Chow Mix, 600's, Recirculating

[BCMaster]

Hey fellas, I wasn't planning on doing a thread here but I thought what the hell... It will give some of you guys a chance to get to know me and likewise. So here is the story, I took a 6 year break from growing. In my mind I had stopped for good and I would never go back. Well that all changed after doing some restoration work on a 100 light show that was busted (I was working as a restoration Carpenter). It brought me back to my grass roots so to speak and at that moment, I knew what I would be doing in the near future. So here is my small little show. Its a 2400w room, sealed with A/C and co2 which I just recently converted from a soil bed to a top feed recirculating system. I'm now running top feed in 50/50 chow mix in 2 gallon pots. Im feeding Floranova Bloom at 1.2 EC, Shits simple and it works. Strains are Gaberville PK, there is a pair of Chem4 cuts in there that I put in to see how they would perform in this system, and 7 different phenos of OGR WiFi that I am testing from beans for the first time. All work was done by myself, check it out.

 

[BCMaster]

More pics n progress

 

[BCMaster]

And more progress

 

[BCMaster]

and again...............

 

[BCMaster]

These pics are from Day 32 flower Its a tight squeeze in there!

First pic is a closer look at the Chem 4
second is the wifi pheno that I will most likely select as my keeper
third is gaberville/swerve pk
fourth is a group shot from the door.

 

[BCMaster]

This is the 3rd run I have had going in this room and also the first room that I have ever ran coco in. Same with the 600's... I traditionally always ran soil beds and 1000's but this coco mix yields better for me by far.
I'm also running water cooled a/c, bottled gas in this one.

I will have to grab some more pics next time I'm in there because that's all I have for now.

Any questions or comments I'd like to hear from ya

 

[BCMaster]

Ok so once again just in case anyone missed it, this is a top feed drip, recirculating hydro grow in 50/50 chow mix in 2 gallon pots with 2" of pure hydroton lining the bottom of each pot. I Run my temps at 78 degrees Fahrenheit and co2 ppm at 1400.

I am feeding 3x during lights on at 45 seconds a piece. Next run I will go down to a 25% coco/75% hydroton mix to try an squeeze an extra irrigation cycle in there.

Alright, enough rambling on and talking to myself...

 

[Desert Hydro]

extremely impressive. your setup looks flawless. i thought i had ok DIY skills, but DAMN. ive always loved tinkering and building things so this grow really caught my eye with all the home made goodness. i love the simplicity of no drip lines. im assuming you just have some small holes over the pots?

 

[BCMaster]

extremely impressive. your setup looks flawless. i thought i had ok DIY skills, but DAMN. ive always loved tinkering and building things so this grow really caught my eye with all the home made goodness. i love the simplicity of no drip lines. im assuming you just have some small holes over the pots?

Thanks man. I have a pair of 3/16" holes drilled in the 1/2" pvc manifolds for every pot. Jrosek gave me the idea and put me onto the FloraNova (Thanks buddy). So far my manifolds have yet to plug up and I don't think they ever will to be honest. I run a 1900gph pump so it helps out allot.

 

[VagPuncher]

Looks sick!

That a bad ass set up.

Why not DTW?

 

[BCMaster]

Looks sick!

That a bad ass set up.

Why not DTW?

Thanks man, feels good to here that from one of the big dogs here. I went with recirc because I was having huge ph swings going dtw in coco. When I was running DTW, for the first 3 weeks or so my ph of the runnoff would be in the mid 6's so I would adjust to compensate and around week4 in bloom I was seeing the ph drop to low 5's and I was getting signs of lockout. But with this recirculating system I run a 100 gallon tank and just top up every other day with roughly 18 gallons of water and 75ml FN Bloom and the shit PH's itself to 5.8 every time. I fuckin love it!

 

[chief bigsmoke]

Now thats a damn nice set-up. Everything looks perfect. I hope to have a big boy garden like you one day. It must take a lot of practice to be run such a cool system.

 

[BCMaster]

Now thats a damn nice set-up. Everything looks perfect. I hope to have a big boy garden like you one day. It must take a lot of practice to be run such a cool system.

Thanks man. I got to live up to the name right? lol...Last run was a disaster, which I had experienced an A/C failure so I am really pleased with how this one is going. For me it has never been about how many watts I am running but what I can do with them. I was tempted to go with a stadium in this room because the dimensions are about perfect but I stayed with the flat garden. I want to get into the bare bulb medical tree scene here soon so this is just warm up for what is to come in the future

 

[cyat]

You truly are the bc master!

top notch design, build, looks fuckin great... just floranova at 600 ppms..sounds nice

I had a great experience runnin chow mix (80/20) in a waterfarm I used a paint strainer too..
I started watering 1-3 times a day at first then just said fuck it and let it rip 24/7...
anyway... biggest yield and best quality off a strain i run alot.. felt more stable somehow than the ones with just rocks

been thinkin of doin it with a table instead of farm type buckets...your setup is similar to what I envisioned to make.... some ideas of mine are: use rockwool floc instead of chow ( workin great in an ebb n flo bucket), add a venturi, try rockwool croutons, or mix of croutons and rocks...

sorry for runnin my mouth, u gave me some inspiration ... thanks

 

[cyat]

oh whats the key to makin the manifold work even?

even spaced holes? looks like the end are capped

thanks again

 

[BCMaster]

You truly are the bc master!

top notch design, build, looks fuckin great... just floranova at 600 ppms..sounds nice

I had a great experience runnin chow mix (80/20) in a waterfarm I used a paint strainer too..
I started watering 1-3 times a day at first then just said fuck it and let it rip 24/7...
anyway... biggest yield and best quality off a strain i run alot.. felt more stable somehow than the ones with just rocks

been thinkin of doin it with a table instead of farm type buckets...your setup is similar to what I envisioned to make.... some ideas of mine are: use rockwool floc instead of chow ( workin great in an ebb n flo bucket), add a venturi, try rockwool croutons, or mix of croutons and rocks...

sorry for runnin my mouth, u gave me some inspiration ... thanks

oh whats the key to makin the manifold work even?

even spaced holes? looks like the end are capped

thanks again

Thank you sir! You want to know whats funny? I was also going to go with rockwool flock and last minute changed my mind and went with the chow. I liked the fact that I can reuse it and I can get it from any hydro shop in my area whereas the flock is a special order thing and half the shops look at me stupid when I asked them for granulated absorbent lol. Im going to thin it out next round with some more hydroton. That is if I can find any, seeing how vag puncher and jackmayoffer are depleting the world supply LMAO!

About the manifold. Its just 1/2" pvc with 3/16 holes evenly spaced at 2 per pot. I think you could easily get away with 1 hole per pot. The only reason I went with 2 is because I was afraid of clogging because I'm not running any filtration system. The ends are capped because I got lazy and said fuck it lol. I would recommend looping the whole manifold and I will most likely change that when I come down. The key to a manifold like this is a large pump and having your manifold sit level. My table slopes in to the center 1" built into the table.Buy a pump 2x bigger than you think you need. Mines 1900gph... With the right strain I think that you could easily do 9 or even 5 per light with this system.

BCM

 

[cyat]

thanks bc
ya the floc is knda inconvenient.... got 12 flo n gro buckets with cloth liners... 11 with coco... 1 floc... the floc bucket has slightly better nugs than her sisters...

tried handwatering the floc which was not working... have u used it before?

gold label will mix you some chow at whatever rate u want too.. I wanna do that just to avoid rinsing the rocks

so no res change outs ever?

 

[BCMaster]

tried handwatering the floc which was not working... have u used it before?

gold label will mix you some chow at whatever rate u want too.. I wanna do that just to avoid rinsing the rocks

so no res change outs ever?

No, have yet to do a flock grow myself but I know a guy who does flock in 10 gallon pots hand fed every other day. He says that 10 gallons is the ticket, any smaller and they need water daily. He gets 2+ ever time and runs 3 per light.

I actually just found out about the 80/20 gold label after I already made my own mix. Good to know though man. Saves allot of work! I fuckin hate washing clay pebbles, possible worse than washing bricked coco lol.

I have been doing a res change around every 10 days. I basically keep track of my volume of top ups and when that exceeds the total volume of the res I change it out. I don't doubt that a guy could do a full grow with only top ups but they really do literally jump when I give them a fresh res so I kinda look forward to it.

I bet those flo-n-gro systems are the cats ass for chow mix man. Whats old is new again...

 

[cyat]

hey BC, I'm dyin to figure out other ways to use the floc.. ebb n flo.. works pretty sweet..
just inspected the girls and the floc bucket is pretty crazy... the nugs are bigger than the coco and no popcorn solid top to bottom....i'll get around to some pics if u wanna c em

back to your buddies technique that sounds like the grows that got me interested in it..
I tried handwatering in little pots with clones.. they werent happy... they were in saucers not drain to waist... they seemed wet as hell forever....didnt wanna drink the water in the drain pan
so does he drain to waste.. or ghetto style with catch pans? Im also thinkin I didnt flush out the rockwool soak stuff... maybe I just need to rinse it out with phd water for awhile?
any help from you and your buddy would be much appreciated ... still got two totes of it

I'm liking the flo and gro more and more as I get it dialed! the fitted liners are cool.. pumps need to be checked but its like autopilot.. pretty sick

 

[Mister_D]

BC - Nice clean room you've got here. I'll be following along for the show