Kit Kat's OG Kush Round 2, the Perpetual vScrog

Kit Kat · Jul 17, 2013

Round 3, day 12 flower

Round 3, day 12 flower

And here they are, 12 days into flower. I've been pinching them pretty heavily to try and keep them from stretching too far out of the screens and it seems to be working okay, right now. One of them unfortunately I ran out of garden screen and didn't get any more until last night. I'll have it strapped up later tonight.

Still a bit haggard from the light burning, but I only pulled the truly bad leaves and just left the rest be.

Kit Kat · Jul 17, 2013

[Set 2] 34 days into flower

[Set 2] 34 days into flower

Here's what set 2 is looking like now, 34 days into flower. I'll post the shot from when they first went in as comparison, I believe they were 16-18" tall when they first started and the majority of the time I was gone the bulb wasn't getting pulled up along with the stretch, so they never really put on a lot of height. I do like how they look though.

Went they first went in:

And 34 days later:

These definitely kept much more of a 'standard' structure - they weren't pinched at all, and the bulb remained in a static position and it shows - they could've filled the screen out a lot more.

Kit Kat · Jul 17, 2013

[Set 1] Day 49 flower

[Set 1] Day 49 flower

And the original ones that went in there. I didn't want to pull everything else out of the way to get some full body shots so I just stuck the camera in there for a few quickies. They're now hooked up to the straight water tank to flush out, they'll be on that anywhere from another week to two weeks depending on how the trichs color out.

Ichabod Crane · Jul 17, 2013

If you can bend the tops down like a candy cane you can fill the screen more down below. If they are to brittle and might snap you can just add a screen extension to the top of your existing screen.

Kit Kat · Jul 17, 2013

And finally, the infrastructure to start supporting some more changes is in place. I picked up a handful of blumat on/off valves and some more through pieces, so I can ideally set up 3 tanks total - one for main feed, one for bloom, and one for flush. Right now there's just the main feed and bloom set up, but the way I ran the lines to each set of 4 will let me just switch from one to the other easily.

Left is a 32g that's currently using the standard 1.2 EC feed I listed previously, the left is a 20g that's just full of water. I ended up adding air stones to the 32g to keep things moving around and help mix when I refill - I was noticing a lot of gunk sitting at the bottom and didn't like that. It went away when I stirred, but would settle out again later. Not sure what that is.

This is the one/off valve set up. Right now the 3 split runs back to the 32g, and the one off to the right is for the flush tank. Tonight when the lights come on set 1 will be hooked up to the flush. Shortly I'll add a second 20g for bloom and have a single line running off for it as well.

Bit dirty in here (another chore for tonight) because one of the blumats ran away when I let the main tank get too low and it dried out a bit - once I filled and mixed, I woke up to a nice big mess I had to shop vac out the next morning. Each of the lines is labeled with tape so it's easy to figure out which goes where.

I'll update this post later with a long list of the mistakes that've been made over the last 3 weeks, 'cause damn, there were quite a few - but I wanted to finally post something and get it offa my head.

Kit Kat · Jul 17, 2013

Ichabod Crane said:
If you can bend the tops down like a candy cane you can fill the screen more down below. If they are to brittle and might snap you can just add a screen extension to the top of your existing screen.

They're pretty supple still, but if they stretch too much more I might end up having to do that. I keep pinching the tops though (take a close up shot later of it) to the point that there're like, 5-6 knots up there and the rest seems to be catching up to it pretty rapidly.

Bmac1 · Jul 17, 2013

Looking awesome Kit Kat. I am hopeful for some full screens in my near future. Got some seedlings going now but I will be using 7 gal pots so hopefully some very full screens ;-)

Ichabod Crane · Jul 17, 2013

I did not mention this earlier and thought it may help you in the future. If you run stacked bulbs you can let the buds hang toward the light some. This will increase the amount of your yield. Because you will be running a stacked bulb the light will get behind the protruding buds. This increased my average from one buld of 22-24 to 62-66 for two bulbs. I went from 1000 watts to 1600 watts and increased the bud quantity and quality. Of course I had to veg longer to do this to get a fuller plant to put into flower.

Kit Kat · Jul 17, 2013

Ichabod Crane said:
I did not mention this earlier and thought it may help you in the future. If you run stacked bulbs you can let the buds hang toward the light some. This will increase the amount of your yield. Because you will be running a stacked bulb the light will get behind the protruding buds. This increased my average from one buld of 22-24 to 62-66 for two bulbs. I went from 1000 watts to 1600 watts and increased the bud quantity and quality. Of course I had to veg longer to do this to get a fuller plant to put into flower.

I'd love to stack bulbs... watching the single 600s this time around on screens definitely makes me want to, and I have the equipment to double up easily.

Unfortunately I only have two 15a 120v circuits downstairs and they're both pretty much maxed out at the moment with everything hooked up, just enough left over on one to run the shopvac or whatever else I need without knocking the breaker out.

The panel is right there in the basement though, but I don't know anything about running subpanels or know someone yet who does.

Kit Kat · Jul 17, 2013

~doublepost~

It'd be great to get suggestions on options there though, for sure, I wouldn't mind doing it myself if there was a good resource available.

SecondAttempt · Jul 17, 2013

I'm on my lunch break... be back later to discuss running new breakers. It's pretty easy just gotta obey a few safety precautions. Show is looking real good so far.

Kit Kat · Jul 18, 2013

SecondAttempt said:
I'm on my lunch break... be back later to discuss running new breakers. It's pretty easy just gotta obey a few safety precautions. Show is looking real good so far.

Thanks a lot! I'd really appreciate it, can't get a 4th light set up in there now as it is - much less stacking them all and doing 8.

Now I'm running into a new fun thing to troubleshoot here - given the amount of 8mm and 3mm line I'm using the 32g tank only puts out enough pressure to drip as expected to the entire system when it is over half full. This is a bit of a bummer since when all three sets are hooked up they can drain that down in a couple days, easily. Noticed a couple of them were getting light when I was poking around earlier and when they were untwisted all the way, a pretty anemic flow was coming out.

It appears I'll either need to keep manually refilling/mixing every couple days to keep the tank topped off (not ideal, but what I'm doing now), get a pump and a smaller raised bucket with a float valve that stays topped off from the 32g which will give me a lot more time inbetween mixes and let it drain out more (but adds more complexity and failure points), or get a third tank in there asap for a blooming mix so there's only ever two sets at one time hooked up to it in the first place.

Ideally I'd like to get 'chore day' down to one day out of the week.

Arminius · Jul 18, 2013

Kit Kat said:
I'd love to stack bulbs... watching the single 600s this time around on screens definitely makes me want to, and I have the equipment to double up easily.

Unfortunately I only have two 15a 120v circuits downstairs and they're both pretty much maxed out at the moment with everything hooked up, just enough left over on one to run the shopvac or whatever else I need without knocking the breaker out.

The panel is right there in the basement though, but I don't know anything about running subpanels or know someone yet who does.

The easiest thing to do is replace the current breaker with a tandem one.

Born Loser · Jul 18, 2013

Arminius said:
The easiest thing to do is replace the current breaker with a tandem one.

Depends on the box and breaker from what Ive seen. Ive tried this in a few boxes.. Some have to have a short spot on the bar in the box for the tandem breaker to snap into place. Some tandems have a metal 'tab' across the notch that the bar goes into to prevent them from snapping in unless the bar is notched down. Some panels have certain spots designated for these breakers...
I know I not the only one that has seen this...it prevents the user from filling the panel with tandems and overloading things.

Kit Kat · Jul 18, 2013

Arminius said:
The easiest thing to do is replace the current breaker with a tandem one.

The one in there powering both 'sides' of the basement is a tandem currently.

Kit Kat · Jul 30, 2013

Pulled down the first set that went in last night - it was only at about five percent amber or so, but it'd been a bit long and the next set had to be cycled in. The heatwave and intermittent feeding they got when I went on that trip and came back all contributed to some foxtailing and spacy looking nugs, lesson learned for next time. I'll get some pictures up of the next sets as they are now, but I think I'm going to start doing structures like Arminius and lay off the pinching until the lights get doubled up.

Kit Kat · Jul 31, 2013

Round 4, Day 1

Round 4, Day 1

Pulled the poor bastards that were neglected in veg and set them up on the screens, they've rotated in to take the place of the ones chopped last night. They got a good dose of ogbiowar tea and sea green before going in, redialed the blumats and hooked them up to the veg res.

Unfortunately they grew too tall (again, nearly 30") and burnt themselves against the light of the little veg tent I've been using. Scoping out another part of the basement to hang a Magnum XXXL 8" reflector I didn't sell to make a new and larger veg area.

Not going to pinch these this time - they were already topped and chopped to get some cuts, and round 3 was this tall AND pinched and they're already getting a bit unruly.

Lightly stripped them and tomorrow they'll get a spray of Magic Green. Finally back on track. :dance013:

Kit Kat · Jul 31, 2013

Round 2, Day 65

Round 2, Day 65

Second round is now hitting day 50 (ignore the day 65 thing in the subject, I was counting way way wrong).

Just hooked these up to the flush res and took a peek with a scope, hardly anything has turned cloudy on them so I'll just let it run and see.

For some reason this one was bone dry, didn't notice until I pulled it back to take a picture. Opened the blumat up a bit and let it soak, but I'll probably have to replace this one with a soaked sensor tomorrow.

Definitely like the nug structure better when they aren't pinched. These are much bigger than the first round.

Kit Kat · Jul 31, 2013

Round 3, Day 28

Round 3, Day 28

Here's Round 3 on Day 28. Stretch is over and they're starting to set, these were just hooked up to the 'bloom' res, which right now is just A, B, Bud XL, and Drip Clean.

Suckers overgrew the top of the tent and got a little unruly. They went in at about 30" tall and were pinched heavily while they were growing and it turned into a mess of branches. I'll need to get in there and clip and start doing some pruning, some of the fan leaves are as big as my head.

Kit Kat · Jul 31, 2013

Finally, here's the next set going in. On the left is Kalichakra seeds planted about two days ago, on the right are OG Kush rooted cuts in coco.

One of my biggest problems is losing track of what to do when, especially when work and drinking get to be a bit much. Ordered a printer that should be here tomorrow, and I'm going to start filling out daily 'note' sheets that have the chores/schedules pre-printed on them so there isn't anymore having-to-think-about things and letting stuff drop when life starts getting hectic. I'll note water level, EC, pH, height, temperature, rH and anything else weird and keep it in a binder.

Oh, and I took Ichabod's advice and stuck a ruler on the side here so I can see how quick they're growing.

The room now has 3 reservoirs in it, one 32g for stretch that'll be hooked up to a max of two sets at a time, one 20g bloom, and 20g flush. Each of the 20g tanks will only be hooked up to a single set, and with the 32 handling two they should last a lot longer before needing a refill. Having three for each stage of the schedule'll make it easy to refill as well - the insides of each res now have 1 gallon water marks etched on the inside, so I can just stick a hose in to top it off and mix according to that.

Also added airstones that come on at lights on just to keep things stirred up, I was noticing a lot sediment hanging around the bottoms.

Kit Kat's OG Kush Round 2, the Perpetual vScrog

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