her life has accelerated blooming? Below is a crop of the above shot at 40 days. It should be way too early but already almost all trichs appear cloudy and some are becoming oxidized. The shot from last week shows no amber trichs. Judging by trichomes would you say this is ready, because I like to get high not stoned, but surely it will keep going?

Thank you for all the precisions
Where did you find your lenses? I can't find any site selling reflectors for vero
I will follow this grow carefully.

I got the reflectors off one of the big parts sites. I had to buy the reflector combined with a mounting plate for some other cob and order the Vero plate separately.

So the plant in flower has ten zillion of these things swarming around the roots. They are tiny and move fast. If the pot wasn't clear I would never have known they were in there. This guy came out of the drainage hole when I poured in a bunch of water with a bit of H2O2. The H2O2 didn't seem to do much. Anyone know what these are? These are tiny, just barely visible at maybe 0.1mm in length, and they move very fast.

I wouldn't want to abuse of your kindness but could you link me please?
because after looking at digikeys, mouser, newarks etc... I didn't find. Is that what you call "big parts site" ? (not native anglophone myself, sorry)
I have never seen this fuckers, H202 should be damn efficient against any thing living like these ones...

It looks like thrips

yeah, I heard about them, never had... (lol I am in soil, and did coco but never had any)
Use something chemical and clean well the box, don't care for now, the bud are not present.

I guess those are juvenile thrips hanging out in the roots but they hadn't yet matured? Dunno, but seems strange to me. I chopped my little bud and disposed of the media. I inspected the bud and leaves pretty carefully and saw no damage or feces or anything, they were confined to the roots. Hopefully they didn't infect the rest of the grow, we'll see.

You are in hydro, just clean perfectly the grow space, take of the media and use strong detergent to clean it. then flush it a maximum and put your plants back in it... no more issues
Maybe you could put a kind of filter in front of intractions.

Just go organic already, some soil with probiotics and everything is done for you.

I've found that no media at all can be better. Just a simple black 3.5 gallon bucket, a black lid, a 2 or 3 inch net cup, and a neoprene insert.

liking your cabinet man. Good job. Those are for sure thrips. They especially come out when its warmer. If you are in Veg I can tell you that SeVen works great but you should not really apply in flower IMO. It eradicates the little fuckers for sure. I grow in 100% perlite and I am surprised they found it hospitable!

Organic would keep me from getting thrips?

DWC sure seems neat but I see lots of threads showing necrotic roots and my cab isn't exactly cool in temperature. Also, air pumps make a lot of noise and I'm already pushing the threshold of noise on my cab. Hempy buckets are silent and seem to give a lot of bang for the buck but dealing with perlite/vermiculite is a pain and the dust is unhealthy. I found out my corner hardware store has bricks of coco so I'll probably switch to that when I run out of perlite.

Observe & Report said:

Organic would keep me from getting thrips?

DWC sure seems neat but I see lots of threads showing necrotic roots and my cab isn't exactly cool in temperature. Also, air pumps make a lot of noise and I'm already pushing the threshold of noise on my cab. Hempy buckets are silent and seem to give a lot of bang for the buck but dealing with perlite/vermiculite is a pain and the dust is unhealthy. I found out my corner hardware store has bricks of coco so I'll probably switch to that when I run out of perlite.

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I use hempy with 100% perlite. works great. Just wet it before using and no dust. no dwc without a water chiller outside in a cabinet grow IMO. Lots of people have luck with coco but I know its more pron to pests. The vermiculite is not necessary in the Hempy.

I think you would have more chance of thrips in an organic setup btw... treat them a few times and make sure you have good intake filters. I had to resort to pesticides but I wont be flowering again for several months and dont particularly like fighting pests.

Observe & Report said:

Organic would keep me from getting thrips?

DWC sure seems neat but I see lots of threads showing necrotic roots and my cab isn't exactly cool in temperature. Also, air pumps make a lot of noise and I'm already pushing the threshold of noise on my cab. Hempy buckets are silent and seem to give a lot of bang for the buck but dealing with perlite/vermiculite is a pain and the dust is unhealthy. I found out my corner hardware store has bricks of coco so I'll probably switch to that when I run out of perlite.

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Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't a hempy just a DWC with no airstones? Why would you need the coco or perlite?

Captain jacks spinosad worked for me. Cleared my room of gnats and thrips after a few foliar sprays. It did take multiple applications about a week apart.

A fresh organic mix made outdoors gave me my bugs..

bicit said:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't a hempy just a DWC with no airstones? Why would you need the coco or perlite?

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you need a medium in passive hydro. There are no pumps to bubble water and it would go stagnant without a medium to wick the moisture evenly through the container. Whole other threads devoted to the workings of the hempy bucket.

SomeGuy said:

you need a medium in passive hydro. There are no pumps to bubble water and it would go stagnant without a medium to wick the moisture evenly through the container. Whole other threads devoted to the workings of the hempy bucket.

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Hmmm, for just two buckets a dual outlet walmart pump would suffice. They use less than 10w of power and work wonders. Practically inaudible, though I guess that would be relative to the background noise of your house.

bicit said:

Hmmm, for just two buckets a dual outlet walmart pump would suffice. They use less than 10w of power and work wonders. Practically inaudible, though I guess that would be relative to the background noise of your house.

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to do dwc in a small space takes a rez with chiller outside that space. the heat is no bueno for the water in dwc. That is why it is a poor choice in cabinets. I have tried dwc and been hit or miss.... all because of water temps. passive hydro is cheap and fail proof.