Lighting Bigsm0 and the cob addiction

[BigSm0]

@MassMom check out the last picture I posted here. These are the auto gorillas. Didn’t want to post pics in your thread but wanted you to see these great plants.

 

[4tokin]

Hi BigSm0

I thought I would call by and check out your grow after seeing the pic in LS.
You have a well thought out and clean grow. There is a lot of detail in your set up that is well executed.

I have dabbled with coco, blumats and smart pots for a couple of years with some impressive results, once you get your groove on.

A couple of things I have noticed in your setup that may require some thought.
Emergency drainage. Mainly for the tent and pots on the floor. If you have a blumat malfunction and it sticks open you run the risk of dumping your reservoir on the floor. A lot of water can come out of those small feeders over 12 to 18 hours.
Organic based nutes or supplements will clog your lines, salt based nutes are needed for cleanliness. Drip clean FTW.
The mixing of soil and coco. The thing there is they both work at different PH ranges. For soil mid 6's and for hydro mid 5's. Then where do you set the PH for the nutes you are using. I think this may be where some of your late flower deficiencies are coming from. Salt build ups with PH swings causing lock outs.
Media wetness. I see in some of your pics you are watering your smart pots so much you can see the water level on the side of the bag. You have a good dose of perched water table going on there. What I have found running the pots that wet you get no root growth in the lower 25% to 30% of the pot. With that amount of moisture present the roots can't grow into it as they drown due to being to wet What you need to experiment with is cutting back on the water flow so the roots have to hunt to the bottom of the pot in search for moisture. It is a trial and error thing where feeling the weight of the bag is a big help as the bags will feel bordering on dry. Once you get that down pat your dead rootball will come out like a afro that has had a dose of fractal weirdness thrown in. The roots are so fine and dense that they overtake the media and become the media. As we know you need roots for fruits.
Pot size. Do your self a favour and experiment with 2 and 3 gallon bags. The 2's are a hoot. With coco and blumats you can get away with running small pots with ease while still growing big plants. I think the 2g is about as small as you would go with a 200mm bag because of the positioning of the carrot plant location and dripper length make it a little tight.

Looking forward to seeing where your grow goes this year.

 

[Evil-Mobo]

Hi BigSm0

I thought I would call by and check out your grow after seeing the pic in LS.
You have a well thought out and clean grow. There is a lot of detail in your set up that is well executed.

I have dabbled with coco, blumats and smart pots for a couple of years with some impressive results, once you get your groove on.

A couple of things I have noticed in your setup that may require some thought.
Emergency drainage. Mainly for the tent and pots on the floor. If you have a blumat malfunction and it sticks open you run the risk of dumping your reservoir on the floor. A lot of water can come out of those small feeders over 12 to 18 hours.
Organic based nutes or supplements will clog your lines, salt based nutes are needed for cleanliness. Drip clean FTW.
The mixing of soil and coco. The thing there is they both work at different PH ranges. For soil mid 6's and for hydro mid 5's. Then where do you set the PH for the nutes you are using. I think this may be where some of your late flower deficiencies are coming from. Salt build ups with PH swings causing lock outs.
Media wetness. I see in some of your pics you are watering your smart pots so much you can see the water level on the side of the bag. You have a good dose of perched water table going on there. What I have found running the pots that wet you get no root growth in the lower 25% to 30% of the pot. With that amount of moisture present the roots can't grow into it as they drown due to being to wet What you need to experiment with is cutting back on the water flow so the roots have to hunt to the bottom of the pot in search for moisture. It is a trial and error thing where feeling the weight of the bag is a big help as the bags will feel bordering on dry. Once you get that down pat your dead rootball will come out like a afro that has had a dose of fractal weirdness thrown in. The roots are so fine and dense that they overtake the media and become the media. As we know you need roots for fruits.
Pot size. Do your self a favour and experiment with 2 and 3 gallon bags. The 2's are a hoot. With coco and blumats you can get away with running small pots with ease while still growing big plants. I think the 2g is about as small as you would go with a 200mm bag because of the positioning of the carrot plant location and dripper length make it a little tight.

Looking forward to seeing where your grow goes this year.

Solid advice here. I will add to the 2/3 g pots been trying to tell him for a minute as well. I settled on 3g for flower and 1g for veg for the auto's I start them right in the 3g when I can. I never thought about what you mentioned about the mix of coco and the soil this is a solid point you just saved me a headache as I was going to try this next run thanks for that info. I am using straight pro mix bx this run and having great results. It's my first non organic grow in quite some time so adjusting to the PH and all that again and bottled nutes etc. Thanks for sharing

 

[BigSm0]

Hi BigSm0

I thought I would call by and check out your grow after seeing the pic in LS.
You have a well thought out and clean grow. There is a lot of detail in your set up that is well executed.

I have dabbled with coco, blumats and smart pots for a couple of years with some impressive results, once you get your groove on.

A couple of things I have noticed in your setup that may require some thought.
Emergency drainage. Mainly for the tent and pots on the floor. If you have a blumat malfunction and it sticks open you run the risk of dumping your reservoir on the floor. A lot of water can come out of those small feeders over 12 to 18 hours.
Organic based nutes or supplements will clog your lines, salt based nutes are needed for cleanliness. Drip clean FTW.
The mixing of soil and coco. The thing there is they both work at different PH ranges. For soil mid 6's and for hydro mid 5's. Then where do you set the PH for the nutes you are using. I think this may be where some of your late flower deficiencies are coming from. Salt build ups with PH swings causing lock outs.
Media wetness. I see in some of your pics you are watering your smart pots so much you can see the water level on the side of the bag. You have a good dose of perched water table going on there. What I have found running the pots that wet you get no root growth in the lower 25% to 30% of the pot. With that amount of moisture present the roots can't grow into it as they drown due to being to wet What you need to experiment with is cutting back on the water flow so the roots have to hunt to the bottom of the pot in search for moisture. It is a trial and error thing where feeling the weight of the bag is a big help as the bags will feel bordering on dry. Once you get that down pat your dead rootball will come out like a afro that has had a dose of fractal weirdness thrown in. The roots are so fine and dense that they overtake the media and become the media. As we know you need roots for fruits.
Pot size. Do your self a favour and experiment with 2 and 3 gallon bags. The 2's are a hoot. With coco and blumats you can get away with running small pots with ease while still growing big plants. I think the 2g is about as small as you would go with a 200mm bag because of the positioning of the carrot plant location and dripper length make it a little tight.

Looking forward to seeing where your grow goes this year.

My man! Not sure you saw the whole room or not? There is a lot going on here. It’s in an outdoor building. Insulated to the max. The back room where I hold my main res is 100% waterproof with a pitched rubber floor and drain. Outside this on the floor near the flood tables is a temporary thing. I’m the meantime I do have drain away trays coming. I liked a guys picture on Instagram and he is sending me some. Yes!! I do use drip clean. So far so good, I generally do keep the drippers slightly tight on the floor. But you are absolutely right! I have had a few instances I was happy to be in the flood tables.

This is also my first grow with the smart pots and I can say I don’t really like them. The plants aren’t nearly as big or happy/healthy if that makes sense. I do feel the salt has sort of stuck in the pots where the air pots will flush easier. I do drain the reservoir at the end of 2 weeks by hand watering. Generally I do keep it moderately moist. But this may have been from a picture you have seen. Never saturated but probably a little to moist. So I will definitely lower this as it all makes perfect sense. The reason for the bags is I had a terrible 3 month gnat infestation that kept killing seedlings. This grow I topped each pot with 3” of sand and used bags. When they were gone I added a bit of coco to help the roots as they were growing like crazy in it. A mess! Back to air pots. I am now in all 5’s. Another mix of coco/peat. Usually ph to 6.0. You could be right on the ph causing issues. When I ran 5’s I had much smaller plants, I also hand watered and that’s another reason for the 7’s when they got big I had to water every day atleast in 5’s and that was to much with my work schedule. So now I’m back to 5’s, if it goes well with the blumats I may continue or lower again down to 3’s. If not anything else my plants will take pictures better. Like that guy in 1/2 gallon pots who had a 1oz plant, I swore he cleared a lb till he told me the pot size. Lol. Thanks a ton for the advice. Really hope you follow along and send a tag if you have your own grow going.

 

[4tokin]

Solid advice here. I will add to the 2/3 g pots been trying to tell him for a minute as well. I settled on 3g for flower and 1g for veg for the auto's I start them right in the 3g when I can. I never thought about what you mentioned about the mix of coco and the soil this is a solid point you just saved me a headache as I was going to try this next run thanks for that info. I am using straight pro mix bx this run and having great results. It's my first non organic grow in quite some time so adjusting to the PH and all that again and bottled nutes etc. Thanks for sharing

We might get him to downsize. If he starts inspecting his spent root balls he may see the light.
If I can help someone avoid the fuck ups I have made and all understand why then it has been a good day.

My man! Not sure you saw the whole room or not? There is a lot going on here. It’s in an outdoor building. Insulated to the max. The back room where I hold my main res is 100% waterproof with a pitched rubber floor and drain. Outside this on the floor near the flood tables is a temporary thing. I’m the meantime I do have drain away trays coming. I liked a guys picture on Instagram and he is sending me some. Yes!! I do use drip clean. So far so good, I generally do keep the drippers slightly tight on the floor. But you are absolutely right! I have had a few instances I was happy to be in the flood tables.

This is also my first grow with the smart pots and I can say I don’t really like them. The plants aren’t nearly as big or happy/healthy if that makes sense. I do feel the salt has sort of stuck in the pots where the air pots will flush easier. I do drain the reservoir at the end of 2 weeks by hand watering. Generally I do keep it moderately moist. But this may have been from a picture you have seen. Never saturated but probably a little to moist. So I will definitely lower this as it all makes perfect sense. The reason for the bags is I had a terrible 3 month gnat infestation that kept killing seedlings. This grow I topped each pot with 3” of sand and used bags. When they were gone I added a bit of coco to help the roots as they were growing like crazy in it. A mess! Back to air pots. I am now in all 5’s. Another mix of coco/peat. Usually ph to 6.0. You could be right on the ph causing issues. When I ran 5’s I had much smaller plants, I also hand watered and that’s another reason for the 7’s when they got big I had to water every day atleast in 5’s and that was to much with my work schedule. So now I’m back to 5’s, if it goes well with the blumats I may continue or lower again down to 3’s. If not anything else my plants will take pictures better. Like that guy in 1/2 gallon pots who had a 1oz plant, I swore he cleared a lb till he told me the pot size. Lol. Thanks a ton for the advice. Really hope you follow along and send a tag if you have your own grow going.

There was so much to take in I may have missed some details, I will need to go back for a closer look.
I thought your flood tables where pretty good (something I will be replicating in the future) ,all that is needed is a bit of hose work underneath for E drainage.

You have invested so much to get this far don't give up on them just yet. Try a run in straight coco before giving up.
Air pots and smart pots will flush similar to each other. The best position to take is not to overfeed thus making flushing unnecessary.
Gauging the moisture content is the hard one. I try to water as little as possible and the only way I can gauge it is pot weight. When I hand water I constantly pick up the pot to gauge it's weight. There is a point where the pot itself will feel bottom heavy. For me this is slightly overwatered. When I am using blumats I don't hand water at all as I believe this upsets the salt moisture balance in the top of the pot.
I find 1" of sand is enough to combat the gnats.

I will be following with interest, as your set up has so much potential.
I have only got a small cabinet going at the moment, mainly to keep my game up. There should be a link in my sig.

 

[Evil-Mobo]

We might get him to downsize. If he starts inspecting his spent root balls he may see the light.
If I can help someone avoid the fuck ups I have made and all understand why then it has been a good day.



There was so much to take in I may have missed some details, I will need to go back for a closer look.
I thought your flood tables where pretty good (something I will be replicating in the future) ,all that is needed is a bit of hose work underneath for E drainage.

You have invested so much to get this far don't give up on them just yet. Try a run in straight coco before giving up.
Air pots and smart pots will flush similar to each other. The best position to take is not to overfeed thus making flushing unnecessary.
Gauging the moisture content is the hard one. I try to water as little as possible and the only way I can gauge it is pot weight. When I hand water I constantly pick up the pot to gauge it's weight. There is a point where the pot itself will feel bottom heavy. For me this is slightly overwatered. When I am using blumats I don't hand water at all as I believe this upsets the salt moisture balance in the top of the pot.
I find 1" of sand is enough to combat the gnats.

I will be following with interest, as your set up has so much potential.
I have only got a small cabinet going at the moment, mainly to keep my game up. There should be a link in my sig.

What you state about hand watering is why I can't let go of it lol. It forces you to grab each pot so you learn by weight if they need water etc and makes you go up close and you're able to catch a lot of things not normally seen. I am using pro mix BX this run that I mixed with organic rice hulls for more aeration. I also use fabric pots and have success with them when doing dtw hand watering. The hulls are mixed in at about 30% to the pro mix 70%. This is turning into good discussion hope you don't mind @BigSmo

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

 

[bartlancertp]

I am using pro mix BX this run that I mixed with organic rice hulls for more aeration. I also use fabric pots and have success with them when doing dtw hand watering. The hulls are mixed in at about 30% to the pro mix 70%.
Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

I switched from Promix HP to Promix HP CC. It has coconut coir added for aeration, so I no longer mix in perlite (hate perlite dust). I prefer 3 gallon pots---I get ones my shop calls squat 5's, which are lower and wider (I have a low ceiling). I drill holes on the outside of the bottom half for additional aeration. I usually yield 1-4 oz per plant.
Switching to COB lights soon (power supplies came in yesterday), mainly to lower summer temps and the electric bill. Doing two racks of three 35W COBs. My build is at https://www.autoflower.org/threads/building-2-racks-of-three-35w-cobs-for-low-ceiling.63238/ .

 

[BigSm0]

We might get him to downsize. If he starts inspecting his spent root balls he may see the light.
If I can help someone avoid the fuck ups I have made and all understand why then it has been a good day.



There was so much to take in I may have missed some details, I will need to go back for a closer look.
I thought your flood tables where pretty good (something I will be replicating in the future) ,all that is needed is a bit of hose work underneath for E drainage.

You have invested so much to get this far don't give up on them just yet. Try a run in straight coco before giving up.
Air pots and smart pots will flush similar to each other. The best position to take is not to overfeed thus making flushing unnecessary.
Gauging the moisture content is the hard one. I try to water as little as possible and the only way I can gauge it is pot weight. When I hand water I constantly pick up the pot to gauge it's weight. There is a point where the pot itself will feel bottom heavy. For me this is slightly overwatered. When I am using blumats I don't hand water at all as I believe this upsets the salt moisture balance in the top of the pot.
I find 1" of sand is enough to combat the gnats.

I will be following with interest, as your set up has so much potential.
I have only got a small cabinet going at the moment, mainly to keep my game up. There should be a link in my sig.

The flood tables do have drains. That’s actually what froze on my older post. They are pitched slightly and that wasn’t enough to combat the frigid temps here. I shortened the line a bit and that fixed it. My floors 5” thich with the double plywood and foam sandwich floor.

I can say with confidence that I do not like smart pots one bit. They are flimsy and no where to hold plant ties for training, The air pots drain much easier from the bottom and the holes are a lst trainers dream. When I did hand water it was like a garbage bag filled with water with a pin hole on bottom lol. Plus they are a bitch to clean compared to air pots. I mix a little dish soap and h2o2 and just spray the air pots and that’s it. Rinse and they are like new.

I did start with 1” of sand too. Even being super careful it washes around and left openings for the gnats to get in. I kept adding each time till I didn’t see soil again. Luckily they are gone now and no more sand.

 

[BigSm0]

What you state about hand watering is why I can't let go of it lol. It forces you to grab each pot so you learn by weight if they need water etc and makes you go up close and you're able to catch a lot of things not normally seen. I am using pro mix BX this run that I mixed with organic rice hulls for more aeration. I also use fabric pots and have success with them when doing dtw hand watering. The hulls are mixed in at about 30% to the pro mix 70%. This is turning into good discussion hope you don't mind @BigSmo

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

Mind? I luuuve it.

 

[BigSm0]

I switched from Promix HP to Promix HP CC. It has coconut coir added for aeration, so I no longer mix in perlite (hate perlite dust). I prefer 3 gallon pots---I get ones my shop calls squat 5's, which are lower and wider (I have a low ceiling). I drill holes on the outside of the bottom half for additional aeration. I usually yield 1-4 oz per plant.
Switching to COB lights soon (power supplies came in yesterday), mainly to lower summer temps and the electric bill. Doing two racks of three 35W COBs. My build is at https://www.autoflower.org/threads/building-2-racks-of-three-35w-cobs-for-low-ceiling.63238/ .

Afn I didn’t get a single alert about your thread and even saw the @bigsmo

Our garbage hydro store stopped selling the hpcc which I liked. Probably .50 cents more so the cheap ass owner decided to switch it. I do think adding Holes to the smart pots is a good idea. What about modifying a few air pots. You can easily run it through a table saw.