Stealthy micro grow. first timer

[Interantus]

Hello fellow users!
I have planned my first grow for several months by now and finally the day arrived! If i'm not mistaking, i'm the first estonian, to write a grow diary here?
Well anyway, straight to business:

I'm going to use skunk seeds (don't the rememeber witch ones, i lost the package :/ ). I use those seeds, coz they came free with the main stuff(big bud and white widow) and i wouldn't feel so sorry if i mess something up.

The main idea was to make a chipboard box, witch would fit into my wardrobe. But because of the small surface area inside, i decided to make the box tall and two-layered, containing two airtight rooms.


the beginning:

Both rooms will have 2 PC fans

Then i decided, that naah, 2 layered box is too much of a handful for a first timer, so i cut the box in half. The result is looks like this, safe and sound in my wardrobe. And if you ask, how i would fitted the upper part in? - i would have taken out the upper shelves.

and now the stealthy part comes in:

I use 2 120mm PC fans on 5V. Ventilation intake and output look the same,
basically those pipes just come out the back and end behind the curatin

I keep the PC power supply inside, to reduce the noise and help the air circulation. At the moment i only use 2 23w CFL's, but i'm going to add 1 extra. I'll only grow 1-2 plants at a time, so 69W is enough i think. I don't have any filters yet, so i'll come back to that issue later.




And now to the green part:

week 1(i have holes under those bottles):

week 2:

week 2,5:

week 3:

Every advice and point-out is welcome

 

[Farsinchia]

hey interantus nice lil box you got goin there. but what are the dimensions of it? have you thought of getting a 70w hps security light for flowering should boost your yeild up but good goin
gl and keep growin

 

[Interantus]

hey interantus nice lil box you got goin there. but what are the dimensions of it? have you thought of getting a 70w hps security light for flowering should boost your yeild up but good goin
gl and keep growin

Thank you Farsinchia
the dimensions are: 43x47x85 (cm)
And i haven't thought of getting hps, is it really that much better? Hps has better spectrum but takes more energy and i've seen people getting awsome results also with cfl's also


and now to the main problem:

HOW bad is the odor going to be? Let's say in a 10 point scale, compared to bunch of roses in the vase? What happens, if i use some sort of odor neutralizer, during the bloom phase, instead of carbon filters? (those PC fans aren't really powerful on 5V and higher volts give too much noise)
I've seen different products: spray, granuls, this small electronic thing, that runs on batteries etc.
The thing is, i'm living with parents , so i need the odor as low as possible.

 

[Interantus]

The problem with filter is now solved. I made a carbon filter/pile of duct tape, hope it works



materials (didn't use those white plastic tubelike things):

some rough edges there, but whatever:

covered sharp edges with duct tape:

pulled nylon over it:

second layer of metal net:

second layer of nylon and filled it up with carbon (800g)
and added some more magic tape:

covered it all with some fabric:

and here it is, behind the wardrobe:

as you can see, the filter has 2 intakes, one on both side:

and safely hidden behind the curtain :

 

[Interantus]

week4:

 

[mixin]

everything is looking good!

 

[707Corridor]

Everything looks legit. Keep it up. I would drop the light closer to the canopy if you already havent. With my 4*4ft T5 veg light i usually have the fixture about 2-3 inches from the canopy. Makes the node spacing closer together IMO.

 

[Interantus]

thank you
i lowered lamps now, i never thought that lamp height had effect on nod spacing , i had the lamp so high because my plants were bending towards the center of the light, and that wasn't pretty . One plant even fell over (leaves were big and pedicle was thin)

 

[Tonatiuh]

lookin good man honestly im suprised how good they are doin yo.you have that lttle box dialed in real nice.good chit.peace-T-

 

[Interantus]

Once again, a weekly update
upper vent runs now on 12v and lower on 5v


Also i have a little worry about one plant. Look at those 2 monsters at the front, they grow like maniacs, but look at the puny one at back. What's wrong with you plant?? Start growing!
At first, those smaller plants were in front and bigger ones were at the back. So i thought that maybe those 2 grew quicker because of the direct fresh airflow, which blew right on them. I shuffled them around and put those smaller ones to the back. Still, those two grow fast and the other two (actually one of those smaller is doing quite OK) just don't. Look at those leaves: light green, slim, curved (like a half-pipe or smth, at this picture they aren't, but sometimes they are). :/
Is this normal, like, perhaps just the characteristics of those plants, just like in nature or are those bigger ones suffocating them somehow? They get plenty on light, water, they have room, i treat them they same way as i treated those bigger ones, when they were the same size.

Oh, and also, i have used this fertilizer since the beginning, it's probably not the wisest choice, but we don't have those fancy-pants fertilizers anywhere here and i'm not gonna order also , so i think that it can't hurt, right

http://austega.com/gifted/characteristics.htm

 

[greenpenguin]

Interantus,
Nice microgrow, I wouldn't worry too much about the different growth speeds of the plants, that's just how things go. Some plant's just grow more vigorously than others.

When do you plan on flipping to 12/12? Remember you're doing a microgrow and you're growing a sativa so don't wait too long, there will be vertical growth in the 12/12 flip and I'm guessing the flower period might be around 7-9 weeks (dunno you'll have to check out other skunk threads and see when they harvest), there's plenty of time to grow and not so much room.

 

[Interantus]

thank you greenpenguin , switched to 12/12, let's see what happens

 

[Interantus]

A week has passed and they haven't shown their sex and keep gaining height. Things are getting critical caz they're out of room, growing against the walls, suffocating each other etc.

these two pictures were done yesterday:

And this one was done today. I had to break the reflector and i'm pretty sure i have to do some serious reconstruction about the box, or they will grow awry against the ceiling.

so yea, i'm officially screwed :S

 

[greenpenguin]

It usually takes 1.5 - 2 weeks after flipping to 12/12 for sex to show. I'm not a microgrower but from what I've read around here most micro growers flip to 12/12 waaay early like 2nd or 3rd week. I'd say you'd better either make a bigger grow room, or start training. It doesn't look like low stress training is an option with the number of plants you have in such a small space so high stress training might be the only option. You may want to consider topping your plants to a lower height if you can't make a bigger room. In the future you may want to consider LST or SCRoG for your micro grows.

 

[bostonblazer7]

will you change your lights when you go 12/12? and what kind of 23 watt bulbs are those? is that the actual wattage or the equivalent? I would also like to see how your exhaust works. If i am correct, both fans blow air through the hoses into the carbon filter? Sorry so many questions, i am getting very very very interested! haha!!

 

[Interantus]

i'm already 1 week+3 days on 12/12 and 1 of them (female) has shown it's sex
i don't plan to change lights and i'm using Philips Economy 23W/E27 (https://www.hurt.com.pl/?i=2940&o=shpp)
i'm going to make the box a bit taller, coz isn't tapping and training bad for them, since they already showing sex soon and stuff?

 

[greenpenguin]

High stress training will definitely stress the plants but mostly it will just stunt grown temporarily. You're already out of space and you're still very early into flower with 5-7 more weeks to go so I wouldn't be afraid of it. If you're going to increase the size of your cabinet I'd say, find your females and kill your males to make more room and do some minor LST, it's never to late to LST and LST will NOT stunt growth or anything.. it's LOW stress so it wont hurt your plants at all.

Either way it doesn't hurt to give yourself more grow space. Good luck man!

 

[Interantus]

thank youu
by LST, you mean the tactic, when you step by step tie the plant down(circularly for instance). I dunno if i'm eable to do so, stems are quite stiff already

 

[greenpenguin]

Interantus, Yes that is what I mean by LST but obviously you've grown too high to do a full on LST. What I was saying is just tying the very top of your plant over so it's pointed down to reduce the auxins being sent down to the rest of your plant. The auxins tell the lower parts of the plants to stop growing, if you can reduce the auxins the lower branches should start growing and the top should slow down. Right now your sativa is shooting for the sky as it's designed to do. The only problem with LST is it will consume horizontal space so it's up to you to judge what space you have to work with. BTW, which one of your plants threw female flowers? Pictures?

 

[mikeyray]

Nice setup... i'll be watching the progress