First Grow, AK-48, 5-gallon DWC, 400W

[sneaky101]

Grats on getting the cab set up. You know about the bulb you are using now so we can move on. Looks like you will want to watch out for the weight of the little girl. She looks a bit top heavy for that little bity leg of hers. She is trying to stretch to light that is not there and if this is the only light she gets it won't take long for her to get 10". I agree it is probably a bit too early for a HPS light, but it's pretty much all you got. Fire that bad boy up and see what happens. Just have it up as high as it can go till she gets 3-5 nodes. And yes, those little yellow leaves at the bottom will fall off, no biggy, they are just the pre-leaves (forget the actual name). The next set or 3 leaves will probably fall off or end up too small and you will prune them.

Good choice on the bubble bucket, I like them pretty well. I would suggest a scrog. And 50g in a scrog is a very....very low estimate if you do it right. I would think, with your space and a good scrog, you could get 5-8oz easily. I got about 6-7oz of bubbledust scrogged in a 20x36inch cab and about 4-5oz another round LST'd. I know it's a different strain, but you have more space than I did. But, you can't be disappointed with low expectations. My cab temps varied because the 400watter was not air cooled. They were anywhere from 87-95ish degrees. I had no water cooler and did nothing to prevent the water temp to rise. But once your baby girl gets some size on her, her fan leaves will shade the rez and shouldn't be much of a problem.

As far as your water level and nute ?'s....Until she gets quite a bit bigger, you won't notice much of a drop in your nute level. Just check the levels every couple or 3 days and top off with regular water and ph it to around 5.8-6.2 and you will be fine. Once a week test nute strength and increase slightly. I changed my water/nutes out completely every 2 weeks. It's nice to have a 2nd bucket ready to go so you only have to change out the air hose and put the plant in the new, clean bucket with the nute solution ready. Once you are in full bloom she will probably use 1+ gallons/day of water. It looked like you were using the drops to test the ph...if you can swing it, invest in a digi pen ph tester and if you don't already have it, a tds meter too. You might be able to get away without them, but I would have ruined a couple by too strong of nutes without them.

Again, grats on your cab, hope everything goes well and if you have any questions, feel free.

 

[Schleep]

Awesome advice in there

So is it safe to say that if I had 440 PPM on Sunday, and it's still 400 PPM this Sunday, that it's OK to just leave the nutes and res unchanged and just adjust the pH and top it off accordingly?

 

[bendoslendo]

He could use the HID yeah, just make sure it way back and move it down slow. Just a bit of overkill wattage-wise you know? Not going to get 16x more growth with 16x more watts. Until the plant can use the energy your throwing at it, I'd just as soon throw less energy.

I don't have issues with seedlings under HPS when they start that way. Just when moving from fluorescent to HPS.

Yes your cotyledons will brown and fall off, no sweat. I'd still be concerned with your pH though, still too low. Do you not have any pH up?

 

[sneaky101]

yes, that would be fine schleep, but the more water she uses, the chances are your ppm will go up. Not positive about that but pretty sure. I guess it's all relative.

I've even read where people don't change their nutes till its time to switch over to bloom. To each their own. But my first round in bubble buckets I did change my nutes every week. Waste of time, energy, and $$ in nutes imho. I just check in there when I top off to make sure there is no unwanted visitors. Slime...whatever, but bucket change outs when the nutes get changed out helps eliminate any extra stuff that may grow in your rez.

I may be wrong, but I thought HPS lights would cause a plant to stretch more in veg, that's why the MH lamps were better and why it is important to look at the bulb temps for flos.....6500k and 3000k. Anyone who could confirm or deny this would be great. Anyway, this is the reason I got a MH conversion bulb for my HPS ballast. Otherwise, why bother with 2 different lamps at all?

 

[Chef BeanStock]

Here's my 2 pennies...

If you can get that light 48 inches from the top of that plant, turn it on. You will notice a significant difference in growth rate, and nutrient uptake. Don't be scared. If you can control the ambient temperature in the cabinet and the radiating heat from the HPS, you have it covered. Personally, I start seedlings out at 48 inches from a 1000 hps, mostly because I have the room, but also because the spectrum and intensity is so much higher quality from an HID.


Locate your air pump somewhere other than the cabinet, obviously in a cooler place. This will help in two ways. First, the air that is pumping through the root mass will be a lot cooler than the cabinet temp, ultimately keeping the water temperature cooler than the ambient temperature in your cabinet. Second, it will provide a (hopefully) second source of oxygen for the roots. My current method is to regulate my reservoir temp (70 gal, and I live in the fucking desert, 100 degrees last week) by hanging the air pump in front of the air conditioner if I need it to be cooler, or putting it in a cabinet if its stable. Checked it last night, 19C, too cold...

One more thing. Don't try to save money by not changing your reservoir. Stick by the 100% addback theory. This AK48 will use up everything that res has to offer in a matter of days. Obviously not at the seedling stage, but wait 3 weeks until she shows you pistils. The lucas formula won't provide enough for her during veg. Too much N, not enough P for the transition. I can go on...

1-1-1 means one part each grow-micro-bloom. Provide her with a full spectrum of macro and micro nutrients. Maybe cut back to 25% of the bloom once you reach sexual maturity.

The most important thing, take care of that root mass, and strict management of the temperature and nutrients in your bucket. They're... sensitive sometimes.

Anyway, good luck.

oh yeah, ph 5.5 in veg, 5.9 in flower


PEACE!

 

[Schleep]

I may be wrong, but I thought HPS lights would cause a plant to stretch more in veg, that's why the MH lamps were better and why it is important to look at the bulb temps for flos.....6500k and 3000k. Anyone who could confirm or deny this would be great. Anyway, this is the reason I got a MH conversion bulb for my HPS ballast. Otherwise, why bother with 2 different lamps at all?

I have both bulbs like you, but I can't remember which one I have in there right now. I keep reading online that MH = veg, and HPS = flower. I'll stick to this unless someone tells me otherwise.

Here's my 2 pennies...

If you can get that light 48 inches from the top of that plant, turn it on. You will notice a significant difference in growth rate, and nutrient uptake. Don't be scared. If you can control the ambient temperature in the cabinet and the radiating heat from the HPS, you have it covered. Personally, I start seedlings out at 48 inches from a 1000 hps, mostly because I have the room, but also because the spectrum and intensity is so much higher quality from an HID.


Locate your air pump somewhere other than the cabinet, obviously in a cooler place. This will help in two ways. First, the air that is pumping through the root mass will be a lot cooler than the cabinet temp, ultimately keeping the water temperature cooler than the ambient temperature in your cabinet. Second, it will provide a (hopefully) second source of oxygen for the roots. My current method is to regulate my reservoir temp (70 gal, and I live in the fucking desert, 100 degrees last week) by hanging the air pump in front of the air conditioner if I need it to be cooler, or putting it in a cabinet if its stable. Checked it last night, 19C, too cold...

One more thing. Don't try to save money by not changing your reservoir. Stick by the 100% addback theory. This AK48 will use up everything that res has to offer in a matter of days. Obviously not at the seedling stage, but wait 3 weeks until she shows you pistils. The lucas formula won't provide enough for her during veg. Too much N, not enough P for the transition. I can go on...

1-1-1 means one part each grow-micro-bloom. Provide her with a full spectrum of macro and micro nutrients. Maybe cut back to 25% of the bloom once you reach sexual maturity.

The most important thing, take care of that root mass, and strict management of the temperature and nutrients in your bucket. They're... sensitive sometimes.

Anyway, good luck.

oh yeah, ph 5.5 in veg, 5.9 in flower


PEACE!

I can definitely get that light 48" above, so I turned it on last night before bed. I woke up to a healthy-looking plant with some serious root growth overnight. The "fuzz" on the roots was barely visible when I fell asleep 7 hours earlier.

Day 14. Sorry for the epilepsy. I won't take pictures with the light on anymore.

I'm still having problems with the heat inside the cabinet (and in my room for that matter). Here's my cab from the outside.

The ballast sits in the basket on top with a desk fan blowing directly on it to cool it. Inside the cab, the temperature was about 32C or 90F. I had my Cooltube on pretty high so the WHOOOSHING sound is quite noticeable. Plus, I'm having light leaks at every edge. Any suggestions for any of these problems is much appreciated

 

[Zen Master]

pH is still too low in that last pic you had of the droppers (great investment btw).

get it a little higher and you'll get better nutrient uptake. a slightly more golden yellow/light orange color rather than reddish orange.

if you are testing your PPM's and they are dropping, your plant can take more food as its consuming nutrients faster than water, thus dropping the PPM.

what you ideally want is the water level and the PPM to be in unison.

so a full tub at 450 ppm will still show 450 ppm at a half tub, basically the plant has homeostasis with its nute/water levels.

the plant consuming nutrients will remove pH buffers so your pH will rise with nutrient consumption.

looking great so far, light proofing cabs can be a PITA some times. I used to use duct tape and/or mylar or panda poly (the black and white sided stuff) to seal up cabs.

90 is too hot, especially if you dont have a chiller. Make sure you're exhausting the hot air at the top of the chamber and passively (or actively if you decide to put a fan on it) pulling air in at a lower level (cooler air).


btw once the roots get submerged, thats when you'll start seeing explosive growth, in the next few weeks that plant is gonna get big... fast...

 

[Schleep]

pH is still too low in that last pic you had of the droppers (great investment btw).

get it a little higher and you'll get better nutrient uptake. a slightly more golden yellow/light orange color rather than reddish orange.

if you are testing your PPM's and they are dropping, your plant can take more food as its consuming nutrients faster than water, thus dropping the PPM.

what you ideally want is the water level and the PPM to be in unison.

so a full tub at 450 ppm will still show 450 ppm at a half tub, basically the plant has homeostasis with its nute/water levels.

the plant consuming nutrients will remove pH buffers so your pH will rise with nutrient consumption.

looking great so far, light proofing cabs can be a PITA some times. I used to use duct tape and/or mylar or panda poly (the black and white sided stuff) to seal up cabs.

90 is too hot, especially if you dont have a chiller. Make sure you're exhausting the hot air at the top of the chamber and passively (or actively if you decide to put a fan on it) pulling air in at a lower level (cooler air).


btw once the roots get submerged, thats when you'll start seeing explosive growth, in the next few weeks that plant is gonna get big... fast...

Yeah I need to figure out something to light-proof this cabinet quick. It's fine when I'm the only one sleeping in the room, but if someone came over just for a bit, they'd definitely be able to tell there's a massive light inside the cabinet.

I'm still not sure where I can buy mylar or panda plastic around here, but it looks like it's pretty expensive online.

Does anyone have a good suggestion regarding a cheap pH/TDS meter? I don't mind checking the pH manually, but I'm worried that I'm not getting it as dialed in as I should be.

And since I'll be doing some work on the cabinet this weekend to light-proof it, I figured I could go ahead and assemble my SCROG screen. How big should the holes be, how big should the screen size be, and at what height above the bucket top should I install the screen?

 

[sneaky101]

you can just google search for the meters, or check the bay.

Your screen size is up to you, just remember what you will be poking through there. I made mine about 2" x 2" because my cab is so small atm. It worked fine and I had a lot of tops, but that was probably too small. I would probably go with about 4" squares. The ones you see commercially are about 6 or 8 " square I think.

The height above the bucket is up to you as well. The thing to remember is your hands and arms will be squeezing though to move limbs around where you want them. So make sure you have enough working room with enough space for stretch above the screen. Mine was about 12" and what was plenty of room, could have probably dropped it down another 4 inches and been ok.

 

[Zen Master]

dont worry about dropping $200 on an electronic meter, seriously its your first run, single bucket DWC.....

I've been growing hydro for a few years now and I dont even use my old electronic meter anymore, it crapped out on a grow and I said fuckit a long time ago and have been using the drops ever since.

no need to worry about battery level or calibration or any of that stuff, plus, a fluctuation of 5.2-6.0 is actually good imo... it allows for the plant to absorb nutrients better at different pH levels so by the time I need to re fill my bucket, the pH is higher and the nutes that get utilized at that pH are... well.. being utilized by the plant

save yourself $200, cheap pH meters are just that... cheap...



regarding the screen, it depends how vigorous your plant ends up being, and how branchy. (i used a 2" by 4" screen in my OD greenhouse (check my gallery if ya want to see) and it worked out well, indoors in a small space, you could use a slightly smaller screen size, perhaps 2x2 or 2x3.... I wouldn't go smaller than 2" in any direction though....

ideally the lower the better because then you arent wasting the plants energy growing up, rather once it fills the screen you flip it and let it stretch up and through, creating a sea of colas. dont be afraid to bend your plant and push it under the screen, they can take a bit of punishment with the training. (so long as you've got the tender green shoots (proper pH and nutrients will get you these) versus purple woody stems that cant bend easily.

 

[CFL_Grow]

Caulk is easy and cheap for some of those cracks.

 

[Kreamy]

Schleep. I like the grow and will be following along. I too have picked up some AK48 beans, and will be getting them going soon.

As for the light leaks, I see that there is a fairly significant one right down the center of the doors. The best way to take care of that would be to screw in a strip of board that is maybe a half inch thick, the height of your doors, and approximately 4 inches wide (give or take). You'll want to screw it on the inside of your cabinet to one of the doors, so that 50% is overlapping one door and 50% of it overlaps the other. If you still get some light leak through the center and for the rest of the door edges, you could buy some foam weatherstripping line around the edges of the door to fill any gaps that are left.

Bendos and Chef, any experience growing this strain in soil or soilless medium organically? Any words of wisdow and/or nutrient hints would be much appreciated, although I do have a fairly good idea of what I will be doing.

 

[bendoslendo]

Haven't grown her organically sorry. I have noticed she feeds more than other strains growing beside her. When she shares a reservoir with my White Rhino, the rhino's tips will burn while the AK asks for more!

Keep in mind most of my experience after the initial test grows of AK48 pertain to 1 individual. I doubt everything about my AK-48 can be generalized to all seed grown ak-48.

 

[alpo]

you can try weather stripping for the light leaks

maybe insulated ducting for the "whoooshing" noise

silica can help the plants flourish in adverse environmental conditions such as heat

and combo ph/tds/temp meter for $125

 

[Chef BeanStock]

have you thought about running the lights during the day?

 

[Schleep]

Your screen size is up to you, just remember what you will be poking through there. I made mine about 2" x 2" because my cab is so small atm. It worked fine and I had a lot of tops, but that was probably too small. I would probably go with about 4" squares. The ones you see commercially are about 6 or 8 " square I think.

The height above the bucket is up to you as well. The thing to remember is your hands and arms will be squeezing though to move limbs around where you want them. So make sure you have enough working room with enough space for stretch above the screen. Mine was about 12" and what was plenty of room, could have probably dropped it down another 4 inches and been ok.

Based on the height of my cabinet, and the amount you guys said your AK's stretched, I'm thinking 10" is a good height. And I'll keep the screen > 2" for sure.

dont worry about dropping $200 on an electronic meter, seriously its your first run, single bucket DWC.....

I've been growing hydro for a few years now and I dont even use my old electronic meter anymore, it crapped out on a grow and I said fuckit a long time ago and have been using the drops ever since.

no need to worry about battery level or calibration or any of that stuff, plus, a fluctuation of 5.2-6.0 is actually good imo... it allows for the plant to absorb nutrients better at different pH levels so by the time I need to re fill my bucket, the pH is higher and the nutes that get utilized at that pH are... well.. being utilized by the plant

save yourself $200, cheap pH meters are just that... cheap...



regarding the screen, it depends how vigorous your plant ends up being, and how branchy. (i used a 2" by 4" screen in my OD greenhouse (check my gallery if ya want to see) and it worked out well, indoors in a small space, you could use a slightly smaller screen size, perhaps 2x2 or 2x3.... I wouldn't go smaller than 2" in any direction though....

ideally the lower the better because then you arent wasting the plants energy growing up, rather once it fills the screen you flip it and let it stretch up and through, creating a sea of colas. dont be afraid to bend your plant and push it under the screen, they can take a bit of punishment with the training. (so long as you've got the tender green shoots (proper pH and nutrients will get you these) versus purple woody stems that cant bend easily.

This was also my thinking. I'd rather not spend a TON of money on just one plant for personal use. If I can get by with the pH test kit I have, I'd like to stick with it just because I put so much money up front on the light and fans and cab.

You guys keep talking about "filling up" the screen, but is there anything wrong with just making an overly-big screen and switching over when I feel like the plant's vegged long enough? Basically, just keep spreading the branches out and keeping everything at the same height, regardless of how much horizontal space it takes up, and then switch to 12/12?

Edit: And I promised I wouldn't take any more of these terrible pictures, but I wasn't home during the dark hours, and I really love documenting this process

Day 15:

 

[Schleep]

Thanks for the light leak tips. I have already caulked along the inside of each edge in the cabinet, but it has started to warp slightly under the weight of the light and the fan hanging from the top. This weekend, I'll cut a 2x4 to hold the middle of the ceiling up, and when I do that, I'll add a lip to the door to cut out that middle crack. It really leaks out the top and bottom of the door the most, and I guess I'll just have to play around with overhangs and caulking and duct tape to get that reduced.

And I have thought about running the lights during the day, but the schedule has already been set and I don't want to shock the plant. I made this schedule a while ago when it was much hotter during the day and temperature was a big factor. Now that the weather is cooler, I wouldn't mind having the light on during the day, but I don't know how to change it without keeping the plant in the dark or the light for a few extra hours. As it is now, the light comes on at 21:00 (9:00PM) and goes off at 15:00 (3:00PM) the next day.

 

[Schleep]

maybe insulated ducting for the "whoooshing" noise

Would this really help a lot? Right now I'm using just some flexible ducting like in this picture, but if I switched it out with insulated ducting, do you think the sound would be reduced enough to be worth the extra price?

 

[sneaky101]

one suggestion about getting the plants on a different schedule. Not sure if it would do anything to the plants, but I don't think it would since you are still in veg. You could just leave the lights on 24/7 for a few days and then get your timer set to when you want the lights to be on....just a suggestion if the light leaks are that big of a deal. Guess you have to choose the lesser of 2 evils...

 

[thefalsediviner]

Dude, you're going to love AK48 in DWC using the Lucas formula. Control your environment and change your solution out 100% every week. I grow the same strain and method with great results.

TFD