Mr. Micro's PC3 : Big Box Lazy Organic

[Mr_Micro]

At this point I think the only thing I can say is, "What the hell!?"...
It's day 17 of 12/12 from seed for the soil plants and the pictures say it all.














As you can tell it seems like all my soil plants have either stopped growing entirely or are beginning to die. The only thing I can think at this point is that something in my FFOF soil mix has gone bad and thats whats killing my plants. It's now day 17 of 12/12 from seed and the plants are no bigger than they were on day 3, so something is certainly wrong here.

On the up side of things though...





The Sensi Seeds Skunk #1 seed that I threw in the 1 quart DWC tub sprouted yesterday, so today is officially day 2 of 12/12 from seed for the hydro plant.
I've pretty much accepted that my soil plants are doomed at this point, since I've been unable to figure out what the problem is I doubt I'll be able to save them. I'm afraid soil has just never been something I was very good at, gonna have to try coco next time.

But anyway, based on what happens with the DWC hydro plant I should be able to determine if the problem with the soil plants is in the soil mix or if the problem is something else. The hydro plant receives the same water as the soil plants, is in the same case, and was started in the same type of rapid rooter plug so the only other variable is the soil itself. If the hydro plant lives and does fine than I'll know the problem was the soil, and if it dies too than... well, your guess is as good as mine!

 

[Mr_Micro]

Announcement! :

After a little brain storming and a few talks with the wife it's official, Mr. Micro is moving on up to a 150w grow tent in the closet!

Sooo... I honestly won't be needing this 70 watt PC case anymore and I'm a bit short on funds for my next project. Which means that if anyone in the US would like to buy this PC case than $260 shipped to your door gets you a very nice professionally built PC case! It's about the biggest PC case around, has only been used for this one grow, and cost somewhere in the area of $500 plus countless hours of time to build. So I think $260 shipped to anywhere in the US is a pretty straight deal for it.

It will come with everything shown in the first post in this thread with the exception of the carbon filter and DWC air pump. It will be throughly sanitized before shipping so no worries about the package being sniffed by dogs or anything of that nature.


Anyhoo, if you want it than just shoot me a PM about it! It will be about a week before I can ship it out since I have to wait for my new grow tent and whatnot to arrive so I can transfer my plants to it before packing up the PC case to send off to it's new home.


So... who wants a nice shiny new 100% lightproof 70w HPS stealth growbox?

 

[RudieJ]

Oooooh, very good deal.

 

[Mr_Micro]

Yeah, I think it's a pretty killer deal too

Anyhoo, I decided to make a last ditch effort to save my soil plants tonight. Seeds are just too expensive these days to let your seedlings die if you think there's a chance you might be able to save em right?

So, since I was unable to figure out what the heck the problem was (although I'm 99% certain it was something that had gone bad in the FFOF soil) I decided to give them an emergency transplant to DWC hydro!

But as they say, "You can't save em' all". I unfortunately only had four 3" net cups on hand and my 1 gallon DWC tub couldn't realistically accommodate more than 4 plants. So I decided to let the sickly looking Skunk #1 that was grown in soil go and transplanted the rest to hydro.










So now I've got two Skunk #1 on the right and two Northern Lights #2 on the left. The two NL are the two plants that sprouted from the single seed (one of them is kind of a runt) and the Skunk #1 in the back is one of the original soil ones and the one in the front is the recently sprouted DWC one.

Well, that's about all for now! I'll be keeping my fingers crossed that these little seedlings are able to pull through and grow properly now that they're in a medium that I'm more comfortable with. It's now day 18 of 12/12 from seed, so I think I'll update again on day 22 or 23, since I should know if the seedlings are going to pull through or not by then

 

[jrw]

Mr. Micro is moving on up to a 150w grow tent in the closet!

Might wanna change name to Mr. Mini then

Great news and good luck on your new project!

 

[Mr_Micro]

LOL Yeah, not quite so micro anymore once I hit 150w I think

But hey, I'm going with the Secret Jardin DR40 tent, and that's the smallest tent made (15.74" wide x 15.74" long x 47.24" high, or 40x40x120cm if you rather) so it's still micro as far as grow tents go!

Admittedly I am having mixed feelings about it. Part of me is really stoked to be moving up a real professional system with an expensive grow tent, pre-assembled 150w FloraLux HPS with those neat YoYo light hangers, a 4" Elicent exhaust fan, fan speed controller, Elf carbon filter, duct muffler, 6" circulation fan, active digitally controlled Co2 system, and all those other neat little gadgets and toys that the big boys use. And to be able to fit 4 full grown plants in my growbox without having to train them in any way as long as I go 12/12 from seed... wow... that just kinda blows my mind! LOL

But then there's the other part of me that is nervous as hell about the whole thing!
I mean, I am in an apartment but I probably don't have a whole lot to be concerned about since it will be hidden away in a closet with a locking door and it should be virtually silent from the outside (based on the tests I've done putting my PC cases in the closet and running them).
I only have visitors 3 or 4 times a year and the landlord has never once stopped by nor have I had a single inspection in the many years I've lived here.

So it should be pretty darn safe... but I still can't help but be worried about it! I've been doing stealth PC case grows for quite a long time so moving up to a big not so stealthy grow tent kinda freaks me out a little. In actuality it's probably safer than the PC case I have going right now, since it will be locked away in closet out of anyone's view, but still... I think I'm just being paranoid



In any case though, I already got the tent and most of the gadgets on the way. Just waiting to get a little more cash before I buy the exhaust fan, carbon filter, and Co2 setup.
So yeah, should be really exciting! Not to mention a heck of a lot easier and less time consuming to put together than all these PC cases I've been building for the past few years

 

[rcknrllmothrfck]

Have you found out why your girls are so small? Mine are at 2 weeks exactly, and they've all started they're 5 set of true leaves. This confuses me.

 

[Mr_Micro]

I really have no idea rcknrll, my best guess is that something in the soil went bad. If you check the previous page you can see that I did an emergency transplant to DWC hydro last night in an attempt to save them.
I don't know if it's going to work or not but I'm thinking I should know within a few days if they're going to make it or not.

After this whole experience I just threw out my bag of FFOF and my lime and perlite, I'm done messing around with soil. I'm just gonna stick with hydro methods (and probably try coco on my next grow) since that's what I'm really comfortable with. Soil just isn't for me I don't think, too much guess work.

But anyhoo, for those who missed this post on the last page...

Announcement! :

After a little brain storming and a few talks with the wife it's official, Mr. Micro is moving on up to a 150w grow tent in the closet!

Sooo... I honestly won't be needing this 70 watt PC case anymore and I'm a bit short on funds for my next project. Which means that if anyone in the US would like to buy this PC case than $260 shipped to your door gets you a very nice professionally built PC case! It's about the biggest PC case around, has only been used for this one grow, and cost somewhere in the area of $500 plus countless hours of time to build. So I think $260 shipped to anywhere in the US is a pretty straight deal for it.

It will come with everything shown in the first post in this thread with the exception of the carbon filter and DWC air pump. It will be throughly sanitized before shipping so no worries about the package being sniffed by dogs or anything of that nature.


Anyhoo, if you want it than just shoot me a PM about it! It will be about a week before I can ship it out since I have to wait for my new grow tent and whatnot to arrive so I can transfer my plants to it before packing up the PC case to send off to it's new home.


So... who wants a nice shiny new 100% lightproof 70w HPS stealth growbox?

Yup, the PC case is up for sale! Any takers?

 

[Mr_Micro]

Through the magic of SWC hydro, I command you my little ones, rise from your grave!!









It's been 4 days since the transplant to hydro and the soil plants that were almost completely yellow and wilted not too long are returning to a normal healthy green color and starting to sprout new growth.

So I don't know exactly what was wrong with that soil mix, but that FFOF mix was definitely the culprit for my plant problems here. Now that they've been transplanted to hydro they're getting their color back and normal growth is resuming.

I'll update this thread again with some more pics in a week or so once they've had time to fully recover and get some new growth going, but I just wanted to let you all know that the soil was the problem and it looks like they're going to pull through and hopefully provide me with a good grow from here on out.

Peace be with you my friends

 

[rcknrllmothrfck]

That's awesome, I'm glad none of the girls were lost!

 

[jrw]

Oh yeah! Great rescue

 

[Mr_Micro]

Yeah! That was a close call for sure!
I think if I would have left them in the soil for another 2 or 3 days I don't think they would have survived the transplant.
But, they're doing better and better each day and hopefully within the next week or two I should see some good growth and hopefully find out which ones are girls and which are boys

But... but but... by the time I know their sex I think they'll have found a more spacious home with some much nicer amenities.
I won't say too much just yet, as it will be another few weeks until their new home is ready, but here's a tiny little preview of some of the things to come :wink:

 

[Mr_Micro]

Hey Jeff!

Wow... I'm really glad I could be part of what inspired you to start growing your own! That's just... wow, I almost lack the words to describe how good it feels to find out you inspired someone like that. May you have great success and great safety in your growing for years to come my friend


And now onto the grow update...


As some of you may have noticed, the "PC Case For Sale!" ad has been removed from my signature. The long and the short of it is that the PC case is no longer for sale... which is because my 150w HPS DR40 tent setup was a flop. Even with 140cfm of ventilation temps in the tent were way too high, the tent leaked a lot of light from the zippers, and the worst part of it was how noisy it was.
There was just no way I could pull off a stealth grow in a tent like that even with it hidden in my closet. So I'm now going about returning all the items I purchased for the tent to get a refund on em.

The only non-returnable item is the HydroFarm 0.2-2 CO2 setup, so if anyone wants that than I'll take $100 for it shipped to anywhere in the US. Pretty good deal I think considering it's brand new and retails for about $150!

So after all the planning and set up it looks like I'll be sticking to PC cases from here on out... which actually isn't too bad since I don't smoke very often and I'm very happy with my current PC case



Anyhoo, time for the grow update!

It's now day 27 of this grow, 5 days since the last picture update, and it seems my plants have sprung back from their soil induced trauma very well! They're starting to grow lots of roots, additional leaf sets, branch out a bit, and everything is looking just peachy.








Skunk #1 (A)



Skunk #1 (B)



Northern Lights #2 (A)



Northern Lights #2 (B)





Also, I've been doing a little work on my PC case over the past few days and still have a bit of work left to do on it.

First off I remoted the air pump to the back of the case and suspended it from an eye hook screwed into the back of the case. To keep it quiet I wrapped the air pump in 4 layers of quilt batting and secured it with foil tape. That way no matter what the pump leans or bumps against it won't make any vibration noise. I was careful to leave an open section for the air intake though, so the whole thing isn't completely covered.

Next I decided to replace that rather shoddy looking duct tape wrapped white dryer vent ducting with some proper aluminum ducting.
After that I removed the light trap from the light cooling fan. I haven't gotten around to building a new light trap yet but I should within the next few days.


Lastly, I got a new air distribution device for my res because I got tired of replacing air stones every few weeks and I worried about my plants suffering if an airstone died on me and I didn't notice it soon enough to replace it right away.

So I bought one of these "Elite" brand air sticks. It's a long plastic tube with lots of tiny little holes in it to release air through. I cut it to fit the length of my res, put the cap on the end to seal off the end of the tube, attached it to the bottom with the included suction cups (which actually hold really well!) and voila!






I think it should be a nice way to evenly distribute a lot of air bubbles in my res without having to worry about anything clogging or needing to be replaced during the grow. From what I understand I should be able to easily go years without ever needing to clean or replace the tubing, which for $10 is worth the peace of mind it gives I think


Anyhoo, that's all for now! I'll continue to add onto the PC case here and there with some little modifications (I have quite a few left to do actually) and I'll update this thread at least once a week with new pics of the plants and new details of the grow box modifications as they happen.


Thanks a lot for tuning into my thread and until next time,
stay safe and grow smart my friends

 

[rcknrllmothrfck]

I hate to say it Mr. M, but I'm kind of glad to see you're sticking with PC cases. The way you've crafted your cases inspired me to build my case, and I'm happy with the results. My guy at the hydro shop doesn't seem to think my set-up will work, or anything in such a small scale will work, but every night the girls go to sleep I'm one step closer to proving him wrong!

 

[ganjaPeople]

well, sorry to hear about the tent mr micro... but it seems thaht you're stuck with micro grows, which is not a bad thing cause you became kinda of pc micro grow guru, man, a lot of people are waiting to see what you'll do next and it felt kinda crappy thaht mr micro became the mr tent guy... anyway, i'm still sorry about the tent, it sounded like a really good idea. and what really tickeld my heart is to see that the babys are lookin and feelin good in that little jacuzzi you built for them... i'll be back checkin on how the baby's are doin' in a few days,

until then, good luck and grow smart mr micro, glad to see you back!

 

[Mr_Micro]

Thanks for all the kind words everyone!

To be totally honest, I too am really happy to be sticking with PC cases now. I know I can grow some wonderful plants in these little boxes and the they're stealthy enough that I can feel totally at ease knowing that if the landlord or maintenance people ever decide to do a suprise inspection I'll have nothing to worry about at all.

Maybe my current setup isn't quite as stealthy as I'd like, but later this week I'm going to be building a false wall on the back of my desk that all the stuff on the back of the PC case will be recessed into, so no matter how you look at it my growbox will look just like a normal PC case

Besides, since I only smoke a few times a month the harvests I pull from a PC case are more than enough to supply me for 6 months at a time. Admittedly I was pretty sad that my tent project had to be canceled at first, but now I'm actually quite happy to be sticking with my PC case.


And oh yeah...

what really tickeld my heart is to see that the babys are lookin and feelin good in that little jacuzzi you built for them

LOL! I like that, I think I'm going to start calling SCW hydro the "jacuzzi method" from here on out. Thats great man!
And yeah, I'm really thrilled to see that they've finally got their sea legs and are starting to grow nice and healthy. I think this should be a pretty fun and smooth grow from here on out.
It's just really exciting to check on them every day and see how much they've grown, and it shouldn't be more than another week or so before we start seeing signs of sex, so I'll really be looking forward to seeing how many girls I get this time around!


Thanks again everyone! Stay safe, grow smart, and remember...
The mouse police never sleep

 

[Mr_Micro]

Hey guys and gals!

It's only been 2 days since my last update but I've got some news to share with you. In the past 2 days two of my plants have shown sex!


For reference, the 2 plants on the right are the Sensi Seeds Skunk #1 and the two plants on the left are the Dutch Passion Northern Lights #2 (Oasis).




So one of the Skunk #1 turned out to be a female (the best looking one fortunately!) and one of the Northern Lights #2 turned out to be male. I'm really hoping the other NL is female, but only time will tell on that one.

I tried to get a good closeup shot of the first white hairs on the female Skunk #1 but the macro mode on my camera was being a bit finicky today so this was about the best I could get...




And finally, with a heavy heart I culled the male NL and moved the other NL that has yet to show sex into the spot the male was in to give it a bit better light exposure.



It may sound strange but still get sad every time I have to kill one of my plants... perhaps on my next grow I'll build another small cab to keep the males in to collect pollen and start making my own seeds. I'd love to become self sufficient like that


In other news, yesterday I decided to remove the new plastic air delivery tubing in the res and I replaced it with the old 6" blue airstone. Why you ask? Well... as nice as this new tubing was it made noise like nobody's business! I mean it seriously sounded like there was a small team of construction workers running jackhammers underneath my desk. It was so noisy I could barely think!
So I think for the time being I'll just have to stick with the blue airstones, since they do put out a good amount of air and they're almost silent compared to that Elite plastic air delivery tubing.


Well, that's all for now guys and gals. I'll update again when the other 2 plants show sex or when I finish some of the modifications I'm in the process doing on my PC case, whichever comes first.

Until then, stay safe and grow smart my friends

 

[rcknrllmothrfck]

Wishing I would have gone 12/12 Mr. Micro, I'm still waiting to see whether or not I have girls. At 25 days, 11 of 12/12.

 

[Panconqueso]

Hi there Mr. Micro, very nice work you got there, I am great fan of it

I've been reading and learning a lot of your follow-ups, in fact I did my own micro machine based on your model.

By the way, i´m not a native english speaker (or writer in this case) so my grammar isn't very good jajaja

Well, congratulacion and keep on !

Cheers !

 

[ripOG]

Hey Mr. Micro, I enjoyed reading through your thread man Not sure if you saw mine... I had some FFOF-related issues toward the end of this last PC grow as well. And I know exactly how you feel about soil. After 1 grow I'm switching back to hydro. I need to be able to know the exact pH and EC, I'm tired of this soil monkey business!

You should definitely try to make a little cab or isolation chamber for your guys if you can. I used my desk in this last grow and I managed to procure a bunch of seeds...Hashberry x Satori ("Sashimi"), Chyrstal x Chrystal, and HB x Chrystal Now I only wish I had more space to grow 'em out!

Here's a shot of the boys in the back of the desk. I had a 42 mounted vertically in back behind the top drawer....




The males are very pretty in their own right, but the best part is that you can chop them as soon as you get your pollen, so they generally finish about 40-50 days before you harvest the girls