A5 S1 test Thread

[THC123]

The a5's are alive again!! Also the skunk cross and killer a5 hav recovered. Here a few pics from a week ago.

By now they have become too big as expected, still really low but too wide. I am going to watch how the branches develop over the first 2 weeks of 12/12 and then I'll cut half the branches to have 10-12 buds per plant. ANd I can use those for cuttings, who knos if I find a keeper.

temperSince this morning they are in the tent ith 3 viparspectra V600. The same one as in my motherroom. The fourth on will be installed after my 15th because I need the light for my vegetables and guerill plants and some moms.

But right now they have about 750 watts above them. With the 4 one it will be over 1000 watts. They work great but you need one for each corner to get good coverage. Their angle is 90 degrees. And they sound like a helicopter.

But right now they produce enough heat for good temperatures. I have 600-800 PPM right now with exhaust connected to thermostat. And 28-29 degrees celsius. If a flir camera wasn't so expensive I would buy one. I need to know the leaf surface temperature because LED' run cooler than hps to get the real optimal temperature.

Fluence leaf vs sun leaf

 

[RoyalFlush]

The a5's are alive again!! Also the skunk cross and killer a5 hav recovered. Here a few pics from a week ago.

By now they have become too big as expected, still really low but too wide. I am going to watch how the branches develop over the first 2 weeks of 12/12 and then I'll cut half the branches to have 10-12 buds per plant. ANd I can use those for cuttings, who knos if I find a keeper.

temperSince this morning they are in the tent ith 3 viparspectra V600. The same one as in my motherroom. The fourth on will be installed after my 15th because I need the light for my vegetables and guerill plants and some moms.

But right now they have about 750 watts above them. With the 4 one it will be over 1000 watts. They work great but you need one for each corner to get good coverage. Their angle is 90 degrees. And they sound like a helicopter.

But right now they produce enough heat for good temperatures. I have 600-800 PPM right now with exhaust connected to thermostat. And 28-29 degrees celsius. If a flir camera wasn't so expensive I would buy one. I need to know the leaf surface temperature because LED' run cooler than hps to get the real optimal temperature.

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Fluence leaf vs sun leaf
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A Thermal Laser Gun on Amazon would be your best bet for reading surface temperatures. A Flir camera would be over kill... unless you plan on using on your neighbor's wife's... for research purposes of course

 

[THC123]

Oooh nice and not expensive thx!!!!

 

[THC123]

Some more pics from last week, was too tired yesterday to finish everything.

white og mom

Killer a5

Here you can see the damage I got from raising the par to 180 micromol lol, they totally recovered luckily

 

[THC123]

A5 x skunk x hph

As you can see there is now way I will be able to flower all these plants how they are now(pics are from week ago. They now barely fit in the tent and they will stretch for a month. I will select the nicest branches and I will go for 10-12 buds per plant and the rest an be used to take cuttings. Better to have more light instead of a crowded tent. However some of the nicest branches, the 4 tops, will have to go as they stick out 10-15 cm on each side.

Will try to take pics asap.

I am glad they are okay again and I hope no new shit will happen lol

I am now testing a capillary mat to give water untill they start to make buds. This way I can keep humidity up and water uniformly.

Not sure if they will work well with 5 gallon pots though, we will see!

They all received an organic feeding tab and in a month they will receive flower tabs and 1 week later some extra P and K. It's an organic brand that somehow found a way to make bonemeal immediately usable to the plant. For the rest they will receive some more rockdust, worm castings, bacteria and extra fungae , alfalfa meal and kelp meal.

This will all be mixed with some compost and new soil to make a new top layer as the soil has compacted over 3 months and this way they will have enough till the end.

To combat Calmag def (something I do get under the viparspectra) I bought epsom salts and also another organic spray.

I am glad I waited with flowering them. At least now they have big leaves and sturdy thick stems, and my god, they are GREEN lol. If I had flowered them how they were before yield would have been shit.

 

[THC123]

Update part 3

.

And here the latest side by side, 2 happy brother x guerilla gold moms identical clones), I chose the biggest healthiest one to go under the fluence

The one that is dark green had been under the fluence for 72 hours.

This time I was able to avoid any light bleaching by simply not following the recommendations by fluence and instead using them as a quantum board, so light about 80-100 cm from the plant. It got 250 micromoles.

SO by increasing distance to canopy and turning up the dimmer I was able to avoid the bleaching.

BUT, I mean just look, like WTF. Again almost blue color, droopy leaves and small new growth.


I have now contacted fluence and sent them tons of pics from the side by sides with par values, temp RH and CO2.

I also asked them if I could return the lamp so that they may have a look at it.

Hopefully they will be able to help me. If not then I have wasted a ton of money and I will sell the lamp.

 

[THC123]

The girls have been in the tent for 2 days now, they are getting 300 micromoles.

Tomorrow I will increase it to 400 and next week to 500 and then I'll see. But so far so good, no weird stuff going on, finally it seems to be going normal again with these lights.

Still 2 more weeks before I can install the 4th lamp. So the plant in the lower right corner has about 150-200 micromoles less than the rest

These LED's give just enough heat to have a good climate. I don't need to use heating cables and tubes. Exhaust is at 10% and thermostat is at 28 degrees celsius but the exhaust almost never goes more than 10%.

I also installed capillary mats and after 48 hours I can say they work and can water a 5 gallon container (I read on the blumat site that 2-3 gallon was maximum).

This is a nice way of watering, it saves me time, all plants will have uniform moisture in the soil. The plants that drink less will simply take less. ANd the roots are not submerged in water. I just fill a small reservoir and the capillary action does the rest.

Of course I will also let them dry, I won't keep em moist all the time.

Maybe not the best of ideas to test something new with this grow after all the shyte I've been through, but I couldn't resist.

These are all the plants (6* a5 x skunk x HPH, 4 x a5, 1 x Killer A5 and 1 x White Og) ->

As you can see they are way to big so I'll have to remove a third or even more. I'll wait one more week and then I can clearly see the best branches.

The white og is taller because I now she won't stretch as much as the a5. SHe will b almost ready when the A5 starts flowering. So I think they'll even out.

So glad the a5 are healthy again!!

It's a shame having to remove so much good growth. About 6 weeks ago I removed the first 5 nodes from the a5 cross, leaving only 2 nodes.It was never the plan to let them get this big. But getting them green and healthy had priority. An even canopy with vigorious plants is more important to me. I won't flower weak plants.

After seeing other testers grows, I have decided to go for 11/13 instead of 12/12. The reason is that due to all the problems with the plants, I have 3.5 months of delay.
Last year was only guerilla and I need to have new weed within a few months. I hate it when I slowly start to see the end of my stash, not used to it lol

 

[og.naj]

Beautifull healty canopy THC123

That capillary mat look like a great idea too. It is the first time you use it and on what area size?

Look like a good way for watering.

 

[THC123]

Hi Ognaj,

I have been using it for a few years for strawberries in summer, I have more than hundred strawberry plants and watering them every day is a nightmare, takes more than an hour (plus then rest of vegetable garden). With the mats it takes a few minutes.

I also use it to water seedlings from the bottom once sprouted, or when it is really hot in the greenhouse, to prevent small pots from drying out.

Main reason to try it with this grow was to control humidity, or better said, to increase humidity. Humidifiers simply don't work in my growing setup, but wet towels do. But capillary mats are better, they contain no harmful chemicals and I can also use them to water so 2 advantages for me.

I immediately notice the plants are a lot happier than with watering from above. You can never give too much or too little and there won' be any dry pockets. What is also nice is that the water is absorbed really slow. It takes about 36-48 hours for my reservoir to be absorbed. And when a pot is saturated it simply won't take in any moisture. They really enable the plant to drink at it's own pace without creating a situation were the roots are submerged. Basically this is like an ebb and flood system but without submerging roots in water. Much less aggressive or prone to fungus.

But when it comes to growing, the mats will give you the best results if you only water ONCE from the top in the beginning. When you water from the top the first time, you will create tunnels or airway in the soil.

If from that moment on you only water from below, the soil won't compact and the roots will get much more oxygen.

I will probably remove the capillary mats once the buds start to swell (depending from room RH)

Oh yeah the size of the grow area is 5 x 5. I just put a few pieces of mat on top of eachother (so they touch eachother) in order to transfer moisture over the whole surface.

Btw, if you are from the US, check out Waterpulse capillary mat system. I am from Europe and they are not active in europe but these are made especially for cannabis grows and offer more control.

Mine is just a piece of cloth. I determine how much water it takes to saturate the pots. I never change the water quantity after that, only the frequency.

 

[og.naj]

Thats a really interesting system and time winning watering tech witout any electricity!

Your plants look like they love it and they drink a good amount of water a day!

I look after a system like that and i see before the autopots system. Look like a great passive system too but your look like just cheaper, easier and very effictive!

Water from the top at the begining to create the airway is egnough? I see a little perlite on the picture you share before but are you adding some more perlite in your soil with this setup like in the autopot they say is good to add more perlite, like 50/50 coco perlite?

Just find some grey "root mat" for green wall, (look like the cloth you use) ;-)

 

[THC123]

Hi,

Watering once from the top should be enough. This is done the moment when you place them on the mats. Although doing it twice won't hurt, just avoid the soil compacting. My soil is pretty compacted now after watering 3 months from above.

About the perlite, I have about 25% coco and 25% perlite in my soil. But the reason you see perlite on top is because one of my old enemies reappeared: leaf septoria. Although at this point I am not sure if it is septoria or calmag def as the difference is hard to see.

But the perlite avoids wet soil particles splashing back onto the plant. Its an IPM measure.

I dont like to use this system with only coco or coco vermiculite as those 2 hold on to too much moisture for this system IME but it can be done (I dont have the same "feel" for pure coco as I have for sooil mixtures).

My mats are real cheap like 58 euros for 1.5 x 40 metres. I cut them to size.

The only disadvantage of these mats is the High RH they will cause. For me this is an advantage right now, but it is something to consider.

This is the one I use: https://greenline.nl/product/bevloeiingsmat/
µ
I coudln't find yours online to compare. But if you google capillary mat you will find many.

I am not sure of this, but theoretically (and only when mats are wet) they should prevent mites to be able to reach the plants from other areas.

 

[og.naj]

Nice complement of informations, thanks.

Yes it is the same mat as your or very similar.

And yes the RH would be a problem in my case so maybe the auto pot would be the good choice...

 

[TheDarkStorm]

Thc123 do you ever find they start rooting into the mats an then the pots are then stuck in place ?

 

[THC123]

Yes, for this reason, or you move them every few days (which I do to get more uniformity) or you leave them in the same place and they will grow into the mat. Or another way to avoid this if you want, is to leave them on the mat as long as there is water in the rez. (right now 48-72 hours this will become shorter and shorter) and afterwards put the pots on those plastic things to catch runoff water, of whatever you can find.

 

[THC123]

FYI About the mats, they work fine but I did notice a few pots seemed to have trouble absorbing all the water. The top 2 inches was bonedry and the bottom moist.(mats are optimal for up to 3 gallon)

So what I did was to take another piece of mat, cut to size and then I put it on the top layer. Worked like a charm(and also this way soil won't compact as there is no water falling on the soil)

 

[THC123]

Hi guys, Quick update,

Everything is finally going fine!! It's amazing what the wrong kind of light can do!! My plants are very happy under the crappy chinese leds .

Fluence is still working on finding the issue. First they will try to solve it via mail. I sent them a link to a google drive full of pictures, side by side pictures with all the relevant date. I hope that they can fix the issue cuz the fluence is so much better design wise. The light distrubition is so much better than these chinese LEDS or the SF4000 that I have here (but still this is also a very nice lamp)

Speaking of the SF4000, it is in my mother room atm with the white og cuts under it and a bunch of moms and even small seedlings. They are doing fine, no bleaching or weird stuff.

I have defoliated the plants in the tent. Something that I started doing bout 2 years ago and I get better results with this. After defoliation all plants fit the tent so I won't have to remove too much.

I only defoliated them and did not yet remove the small inner growth. I will use those to make cuttings to have a backup, should I find a keeper. But the cubes are underway, hoping to get them tomorrow.

All plants are flowering or starting to flower. I think this is due to the fact that they stayed 2 weeks in my greenhouse to recover from the fluence. I did not give them suplemental lighting because I knew these would flower for a very long time. SO they had about 13-14 hours of light during that period. And then when I placed them in the tent, I gave them 48 hours of darkness before moving to 12/12. I will not go 11/13 because of the white og and the a5 crosses.

The tree glue I installed also really did it job well. They were for 2 weeks in a greenhouse full of aphids and spider mites (lots of strawberry plants in there). Normally if I would do something like this, I would have to spray the plants. I did not spray them and there are almost no mites or mite damage on the plant and no aphids. There are dead mites and aphids on the side of the pot, sticking to the glue, die you bastards!!!! This week I'll order a new batch of predators.

The white og cuts for my other tent also stayed outdoors a bit without the glue and they do have visible mites. Nothing I can't take care of with predators and one time soap spraying.

White og mom

Here are some pics of the hazes

A5 x Skunk x HPH

And here for Ognaj -->

The roots are constantly poking out so I have to keep moving them, I just pick up the pots and lift and turn the slightly each day. Thinking of maybe putting the pots on plastic dishes and only putting them on the mat when they need water.

Speaking of the mats, there are some issues. I noticed that not all pots were absoring the water decently.

After looking and thinking, I saw that by moving the pots every x days to another position, parts of the soil that were in contact with the mat stayed on the mat. So by moving them around the contact point between the soil and the mat dissappeared. The roots are poking out and do have contact with the mat.

But what I am going to do is I am going to tear off small chunks of mat and put them in the holes on the bottom of the pots so that no more soil falls out of the holes and so that the soil remains in contact with the mats. And I also am going to put some pieces of capillary matting on the top soil. Reason being that these mats are not designed for pots this large. By also placing a piece of mat on the top, the soil gets watered more quickly and 100% uniform.

 

[THC123]

Update part 2

a5 x skunk x HPH


They got real bushy

Too bad I had so much light damage in the beginning. I dont know if you remember but some branches got stunted. If I wouldn't have had the damage, I would have had more uniform branches that would develop big buds. But now I still have 10-15 per plant. Let's not complain, at least hey are green now lol.

 

[THC123]

Update part 3

Killer a5

 

[THC123]

Update part 4

A5 haze s1

they are slowly starting to flower

This is the runt, that got so damaged by the fluence that she won't ever recover. She looks ok but small. This was the most vigorious and promising one before the light fucked her up.

 

[THC123]

Update part 5

This a5 has a few yellow tips due to the feeding tabs. I should have only given half a tab cuz she was smaller in relation to the pot she is in. But she'll be fine.

SO they are all flowering or starting to flower.

They are very hungy, fed them a flower tab 3 weeks ago and still they want more.

Tonight the 4th lamp will be installed as, like I said before, the light coverage with these viparspectra is really really bad. They shine in a 90 degree angle. And some plant stretched a bit due to this.

They are at 5-600 ppfd right now without any issues. Temps are just perfect with these lights constant 27-28 degrees. Co2 is about 600-800 when I am not in the house and windows are open. When I am in the house it is about 1000-1200 PPM.

Going to make a new batch of CO2 recharges for the yeast.

Also ordered an inline carbon filter. The one I have now, 750 m3, is so heavy and bulky and the bars of my tent are a bit bent. I'm afraid of it falling down. Plus even though I don't smell weed, I do smell something weird, so I think that slowly that filter is up for a change.

I am going to order something to measure the leaf surface temperature to get temperatures perfect.

Now that I think of it, maybe it is a good thing that the fluence light gave me problems. Due to this I bought a lot of extra measuring devices that really come in handy and help to create the perfect environment.

Here an overview. The plants are positioned this way because I only have 3 LED's now in the tent and they don't cover the whole area. Tonight I will make sure I have close to 100% coverage by adding the 4th lamp
. But before the defoliation it was way too crowded. Now everything fits with a little breathing space between the plants as well!!

Today they will be topdressed with worm castings, rock dust, trichoderma + mycorhizzae, bacteria , alfalfa, kelp and then some Bone meal and Potassium all mixed in with a bit of fresh soil. Normally this stuff takes long to break down, but they made an organic fast acting version. And in the kelp and alfalfa + casting and the soil there is some N as well.

It is the first time for me using this quickly available bone mean and potassium. I could use some pointers due to the values the bone meal is 0-6-16 and the potash is 0-0-38. I was wondering how I should add this as I don't want to go overboard with the potash.