Kit Kat's Kalichakra Coco Grow Show (1st time!)

Kit Kat · May 28, 2012

Hi everyone, thanks for dropping in!

This is my first time posting after lurking for a long time and I'm hoping ya'll can help keep me from making too many mistakes. I've been playing around with growing for a few years now, mostly in organic soil inside and out; after trying a whole lot of things I've never really gotten the results I wanted. Always my fault, I kept getting in way over my head. Reading tons of threads and books doesn't beat out actual hands on experience.

So this time around I don't have the luxury of yard space to get the whole organic cycle going, so I decided to try something entirely new and do a coco grow from seed. After a lot more reading I put this together:

Substrate
* BioBizz Coco in 2 gallon Air Pots fed by Tropf Blumat auto-waterers
* House & Garden nutrient line, Coco A&B, Drip Clean, Roots Excelurator, Bud XL and Top Booster

Room & Light
* GL145 4x4 tent holding an 8" Magnum XXXL hood with a 600w HPS (I don't actually know the bulb type, just had it) on a Quantum dimmable ballast.
* The whole tent is exhausted by a TD-150 Mixvent fan pulling through a 6x24 Phresh filter and dumped into the garage the tent is in

I have most of the tools I think I'll need to manage a grow like this, ph pen, ppm meter (coming) along with various ways to measure stuff down to 1ml syringes.

I've been running the 600w on for the last 3-4 days on a 20/4 cycle and not externally exhausting the air, just letting it dump right into the garage. A probe that sits on the floor under the light shows the tent to rest at about 80F, and the entire garage stays at about 72. These temperatures haven't budged much so I haven't picked up an A/C yet, but have budgeted for one. Think it'll be fine just letting the garage act like a big heat sink?

Here's some pictures of the completed set up and workspace, I'll have some more tomorrow after I plant 20 Kalichakra seeds in 16oz cups of Light Warrior! I've tried to think of everything... if you could let me know if I've forgotten something or am totally off base it would be greatly appreciated.

Man, I had to pull all my other pictures and smilies out 'cause I'm only allowed 5. Bummer!

Endur · May 28, 2012

Nice clean setup.
I'll be setting up my tent this week
peace
Endur

Harry Gypsna · May 28, 2012

Kalichakra is a nice smoke, not super potent, but lively and stimulating without being racy. It increases in size massively when you start flower, like it trebles in mass so take that into account. I got 2 phenos, one was a more airy sativa type bud, and one was denser hybrid buds, the airy buds had the livlier smoke.

Guest 263194 · May 28, 2012

tagged

Kit Kat · May 28, 2012

Endur said:
Nice clean setup.
I'll be setting up my tent this week
peace
Endur

Thanks a lot! I tried to make everything tidy and slimmed down, my work space before was a horrible mess of random jars of amendments and I could never find anything. :tiphat:

Harry Gypsna said:
Kalichakra is a nice smoke, not super potent, but lively and stimulating without being racy. It increases in size massively when you start flower, like it trebles in mass so take that into account. I got 2 phenos, one was a more airy sativa type bud, and one was denser hybrid buds, the airy buds had the livlier smoke.

Awesome, this is great info. I had an online buddy kind of say something similar, but stressed that I really would need to make sure I could get rid of humidity because the buds would get so dense during the flower swell. If you had a choice would you go for the airy pheno? What were the denser hybrids like?

DTF said:
tagged

Some advice from a helpful friend online in starting my seeds (I've never done this part before) that I was going to follow. The only difference being I was going to go straight from party cups into the 2g Air-Pots.

Sprout them all into party cups. Let them go ~10-14 days until they have enough of a rootball to transfer into 2 liters (or 1G pots). They will jump in growth after a few days in the new containers and I will take a 2 cuttings from each plant and do the clone process. At this point I would switch to 12/12 lighting on all the plants in their 2 liters (or 1G pots depending on how many plants). By the time the clones show roots the plants have usually shown sex ~10-14 days. At this point I will kill any males and the corresponding clones. If a female is too stringy or something looks weird they will be killed at this point too. Now I would take all the females in 2 liters (or 1G pots) and put them into larger 3G pots and flower them out to get the final verdict on which is your keeper. Make sure you keep your clones labeled to the plant they come from ex: K1-K1clone K2-K2clone, so in the end you can be sure that you are killing everything *but* the keeper.

Harry Gypsna · May 28, 2012

The denser bud one was still a nice smoke, but a bit less mentally stimulating than the airy one, a bit more body buzz but still firmly on the sativa side. For personal smoke, I liked the airy one best, but remember it's all subjective, and what is best for one guy, may not be best for the other. They are both still a good smoke if you want something that a few tokes put you on the ceiling instead of on your arse LOL.
You may want to reconsider starting 20 seeds to fit in that tent, even if you only end up with 10 females, by the time you've sexed them, they will have grown to the point that they will become too big in the flowering stretch period. No exaggeration, Kalichakra triples, maybe even quadruples in size in the first couple of weeks of flower.

Kit Kat · May 28, 2012

Hmm, my thinking on doing all 20 was to only keep the best 9 (hoping they all turned female) and then from there turn the cuts from the one I liked the most into mothers and start a new cycle from there. How tall/overrun do you think they're going to end up being provided I don't stunt then by doing something stupid (best conditions)?

Thinking about that some maybe start with 10 as described above, flower them out, keep the best from the first pack and do the second 10 as soon as I chop the first? That'll let me turn around kind of quickly and I can bush out the 'best' from the first into a Mom then do a final show down later. Maybe an airy pheno and a dense pheno? HMM!

Harry Gypsna · May 28, 2012

I can't really say how tall they'll get, because it depends how long you veg them for and how big they are when you flip them.

Desert Hydro · May 28, 2012

the tent looks great. i run almost the same except mines 4'9"X4'9" and i run 2 600's. cant wait til it gets all filled up for ya

Kit Kat · May 28, 2012

Harry Gypsna, gotcha, that makes sense. I think I may just do all 20 and keep 9 as originally planned. The first run should be knocked out quickly I'm thinking so I can get the keeper and start producing some clones. I'll have to keep the veg time really short to do that, just enough to get them above ground then flip.

Desert Hydro, thanks man! Hopefully that'll be pretty soon. Mine's a 4' 9" as well (probably the same one?) I just see everyone call it a 4x4 and went with that. ;p How does yours work out with 2 600's? I have a buddy who just did the same with two bell hoods in his tent, but he has an AC and I wasn't going to push it this first time around without one.

Desert Hydro · May 28, 2012

you will need the AC lol. i leave my tent doors open and the central keeps the room/tent perfect. if you have central and it runs often enough you can run a duct line from the air outlet to to tent which is what i do on my 10X10 tent.

2 600's is a bit much for that tent IMO but if the doors are left open its perfect. dont know if you have that option or not. if not you could run 2 400's pretty well i think. i freakin love dimmable ballasts

Cheerful · May 28, 2012

Hey, Kit Kat, welcome to ICMag, congrats on coming out of the shadows! I'm gonna subscribe to this thread! I've wanted to grow Kalichakra for a long time... I understand Mandala came out with a new & improved version about a year ago (?) Are your seeds the new ones or old ones? Good luck and positive energy being sent to you right now!

Kit Kat · May 29, 2012

Day One from seed, planted

Day One from seed, planted

Desert Hydro, you're right... the temps in the garage jumped from 72 to 75 today, I'll need to have something for when it gets actually warm. There's no central availability in the garage, but I can open a door and let it dump into the living room if necessary. Did that earlier during the afternoon to let it chill out some.

Cheerful, Thank you! Ya'll've made me feel welcome, for sure, glad I posted! I'm not sure whether my seeds are old or new, but I did get them in the mail just a few weeks ago so hopefully they're the new & improved version.

After waffling about earlier on how many I was going to do I decided to pop all 20 into party cups with Light Warrior along with the couple of freebies. A Power Kush and a Flash Babylon(?) made it into the mix. The two extra randoms I'll just stick into the clone tent that will be arriving shortly to mess about with. The Kalichakra's will be aggressively selected when they start to get a bit much.

The seed packs:

Everything laid out and ready to go:

The light is about 20" above the tops of the cups here:

And here it is, tucked up for the night:

smoooth · May 29, 2012

Looking good man. Pulling up a chair for this one. Is that the garage? Like the camo for it lok

Kit Kat · May 29, 2012

Yep, in the back of the garage. The camo works just enough to pop the door open and shut real fast if needed. ;p

Kit Kat · May 31, 2012

Day Two from seed

Day Two from seed

Not a lot happening yet, still just waiting for the ladies to poke their heads above soil...

I did revamp my scrubber -> fan -> exhaust configuration and added a DIY muffler on to the end of the exhaust so I can prop the back door open a bit and let some cool air in the late afternoon. Before I could hear the air flow faintly when the door was cracked in the back yard... now, not at all.

I had to use metal lathe in this one, seriously do not recommend doing this. It was a huge pita and it sliced my hands up a time or two. No one at Home Depot had any idea what 'Machine Cloth' was and the only other option was a 65 dollar roll of chicken wire, sooooo. Even with that gap where you can't see any insulation (it slipped out of the way) it still does a great job of silencing that whoooooshing air noise from the exhaust.

Temperatures are still in the low 80s in the tent though, so I'm thinking about setting up the CHHC-1 and CO2 regulator and running a line to the back of the little fan I have clipped to the hood. I'll also be getting a portable AC soon just to have control over the tent climate, but haven't figured out where to duct the exhaust yet... or if I should just stop tinkering and see how the ladies do. Mandala strains are supposed to be heat tolerant!

:thank you:

Kit Kat · Jun 1, 2012

My COM-100 meter came in today so I decided to check my tap water just to see, and straight from the faucet it appears to be 510 ppm and 7.4 ph! This seems really out of whack, should I be thinking about an RO system or something?

smoooth · Jun 1, 2012

Make sure the meter is calibrated before you go buy an RO system. Hopefully it's just a quick fix otherwise, yeah I would recommend filtered water. 510 is really high

Kit Kat · Jun 1, 2012

Thanks for the quick response smoooth, I have some 1000 ppm calibration fluid and I tested it by setting it for ppm, NaCL and stuck it into a shotglass of 1000 ppm fluid, it read out 109 x10 (1090 I guess).

I suppose I should follow the calibration instructions instead but even if it was 420 wouldn't that still be pretty damn high?

smoooth · Jun 1, 2012

Yeah 420 is still high(no pun intended lol) when I use tap water I want it to be 300-330 or lower. Otherwise i use filtered water or do a half and half with filtered water and RO water.

Kit Kat's Kalichakra Coco Grow Show (1st time!)

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