New Grower Noob with girl scouts and something citrus!

[Lonx]

Alrighty... so after a little deliberation I decided to give this a crack for a couple of personal/family reasons. Here's the setup and a brief intro -

The basics

• 3x3x6ft tent
• QB288 Quantum Board 3000k
• 4" fan (85 / 110cfm or 186m3/h) + carbon filter (4x10", rated flow is double the fan so should be not too bad)
• 2 x Nutrifield 28L DWC pots w/clay balls
• 2 x 200L/hr air pumps + large ball airstones
• 2 x 500L/hr power heads (not used in first grow I suspect, working on a valve routing method for maybe using one in tandem with the cooling system so I can top-feed on the first week if needed.. may not at all.)
• AN Sensi bloom & grow, voodoo juice and calmag
• Feed water is coming from an outdoor tank @ ph 6.6 and 17ppm
• 6" auxillary clip-on fan
• some jiffy pots for germination
• paint drain nets for protecting roots if/when I need to lift the pots
• PH down if needed, doubt it given the base ph of my water and the sensi is the ph stable stuff but will monitor
• ph and tds meter pens

Cooling system for the hotter days - generally only to be on when ambient 25+

• Guts from a desktop water cooler, rated apparently 70W but we'll test that later
• Digital $20 thermostat relay from eBay, set to cycle it on as required
• Upgrading the crappy noisy 120mm fan for it's main heatsink to something pushing 3x more air and quiter
• Inline coarse filter for any general debris or broken roots
• Heat insulated 13mm hose for a closed loop flow
• Clear upright tube to show pot levels w/valves to close as needed
• Shouldn't need to run except for the Australian summer

First grow is going to be a couple of autos, starting with Girl Scout Cookies (fastbuds) and either a Choc Orange (freebie) or Tangiematic (fastbuds) - the latter two depending on what happens as the chocco is taking it's sweet time and I got impatient thinking it might be a dud . Having said that I've done some mild research in getting to this point with the setup so I do have plenty of patience, no worries there.

I'll provide updates in a few days and catch up on photos etc. I'm germinating now and it's always busy midweek with work but have the tent 3/4's setup with a handful of cable ties, fittings and the ventilation to hang. Otherwise it's game on

@fettled6 @AJrexxx

 

[Rev. Green Genes]

Killer. I'm subbed up. You're going to fill that tent man, I love it. Clean set up.

 

[Engineered Grower]

Hmmmm

Hey @bushmasterar15 can you look and give advice?

Thanks!

 

[bad dragon bzzz]

looking good,nice set up.and very clean water.
good luck.

 

[Lonx]

Cheers for the feedback. Sorry for the lack of posting for a few days but obviously getting my shit together as well So the GSC fared well despite throwing it's root leg in the air like a can can dancer, I covered it on advice from GreenSkull however thereafter found some other threads on another forum saying this stuff was kinda normal... I doubt it but all good, she lives and will thrive!! Neuts arrived and I couldn't be more pissed off. I'm growing for personal use (and family therapeutic at that, first grow simple stuff, next is something CBD focused as the old duck has some large growth that is aggressive.. in meantime it's comfort for her on the first). It appears one of the bottles of neuts leaked due to bad sealing and therefore went slightly through the box, cue the delivery guy telling me the box leaked a tiny bit (bottle looks full so fuck all came out, shows on box of course in very random spots). He then told me he knew what that 'oil' was for and it was the good stuff. WTF?!???? Couldn't be more frustrated so I let the seller know but that shit is just not on, nor is razzing up the freight company. Just annoyed there!!

PH: 6.0 after my first mix before application
PPM: 530? Something like that. I'll record properly when I fill the buckets in a day or two.

So here's what I'm calling Day 1 for the girl scout cookie as she's my primary, had a false start for my secondary choc orange and expect to see shoots from the much stronger sub - mrs tangiematic in a day or two. They both have the same rated auto time so a few days, meh Weak 1/4 neuts started on the GSC and I gave a little spare to some of my general herb garden because I love fresh herbs to cook with.



On another note I decided the idea of a top feed loop might be helpful for perhaps the first week (cycle 15min every 2hr) for early germination leaves showing so am going to plumb this into the setup, however for the first grow I'll just hand feed once or twice daily until roots are long enough in the pots. Pots are scored heavily and I'll be throwing filter bags on the very occasional use top feed powerheads that sit in the buckets. in future.

 

[Nuglet]

Hi there Lonx good luck on your grow - i had that weird tap root reaching for the sky thing on my GSC as well. Set her back a bit but then went on to be the biggest yielder of the lot!

 

[Lonx]

Hi there Lonx good luck on your grow - i had that weird tap root reaching for the sky thing on my GSC as well. Set her back a bit but then went on to be the biggest yielder of the lot!

Haha, I'm not the only one! Actually found a thread from 2005 on another forum people who had the same thing too.

What im calling day 2 is here. The tangiematic is yet to show but she was planted 5 days later so no probs. Peat is still very well wet so only gave them a touch but they're now under the lights just cause at night. Daylight in day for a few more. Then normal 18/6 I have setup for the girl scout and tangie when it shows up.

Gsc, first proper leaves showing. Very cute. Bring the growth on in a week!

 

[Lonx]

Slack updates again, hope this isn't a common theme but tbh I won't update every day - too busy. It appears that I might've shocked the GSC a little bit by removing the excess peat and moving her as she hasn't grown much but still looking relatively healthy and 2nd real leaves just sprouted. Tangiematic seed had cracked overnight and took only 2 days to show up, now at the same size (photo shows just a little seed husk leftover, it'll fall off tomorrow naturally). Perhaps I moved them too soon but decided to keep a little peat there to ensure they don't dry out, appears to be working just fine.

Top feeding once a day with neuts @ 330ppm, PH 6.0. As soon as I see a hint of a root down south in either pot I'll be cancelling this. Pots are now bubbling away underneath to keep the humidity up. Temps generally 23-25c and max 27c with lights on, humidity ~60%. Quantum Board LED Q288 is measuring around 305W, she's rated to 277W so wondering if I bother to turn it down... At the moment I know there's little value running at full right now but in a week there will be. Next time might turn it to 150W and leave it closer to the young plants, right now it's around 2ft for the first leaves to grow out.

 

[Lonx]

A timely update... I've left the lights as is but raised slightly to keep the heat down which I think was a little much in the early days (haven't bothered turning on the circulation fan while they're babies). Research has been strong for an Arduino which I'll get to monitor ph/ec/temp/humidity and control light switching. Give me about a month or so to get that somewhere halfway REALLY stoked with how the GSC is picking up, I've had the water level a little higher just to keep the peat moist which has worked but now realise I need to drop it on the next refresh to ensure the root search hard.

Nutes @ 380ppm GSC, 318ppm Tangie (but gave it a flush of clean water 2 days ago, appears that I stunned it... learning curve)
Temps generally 22-24c daytime, 27-29c overnight with lights on

Day 10 - GSC


Day 11 - GSC
I gave it a light top feed this evening, haven't touched it in days.


Day 5 Tangie
I gave it a flush with my clean rainwater (ph 6.0)


Day 6 Tangie
I gave it a light outer feed from it's 318ppm water below (which technically is doing nothing by bubbling there aside from humidity... another learning of course for the first 1-2 weeks of my next grow)

 

[Lonx]

Well, no more top feeding. GSC now has 3 roots around 8-10" long and deep into the water so it's drinky drinky time . I've also ordered a Raspberry Pi and going to run logging on temp/humidity/ph/ec/lux + colour/maybe co2 and then a relay to cycle the light. Fan can stay on constant around here but maybe in winter I'll cycle that on/off as well. I've a lot of experience with analytics so for me it's important to have sensors and a nice dashboard I can view on my home theatre PC. The Pi is overkill as it'll be streaming data directly into a database on my server but it was probably the best and easiest package to start with as I haven't played with that stuff yet, more so because I didn't have a good use case! I'll have the Pi next week and order sensors this weekend to put that together by the time we're in flower.

Day 13 - GSC


Day 7 Tangie