Vertical coco gutter's/ Round 1 disaster.

Is there a reason you went to coco from DWC??? Did you have problems?

I simply ran out of money, I have 3 aquarium air pumps and a 65 liter/minute aquarium air compressor to run between 8 and 10, 5 gallon buckets... I didn't have enough 5 gal buckets and would have needed at least another compressor to flower enough dwc plants for 6 lights. Also with 3 1000w hps you can't really get that big of a footprint in horizontal, dwc produces very fast growth and I don't get much more than 20-24 inches of light penetration with the 1000w magnetics, my average yiel of of a 1000w horizontal is 1-1/4 # to 1-3/4# running a good yielder, altough up till now I've been cutting corners in veg so increasing my veg times would up my average just been using my big lights for flowering and been using a 150w hps and 175w mh to veg... Now I'm running a 1000 w mh to veg Simply trying to increase production with what I have..

I have always found smaller plants of 24" or less to be the most productive and have the fastest turnaround and also the highest quality because even the bottom get good amounts of light. But that applies to horizontal with regular bulbs. The vertical guys can have big plants of high quality with lighting all around the plants. And with the DE bulbs your good for 36" of light penetration and good healthy growth, they're worth every penny, rdwc with 1150w DE is where I'm headed soon. It's going to be an expensive setup Im gonna replace 3000 w hps madnetic ballast flip for gavita 4000w DE, 2 lights per room controlled by a master el 2 controller running in inverse mode. Going to get a chill king chiller for the summer months to cool down the rooms and the rdwc solution, this is going to cost 10 000$ ++ I'm just guessing id have to see prices for everything but yeah around 10 G I'm in Canada so I overpay for everything and on top of that 15% sales taxes.. Ouch.. This set up woulb be professional as sh**, add a few of those new DE cmh 615w and I'd have awesome spectrum to produce top quality dank. One thing at a time I guess..Rome wasn't built in one day.

Right before I watered, day 15 of flowering I will be taking very good care of these girls, house and garden cocos a+b soon, no more gh I saw a good difference in overall health and appearance when I briefly switched to canna for a test, problem for me is canna is expensive up here so I'm going to try H&G cocos a+b with some of there additives.

For horizontal, I am going to buy the newest DIY LED's, Vero29 Gen 7's. Much less heat, better distribution of light, do not have to change bulbs twice a year, better penetration, etc.. LED's would be useless for vertical.

They're getting crowded a bit I'm really good at placing plants to maximize light usage but they are up to the walls and leaf tips are starting to touch each other, time to go up on the shelves a few more days they are still streaching at day 15, bud sites are very apparent and plants vary from 20-24 inches by the looks with a few runts that are about 16 inches. Overall much better then the dwc to coco transfer we're they barely grew during the first 2-3 weeks, they had to rebuild the root systems.. I'll post more pics after the transfer, I'll be busy this weekend, chop-chop and complete clean up, also need to hook the pump and hoses to the irrigation timer and make sure the concept of irrigating a coco pot at 45° angle without leaking everywhere. Well see otherwise i might have to redesign the shelves, I like having them angled towards the bulbs, I know they will grow towards the light regardless of that but looks better angled, I might need to add screens or tie them cause pp gets heavy and at a 45 angle might tip over. We'll see in week 5-8 thats when the weight packs in.

Yeah I'm looking at the LED too they have really moved up in the game, I'm going to have LED strips for clones/ seedlings and early veg they are superior to t5 and you don't have to buy new neon tubes every 6 months, use half the electricity and produce a superior spectrum and higher par. With time the ones for flowering will lower in price and beat DE lights but not quite yet.. DE are much cheaper to purchase, the bulbs are good for up to 2 years and are cheaper then se bulbs lol. LED are good for up to 5 years in 5 years you change bulbs 2 1/2 times thats 360+- and 500$ for light fixture, thats half the price of the average LED fixture that replaces the 1000w hps... You will save up in electricity so maybe at this point they are equals but you will see you're investment returns much faster from the DE. Has anyone on here gotten 3+ # off of a LED panel ? My buddy's been running gavitas DE since early 2015 and his record is 3.3# per DE running the same PP cut I do, he gets almost double what I get from a 1000 w magnetic same with 0.1 amps electricity more lol

I started a thread in the seeds/genetics section titled crop king seeds, I'm starting a bunch of seeds and will be using a 60w LED strip made for aquarium plants that also works really well for any type of plant, it's a spectrum adjustable light with remote and timer/ controller I have 2 of those strips paid 400$ for the first one and got the other slightly used for 175 I started seeds a few weeks ago and was amazed at how they looked natural, green healthy and no stretch at all just like starting seeds under sunlight. https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=340258

No LED panel is very good at the moment. Typically use old technology. I was going to use Cree's which were state of the art until December, when the Vero29 Gen 7's were released. Instead of having one extremely bright light, you use a bunch of lights dispersed of the grow area. They get mounted to angle aluminum frame.

Day 28 or something.. Still trimming the last one no numbers yet, about 3#.

looking sweet

Day 32, tried taking right after lights out with flash

So far they have been fed with General Hydro coco formula, 6/9 ml/gal micro/bloom with a bit of rhizotonic during first few weeks and b1 seaweed extract. I ran out of gh koolbloom last harvest and don't like the koolbloom results so I decided to try advanced nutrients big bud powder because of the amino acids included in the formula. I started using it at day 31 and have already seen a difference in size overnight so I will keep using it daily until day 36 as recommended. I have ordered House and Garden Coco's A+B, top booster and bud xl and should receive those early this week. So week 5-6 will be switched to H&G nutes and supplements and some good ole fashioned grandma's molasses, pp seems to love the molasses like no other, she frosts up and gets nice subtle purple streaks from the extra iron. Tired of general hydro, I've been getting mixed results with it for the past year, some plants are perfected green and healthy and others have yellowing leaf deficiencies while being fed the exact same nute mix, more so since I switched from soilless to coco... I have tried using pure ro water, mixed ratios of tap and ro water but I still get deficiencies. So I tried canna and liked the results better, the leafs had a nicer colour and more natural green look to them, canna is a bit expensive and overly diluted so I decided to go for House and Garden coco's and supplements. Also I finally ordered a 1000 watt nanolux commercial de hps fixture. I really wanted Gavitas but these are collectively priced to sell and are almost 250$ cheaper, not the same reputation as gavita but I'll give them a try... I got the model with the reflector for a 5x5' footprint, I will get a second maybe even a third one in early may and also there dtu wifi module which is like the gavita el controller but is accessible and programable by wifi with a smart phone. They have a 3 year warranty so should be ok, hopefully I don't have any problems as I read they are slow to replace defective merchandise.. So maybe this will be the last vertical grow I do.. Not sure yet haven't decided but horizontal with de bulbs is f****** amazing, buddy of mine got slightly more then 6.5 lbs with 2 gavita 1000w de using this power plant!!!

I have checked online and haven't seen anybody using the new double ended bulbs for vertical grows, I read a thread on ic wjth people talking about it and some saying it couldn't be done... Sure would be interesting to see the potential of those bulbs in a vertical donut or shelves.. It would be crazy.. What about the new single ended bulbs that have the double ended 400v arc tube ??? Has anyone used these for vertical ? I haven't seen them sold anywhere.. Maxpar makes a 1000 w se/de and supposed to be distributed by nanolux but does anyone sell them? I think grower's house sells a 600 w se/de by philips but not the 1000w se/de. I almost want to hack a de bulb holder to use it in my vertical room. The nanolux ballast and reflector can be remotely installed they are seperable and also capable of overdriving the de bulb to 1200 watts !

Ran PhantomDE's side by side with NanoluxDE's, Phantoms are much better believe higher par value. I once read somewhere that somebody manufactured a holder for de bulbs to be ran vertical but can't recall where. Right now I'm running GalaxyDE's with AC/DC hoods and they completely kick ass. Just sold 2 PhantomDE's today to a friend that was running crappy cob led's, guy felt like he won lottery!

PEACE!

Ok, thats good to know, where you running the same bulbs in the nanolux and galaxy fixtures? Or is that what you meant, the nanolux DE bulb is not as good as the philips DE bulb? Or maybe the difference is in the reflectors?? The nanolux I'm getting is for a 5x5 footprint, I might eventually replace it with a different reflector for a slightly bigger footprint similar to the gravitas. But the nanolux is supposed to overdrive the bulb to 1200w.. And claim to have the highest light output (claims) Don't know, haven't seen them in action yet only the gavitas, that's why I'm trying 1 if it's not satisfactory I will sell it to my new apprentice and get the expensive gavita gear instead. Copied by everyone but still not surpassed after 2- 3 years...

Day 32, they are loving the Big Bud from advanced, 3 rd watering with this supplement and it's having a positive effect on the buds, they appear to be swelling faster than usual and it's my first time trying a supplement that contains amino acids and I assume this is what is making the difference.

I apologize, it's actually day 33.

Still waiting for the hydro store to call and tell me my House and Garden nutes and supplements are in...

I might need to tie them to support the weight in another week because those 3 liter pots don't weight much when dry and I can see some of the longer plants tipping over eventually. I will put a screw near each top in tbe shelves above and use horticultural green wire to tie each top, that should do tbe trick and is much simpler then installing a scrog..