PC grow 100w pll, bubbler

Hello Everybody. Please have a look at my pc grow and tell me what you like about it (or what you don't!). Its helpful to get some feedback after the tedious job of resizing and editing many photos. So then



front, behind front panel.


the air travels through the duct that i knocked together to blow onto the bulbs


The fan is mounted with those silicon strips that are sold for quietenning your pc. I recommend them 100%. I used the rubber things that replace the normal screws aswell. The rubber things come with the fan (noctua 120mm) but the silicon strips dont. Even at 12 V this fan is quiter than any pc ive heard but at 6v its essentially silent. Yes the back is a bit of a eye sore but nothing too bad and its hidden anyway.


Below is a small metal frame about 5cm from the fan, held together with a few rivets and aluminium tape which is an exceptionaly strong tape.


2 layers of cooker hood carbon filter pad are stretched over it and taped into place. I think I will have to do this again for every grow, but hopefully no more



Bottom part of air duct. Its going to have to support alot of bud!


Here are the pll bulbs (3x 36W bulbs), mounted with my own reflector that i made. A wire hook supports them at the fan end, and the wire connector at the other
You can read instructions for how I made it here:http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=114922&highlight=pll+reflector+shapes



I wanted a bubbler reservoir that would use the space efficiently. Finding the right size plastic tub proved fruitless so I got carried away a bit and built one, rather badly, out of acrylic. Its extremely strong and won't leak, is soundproofing and has the added benefit of being able to observe your roots like you would fish in an aquarium. The top is also nice as strong and perfect for building a frame for the screen. I proved no experience is needed to do this, anyone can. I used 1cm thick acrylic from a local supplier but its available on certain auction sites.





My plants were a little sick. This is the second batch of seedlings. First time i had a mucus slime outbreak - the water went chalky and plants basically died -only for it to happen again on my next seedlings. in the bottom left is what i cut from what was left from the first seedlings and they have sprouted healthy new roots.



Reading about this snot slime that plagued my grow, I learnt the cure is beneficial bacteria. I am fortunate to have a pond with a large biofilter that keeps the water crystal clear despite alot of fish waste. Knowing the magic of my pond biofilter I was sure this was the cure, not H202, not toxic chemicals, but beneficial bacteria. The blue wirey stuff lets water flow through very well but also has massive surface area for the bacteria to colonise. Both of these are very imporant. I simply took some of my filter medium from my pond biofilter and added about a cup of pond water to help it too. Its made a tremendous difference in only 2 days.









Without a doubt the best airstone i found is a hagen air curtain. It really blocks out the noise of the pump. With other airstones I tried, the buzzing of the pump was actually coming from the air emitted by the airstone. Its even quieter when you also add a non return valve and it just sounds like fizzy water. I run 4m of airline to an airpump i have suspended on elastic bands and the result is blissful silence.



the pll ballasts are shoved in an old dvd player case





Hope you enjoyed the show. To be continued...

Color me very impressed. I'd have suggested opaquing the tank for anti-slime purposes but, your bio filter seems to have taken care of that. Are you saying that filter came straight from the pond? I'd have recommended against that but, how do you argue with results like yours?

Check this out microRU - Mad Russian Micro Genius
Someone of your skill level will really be able to appreciate it.

Hi freezerboy. First of all an apology to you and everyone else for the poor quality of my photos- I'm sure the camera is decent enough but its hard when each photo has to be less than 100kb plus i'm not good or enthusiastic about taking the pictures.

The acrylic is light proofed all the way round. All but the facing panel is covered in that foil tape, and a mylar sticky blanket goes over the face that i only remove to have a look at the roots. Its still lightproof. To cover the whole clear res would have been a waste of a great opportunity to get a good view of the workings and health of the roots.

Yes about 5% of that water is from my ponds biofilter. The blue mat stuff is a special filter medium developed by the japanese for koi ponds that i put into the ponds biofilter for 2 days before transfering it to the res. What i didnt bargain for was the little creatures that climbed out of the filter mat! A few hours later i saw two baby snails skidding along my airstone (more like and airtube) munching up my dreaded slime. Never would I have thought of putting them in, but ill keep on eye on what they get up through my glass window! They are in my seriously good books right now

Very nice!! That is some quality work....Love to see the PL-L's catching on, lets see what we can do with them....

Wow man, this is some serious innovation and engineering for a pc grow. I love seeing people put good work into small projects, because the rewards are modest in quantity but outstanding in quality.

Ill be following this one.

keep growing,
-AP KUSH

Ok boys, looks like things are getting dialed in!











A funny thing happenned when i looked at my roots yesterday



I saw the snail had moved onto the most slimey root in the whole tub and was leaving it clean. What a friggin dude. The story has a sad ending though because i bumped EC up to 1.0 at the time and not long after i saw a dead looking snail on the bottom. that photo shows how much the roots have grown in a day!, at that rate there will be no room for water soon.

AP and Aero, thanks for the bloody excellent comments

Awesome! So glad to see those 36w lamps fitting like that. Wicked keen

Can't wait to see it full up and how well that reflector penetrates.

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ooh, looking mighty fine there!!

I'm hoping to get something similar running for my next grow!

looking forward to seeing them bloom!
peace,
T

awesome looking grow cant wait to see the results. is pll a type of light? where are they and how much are they

i love the fact that you have snails living in your res in order to control algae. That must be the smartes, ecological approach i have seen in a while. As long as they don't die and decompose, you got yourself your own little helper in there hahaha

Keep up the good work!

hydro, jonk, tee, smokey, rave - they are all most excellent comments. noctua fans are very good! But you must get the silicon strips too. Without them the whole pc case was resonating and the noise was really pretty unnaceptable. Smokey check out Hydro-Soil's thread on remote balast cfl for the definative guide on pll.

To sum up today in two words -very frustrating. I had a feeling something wasn't quite right with the heat emmision of the lights but today i knew i realy had to do something about it. Check out the burn on the new leaves.

I believe its not just heat from the lamps causing this but also the wind burn from my ventilation - a combination of moisture stripping factors that the leaves cant replace fast enough. It wouldnt matter how much ventilation i had cooling the bulbs, the radiative heat emitted is too high and u cant cool radtiative heat with convective cooling - plus the wind would help to dry out the leaves faster! This is my theory and based on my experience so far.

I had to install a glass pane beneath the bulbs, but how to support it in a pc case? Its not a simple as nailing in a few suporting nails into a plywood cab. I had to think.








On the other side i have one of those L brackets supporting the glass and to make sure the ventilation passes through the lamp fixture and not over the plants, i stuck a clear piece of acrylic with double sided tape, verticaly, on the vent duct. The glass shop was closed and i had to butcher a picture frame - the sacrifices we make huh - and as u can see i made an absolute horror show cutting it to length. Ill be getting some new glass cut for me!




Now i wait for the next problem, and i think i know what it might be. Today i noticed there was a slight, how can i put it, "green" smell coming out of the exhaust - only when i stick my nose in the fan but this is not good.

Ill give them a day or two and switch the lights.

Rave420, well its not smart when it was a pure accident - but hey some of the best discoveries are made that way. Sadly he was floating and dead today. I can only speculate on the cause but my guess is the nutrient mix is too salty for him.

Hey uhhhh..... Ya might want to flip to 12/12 already if you haven't yet.

That's a tiny screen for that many plants, I can see they're already going to over fill it. Once the stretch is finished you'll probably have to chop off some stuff on the edges or you'll get too much moisture building up.



Sooner than you thought, eh?


And yeah.... definitely get that odor situation taken care of. Odor has killed almost as many grows as jilted women.

hehe, thanks hydro, i think your right to be concerned for my lack of space. They are from seed tho and i have an amazing ability to pick male seeds. Im gonna be doing some extreme training no doubt.

OK, I will switch the lights off proper for the first time this morning. Want to keep lights off during the day.

Odor, well its not a problem yet and ive need a break for a few days!

D.I.trY said:

hehe, thanks hydro, i think your right to be concerned for my lack of space. They are from seed tho and i have an amazing ability to pick male seeds. Im gonna be doing some extreme training no doubt.

OK, I will switch the lights off proper for the first time this morning. Want to keep lights off during the day.

Odor, well its not a problem yet and ive need a break for a few days!

Click to expand...

Enjoy your break

Make odor your first priority when you come back though. She's not a happy woman to go cheap on, best to do her right the first time. Odor can crop up super powerful overnight. Just depends on the strain.

Ok folks, day 2 of 12/12:

the grop tips are carefully bent under the screen. If only these were female clones.









In two weeks time i will have some males. Now I would really like to know how can i collect pollen and polinate some bottom bud sites in about 4 weeks. I am thinking about cutting back a male to one bud site and a couple of leaves and putting a clear bag around it with lots of elastic bands. Once there is pollen in the bag i will cut it and remove it outside and collect the pollen and freeze it for use two weeks later - what do you think, will this work?

day 5

I got a very keen leaf trimmer. It could trim a whole of one of those plants in one sitting if i'm not careful! Damn critter!



I fixed the smell problem by using 6 layers of the carbon cooker filter stuff instead of the 2 i was using! I think it restricts airflow less than carbon pellets and its useful stuff to the microgrower.

Looking good, the lights are blowin those plants up!!!

looking really great there!! can't wait to see that case in bloom already!

thankyou kind sirs. I am having to seperate the lights with some glass or the plant frazzles even at 12 cm away. I am going to see if a pc fan blowing from right to left over the bulbs will allow me to ditch the glass.