Xil's LED PC box

[xil]

Hey people, welcome to my first grow ever.

This is a stealth operation as i live with my folks who dont know i have anything to do with mj.

Set up:
All of this is in a mid tower PC case, not ideal, but the light takes little space, so it evens out i guess. The PC is in a closet, with VERY minimal air exchange with the outside

47 W (max power) DIY led panel. with 2 drivers, one being dimmable.

Hempy bucket(s). Its a flower pot split into two by a plastic wall with silicone sealant for the gaps. 100% perlite

80mm PC fan for circulation, 120mm PC fan for exhaust (i had made a replacable carbon filter with 2 120mm fans in push-pull, it was working but way too loud to be stealthy)

Germed 2 seeds on sunday, planted both 3 days later, one sprouted the other did not, today i looked around the spot of the second seed and surprise, there were 2 seedlings. now i have 3 plants from 2 seeds. Supposedly autoflowers (a grower guy gave a bunch to me, dunno the strain).

TO DO:
ozone generator
co2 source

PROBLEMS:
I have super high humidity in here (did not expect that), RH is 75%, about 55% where the fan is blowing, I guess its because hempy buckets vaporise a lot, I think I can regulate this later by covering some surface area around the plant

The biggest seedling is drooping, not sure why, perlite drains way fast, thus I was watering twice a day with little amounts. Gave a bigger watering just to the largest one and see how it responds vs the other 2 with no watering for some time

Thanks for any input! Started a thread on gc, but no one responds.. so yeah.

cheers

 

[xil]

Biggest- 6 days old
Other 2- 4 days old

I will probably leave 2, i wonder when they will show sex tough

I had overwatered them, the larger one was looking the worst, now it seems they have recovered. Perlite still slightly wet, surprisingly good retention of water. Or atleast plants think so

 

[xil]

forgot a group pic

 

[tebos]

Good stuff, I'm in.

 

[Mtnstream]

Interesting, Hempy?

 

[xil]

10 days for the larger one (3rd set of leaves) and 8 for the other two (above ground)

I managed to drop a worki g circulation fan on the bigger one, but just lightly cut two leaves and it's growing like it never happened.

Atm 1 driver is off (only reds on it), but i still get like 31 celcius with the closet being shut. I put on lenses on white and blue diodes, its more of a veg lamp atm, running at like 26w, but its only a guess, can be a bit more, i like this flexibility with spectrums though

Gave a 1/3 str nutes with last watering, no damage. About 1l of water fits in the rez, and it was gone in 2 days completely, perlite still damp but no water on the bottom, i guess its because of high evaporation?

 

[xil]

Hempy buckets are basically a passive hydro set up. A container filled with perlite/vermiculite mix or coco etc. A hole is made 1-2 inches from the bottom for drainage.

Roots get enough aeration since most of them are in the very airy medium which is also rather humid.

All food comes from the nutes, as in dwc. But you can use even non hydro nutes here, as long as they are water soluble, I will try this in flower, see how it plays out. I did not find any hydro nutes for sale.. big surprise..


And why the hell cant i edit my posts ? instead of double posting.. thats lame.

 

[x.man]

Nice box. Grow is looking good. Good luck Xil.

 

[xil]

thanks x.man yea they are growing alright, i wonder if they reached the res yet, i mean it was only a 2 inch trip down to the water level.

 

[x.man]

I am sure the roots are down there. You will be surprised how fast roots grow, especially tap roots.

 

[xil]

Well then I guess i had a bit too high expectations for hempy bucket growth rates

anyhow, update time

13 and 11 days above soil. Did some lame ass lst. Originally i was going to use the holes on the side of the pot, but the plants are too short for that, which will change i hope

When i opened the box i already could smell them lil plants. Thats great, except that i havent made my O3 generator yet. But id say i have 2 weeks untill i will be able to smell them outside the box (i already had some smelly ..things... in there, was not able to scent anything until the doors were opened)

for the last 2 feedings i gave em half strength nutes npk 9-4-5

 

[xil]

So its 18/16 days above perlite for the plants now.
Ive determined that half of the smell from the box is comming from the perlite, maybe salt build up, will flush today, just for the sake of it.

I am upping nutes very slowly, they are still at ~1/2 strength, maybe a tad more. I wonder if i can survive without cal-mag. My tap water is quite hard, but i think i might get magnesium troubles later. Of course there is no such thing as cal-mag where i live, so i will buy some magnesium salts separately most likely. As calcium should (hopefully) be provided by the hard tap water.

Oh and i moved the pot closer to the lights, about 15 cm distance (thats 6 inches for the imperialists), cant move closer as the light leaving the lenses will not fully blend and cover the whole plant. Damn chinese got me 30 deg lenses instead of 60. And the temp is getting into 27 deg there so there is also that.

I noticed a problem with the light during off time on the timer yesterday night. The light was still on. Not bright, like... idk, a very burnt out led flashlight, but i clearly saw the circles left by the leds with lenses in the perlite. And even more fun, when i touched the box (metal parts of it) the lights became brighter lol,

This leads the idea that i need to ground my lights. That and also that the timer is obviously not that great as i suspect that the changing magnetic field from the wires inside is enough to induce a current to the drivers which lights up the leds. Meaning the actual switch mechanism is creating a very small distance between wires when turning off the power. So yea... still not too sure if i should blame the chinese driver for this, not fully at least.

How much light during the night cycle is bad enough to cause problems? like stress/ hermies and so on

 

[hush]

Any light at all will be a problem. Even the little red led lights that some timers have are a problem and need to be taped over. So yeah, figure out what's causing your lights to glow when the timer shuts them off. You can always bypass the timer and see if the problem is still there... If so, you know the problem has more to do with grounding than a crappy timer. It's hard to say what would cause that problem exactly without doing some troubleshooting, but yes it sounds like some voltage is still making it to the diodes even when the timer disengages the circuit.

Good luck to you!

 

[xil]

tried grounding, no use, peculiarly the lights got brighter when i connected the driver case to ground terminal in the socket.

They also get brighter if i touch the metal parts of the case. No real solution to this as of yet. Looking for a new timer as im pretty sure its the main culprit (i tried the second driver (a meanwell)- same problem).

So far im not seeing any bad signs... the lights are extremely dim, much dimmer than any status led on a timer/charger/you name it. I take off the lenses before dark, and its not really noticable..

maybe the plants wont mind. I mean in the real world its never 100% dark during the night, the fricken moon shines brighter than my lights.

 

[hush]

Trust me, your plants will mind once they are in flowering mode. You can't quite compare leds (or any artificial lighting) with moonlight. Get that fixed before you flip to flowering or you will be harvesting pollen and seeds instead of sinsemilla.

 

[xil]

Well that sucks donkey balls. Thanks for the early warning though

I guess in the worst case i can run them 24/0 instead of 20/4. Although i am an advocate of giving the plants at least some time with lights off. (my plants are autoflowers)

 

[hush]

Oh... I missed that part. I've never grown autos before, but it's possible the light leaks won't matter then. I'll let someone else weigh in on that...

 

[xil]

Oh... I missed that part. I've never grown autos before, but it's possible the light leaks won't matter then. I'll let someone else weigh in on that...

your advice still stands as i am planning on growing regulars in there too some day

 

[xil]

Update, 3 weeks old

Doing averave id say, note to self, fill the pot with perlite to the top next time. I think the plants got stunted due to little space for roots as i think they pretty much stopped growing. In my eyes at least.

Some lower leaves started yellowing, they don't get much light, leds do not penetrate well.

Upped the nutes a bit, no burn. Or maybe just lame polish nutes.

I see preflowers on the big one but they are too small to make concrete conclusions. Though i think it might be a male. Will see.

 

[xil]

Update, so i pulled the male, looks so empty now.

It is soon 1 month from seed.

To be honest im loosing hope in this grow. Have you ever seen plants this small after 30 days ? I mean they make my mid tower pc case look hella spacious lol Maybe they are so tiny because they came from a single seed or got stunted for some reason ?

and i also think these could be semi autoflowers (show the sex under any lighting but do not flower without 12/12). As i did some digging and all autos show visible chunks of flower by this time already.

its been like 2 days since i saw the first pistil on both the little ones and no visible change is happening. These genetics could be total whack here, I saw these guys grow under 400W hps and they were still not more than 40cm in height, no training or anything.

On the plus side i found a way to ground the light, the diodes are still barely visible in total darkness, but i wold not even call the thing they give off "light" anymore. Many times better than before.

Also got 2 more beans of the same type going, root is breaking out atm. Maybe i should go with a photoperiod bagseed? or make like 4-6 plant sog on the empty side ? just for shits and giggles. Or i can start a white widow seed factory going here. Man im kinda lost now. Either the light sucks or the genetics suck or the plants suck cuz i stunted them... somehow.

Atleast i did not have any huge problems during this first grow experience...yet. they grew nice and healthy. just so fricken small. Maybe this will change , i will switch to 12/12 if no changes happen in the upcoming days.