Slinger's 8x4 Double Ended HPS Fun Run

Whats up guys, I'm back after a simi-long hiatus to have some more growing fun with everyone. I wanted to do some testing with some double ended HPS so hopefully you will join me for the ride. Currently I am vegging mothers to take clones in a week. This is what we are using.

Clone Area:
- Open Space no tent.
- 4ft 4 Bulb T5 AgroBrite
- Clone King 36 Site Aeroponic Cloning Machine

Veg Area:
- Open Space no tent.
- 4ft 8 Bulb T5 with Eye Hortilux PowerVeg Bulbs
- 3 Gallon Smart pots
- Fox Farm Happy Frog Soil
- Botanicare Full Pro Line Nutrient Schedule

Flower Area:
- Grow Tent 96x48x80
- 2x Hydroplanet™ Double Ended Air Cooled Hood Hydroponic Grow Lights Kit DE Reflector Hood With Dimmable Digital Ballast HPS LAMPS Horticulture Plant Grow System Set
- 6ft Light Rail
- 3 Gallon Smart Pots
- Fox Farm Happy Frog Soil
- Botanicare Full Pro Line Nutrient Schedule
- VenTech VT IF6+CF6-B Inline Exhaust Blower Fan with Carbon Filter and Variable Speed Controller, 440 CFM, 6" (For Odor Control)
-VenTech IF6 6" Inline Duct Fan 440 CFM (For Pulling Cold Winter Air from outside thru the lights for cooling)
-2x Holmes HAOF90-UC Blizzard Oscillating Table Fans (for air circulation).

Strains to be tested: Lemon Bogglegum, Sweet Mendo Purps, Queen Mother Goji OG Kush, Dj Shorts Blueberry, Master Kush and UK Cheese. Others may be added as we go along but this is what I'm working with so far. All of these strains are from clone and a couple of the clones I got had been severely mistreated but they are bouncing back with some TLC.

At this point, I transplanted all clones except the Lemon Bogglegum into 3 Gallon Smart Pots yesterday 9/7, The Lemon Bogglegum is the oldest and was transplanted into a 5 gallon regular ol' pot before I purchased the smart pots. The Cloner came in today but its gonna be a week, maybe a week and a half before all the plants are ready to take cuttings from. All of the equipment will be coming in throughout the next 30 days, my hopes as far as a schedule is concerned is:

9/16: Cut Clones
9/30: Move Clones from Cloner to 3 Gallon Smart Pots
10/7: Begin Veg Cycle for 4 weeks 18/6 Light Schedule
11/4: Move Veg plants into Flower Tent 18/6 under the Double Ended HPS for 1 week to harden them off
11/11: Begin Flowering 12/12 Light Schedule
1/6-1/13: Harvest depending on strain finishing times

This is a tentative schedule, subject to change but hopefully it will be the permanent schedule. Here are the lovely ladies at the current moment!

Double Ended's came in today, found a hella good deal on the Botanicare nutes, like 20 to 25 dollars for the gallon jugs! Got some Botanicare Hydroguard today to start feeding to the mothers, since they are in fresh Fox Farm Happy Frog I'm not gonna give them veg nutes for a week or two. Next weekend ill be getting the rest of the nutes, the tent, the inline fans and light rail. Grow ON! Totally forgot there is also a Gorilla Glue #4 in the veg room. derp...stoned.

Decided to go ahead and test out the cloner today to monitor temps and see if I need to chill the water due to heating from the water pump, since I turned the cloner on the temperature of the water has raised from 71.3 to 71.9 in the span of 45 mins, will be monitoring thru the next couple hours to see if the temp continues to raise. Took 3 Lemon Bogglegum, 1 GG4, 2 UKCHE, 1 QMGO and 3 DJBB cuttings for the test.Topped a couple of the ladies and bent them over to get more tops for the real cloning attempt. Also I watered them all yesterday with 2ml of Hydroplex per gal, each plant got around 3 cups of water per. That's all for now! Happy Growing Rollitup!

looks good mate!

The cloner water temp was at 75 degrees this morning so I tossed in some ice cubes into the reservoir, will see what the Temps look like tonight, 75 isn't bad but I I didn't wanna risk it hitting 80 while I am at work, will update when I get home.

Came home, reservoir temps were 77F, placed a water bottle I had in the freezer into the tank, temps are staying at a steady 71, will continue to replace frozen water bottle every 12-16 hrs as needed! There is nifty little trick for you guys out there having issues with water temps in your aeroponic cloners!

CornerStone said:

looks good mate!

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Thanks man, appreciate ya stopping in, feel free to drop by any time to check out the progress!

A day early but took a bunch of cuts yesterday, hopefully we see some nice strong roots in 2 weeks! Picked up all my veg nutes, ordering tent and other supplies tomorrow, hoping this tent setup will be the best yet, got some cool ideas for cooling etc. im gonna test out! I know this part is boring but stay tuned, I will do my absolute best to give you guys something beautiful in the end!

Tent went up today, working on the light rail, intake, light cooling and exhaust now, will get some pictures up once everything is set up, the instructions for putting the light rail together were absolutely terrible but I think I managed to get it all together, just need to test it out. Cuttings in the cloner are looking good, hope to see some roots in the next few days, been keeping the water Temps between 62 and 72 so hopefully everything goes well, the leaves are all still nice and green, no drooping, first time using an aeroponic cloner so it's been quite an adventure. Hope everyone's grows are going spectacular!

I've gotten a lot of work done these past couple days, after 20 hrs of labor the intake, exhaust and cooling ducting is finished with the exception of the carbon filter odor control which I will be ordering this weekend, for cooling I have a duct ran for pulling the cold fall/winter air from outside, there is a Y in that duct with another fan connected to a temperature censor set to pull cold air into the tent if temperature get over 75 degrees and it will automatically turn off once temperatures reach 68 degrees. Still need to order flowering nutes, my hookup on the nutrients fell through so that sucksssss but what can you do. The mothers received their first dose of veg nutes, once the clones have successfully rooted which some roots are starting to form, I will be moving the mothers into the flowering tent and flower them out to get myself a little head start. Plants were sprayed tonight with a SM90, Dr. Bronners, neem oil mixture. Now it's time to have a bowl of some White Girl and chill for the night, can't wait to get the flowering under way. Gotta get some stakes and do a little training to the ladies since I'm not use to using smart pots I can't attach the plant ties to the sides of the pots like I usually do. GROW ON ROLLITUP!

Forgot to add that the tent cooling duct has a backdraft damper on it to keep the lights from pulling air from the tent when the tent is not being cooled by the outside air!

Transplanted a couple of the clones from the aeroponic cloner today! Carbon filter, can fan, ducting, oscillating fans and a few other things will be in tomorrow so I can install them tomorrow night and begin testing out the flower tent for temperature and temperature control for the next week to get an average of what the temperature will be with my current setup and 50 degree nights, if I can maintain temps of 70 degrees on 50 degree nights I should be able to maintain temps even easier when it's 20-30 degrees at night given the house is heated usually around 75 during the winter. Sounds a little confusing but I don't know how to make it more clear at the moment. I'll break it down even more once I begin testing. Still need to acquire some other materials/equiptment/flowering nutes but I'm almost there, some of the items I originally stated for the grow have changed as well due to availability but essentially I am using the same type of equipment, you guys know how it goes, even when you think you have everything you need, you figure out things need to be modified and you need more equipment or something slightly different in order to achieve the desired effects, nothing is perfect but I shoot for damn near close. Going to aquire a 20lb co2 tank, regulator and timer but I think they will have to be used next run as I'll need to modify the current setup slightly to account for humidity and other variables, this run is just to test out these strains and see how they grow under the current light setup and nutrient schedule and get down to two great strains from the current 6 strains. Looking forward to flowering out these ladies. Happy Growing RIU!

Well gentleman the cooling in the tent is working as planned, able to maintain 75 F inside with the outdoor temps at 55 degrees, should be able to keep it at 70 F once the night time temps stay at 40 or below, super stoked I dont have to use AC, will see what happens during the summer, but I wont have to deal with that til May of next year. Going to continue to test out the cooling as the temperatures drop in the next couple weeks but I'm very happy so far. Wish I had a little more head room for the double ended but gotta take what I can get. Almost all of the clones are out of the cloner now, I have way more than I need. Gonna donate a few to some of my homies. Happy Growing Friends!

Did some cleaning up of the undergrowth and some training to the mothers (now veg plants) in preparation for moving them into the flowering room in the next week to harden them off under the double ended and then switch to flowering, all the clones have made a happy transition to the red solo cups and we are starting to get some growth. That's all for the update for now.

Just a quick update, I won't be starting flowering til the middle of next week, weather has warmed up a bit and the night time temps are not optimal for cooling the light. Another week of veg won't hurt. With the way I train these ladies, I won't be having any issues with them being too tall, especially using the light rail. I'm hoping to get good results just using the one double ended on the rail this run, gotta do some testing with light intensity since my lux meter just came in today.

Moved the ladies into the flower tent, keeping a steady par reading of 35000 at 20 inches from the canopy, the double ended are on 600w right now, just to get the ladies use to the light intensity of these DE HPS. Will get some pictures up of the flower room once the lights come on, for now, here are the clones, getting close to time to transplant them into the 3 gallon smart pots, 8 weeks at least of veg , gotta wait for the current run to finish, gonna have some monsters in there this next round, gotta step my LST training game up.

Here is the promises pic of the flower room, ladies are all thinned out and ready to produce some fat nugs!

UPDATE

Transplanted half of the clones into 3 gal smart pots, would have transplanted all of them but I realized I don't have enough pots haha, no big deal, they can stay in their solo cups another week without any issues. Its been about 4 days of 12/12, another week and we should be through the transition phase and into bloom. Humidity in the room is kinda low, around 15% during day and 20 at night, going to hook up my humidity controller and humidifier so I can keep those readings up around 35-40%. The biggest update is that im going to be throwing CO2 into the room in a week or two, going to have to rework some of my ducting but no big deal, my grow style is constantly evolving and figure running the double ended's I would be stupid not to run CO2 as well. I was going to save it for next run but I might as well optimize every harvest, even if this one is just a test to determine the strains I want to keep.

slinger36s said:

Double Ended's came in today, found a hella good deal on the Botanicare nutes, like 20 to 25 dollars for the gallon jugs! Got some Botanicare Hydroguard today to start feeding to the mothers, since they are in fresh Fox Farm Happy Frog I'm not gonna give them veg nutes for a week or two. Next weekend ill be getting the rest of the nutes, the tent, the inline fans and light rail. Grow ON! Totally forgot there is also a Gorilla Glue #4 in the veg room. derp...stoned.

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looking real good, great setup!! you cant go wrong with botanicare, you should try using their hydroplex as a bloom enhancer. a buddy of mine uses it and he grows some fire shit with it. great dense frosty nugs, might even go back to bottles because of it.