Lighting Gloom's first... everything. DWC LED.

[Gloomshade]

So everything is looking pretty good since the res change. EC is remaining stable at 0.9 for the think differents and 1.0 for the pounders with their calmag. I did see a bit of leaf tip yellowing/burn on Think Different #1, but considering the smaller think differents are on the same feed with no leaf tip burn, im going to assume that #1's first bucket change should have come sooner and (uneducated theorising here...) she drank all the N and was burnt by the higher levels of the other stuff when i gave her a few mls of extra nutes the night before rez change.

I'm pretty sure i need to keep the feeding light due to the hardness of my water, so i think the next res change i'll up the grow A+B a smidgen but add some extra silica... I'm yet to see any change in EC levels that i didn't orchestrate myself....Hoping to see some movement this week so i can gauge how they're taking their feed.... But then again...if the EC stays the same i must be doing it right.

PH moved from 5.6 to 5.8-5.9 in the last 48 hours so i added a couple of drops of down and adjusted them all back to 5.6. Mars II 900w is hanging at 60cm and i turned the light mover on, it only moves back and fourth about a foot so they all stay under the footprint the whole time but the outer ones should enjoy slightly higher intensity as it moves around.

Gonna buy some string this week and start to gently bend some of the tops over, try to get them wide enough that i can justify moving a couple of buckets under the other mars II 900w.

Also realised my thermometer/hygrometer has a min/max setting... These babies have seen a max of 41C and a minimum of 23. I reset the meter, weather is cooling off heaps now i haven't seen temps in the tent over 29 last couple of days.

Hoping to see sex from think different #1 pretty soon, just waiting with baited breath to see hairs come out of those calyx's.

Cheers for stopping by.

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was going to say your worried about inspections, but you had all them massive plants in your garden with them low fences haha. subbed in for this one seems interesting!

Heh, nah that was my mates crop. He's pretty dirty on the whole growing weed scene now, i keep trying to convince him to go hydro. In the end our landlord couldn't cancel the contract with our property management company or something...so it will be another 7 weeks or so before they can take over managing the property for themselves. Which could potentially = 2 inspections in a week as the management company closes the book and the landlords wanna come check it out for themselves... Not looking forward to lugging my ladies outside to rest in a garden shed, and pulling my whole setup apart to make it look like it doesn't exist... but a few hours of extra work per quarter wont hurt me. Hopefully it doesnt hurt the ladies either. If i wasn't so impatient i could have waited until a couple of weeks before an inspection to drop the seeds in a small cupboard or something to start them off in, and then had an uninterrupted grow...but oh well, might even try to overlap depending on if i have space in my tent for seedlings when these 5 are in high flower mode.

 

[KannibisKing]

yeah i feel that man but u gotta do what u gotta do, shouldnt hurt the ladies to much as long as there light periods arnt interupted that much, hopfully all works out well for ya looking forward to progress and seeing what the mars2's can do one of my friends has the 1200w panels and they work great

 

[Gloomshade]

Day 13. Little bit of light bondage initiated today. Definately have to get that carbon filter this week, my mum is coming for a visit on the weekend lol. EC has risen by a point in some of the buckets, and PH has risen from 0.1-0.2 in 24 hours. Not sure if the PH rise is just hydroton still leaching into my water or what...but buckets are sitting on 5.7-5.8 so i've let it ride until tomorrow night, when i will do a slight top up just using ph'd water, level out the ph and ec.

I was concerned with slight yellowing of the new growth, but it may just be my eyes or the light...I dunno...they still look healthyish to me.

I bought 6 new airstones off ebay last week, they came in the mail today...my concern was the ball shaped airstones i am using create a lot of turbulence and i dont want too many roots breaking off, so i got these disc airstones... Unfortunately, they are junk. They are made from what looks like the exact same material as my blue balls (lol)...So the air bubbles that come out of them aren't any smaller than before, and there is less of them... Which wouldn't be that much of an issue except the stupid things turn over stone side down no matter what i do short of glueing them into the bucket...So i've tossed them to the side and will continue to run 2 blue balls per bucket. $60 dollar lesson.



On to the ladies.

Day 13

Think Different #1



Think Different #2



Think Different #3



Auto Pounder #1



Auto Pounder #2



Group shot

 

[Gloomshade]

power was out for 8 hours today =( I think i can see increased yellowing of the new growth...kind of concerned now. Gonna give them a couple of hours of lights on before i go in and harass them.

 

[KannibisKing]

Is it a nitrogen problem? Have u started feeding them yet? Unlucky on the power btw what happen?

 

[Gloomshade]

Is it a nitrogen problem? Have u started feeding them yet? Unlucky on the power btw what happen?

Yeah, they're on 1.0 EC. I'm not sure if its a nitrogen problem. 24ml of Canna Vega A+B went into the buckets friday. Its now tuesday. I'm pretty sure the EC has gone up 0.1. I'm about to head into the tent and take all my readings, top up some water and snap some pics... It could just be me worrying about nothing, just seems the newer growth to my eyes looks much paler than the older growth.

 

[DWCocha]

Hey Gloom ,cheap stones are not good .i find those blue balls good for 1 grow & there blocked too .Heres a link to site that sells qualkity ceramic stones & diffusers ,a bit more expensive but well worth it in the long run & they make the proper micro bubbles :dunno: http://www.koilogic.co.uk/air-stones-discs/c311

Also those wire LST ties look to thin & sharp bro , something softer like like cord or garden ties would be less likely to damage the plants :Sharing One:

 

[KannibisKing]

Yeah i was going to say maybe use pipecleaners that's what i use
and yes looks like nitro def gloom, see what happens after u play around with them today.

 

[Gloomshade]

Day 14...not much light for the ladies today but oh well. Topped up the buckets with PH'd water to bring EC's back down...thats about all for today. I set up a little lamp i can turn on when i turn the LED's off for photo time, so now it doesn't flash from my phone and i dont get the reflection of the silver stuff... hopefully makes for clearer pics.

Think Different #1


Think Different #2


Think Different #3


Auto Pounder #1


Auto Pounder #2


Group Shot.


I cant work out why i would have a nitrogen deficiency. I'm only 5 days into a 7 day rez, and EC's are not going down, they're going up = drinking more water than nutes. Surely i shouldn't have to do a rez change halfway through a week in only my second week of growing... I dunno... They dont look as pale on the new growth in the photos as they do under the LED's.

Then again I dont know a lot of things...like for example how my background EC of 0.8 affects the nutrient uptake... Does it work that way? would having a total EC of 1.8 this early cause a lockout of Nitrogen? If thats the case...im screwed. Is it too late to choose soil for my first grow!? lol... Also humidity was at like 90% all day in the tent today, with no air movement no light and no bubbles in the rez...maybe that made it yellow a little...

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Hey Gloom ,cheap stones are not good .i find those blue balls good for 1 grow & there blocked too .Heres a link to site that sells qualkity ceramic stones & diffusers ,a bit more expensive but well worth it in the long run & they make the proper micro bubbles :dunno: http://www.koilogic.co.uk/air-stones-discs/c311

Also those wire LST ties look to thin & sharp bro , something softer like like cord or garden ties would be less likely to damage the plants :Sharing One:

I checked out that link but it only has information about UK delivery, not sure if they would send stuff to Australia. Those flat disc airstones on that website are the ones i want, smaller bubbles.

I just asked my wife to get me some string when she went to the shop the other day, and thats what she came home with, $1. I will try to get something softer and thicker in the future, but at this stage with the light pressure on the string its not cutting into the plants, i can imagine it would cut it if it was trying to hold up a bud or something though.

Cheers.

 

[Happy Horticulturist]

Hi Gloom - your first grow you're working out the kinks. Obviously there's issues with the power going off which in DWC is bad bad news. You need oxygen, without it the roots will die, when they start to die that's when pathogens start to grow on the dead root material and before you know it, you've a pythium infection and well kiss goodbye to any decent harvest.

You've got issues with your background water EC, so go and get a water filter. Even if you got a basic one with two filters in it, that would take your water EC level down to about 0.2 EC or something which will be fine. Then you don't have to worry about that.

Pale new growth is fine, they are growing fast so they are a bit pale, the trick is to just not let the new growth get too pale or too big. Pale new growth to me = fast growth and that's not a problem at all dont worry about it.

As you've found out and as DWCocha has said the Ceramic air stones are really the only ones you should use in DWC. Of course the blue ones will do in a pinch. Don't worry too much about roots breaking off, they are pretty strong. If you do find any broken roots in the water though, do fish them out asap. You don't want pathogens feasting on them and creating baby pathogens.

The photos are looking much better - finally I can see what's going on in your tent Maybe a brighter light would would help if possible, but 100x better than before.

As far as I can see mate you're doing well. Two weeks in and the plants are where they should be. If you can on your next grow get yourself some filtered water, some Formulex (great for starting off seedlings and cuttings) and some Cal-Mag, that's all you really need for the first couple of weeks, they should be slightly better off. But with what you have there's nothing to be scoffed at, they're a good size for 14 days and nothing too bad in the way of deficiencies, etc. If they carry on like this you'll get a decent harvest and have learn't a lot to make a bigger harvest for next time, so far so good.

Lastly I think the string will be fine. When the plants get older the branches turn into stalks / trunks almost and no string on earth will cut into them If I were you the things I'd be concentrating on are and in this order
1) water temperatures - don't let it go over 22, aim for 20 degrees
2) air in the water - don't let that air pump stop or the power go out
3) lower ec starting water - start looking around at water filters

but all in all man things are going well - keep it up