Lighting Monsters in my closet, my ongoing grow thread

[Ozone69]

Ok....After a few months off from growing, I'm firing up the closet again. And I've decided to kick things off again with a little comparison grow to try out a different brand of nutrients. The plan is to grow out two of the same plant, one using the same Advanced Nutrients Jungle Juice three part line up and the other being given Earth Juice Hi-Brix Grow two part nutes. I'll use the AN Flawless Finish on the AN plant and Earth Juice's Hi-Brix Molasses for Plants on the EJ side for the flush on each respectively. Also trying out the powdered PH up/down from Earth Juice, but will be using that for both as I want the comparison to be for the nutes only.

Started two seeds on Wednesday. Both are Auto White Berry that came with a variety pack from Paradise Seeds. Looks like both are germinating alright, so hoping to get things really fired up in the next couple weeks when they're ready to go in the net pots.

Other basic info for those new to the closet:
Will be using 5gal bucket hydroponic DWC setup
Overhead lighting will be supplied by two Advanced Platinum LED P150's
Side lighting supplied by 4x3ft T5 florescent in the corners of the closet

Starting the lights off with just the veg LED's on with the overhead LED's. Will kick in the remaining bloom LED's when the plants are further along and getting into preflower stage. I've put a mix of 2 x 6000K and 2 x 2700k spectrum on the side T5's. Running them for the entire grow as the heat from them helps keep the closet warm in the winter.

Closer view on the nutes:

 

[Ozone69]

Still not much to report. One week in from dropping the seeds into the rock wool cubes. Both germinated without issue and seem to be moving along nice. Keeping them in the humidity dome for now on the seedling tray. Realized after planting that my old humidifier is dead, and with winter in full swing it's about 21% humidity in the house about now. Picked up a new one and starting to get the RH in the room raised, so leaving the dome on the seedlings until it's up in at least the 40's for RH in the closet.

I suppose the fact that both seeds germinated with no issue can also be a sign that my changes to making sure I'm prepping the rock wool correctly may be paying off. Originally I was getting about a 1 in three failure rate for seeds, but the last 3 have germinated perfectly. The biggest change was I wasn't always soaking the cubes before planting. Soaking them in PH adjusted water for at least a couple hours up to over night is from what I've read and seen in my results is VERY important. Also, DO NOT SQUEEZE the cubes to wring out some of the water. This can affect the air pockets in the rock wool structure and cause problems like the seed drowning after popping out the tap root. Just those two simple changes seems to have made a nice difference in my germination success rate, though it's still too early to for certain make that call.

 

[Ozone69]

Mixed up my first batch of nutes today in anticipation of the seedlings going into the buckets tomorrow. I want to let things bubble up overnight with the net pots in place to make sure that the hydroton is getting sufficiently splashed to moisten the media.

Initial PH (both): 7.2
Initial TDS (both): 60

I went with the "General purpose mild" strength on the Advanced Nutrients mix. For my 2.25 Gal reservoir, I calculated to need 11ml each of grow, micro, and bloom.

For the Earth Juice side, I used their "Starts" feeding level, which I calculated to be 22ml of Grow Part A and 11ml of Bloom Part B.

I liked the idea of these two feed chart levels, because it essentially means that the TOTAL ml of nutrients that is being added to the reservoirs is the same for each. Eleven each on the three part and 22/11 on the two part comes up to 33ml of added "stuff" for each bucket.

AN After Nutes: PH 6.3
EJ After Nutes: PH 6.0

Adjusted to PH 5.8

AN Final TDS: 530
EJ Final TDS: 600

Sooooo...Earth Juice is putting more overall "stuff" in the water with each ml if the TDS readings are to be believed, but not by a ginormous amount.

 

[Ozone69]

All planted and away we go. Humidity still slow to raise in the room/house, so I've moved a small humidifier right into the closet.

Seedling starting on the Earth Juice:


Seedling starting on the Advanced Nutrients:


All setup and ready to grow:

 

[Ozone69]

Three weeks from planting seeds, one week from moving from seed tray to net pots and ttill rolling along. The Advanced Nutrients plant looks to be out to an early lead at this point. Little bit better growth so far and more roots popping out the bottom of the net pot. But, the seedling was a bit ahead of the other for root size when I put then in the netpots, so hard to say this early on if it's a clear lead for Advanced Nutrients over the Earth Juice.

Was seeing a problem with PH rising dramatically again. With the roots still not even in the res yet, and only the slight drip that makes it back down from the bubble spray on the netpots it was hard to believe it was the plants and/or hydroton setup. After inspecting the air lines, stones, and buckets, I believe the brown slime that was plaguing my last grow may still have some residual hold on things. I bleached the buckets and everything what I thought was sufficiently, but apparently not. Sooooo....I got rid of those buckets and picked up a couple new ones. Soaked the air stones for a half hour top forty five minutes or so this morning in a Physan 20 solution, then gave them a good scrubbing and rinsing before putting them back in the system with all new air hose (threw the old ones out). Hopefully PH will stabilize and the slime will be gone now. I think the drain level hose setup on the side of the buckets had some residual slime dried in it, despite the bleaching. Since I don't need them to work with water level in the buckets as much as when I started, because of the slime, and because I want to be able to stack buckets when not in use I'm not going to be using them on the buckets any more starting with the new ones.

Advanced Nutrients plant and early roots:


Earth Juice plant and early roots:

 

[AKsteel]

Subbed up. Really getting interested in the DWC. Keep up the good work

 

[Ozone69]

Well, the Advanced Nutrients plant is chugging along. As I posted about in the nute battle thread, I had to give up on the Earth Juice plant, though. Too much brown slime in the res to deal with when using the molasses based, organic nutes (stuff's like mega growth fuel for the slime). The AN plant has it a little as well, but I can keep it manageable with some H2O2 in the weekly res change and then about half way through the week. The remaining plant seems to be on the verge of taking off with growing, so I bumped it on up to full strength nutes using the veg ratio on the AN 3 part.



Meanwhile...since the Earth Juice plant was a wash, and I'm getting tired of trying to fight the brown slime that I seem to always have in DWC I've decided to (hopefully) simplify a bit and try out some soil. So after some reading I'm starting simple and just picked up a couple 5gal smart pots, a bag of Fox Farms Ocean Forest, and planted an Auto Berry Bomb seed in each of two pots. The plan is to do the same comparison, giving one the AN nutes and the other the EJ, if the germinate and take off. Starting to think I should have germinated using the same rockwool technique I've used for hydro, at least to start with. But still only been a few days so too early to give up on 'em sprouting just yet.

 

[Ozone69]

Nothing too exciting going on this week. The Auto White Berry in the hydro bucket is still inching along. Roots aren't quite what I would like to see, but hoping they'll take off now that they're starting to get into the the res for the DWC stage of things. Lots-o-brown sludge on the air stone this morning when I did the res swap. Every time I go searching around the 'net on it, I keep coming back to using a Heisenberg or similar compost tea as being the more commonly prescribed treatments. So I may have to start looking deeper into the pieces/parts needed to brew some up and try it out. I'm going back and forth over wanting to just give soil a serious try as well. Given the means, from what I've read so far I'd be most interested in trying something like a TLO type soil mix. If memory serves right, there may be some cross over in the ingreidents for a good TLO mix and the Heisenberg Tea that could allow for trying both out with many of the same starting ingreients. hmmmmmmmmmm.........

Speaking of soil, only one of the two Auto Berry Bomb seeds I planted germinated and broke ground. Looks to be doing nicely from what I can tell. Decided to use the Earth Juice Hi-Brix A/B nutes with it. First popped out the soil last Friday (5 days ago) about six days after the original planting of the seed. Starting it soon on some light strength. One strain in hydro against a completely different strain in soil wasn't really the original Advanced Nutrients versus Earth Juice comparison I was hoping for, but then something something about the best laid plans of mice and men. *shrugg*

 

[Ozone69]

Well the little Auto White Berry plant in the hydro setup is really fighting along. Starting to look like she's transitioning into blooming. Not sure if it's early for the strain due to stress or not, but went ahead and adjusted the nute ration on the AN 3 part to the transition stage (cut back grow and increase bloom for equal parts bloom/micro/grow at full strength). Poor little things roots are just getting choked by the brown snot. Tried dropping the H2O2 and added some Hydroguard based on some info I'd read on the slime, but doesn't seem to be getting rid of it. Though it could be holding it back some so I'll continue with that. I also kicked in the bloom spectrum LED's on the overhead lights as she starts to move into flowering



Over on the dirt side, the Auto Berry Bomb plant seems to me to be taking off very well. Looking good enough that I went ahead and increase the strength on the Earth Juice nutes a little. Didn't go quite to full strength, more like about 3/4 (split the difference between half and full strength per their chart).


Since the other seed I planted for trying out soil didn't germinate, and I started reading that the Ocean Forest blend might not be the best for germinating in I picked up some Happy Frog and have another seed trying to pop in it. Trying out a Pyramid Seeds Auto Purple that was a freebie on my original order with Herbie's. Finally started to look like I had germinating dialed in for hydro and now I switch to dirt and have to figure it out again. hehe *crosses fingers*

 

[Ozone69]

Things still cruising along. The hydo, Auto White Berry plant has not had any new growth in the last week, so I moved it on up to full bloom nute ratios this week. The soil Berry Bomb plant just keeps chugging along. I changed to full strength (per the chart on the bottle) nutes about mid week with how well she's taking off. I also moved the lights a little closer a few days ago, but already had to move them back up an inch or two with how well she's growing. The Auto Purple seed from Pyramid I planted just popped through into the light late yesterday. Have it going in a little peat pot for now and going to transplant it into the large fabric pot sometime probably in the next week. I've seem where a lot of people go with stepping up to medium sized pots before the large ones. May have to do some more reading on the reasoning behind that and maybe think about it down the road since it's looking more and more like I'm going to be converting predominately to soil, with a possible occasional hydro for shits and giggles.