Not Another Grow Journal

Wasn't a friend I got the gear from. Just a guy that put an ad up on the local FB Buy&Sell my wife happened to be viewing and called me over. I got the near new Vivosun tent, no-name COB light, big air pump and a 4" Vivosun inline fan with about 10ft of hose on it for $175. Was texting him and asked if he needed any bud but he said he was good but into swapping a bit. I took a couple of 8ths and he gave me almost an oz total of 3 different ones. Some Maui Wowie, Gelato and Zkittlez. The Zkittlez is great, Gelato is pretty good but has an odd smell and taste. The Maui is OK but not as good. Not much of a cure and lots of sugar leaves on it all but some folks aren't as fussy about trimming and slow drying like I can be.

Bit of a bonus. When I was setting up the tent a few days after getting it there was one of those cheapo probes that test moisture, pH and light under the big drip insert tents have. I only use the light thing to check how the light hits various plants and the 20 yo one I had died last year so that was sweet. He's sold his house and whan I asked where he was off too he said the Sunshine Coast in BC. I asked where and he said Powell River. I says, Small world. My wife was born on Texada Island next to it then grew up in PR. And my late adopted sister's birth mother was from there and still lives there and I've been up there with her there to visit many times. She has a half-brother with the same name as me and we could pass for brothers only he's a bit beefier than I am. Red hair, same height and both fishing nuts. We got along great.

Sux about the ballast. Hopefully it hasn't run out it's warranty sitting around most of the time. Couple years ago out in BC to visit family I stumbled across a good deal on some 600W digi-ballasts with Hortilux SHPS bulbs and open shades for $60 a set and bought 5 sets. Two for my local buddy and I kept three. From a shut down grow-op and they had 24 sets. I have way more lights than room to use them but nice to have spares.

I got a Hindu Kush cutting off a buddy a couple years ago and that damn plant went almost black by the time it was done. Even got what looked like blood on my trim scissors a few times. The two cutting I had saved were growing slowly in 3" pots for over a year then during a period of more severe depression I forgot to water daily and they died. Really liked the buzz too.

That's her in the back.



Trim time!



Lots of bulbs for my various ballasts too.



Time to run to town. Need more RO water at least.

@OldMedUser
ahh man that hindu kush looks awesome thats the kind of stuff im looking for. im having even more problems with my remaining ballasts the other three work but the 4 mh and the 4 hps i picked up are all not compatible with the ballasts even though the bulbs state there for digital ballasts. my old bulbs from my old ballasts that brand is compatible go figure three different brands only one works such a pain now i got 8 bulbs that aren’t good for anything it looks like vivosun bulbs are compatible but i gota buy more i only got one 600 mh, i need 4x1000mh and 4x1000hps

xox said:

@OldMedUser
ahh man that hindu kush looks awesome thats the kind of stuff im looking for. im having even more problems with my remaining ballasts the other three work but the 4 mh and the 4 hps i picked up are all not compatible with the ballasts even though the bulbs state there for digital ballasts. my old bulbs from my old ballasts that brand is compatible go figure three different brands only one works such a pain now i got 8 bulbs that aren’t good for anything it looks like vivosun bulbs are compatible but i gota buy more i only got one 600 mh, i need 4x1000mh and 4x1000hps

Click to expand...

I'd be trying the bulbs out if you can't do anything else with them. Most should work regardless if they say compatible or not. The worst that can happen is they won't fire up or do and die early. I'm not sure I'd want to use VivoSun bulbs. Love my Hortilux and the EYE Blue is supposed to be great veg and flower but cost an arm and a leg.

Where did you get the bulbs? Any chance of returning them or trading them in for the others? 8 1000W lights arent going to be cheap and you should have one backup of each type if you plan to be running all at once. I couldn't afford the power unless I was selling product. Bill before last was $547 but he last was just under 400. Will be higher next month as the wife has 400W of fluoro tubes going for her peppers and such and I'll be running 1000W for my stuff. Weather is getting warmer so less power for the water warmers in the chicken coop and furnace won't be running all the damn time. Those fan motors suck a lot of juice too. Paying 26¢.kwh here for power. Adds up fast.

All my ballasts other than the 3 600s are magnetics and some are damn near as ancient as me. Not quite but I have 2 400 HPS that are at least 40 and one MH the same. Still work fine and I'd like to check the capacitors on them but will have to cut the wires to isolate them as they are hardwired into the caps. This is the one I'm using now to run a Philips 400W CMH.



Wish I had deeper pockets and I'd get at least one of these. Might post in the LED forum to ask about it's specs from folks who know that stuff.

yea im stuck buying cheapo bulbs for now hopefully all these ballasts work properly minus the fucked one. yea i got two old lumateks 600’s there 7 years old now there great run like a tank. these solistek ones are fucken garbage customer support and warranty both shit and they use a wierd frequency that makes alot of bulbs designed for digital ballasts not compatible i should have done more reading last year befor buying. nah i cant return the bulbs it was bought over a year ago

Too bad you can't return them. You could try flogging them on Kijiji or somewhere. Legal now so WTF eh. Even tho it's legal I would still be too paranoid to do that tho. I really should fill out the paperwork for Hellth Canaduh and get my grow permit. I have a 12g/day permit from the doc and the wife has one for 6g/day but I'm too paranoid to do that too. Hard to relax after 50 years of hiding my pot use from the authorities. If Peter the Tool manages to get into power I wouldn't put it past him to start a med grower task force to inspect every medical grower in Canada and they'd shut me down for non CSA approval on most of my gear. You'd likely pass OK.

The way my little ones are growing I can see I'm still going to need to build my add-on downstairs. I should have just bought the lumber I need to build it instead of buying the tent and stuff but what's done is done. Time to whip out the VISA card I guess.

ah i like renos but im now taking a break from that, that was quite a technical build im pleased with the results. its good that im now done im currently in quite a bit of pain i think i may have gal stones im gona see the doc tommorow for an ultra sound maby they can remove it. my cheapo bulbs have arrived and they work alright im gona fire up one of my ballasts with my new bulbs once my seeds get going. ive just been having alot of trouble getting started i think the seeds i ordered were very old. normally when i sprout seeds i usually see some action after 3-4 days. i started 7 seeds only one has shown up after 10 days. i planted another 13 seeds from the rest of that variety no point keeping old seeds that wont sprout. i just need 3 more to show up and ill be good. ill be doing buddha seeds purple kush non autoflowing version

No gall stones here but had to have an emergency appendectomy a couple years ago last Dec. Just got home from that and had to call an ambulance 2 days later again for a horrible pain that turned out to be a kidney stone. Just howling my head off and 5 miles from the hospital the pain went away as I passed the stone. Done with that shit I hope.

Do you prep your seeds in any way before trying to sprout? I lined a pill jar with sand paper and shake them around for a few min before sticking in media and that usually works well. The last two batches I used the paper towel method and got 9/10 which I'm growing now but pill-jarred those too.

Did you contact the seller about the seeds? I'd be bitching.

Good luck with that ultrasound!

ah i bought the seeds last fall, but it feels like the seeds are older than a few years there also super tiny. if i had known befor hand that they were old prolly would have done the water with a tiny bit of hydrogen peroxide to clean the seeds, then into water and paper towels. i guess im used to getting fresh beans i stupidly put them into peat pellets under a dome. luckily each seed pack was from a different seller i think the one pack was much newer im gona get my limit for sure i saw some break the soil this evening im pretty excited about that. yea im pretty sad about having a gal stone every time i have more than one beer it feels like im dying. i even fixed a beer fridge from 1947 during the lockdown i cant even drink beer out of it lol. shes a beauty though i took the whole door apart and changed the rubber gasket and i repaired some of the wiring its still on the original compressor

Nice fridge! I'm looking for one myself but a newer one will do if I can get it cheap. Never any room in our fridge and I'd like to have one to store all my seeds and other goodies in. It's cool in the basement so I keep some stuff down there but not as cool as a fridge. 48F now but gets up to 64 in the summer. Just a little bar fridge will do.

If those seeds that didn't pop are still solid then you could try the peroxide and towel method to see if that will do it. If that won't pop some then they must be dead inside. I tried 10 seeds of some CBD ones that none popped but was warned they had a low germination rate. I had ordered a batch from that guy and he sent me two with 169 seeds between the two of them so got lots to play with later. Nice 3:1 CBD:THC plants so will try again.

My wife had her gall bladder removed a year before we met but I still have mine.

well its been a bit not much excitement when there small heres a few pictures. i forgot to mention earlier that im doing peat not soil i dont like bugs in the grow room lol. so the brand is pro-mix the large compressed bales. my first impressions so far are the stems are purple and the leaves are a very indica dominant leaf expression

xox said:

well its been a bit not much excitement when there small heres a few pictures. i forgot to mention earlier that im doing peat not soil i dont like bugs in the grow room lol. so the brand is pro-mix the large compressed bales. my first impressions so far are the stems are purple and the leaves are a very indica dominant leaf expression

View attachment 4858277View attachment 4858278View attachment 4858279

Click to expand...

I get the big bales of ProMix HP. Works great right out of the bale but I like to add some goodies to it like crab/lobster shell, DynoMyco, Insect Frass and maybe some organics like EWC, steer and sheep manure. Get that 'organic' flavour in the buds maybe.

I find some strains have purple stems and that's just the way they grow. Unless I see other indications of a deficiency I don't do anything about it. Most problems arise from trying to fix something that isn't broken.

Away you go!

yea i usually stock up on the bails once a year can get them cheap at home depot, generally any other time hafta pay for weight. i dont have the hp tho. i have the white ones with the added myco i guess thats the added micro organisms. organic eh that sounds interesting i like doing organic outdoors with my garden beds. inside im just doing liquid nutrients i had some old bottles of advanced nutrients 3part in the basement. i did general hydros organic line once it was interesting needed to use ph up rather than ph down when mixing everything

My HP bales are white with added myco too. I add extra myco tho and that DynoMyco is compatible with hydro nutes. How is the one you have for perlite? The HP has lots so never have to add any to it. I have AN 3-part as well. I bought gallon jugs 5 or 6 years ago and just used some last night to feed all my plants. Are yours the ones with the Gorilla on the bottles? Different NPK ratios than the older stuff. The Jungle Juice has the pld ratios but I don't think it has pH Perfect like these which is a great feature. Just mix it up and dump it in. My plants seem to be doing great at 1/4 strength, (1ml/L).

These are my CBD ones called Sebring's Revenge. Those pots are all the same 3L but look like different sizes. The tallest is 15", shortest is 10". They side branch hugely so I haven't topped them. Confirmed girls from fem seed.



Slightly smaller white pots, (tobacco cans), at just over 2L for the Nepali Temple. They don't want to branch so I topped them a few days ago, took off all the big fans and have some DIY LEDs aimed at the sides to get them going so I can take some cuts. Regular seeds for these and none have shown sex yet tho sprouted a few days before the others. Bit droopy looking compared to the others too. I'm liking that little LED I bought with the tent and the plants seem to like it as well.



Yours should be looking like those soon enough.

yea the perlight seems alright drains okay normally in my larger pots but theres alot of holes drilled in my 5 gallons i use when there bigger im going to try some fabric pots later in this grow i think there 25 gallon probably major overkill no idea ill find out later lol. yea i think there ph perfect. my tap water used to be a ph of 7 now its around 8.5 once i add the nutrients it sits around 7.1 i still hafta add ph down bring it to about 6. im pretty sure when your using peat the ph of the medium should be around 6. however youve added alot of organic stuff i could see it being a bit higher. those plants are coming along nicely, are those under that led you scored on the buy n sell

Those plants just have a some myco added to the HP I think. Might be a bit of the crab stuff but I didn't put any manure or earth worm castings in the mix yet. Should have wrote that stuff down in the notes I'm keeping about their feed.

They are under that little LED light and I'm thinking of getting another one just like it for the other side of the tent off Amazon . ca. Same unit with a company name on it for $128 there. Called a 1500W but that's a joke. Pulls 207W from the wall but maybe is equivalent to a 250W MH/HPS. I'd want 4 of them to cover a 4x4 tent well but would be better off using a 600W MH/HPS in that case. My DIY LED light that's in the pic on page 4 should be good enough for the other half of the tent. It does a decent job of vegging smaller plants and I'm thinking of adding a couple of those little LED strip lights to it to boost it's output. The 4 bulb vanity fixtures I made it from are 2ft long so 2ft LED strips should fit between them nicely.



Just have some of the bulbs on to get more light on the lower parts of the plants that aren't branching well. Good strain for a SoG grow and I just bought 18 more 9L square pots to do that one of these days. 25 of them will fit in a 5x5 block in a 4x4' space with a little wiggle room.



25gal pots are 2 bales of promix each. Could do 4 plants in one and ScroG them but I think I would do some sort of hydro setup for that. 25gal of wet mix would need a forklift to move around.

I'm surprised that your tap water would change pH so much. What is it's ppm? I think I would contact your supplier and get a copy of the water analysis emailed to you so you can see exactly what's in it. Our water is shit so just RO for me. The town water is no better but sterilized with chlorine rather than chloramine and no fluoride added so not horrible. Tastes like crap tho even when run through a Brita filter. Have you thought about getting an RO unit? Any tap water unless very low ppm is going to cause mineral buildup in pots over time. If fairly hard water then any pots will need regular flushing to rinse out the minerals and flushing a 25gal pot won't be easy.

As your tap water is over pH 8 I suspect it's fairly hard so that's something to think about. Could be other minerals like sodium in excess that could be problematic as well. More reason to get a water report.

yea i can look at the water analysis im pretty sure its public, im not sure of the ppm thats one of those things i still need to buy aha. i know i just built the room but im still missing alot of gear to make things run. i still need these things im currently just limping along now that the room is built.

- reverse osmosis machine
- a humidifier that i can connect to the ro machine as well as a reservoir later
- 2x 4" vortex fans
- 2x carbon filters for the 4"
- 2 timers for the vortex fans
- 4x trays 32" x 32"
- a controller for the dehumidifier / humidifier
- some sort of unit that i can connect to from my phone that i can monitor co2 / humidity / temp with graphs and charts
- meter for ppm
- replacement ballast since i got burned on the warranty on the one that burnt.

well were just trundling along slowly an awkwardly. honestly i think its too hot and the humidity is too low. despite this they seem to be taking off. i ended up repotting them into 1gallon pots so at least theres some better drainage and i topped all of them so should start seeing some side branching

xox said:

well were just trundling along slowly an awkwardly. honestly i think its too hot and the humidity is too low. despite this they seem to be taking off. i ended up repotting them into 1gallon pots so at least theres some better drainage and i topped all of them so should start seeing some side branching
View attachment 4864425

Click to expand...

They look like they're off to a good start!

Curious about your parts list. How come 4" fans and timers for them?

My little tent is getting crowded so need to get cuttings and move some downstairs for flowering ASAP.

OldMedUser said:

They look like they're off to a good start!

Curious about your parts list. How come 4" fans and timers for them?

My little tent is getting crowded so need to get cuttings and move some downstairs for flowering ASAP.

Click to expand...

well ive been doing some reading about co2 enriched rooms i plan to use the fans to exchange all the air in the room on lights out. ive been reading thats better for the plants when using co2 burners. ill set the timers to click on just after lights out and ill set them to run a set amount of time ill probably calculate the cu.ft of the room or i might just stand inside the room and watch the co2 levels drop on the monitor ill figure that out later though. for now i only have one fan my carbon filter got delayed stupid canada post probably be another 10 days befor i can fire up my co2 burner and a/c

what do you think of this humidifier with a float valve inside connect this to an ro water machine ive been making a list of toys i want

plants are starting to take off i find they droop a bit befor the end of the light cycle im still battling heat its never usually this hot during this time of year. im starting to get things ready so i can turn on the co2 and a/c. ive been setting up my exhaust vent to exchange all the air in the room on lights out. my carbon filter for that exhaust is late in the mail prolly have it in another 9 days or so.