400w HPS, Blumats, Smartpots with Golden Label nutrients

Most of the bud in 1 picture - missing 2 dolmio glass jars~
Clones - will probably use the two big ones

Closer look on one of the clones - I must say I'm very pleased how easy it was so get really nice clones even taken several weeks into flowering. I will probably continue this kind of cloning from now on - they grow pretty wildly too thanks to this!

How do you like the blumats? Any suggestions or thoughts? I'm thinking to try those or just go back to dripper system.

been using blumats in straight coco over the last couple weeks for the first time, absolutely love them. they're very easy to set up, my first time with them and i have 16, didn't mess anything up and haven't had to make any adjustments. just have to check the ph in the res every few days. no runoff either.

blumats are pretty good once you dial them in good - the reason i had issues with mine were that they are very sensitive and sometimes they kept dripping even tho the medium was completely soaked - ending up emptying my res into the tent bottom. I will fix this issue by building myself a flood tray and a bigger run off res attached it - it's always great being able to flush the ladies in the tent and not move them out into the shower too.

I will probably try to run them in "coco-hydro" with the blumats always dripping every 7-8 seconds in this next grow!
Oh yeah, here's a pic with my new hood and a couple of smaller pots for them, 3.6L/1 Gallon pots - I've heard you don't need bigger especially when running blumats since they never get dried out.

i think it's best to let the blumats adjust to the medium before trying to set the drip, and use a bottle or baster to blast the air bubbles out from under the cap while you assemble them under water.

i soaked my coco thoroughly, then waited 24h (this is with freshly transplanted clones in airpots) while my blumats soaked (cap off) in a bucket of water. after the 24h, i assembled the blumats and before installing them i wiped off the outside so they weren't dripping wet. the valves were totally closed when installed.

after they were installed i waited another couple hours for them to adjust to the medium, then i opened up each one to let the air out, dialed back to a clinging drop, then another 1.5 arrows.

did that process for each one and haven't touched any of them since. perfect results.

Interesting bikhomes, for now I will hand water them til the roots are good and prosper - i have put two blumats in them unplugged so i dont have to destroy roots putting it in later. Once the root system is through the pot i'll start using blumats, you have a good idea of how to config the blumats so I will follow your words doing them this time

if roots are established you probably don't want to wait as long between soaking the medium and installing the blumats. basically wait until the medium is about how wet you want it all the time, then install them and they will keep it at that level of moisture. glad i could help!

So I finally have enough money over to purhase some supplies for a flood tray and scrog net! I purhased all things needed at around €35


Scrog Frame

http://i.imgur.com/7hY5VDv.png
I epoxyed a bit of 8mm blumat hose cut at a 45 degree angel


The tray is standing on an IKEA table that put me down €5, and a 20L container below (which is about the size of my nute res atm)


The finished product I'm pleased with myself - with my tight budget restraint it came out pretty good, I might have put some " O-- " screws instead of duct tape but they were like 3 euros per 10 of them and you'd need probably 10-15 euros worth of those things to get it done with 5cm/2 inch spacing. Granted my net is a liiitle bit lose at some spots but it's ok for me! That's perhaps more about technique than anything.

The bulb is right now 50-60 cm from the net.. I just hope this is enough for a 400w bulb - I did see some heat stress signs on some of the leaves. I put my small usb fan to cool it a bit more and see if that's enough.

I'm thinking of buying and hanging a honeywell fan from the tent ceiling and get it in an angle to push air on the bulb in a few weeks if the heat stress doesnt go away.

Havent posted in a while so I sneaked into grow and snapped a photo to show the progress. I had some issues with the girls showing wierd def's so I asked around in our nursery on icmag - came to the conclusion it was the pH that had been wrong because of using run-off a couple of times. It's basicly back to normal now, I have stepped up the nutes a little bit to like 2.1 ML/L. I'm still waiting on my E/C meter, it's gonna be so awesome to finally have what i actually need to run a proper coco grow.

Time to go toke one, and god damn the buds smell wonderful from my last batch. Since they got the few weeks of initial courating they don't taste bad anymore. Life is good.
I'll post when I see some progress, right now I'm just filling out the net - not the most interesting time of a grow

Peace out!

I here ya on having to empty the bottom of the tent. I only have small pans and it gets tiring hand dumping them all. Im thinkiing on a small pump to evacuate the water to my drain. I have a five footer in a 3/4 gallon in Coco and the down side for me is having to water it every day and it suck's it pretty dry. Now when I get a drip system set up they will do great. But I find 2 gallon works well for my big plant's so I don't need to water every day. I recently got the stomach flue and it had me down for 4 days. I almost went to the clinic. I lost 0ver 20lb's and I was lucky I didn't lose my crop. The couple in 3/4 gal. were almost dead when I got to them . But all the one's in 2gal in flower were OK I was so sick I got down there and could not mix my nute's so I just poured on some well water @ph7 and hoped for the best got sick and drug my self backto bed. I see it look's like you are possibly cloning in Coco. I gave it a try and am 100% on both I tryed to clone in it. I recently made a bucket cloner and it is working well too.

Ok guys..blue mats are best when u r watering mutiple times a day and have a
re resivor/ catch tray...it can and prob will end up flooding u up.
Do a slow drip system if u do doo it..but u stil lneed a tray for bad timers etc etc

Unclecrash said:

I here ya on having to empty the bottom of the tent. I only have small pans and it gets tiring hand dumping them all. Im thinkiing on a small pump to evacuate the water to my drain. I have a five footer in a 3/4 gallon in Coco and the down side for me is having to water it every day and it suck's it pretty dry. Now when I get a drip system set up they will do great. But I find 2 gallon works well for my big plant's so I don't need to water every day. I recently got the stomach flue and it had me down for 4 days. I almost went to the clinic. I lost 0ver 20lb's and I was lucky I didn't lose my crop. The couple in 3/4 gal. were almost dead when I got to them . But all the one's in 2gal in flower were OK I was so sick I got down there and could not mix my nute's so I just poured on some well water @ph7 and hoped for the best got sick and drug my self backto bed. I see it look's like you are possibly cloning in Coco. I gave it a try and am 100% on both I tryed to clone in it. I recently made a bucket cloner and it is working well too.

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hey uncle, damn it sucks to hear about how sick you were, just hearing it makes me shivver because of how shit it is to have the flue. I'm glad the girls are alright! Regarding the cloning I use these sponges from rootit! (http://www.rootit.co.uk/) They work good, I also use their nutes for seedlings the first few weeks and also I used their gel to root the clones to begin with. It worked alright, A couple of them died, my air was a bit stale in the beg chamber so one of them even got this white mold thing - I decided to only use 2 of the clones tho, which In my opinion is enough since I'm doing scrog anyway. I think the seedling nutes has everything since their sponges are basicly like coco - carries no nutes.
If I remember correctly you have limited height in your grow room, which can make it hard to make a tray and use gravity. I have however seen people use regular pot trays, put a pipe system on them - and elevate them just a little bit say 3-4 inches and then having a big flat container on the floor that the pipes lead to outside of (in this case) the tent. It seems to work alright as long as you empty the container out before gravity works to an disadvantage
It's just an idea, I can make a drawing if that helps, I can't remember where I saw it.

Weeded1s said:

Ok guys..blue mats are best when u r watering mutiple times a day and have a
re resivor/ catch tray...it can and prob will end up flooding u up.
Do a slow drip system if u do doo it..but u stil lneed a tray for bad timers etc etc

Click to expand...

Hello weeded, yes coco is usually best with some kind of container to catch all the excess water. It's the reason I installed a flood tray with a container as big as my resoirvoir! Not just because of the blumats, but because often you have to flush the girls if something goes wrong, and running around with pot plants in the house is usually not a great idea, and things like scrog would make it impossible hehe. Regarding multiple times a day etc.. Well, with blumats you always have a continuous drip, and there are no timers, but indeed the dials are sometimes very fragile and could empty your res through the pots in a couple of hours with a slightly too high drop rate. All in all blumats are great if you have the time and patient to dial them in properly, not so much if you don't. I personally hand watered my flowering girls the last run the last couple of weeks because I was tired of adjusting them. However this time around I need to spend less time doing chores in my grow - like emptying the bottom of my tent if I adjust them wrong - so it's working out great with my flood tray!

I decided it was time for flowering yesterday, and installed my timer. The girls are basicly massive and I'm afraid I am once again a liittle bit late on the switch. I am thinking about lowering my flood tray by sawing off the feet of the little table I have it on, if they stretch so much that I wont be able to tuck them down below the net again. We'll see.
I am gonna defoliate the girls probably this weekend when I have some extra time to sit down and do it in my own pace.
Here's a pic from today!

omgwt said:

View Image

Closer look on one of the clones - I must say I'm very pleased how easy it was so get really nice clones even taken several weeks into flowering. I will probably continue this kind of cloning from now on - they grow pretty wildly too thanks to this!

Click to expand...

Crazy little clone's for sure. No need to post diagram's im pretty mechanically inclined. I used to install sprinkler system's and such. Here is my Purple Wreck @ about a month and the smaller about 3 week's I didn't take them in flower but right as I put them in I cloned them. Next time Im going to take them a week or so in. Im at my # so I cannot clone any more. I want to clone a week in and then only veg for a few days if that to see what kind of yeild I can get. Just one bud straight up like they do SOG. Trim everything else off but the main Cola.

I am also getting ready to run my bubble bucket in about three weeks I just finished up a bucket cooler with a small pump which pushes the water through polyethlene water line coiled in the bucket to cool and copper tubing in the pump bucket as the water returns it is cooled through the ice and the copper. There is no copper or any thing to contaminate my mix in the bubble bucket . I tryed it out and I started with 73F water in the bucket and within about an hour it had the water in the bucket down to 64 F a bit cold so I might try running just cold water out of my well gets down to about 54F im really curious how cold that will get the water. I used a gallon jug of Ice for the first test. Im also thinking I can use a timer to vary the temp a bit by stopping and starting the pump to let the water in the bubble bucket to warm back up between pump cycle's. What's cool is it is all done with quick connect fitting so all I have to do is set the bub bucket in the room and the other outside where cooler and hook up two quick connects and it is up and running. The coil of poly sit's down in the bub bucket then the plant will sit in the middle. The bucket with copper hooks a gallon jug of ice or cold water to cool. It is running in the pic to check to make sure the one quick connect in the coil of poly does not leak. I needed a few more feet of poly to do it in one piece. The worst part is feeding the poly through all the holes in the plastic and get it situated. It didn't cost a whole lot so I figured I would give it a shot. $10 for pump about $20 for all the fitting and poly the copper coil was the most. I might try it with poly in both buckets to see how it cools, but I figured the copper would cool the water coming back in faster than just letting the water dump back into the ice bucket.

That's very interesting. I never ran hydro but I'd like to some day. Why do you need the cooler by the way, is the bulbs making the room so hot that it needs to be chill?
It would be interesting to see if poly in both buckets had a big difference in cooling the water

Alright I defoliated the girls a little bit today, it was a god damn jungle below the net hehe.
I think I removed enough of it? By the way, do you guys think that the honeywell fan in the current position is enough to not have any stagnated air during flower? I run it on the lowest setting because well.. It's pretty loud.

omgwt said:

That's very interesting. I never ran hydro but I'd like to some day. Why do you need the cooler by the way, is the bulbs making the room so hot that it needs to be chill?
It would be interesting to see if poly in both buckets had a big difference in cooling the water

Click to expand...

The thing is you dont want copper in the nute water i guess it will change the copper in the mix. Im sure it will cool it either way probably not quite as much. It was getting too hot in the nute mix. My roots spit out all kinds of milky crap so I had some extra cash and got the Hydrogaurd and it works good to make new root growth. So I saved her and she is going in in about 3 week's. Im glad I vegged it in the flower room when I first started to know that it was struggling now i can try and combat it.