Novice grow, veteran mentored

[OldSchoolGreen]

OldSchool, for some reason none of the pictures of your setup show for me, only the pics of the bud!

Thanks for letting me know, I'll have to look into that and see what's going on. Your E&F system looks super cool, I'm sure you'll find your balance in no time. Good idea on the infirmary, get those ladies nursed back to good health!

-OldSchool

 

[Snype]

Looking good to me! Give the plants time to grow. No need to float them or LST them this early. You can add more hydro later when you cut off the bottom branches and do your pruning. Plenty of time for that later. Be patient. Your flood cycles should be more frequent now as long as you are showing good root formation below the pot. Pictures are needed to make those assessments though.

I can't tell you for sure because I can't see the roots but if the roots look like what I think they do from judging the top of the plant that we can see, I would be flooding at least every 6 hours if not more. If you have at least 10 roots coming from each of your pants and they hang down at least 1.5" below the pot, I would probably be flooding every 3 hours. The more you flood, the better your elves will look but you have to have the root to support that. I don't see root pics.

 

[sahdgrower]

roots

roots

Roots are still not hanging out of pots, they don't seem to really want to stretch out. I am now on a 6hour flood cycle 3 of which flood only to the bottom 1/2" of the pot and the 4th cycle I am hand dipping. I am still on the 1.5ml/l b1red .75ml bloom .5ml micro formula and keeping ph between 5.8 and 6.2. I did have a night when I went down to tired and stoned and didn't catch that my meter was off and the ph was more around 6.8 for a feeding or two.


and here is a closer look at the rust spotting. Best I can tell it is a calcium deficiency but I wouldn't bet on it.


So as far as LST, there is a method called the 4 way LST, there is a great tutorial on another website maybe riu not sure. Anyway it is specifically directed towards scrog grown from seed and it directs topping the plant when the 5th node emerges, I am a day or two away from the 5th node being ready to be cut. I really like the uniformity and the solid base for scrog that this method develops. I know you are right about not floating the plants though, I am just being OCD. When you first start and you visit your plants 4-6 times a day they don't seem to be growing so rapidly! Then looking at pictures I can see how fast and steady the growth is.

These Vortex plants are short and stout! Internodal length is very small at this point.

 

[Snype]

Roots are still not hanging out of pots, they don't seem to really want to stretch out. I am now on a 6hour flood cycle 3 of which flood only to the bottom 1/2" of the pot and the 4th cycle I am hand dipping. I am still on the 1.5ml/l b1red .75ml bloom .5ml micro formula and keeping ph between 5.8 and 6.2. I did have a night when I went down to tired and stoned and didn't catch that my meter was off and the ph was more around 6.8 for a feeding or two.
[URL=https://www.icmag.com/ic/picture.php?albumid=50492&pictureid=1184831&thumb=1]View Image[/URL] [URL=https://www.icmag.com/ic/picture.php?albumid=50492&pictureid=1184830&thumb=1]View Image[/URL] [URL=https://www.icmag.com/ic/picture.php?albumid=50492&pictureid=1184829&thumb=1]View Image[/URL]

and here is a closer look at the rust spotting. Best I can tell it is a calcium deficiency but I wouldn't bet on it.
[URL=https://www.icmag.com/ic/picture.php?albumid=50492&pictureid=1184832&thumb=1]View Image[/URL]

So as far as LST, there is a method called the 4 way LST, there is a great tutorial on another website maybe riu not sure. Anyway it is specifically directed towards scrog grown from seed and it directs topping the plant when the 5th node emerges, I am a day or two away from the 5th node being ready to be cut. I really like the uniformity and the solid base for scrog that this method develops. I know you are right about not floating the plants though, I am just being OCD. When you first start and you visit your plants 4-6 times a day they don't seem to be growing so rapidly! Then looking at pictures I can see how fast and steady the growth is.

These Vortex plants are short and stout! Internodal length is very small at this point.

First problem is that I see no reason at all how the pH could go to 6.8 by hand dunking like that. You really have to monitor your pH.

I thought your roots would be further out than they are so that's 1 poor sign but we will get to that problem in a minute. The good thing is that you have crazy roots just waiting to bust out. You have to do a better job at monitoring your pH before waterings. I'd rather be at 6.0 - 6.2. It makes perfect sense that your plants should be showing problems most likely due to your crazy pH swing to the up side. If you want to know how to judge the current health of your plants after you see problems like pH swings, get your pH back and line for a few days and pay attention to the newest growth. If your newest growth is coming in healthy, they you should be doing well. If you have a problem with your pH rising, set your pH to 5.8 and let if rise to 6.2.

Here's the first thing you need to do. Cut out the B-1 Red and your total rez will be changed to:

1 mL Micro
1.5 mL Bloom
These rates are per liter

I don't know if I am reading you correctly but I think that you said that you are flooding so that the water is going 1/2" up the net pot. Don't let that happen. No solution in your flood should be hitting the pot. If the roots can't get the solution then that is a good thing because they will grow to the solution instead. You are preventing them from growing into the solution by watering the cube itself every 6 hours. You should only be doing that 1 time per day from your hand dunk. The rest of the time the plants most likely won't reach the water and that's what you want to happen. You are real close though. Here's what's going to happen. When your tray floods every 6 hours, even though the solution isn't going to go up the pot, it is still creating very moist conditions even though the solution isn't touching the cube. The solution should only touch the cube when you dunk that 1 time per day.

You are extremely close to flooding those plants every 4 hours but you need those roots to start coming down and reach the solution. A couple roots are just about to start hitting the solution but your protection comes on your 24 hour dunks.

Don't let your pH rise up past 6.2 and don't let it fall below 5.8. It's a tight range that you need to be in with this technique. You are very close though so stay on them.

 

[sahdgrower]

I guess I didn't explain. There was no ph swing. It was when I put in my new solution I didn't ph correctly the first night. I am managing ph properly the rest of the time. I will lower water level to just miss the bottom of the pots. Will also change the res out to new formula.

 

[sahdgrower]

Mixing nutes listening to stir it up by Bob marley.... smoking a little ganja. .. life is good!

 

[OldSchoolGreen]

Bob and some ganja? Can't go wrong with that! I'll smoke one with you!

 

[Snype]

Nice! Adding back a bunch of nutes into my buckets as well! Only listening to the sound of water from the water falls the pumps are creating and smoking KK StarDawg. About to move on to a joint of ChemDD after I add back all my nutes. My schedule is all fucked up but I guess it's a good schedule to be on for the harvest late this week.

 

[sahdgrower]

roots

roots

It seems like my roots are not getting enough moisture or humidity in the e&f flood table. It seems like all the roots that start to come out of the net pots, the tips turn brown like they are air pruning. My gut tells me to flood more often or pump some humidity into the flood box. Seems the root tips (only the parts sticking out of the net pots) are just too dry to grow.

 

[Snype]

It seems like my roots are not getting enough moisture or humidity in the e&f flood table. It seems like all the roots that start to come out of the net pots, the tips turn brown like they are air pruning. My gut tells me to flood more often or pump some humidity into the flood box. Seems the root tips (only the parts sticking out of the net pots) are just too dry to grow.

You have roots that seem to be hanging past the pot. Why can't you get the water to reach them without reaching the rock wool cube so they don't dry out? You can try flooding every 3 hours to see if it helps but it's very strange that your roots aren't dropping down. My roots drop down only within a few days of seeing them. You don't want to see any brown in the tip of your roots. I stated in a previous post of the 3 things you want to pay attention to so you know when to flood but your flood should be hitting your roots by now. I would just hand water for now every 3 hours. Pour 2 quarts of your solution from the top of the net pot.

TBH I buy the equipment that I buy for a reason. I'm looking at your Veg-A system and it's a make shift tote thing. It's possible that you are getting chemicals in there from off gassing or just chemicals leaching into your solution. I could be wrong but I stopped using things like those because of a weird plastic smell that I was getting.

I don't know why you are having problems but I do know that it's hard to tell you the right things to do without getting pictures every day or 2. When I'm in my VEG-A system, things change real fast. My first 3 days in the system might be a dunk every 10 hours for 3 days. After that the roots are inside being flooded every 3-4 hours for day 4 and 5, by day 7 of VEG-A I'm flooding every hour and my roots look like this:

That's after only 9 days of being placed in the system. It only happens like this because of how observant that i'm being to my roots themselves. I really have no idea what is going on without seeing pictures and data all the time. I shouldn't' have to ask for this information either. It should just be typed out here.

 

[sahdgrower]

Just lack of experience coupled with my DIY rigs are the 2 biggest problems at this point. With my DIY E&F the lid sinks in the middle and the middle pots sit a little lower so if the water hits them it isn't up to the others yet. I have a solution just need a bit of time to make it happen. Wife getting annoyed with me for time spent on this. Once I get all the pots sitting even I will sort out the water height better and flood every 4 hours to the roots and a full submersion 1 time/day. As soon as I get my roots dialed in and everything cranking better I will update with pictures. Gimme a week to rock it out!

 

[Snype]

Just lack of experience coupled with my DIY rigs are the 2 biggest problems at this point. With my DIY E&F the lid sinks in the middle and the middle pots sit a little lower so if the water hits them it isn't up to the others yet. I have a solution just need a bit of time to make it happen. Wife getting annoyed with me for time spent on this. Once I get all the pots sitting even I will sort out the water height better and flood every 4 hours to the roots and a full submersion 1 time/day. As soon as I get my roots dialed in and everything cranking better I will update with pictures. Gimme a week to rock it out!

Listen, I'm not at your grow and if you don't let me know these things from the beginning then how can I possibly help you? You see all my data in my own threads and if you don't give me all the data every day or 2, it's very hard to help you. Now you are telling me that your tray isn't even level so the water heights change per pot. That's a big problem considering I thought this whole time that your water was just below the pot but obviously some of your pots are much further away from the water. If you were being observant, you would notice a difference between the pots that are closest to the water compared to the pots that are further away. There should be a difference on how the plants roots look. I can't continue to pull information out of you. You just have to give me all the details that you can think of all the time. Feeding, pH, top off, water temp, air temp, humidity data should be given every day or 2 without asking for it.

 

[sahdgrower]

got it. Will give a full report this evening.

 

[Snype]

Ok, you are in luck! I have a harvest starting this weekend so I had to put my cuts into VEG-A today so I will take you through my entire process right now in a few posts. Here we go:

First, I took my cuttings 17 days ago so that when my plants get out of flower, they will already be finishing VEG-A at the same time so I can place them into VEG-B without any delay. I know how to delay my cuttings by keeping my medium a little more on the moist side until I need them to root. I can keep them in limbo for a while so that they can root all at the same time and build a decent root structure. Here are some pics today before I placed them into VEG-A. These rooted clones are at day 18 of the cloning stage today:

More pics and info on the way...

 

[Snype]

Now let's have a look at the VEG-A system and the parts that I use to make it all work properly. Look at all the parts in these 5 pictures:

 

[Snype]

That pump that you see in the last set of pictures cost like $20 and pumps faster than the water leaves. I use it on the highest setting. This will all depend on your fittings and they make many. I try to use the biggest one I can find but you will have to test that out with different pumps to find the right one. Here is how I place all of my fittings and the system is all together now:

 

[Snype]

These next pictures, I transferred the plants into VEG-A today at 9 PM and we begin Day 1 Veg-A. I can't tell you how often I am going to hand dunk them because I have to be observant of the roots to tell me what's going on. What I can say is that I may not have to dunk them again for maybe 10 hours or maybe 12 hours, or it could be 6 hours or possibly 8 hours. I don't know until I keep seeing how each one is doing. I purposely have 5 extra plants on this tray that will be thrown in the trash. I only take the best plants to go into RDWC and I only need 10 plants per tray for each RDWC system. Have a look for yourself:

And now we are up to date of what is going on. I will show you more details as they grow. Oh and I always cut the paper thing on those Grodan Mini-Blocks before I place the cuttings into net pots.

 

[sahdgrower]

Alright those pictures are very helpful. I have my plants temporarily leveled and am gonna switch out the flood tray tomorrow for one with a better lid. As for my e&f I have an active aqua 400gph submersible/in line water pump. It feeds with 1/2" tubing and drains with the same. If I submerge the pump on full throttle it will not outpace the drainage. So I have put a reducer on the drain line but this diminishes the waterfall and therefore reduces DO. Tomorrow I will fiddle and see if I can't get it to work using a bigger feed line.

I am maintaining the room between 65-75f and humidity 50-60% I am recording at least daily ph, water temp., air hi and lo, and my ppm (which has not ever dropped significantly between res changes). I changed the res yesterday using your formula and adjusted ph. Using 4ft. 6 bulb t5 with 65k spectrum bulbs. Approximately 12" from plants. I have an oscillating fan directed at plants keeping em dancing 24/7. Currently not using intake or exhaust fan as the room is not tight and breathes passively.

 

[sahdgrower]

Also since this is my first grow indoors I am still acquiring the right equipment and that will take a little while due to funds and such. I am also still building out my whole grow room. Currently I have an 8x8x7'tall room. I am building on to it an 8x8 office/kitchen where I will run my water and have a sink and counter and also a 4x8 veg room. My current lighting is the T5 I mentioned and a 600 watt Gavita HPS. I also have some various CFL standard base bulbs and fixtures. I am looking to add an additional 600 watt light possibly MH or maybe just another HPS and 2 light movers so as to cover the most of the 8x8 flower room I can achieve Im thinking 4x6 but I am not sure about that. The other idea I was toying with was to flower in the 8x4 room doing a vertical scrog with 2 lights on a yo-yo which would save me the cost of one light mover. The whole build is in a basement so temps have been no problem in fact I need to heat a little to keep the room warm enough so the res doesn't get too cold. I am legally allowed 10'x10' of canopy and the lower the plant count the better, in California the laws vary from county to county. So I really aim to maximize the yield per plant. This is a medical grow so I am going for the dankiest, stickiest I can grow. My excess I can sell to the dispensary and use the money to recoup expenses. Whatever method I can employ that makes the least amount of trimming at the harvest is also highly desireable, even if it means much more attention throughout the grow. Gosh I can't think of any other pertinent info at the moment but if/when I do I will be sure to keep you posted. Sorry for lack of good communication, I am always a little reluctant to say too much because I tend to overdo it some times. Also some of the problems I should have realized were problems and told you about them sooner but I am just a little slow to the punch sometimes. I think I got everything going good now though.

 

[Snype]

Alright those pictures are very helpful. I have my plants temporarily leveled and am gonna switch out the flood tray tomorrow for one with a better lid. As for my e&f I have an active aqua 400gph submersible/in line water pump. It feeds with 1/2" tubing and drains with the same. If I submerge the pump on full throttle it will not outpace the drainage. So I have put a reducer on the drain line but this diminishes the waterfall and therefore reduces DO. Tomorrow I will fiddle and see if I can't get it to work using a bigger feed line.

I am maintaining the room between 65-75f and humidity 50-60% I am recording at least daily ph, water temp., air hi and lo, and my ppm (which has not ever dropped significantly between res changes). I changed the res yesterday using your formula and adjusted ph. Using 4ft. 6 bulb t5 with 65k spectrum bulbs. Approximately 12" from plants. I have an oscillating fan directed at plants keeping em dancing 24/7. Currently not using intake or exhaust fan as the room is not tight and breathes passively.

My plants that you just saw tonight are 20" away from a 6 bulb T5 and I only have 4 bulbs on until I can water more frequently than 6 hours. They just received their second dunk at the 6 hour mark. The first dunk was performed when they first went into the tray at 9pm. The light will stay 20" away for at least the next few days until I can flood the tray more often than my dunk schedule is now. If you keep your light close to your plants, they will want to eat more and that means you will have to flood more frequently. This also means that you can over water your medium in the process and cause some other types of problems. We are not trying to grow the plant right now. We are trying to focus on growing out your roots. After you grow out your roots then you can focus on the plant and the plant will do well after you take care of her roots. You don't want a fan blowing on those little seedlings either. I'd pull the fan out and maybe blow it above the top of the plants where it doesn't really affect movement on the plants.