Micro Adventures with Mr. Sparkle

Introductions:

My Name is Mr. Sparkle or at least that is my pseudonym.

Background:

I have been growing off and on for enough time to consider myself experienced, but not an expert.

I started in this hobby when a good friend was in the process of moving and dropped off some window started and grown bag-seed that he asked for me to look after till they finished moving. The plants were scraggly stretched out things and 6 out of the 7 became male, but i built a small light and poor excuse for a reflector for them and that started me down this garden path.

I have oddly enough instead of going bigger and bigger in people grows over time have consistently gone smaller and smaller till where i'm at today.

Purpose:

To enjoy this hobby and to learn and share as much as i can with an open mind, while challenging myself to do better.

Setup:

Current setup is two PC's, they're typically referred to as the Boxes, But have the names of Ashla and Bogan to differentiate the two, I'll let you figure out the reference if you so desire.

The differences, Bogan is slightly smaller at around 0.85 sqft, and runs 4x350ma COB leds mounted to PC heat-sinks, and is typically used as my vegetation box with a 18hr on 6hr off cycle, but has and can been used for flowering.

Ashla is slight taller and longer Case and comes in right around 1 sqft, and runs 2x700ma COB leds mounted on eBay heat-sinks.

What the same between them, they both run a higher pressure 120mm PC fan with homemade carbon filters that are magnetically attached for ease of removal and refill, and smaller 80mm stripped housing fans for circulation.

Both are controlled by Arduino's which are consistently getting upgraded, but the have real time clocks for light timers and other functions, relays for the lights and water valves, custom made soil moisture sensors for automation, pulse width modulation control for fan speed changes between day and night, LCD screens just to display certain measurements or values such as date, time, temperature, humidity and soil moisture.

They're setup to run as a no waste bottom feed tray setup, with homemade fabric pots with 400ml or 800ml volumes, and i currently run a 50/50 mix of coconut coir and perlite, it gets reused till it breaks down or i need more, and i use General Hydroponics MaxiBloom at 600ppm/EC 1.2 to keep it simple, as i see no sense in buying water like other nutrient brands, and have it fed out of a 3.5 Liter reservoir.

Genetics:

I'll try anything so long as they are not ridiculously over priced and work in my setup, but i'm currently trying to run through all the seeds i have to try and find some real good keeper's or interesting genetics to breed my own strains with.

One to the pictures:


The Boxes:

Ashla with an inside shot






Bogan with an inside shot

Latest Booty Shots

Female Seeds BubbleGummer





Female Seeds Ice



Female Seeds Blueberry Cheesecake



Female Seeds C99

And Pictures of the Boxes taken at one week interval's

Bogan





Ashla

Those have to be the tidiest PC cabs I've ever seen, you've certainly maximised the amount of available grow space. Beautiful grow and happy plants.

What's been your favourite strain so far? It looks like you've made a wide variety of strains thrive, looking forward to a smoke report on that c99!

awesome. subbed.

Gnz said:

Those have to be the tidiest PC cabs I've ever seen, you've certainly maximised the amount of available grow space. Beautiful grow and happy plants.

What's been your favourite strain so far? It looks like you've made a wide variety of strains thrive, looking forward to a smoke report on that c99!

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Thank you, as for strains cant really name any per say as its typically been ones that ive made myself, the ones i enjoy are fruity, floral, herb like strains, that are either active, productive, social, creative, or introspective.
The narcotic, couch lock, pungent, knockout skunky strains are just not my thing.

But some of the crosses have had things like Mandala #1, older karma genetics Jamil Sayidda and other stuff mixed in.
A more recent strain that i enjoyed was a KC Brains Bahia Black Head, i came across a few fruity candy like genotypes that were productive introspective highs, ill definitely be trying some more of them and some of his other strains even is he gets a bad rap from a bit of variability in the seed. Well that and that most people who have tried his stuff typically have tried his stuff for their first grows due to the cheap seed cost, but grow them horribly then say there junk.


The C99 is interesting enough to me that i would like to try some other breeders versions, didn't liked how it grew for my boxes, being a bit of a pain, but seed vs clone is different in small spaces in how things grow, still can get a good comparison though.

Should be a week or two before ill be trying some from this round, as i like a bit of a cure.

Edit:Fixed the links above which i couldn't do till i had 50 posts

Damn, thats how you make a proper PC grow. Big up!

Can you give me more info about the scrubber and the PC fan. Do you think it would work in this one http://www.ikea.com/se/sv/catalog/products/40214551/?

Those look incredible. Extremely tidy setup. I keep meaning to finish off and post my own setup and I must say I'm kind of inspired. Though it no way looks as good as that.

I can see this being where I'd like to end up in a couple of buillds. Subbed.

Looks great!

Looks great!

That C99 looks amazing! Love the colors and it looks like it has a very high calyx to leaf ratio?
Looking forward to more!!
Is that one of your mothers? The one with the long thick stem in veg?

Flowdandada said:

Damn, thats how you make a proper PC grow. Big up!

Can you give me more info about the scrubber and the PC fan. Do you think it would work in this one http://www.ikea.com/se/sv/catalog/products/40214551/?

Click to expand...

Its just a high static pressure pc fan pulling through around 2"+ of aquarium carbon, nothing special. It will work for your application but it all depends on how much heat your generating, key is to have enough passive intake "twice the amount as exhaust at least" and just consider that hot air rises so you'll want to scavenge your air from the top.
My scrubber's isn't the most effective during full bloom with stinker strains, due to the amount of air i need to pull through it to keep the boxes cool, but in the past when I've designed and built boxes to vent from the top where in a fan failure they could still function from natural convection the amount of odor that came through was less, cause i could slow down the airflow through the carbon.

Evil_Monkey said:

Those look incredible. Extremely tidy setup. I keep meaning to finish off and post my own setup and I must say I'm kind of inspired. Though it no way looks as good as that.
I can see this being where I'd like to end up in a couple of builds. Subbed.

Click to expand...

Thank you, it just takes time and a bit of tinkering, and not being scared to change things up and try different things, im fortunate enough to enjoy building boxes almost as much as growing the plants, as its all a fun challenge to me.

ydnap said:

That C99 looks amazing! Love the colors and it looks like it has a very high calyx to leaf ratio?
Looking forward to more!!
Is that one of your mothers? The one with the long thick stem in veg?

Click to expand...

Actually some of the other plants were alot better than the c99 in those regards, but what the c99 had on the other plants was everything was covered in trichomes, and seemed to bulk up right near the end, that c99 wasn't grown the best, so ill try running her through again.

Yes the one with the long stem was a mother, it was actually a flowered seedling that i re-vegged after i harvested her, i just had her in there till she resumed normal growth and i had clone from her, which was the bushier plant in veg a couple weeks after the long stem one disappeared in the photos
Now some people look down on re-vegging plants, due to supposed factor like genetic drift and or the potential to loose the genetics but its just another tool in my mind. Also i don't really have the space or time to first veg out a seedling take clones then flower those once they're rooted, just to determine that its something i don't want, while i could of ran 3-5 more seedlings through in the same time/space.

But you will see a couple plants in the photos ill post shortly of some ones ill be re-vegging, well trying to anyways.

Here's a question for those subbed in or viewing at the moment, Until i get my post count up, im limited to 800px max image size then 1024 after that, Would you rather see bigger more detailed shots, with a higher chance that they might disappear from this thread in the future, or smaller shots that will stay around as long as my user account isn't deleted, which i don-t plan on deleting.

Till some feedback or i get 50 posts here are my weekly shots.

i typically take them Monday, as im not always around on the weekend, especially with all the fun that can be had during summer, but some times i miss them and take them Tuesday, it helps me keep track of them personally as i can just look back through the photos, also starting to be better at keeping a grow journal.


Bogan

Clones bottom left two, two mothers just above them one is a Female Seeds - Lemon Kush , and the other is a Dutch Passions - Orange Bud, and the sticks above them are Bubblegummer #2, and C99, from the previous run getting re-vegged.

In the center the top two are just potted Blazing Pistileros - Krakatoa they have been duds so far, as in males or mutants, or a trifoliate males, just burning through them, so im not expecting much now. Bottom center are three SinCity Seeds - Sin Mint Cookies, wasn't impressed with the couple i grew before, so burning through these aswell, cause you never know.

Right side is three auto flowers, two Dutch Passion - Auto Mazar, which have been taking a beating, and one Royal Queen Seeds - Quick One Auto at the top there about 4-5 weeks in.




Ashla

On the right i have 5 (Mandala #1 x (Mandala #1 x Jamil Sayyida)) there about 5-6 years old, burning through them aswell, also have a Bomb Seeds - Ice Bomb in there.

On the left we have some recovering Orange Bud clones, and Lemon Kush clone which i might just get rid of as i have more clones but we will see, also a sparse Dinafem - Critical Cheese on the bottom, and a Bomb Seeds - Cherry Bomb

I decided to flush that last group allowing the other plants to get the run off, well that caused the plants to remain too wet, then fungus knats most likely were just starting due to them all being to wet for too long and abit of root rot happened aswell so that combined with a random feed schedule just screwed with them, ive corrected all the problems since, so lesson learned for this setup just let it run and dont flush, as is flushing actually necessary, some say no, i agree to some extent apart from nutrient burnt plants, as i cant tell a difference, whats your opinion ?




And here's a Female Seeds - Lemon Kush i just Chopped today, it needed a bit more time than the others.

Nice grow rig, I like the two box set up.

Hope to see more and more of your grows!

Great thread, subbed

Nice, clean, tight PC grow. Looks like your doing a perpetual uSOG right?

ReikoX said:

Nice, clean, tight PC grow. Looks like your doing a perpetual uSOG right?

Click to expand...

Yep, been doing them off and on for a few years now, allows me to play around with different genetics.

Lemon kush looks frosty as hell. Where are your LED drivers btw? I'm assuming out-of-cab?

On Ashla they are on the back with all the other electronics, On Bogan there tucked away between the front face plate and the PC but you can't see them without removing the drive filler plates.

But here's Ashla

Everything about your cases is magical! Absolutely amazing job you did with them