First Grow, AK-48, 5-gallon DWC, 400W

[Schleep]

great ph meter, little more than a cheap hannah champ,but from personal experience spend the little extra. It reads temp and ph. Also reads down to the hundredth (5.82) is what I am for in veg.

http://www.h2odistributors.com/ph-200.asp

I already picked up a Hannah meter on Amazon so until it craps out on me, I'll stick with that. Thanks for the recommendation though. Once I have enough $$ to purchase something nicer, I'll definitely jump on it.

Now that the plant is getting a little closer to SCROG height, I'm having second thoughts about using a whole screen to control the height. Changing out my reservior involves lifting the lid/plant/roots/air pumps, placing all that into an empty bucket, and then dumping and refilling the res bucket. This has become quite a delicate process now that the roots are long and the plant is larger than a seedling. Once I introduce a SCROG screen to this equation, changing out that bucket without breaking limbs and roots will be very difficult. I'm thinking that LST might be an easier way to go, so that I could attach my wires to the outside of my lid and therefore everything would still be confined to the lid. If I use a SCROG screen, then the screen as well as the lid will need to be moved and that could get ugly.

This image should explain what I'm talking about. The black part is the lid and I have to remove the bucket to be able to change out the res. As you can see in the SCROG example, I'd have to move the lid enough to get the bucket out, but then the plant would be stuck there bc of the SCROG.

So my question is, will LST be just as effective at controlling the height since I'm only growing one plant?

 

[JohnnyHopkins]

LST will control the height..... I'd say the biggest benefit of scrog is EVEN canopy and SUPPORT. You can still flush by lifting up the lid and sliding the BUCKET over. stick a wet vac hose in there or something and suck it all out. OR put a grommet on the bottom of the bucket with a cap on it so you can just pop the cap off and it will drain. put the cap back on fill back up with fresh nutrients. If you use LST you will want some support.... like tying heavy colas to the ceiling or something. Oh and i have my airlines coming into the side of the bucket so you can lift the lid without having that get in the way and you should only need one air stone in each bucket. hope that helps

 

[SpeedyGonzales]

Nice work and well documented.

Keep it up, dude!

 

[Schleep]

LST will control the height..... I'd say the biggest benefit of scrog is EVEN canopy and SUPPORT. You can still flush by lifting up the lid and sliding the BUCKET over. stick a wet vac hose in there or something and suck it all out. OR put a grommet on the bottom of the bucket with a cap on it so you can just pop the cap off and it will drain. put the cap back on fill back up with fresh nutrients. If you use LST you will want some support.... like tying heavy colas to the ceiling or something. Oh and i have my airlines coming into the side of the bucket so you can lift the lid without having that get in the way and you should only need one air stone in each bucket. hope that helps

Thanks for the advice on the air lines. Duh. I'll fix that this weekend and it'll make my life so much easier. I like having two in there because I feel like they're pretty weak by themselves. Don't wanna drown those roots.

Nice work and well documented.

Keep it up, dude!

This one's for you

Day 32, ~845 PPM, ~5.9 pH
She's a little drooppier than I'd like, so I lowered the light to about 8" above the top of the plant to see if she perks up over night.

But look how big the stalk is

 

[tonsoffuns419]

id raise the ph to 6 maybe 6.1, it looks like it is trying to start the clawing and usually ph issues.

 

[erwingruber]

Changing out my reservior involves lifting the lid/plant/roots/air pumps, placing all that into an empty bucket, and then dumping and refilling the res bucket. This has become quite a delicate process now that the roots are long and the plant is larger than a seedling. Once I introduce a SCROG screen to this equation, changing out that bucket without breaking limbs and roots will be very difficult.

I counter the same issue that you are thinking now and i came up with a solution that works for me , i will just drop it here.
I can raise my lid maybe only 2 or 3 inches.I throw inside the res an electrical water pump and let her drain the res i protect the roots with my hand and yes it is some work but not hard work, the last drops of water i remove with manual water bump , i clean my res with dry clothes and after that i refil my res with the electrical water pump.
Thats it i replace 16 gallons in less than 15 min's

 

[THCKingsblend]

I agree with tons of fun. When you get the leaves curling under or "claw like", that is usually the ph being too low. Remember its best to gradually adjust ph. I usually bounce my ph from 5.6-6.5. The plant uptakes different nutes at different ph levels.The plant will ultimately produce more if ph is slightly fluctuated during the grow, compared to a SET ph level! Another point I wanted to touch on was the ph down. You are going to need alot more ph down than if using RO or distilled. All the chemicals in tap water act as a "buffer", in other words, it takes more due to more chemicals in the water. I personally use tap water over RO simply because the chemicals in tap help keep a clean rez, and I dont personally feel like toting in bales of water... The RO process takes away cal and mag out of the water, this is why you must add cal+mag.All looks well tho, just my 2 cents, I alwayz enjoy helping.Stay safe
Kingsblend

 

[Schleep]

id raise the ph to 6 maybe 6.1, it looks like it is trying to start the clawing and usually ph issues.

My digital pH meter should show up today, so hopefully my days of guessing at the pH are over. I'll try and fluctuate between 5.6-6.1 depending on how she looks.

I counter the same issue that you are thinking now and i came up with a solution that works for me , i will just drop it here.
I can raise my lid maybe only 2 or 3 inches.I throw inside the res an electrical water pump and let her drain the res i protect the roots with my hand and yes it is some work but not hard work, the last drops of water i remove with manual water bump , i clean my res with dry clothes and after that i refil my res with the electrical water pump.
Thats it i replace 16 gallons in less than 15 min's

That's a great tip. If I can pick up a water pump for cheap, I'll definitely look into that. This way, I could still SCROG, as long as I could get the hose and my hand in there to wipe it down.

I agree with tons of fun. When you get the leaves curling under or "claw like", that is usually the ph being too low. Remember its best to gradually adjust ph. I usually bounce my ph from 5.6-6.5. The plant uptakes different nutes at different ph levels.The plant will ultimately produce more if ph is slightly fluctuated during the grow, compared to a SET ph level! Another point I wanted to touch on was the ph down. You are going to need alot more ph down than if using RO or distilled. All the chemicals in tap water act as a "buffer", in other words, it takes more due to more chemicals in the water. I personally use tap water over RO simply because the chemicals in tap help keep a clean rez, and I dont personally feel like toting in bales of water... The RO process takes away cal and mag out of the water, this is why you must add cal+mag.All looks well tho, just my 2 cents, I alwayz enjoy helping.Stay safe
Kingsblend

How often do you "bounce" the pH? Daily, or weekly? Like I said above, hopefully I cans start being more precise with my pH fluctuation bc my digital meter is showing up today. And I've officially switched to tap water because of the reasons you just mentioned. It was way too much work to pick up 5 gallons of distilled water each week, and it's only going to get more expensive as she drinks more. With the water pump idea, I might be able to just have a water-in/water-out line that continually circulates the res, but I'll have to do a bit of work to get there.

 

[JohnnyHopkins]

Thanks for the advice on the air lines. Duh. I'll fix that this weekend and it'll make my life so much easier. I like having two in there because I feel like they're pretty weak by themselves. Don't wanna drown those roots.

It's not about how many airstones you have in your bucket.... its about how much air u have going through the airstone. I'm assuming that you use the same kind of pump in the picture below....

 

[sneaky101]

I've tried some inferior air pumps in my time. Hard to get good air movement out of airstones with them. I finally bit the bullet and got one of the sunleaves **i think it may be a gen. hydroponics pump**air pumps that has an outlet on each side hooked up to a 4-way and it really works good. It is like watching a babbling brook vs some white water rapids. It was about 60 or 70 bucks. Well worth the money when I look back on it. But if you don't have the cash for it, you must make do....good luck with it.

 

[Schleep]

It's not about how many airstones you have in your bucket.... its about how much air u have going through the airstone. I'm assuming that you use the same kind of pump in the picture below....

Yeah my pump is almost exactly like that. But I have one airstone for each lineout, instead of joining the two like in your photo.

I've tried some inferior air pumps in my time. Hard to get good air movement out of airstones with them. I finally bit the bullet and got one of the sunleaves **i think it may be a gen. hydroponics pump**air pumps that has an outlet on each side hooked up to a 4-way and it really works good. It is like watching a babbling brook vs some white water rapids. It was about 60 or 70 bucks. Well worth the money when I look back on it. But if you don't have the cash for it, you must make do....good luck with it.

Thanks for the tip, but I definitely don't have the money for a new pump right now. I think she's getting plenty of bubbles down there, just the way she likes it

Unfortunately, today was her first bad check-up. I opened the cabinet this morning to a bad scene with the lower leaves.

Day 35, pH 6.4 (finally got a digital meter), 850 PPMs

Her water level was down about 1.5" below the netpot, so I added some distilled water until it was about .75" below the pot. I also lowered the pH to 5.6 because I think she's been on the high range for way too long and that's what's causing the nutrient lockout she's showing.

Any tips besides what I did? I'm going to check on her tonight to see if she perks up. Are those yellow and brown spots recoverable, or should I snip those leaves off?

 

[sneaky101]

Well I'm surely no expert on deficiencies so I can't comment on that, but doing DWC, I've had to let my water level go WAY down (about and inch above the airstone) before when I went out of town for a few days. So long a decent amount of roots sit in the aerated water I would think you would be ok. The humidity in the rez should be sufficient to keep it hydrated.

 

[Schleep]

Well I'm surely no expert on deficiencies so I can't comment on that, but doing DWC, I've had to let my water level go WAY down (about and inch above the airstone) before when I went out of town for a few days. So long a decent amount of roots sit in the aerated water I would think you would be ok. The humidity in the rez should be sufficient to keep it hydrated.

Yeah, the water level seemed sufficient to me, but there are a lot of little roots popping out the side of the netpot, and they're realllly fuzzy, like they're grasping for water. So I bumped up the water level to see if I could get those guys drawn down into the good stuff, but I'm sure the deficiencies had to do with the pH being too high....I think

 

[RealHard]

Hi, Schleep. Everything is going real well. Good thing you've got the ph meter now. 5.6 is great for veg. I used AN Sensi Grow for veg and I kept it at 5.6 and I had to adjust it day and night. Sucked. Now I use Jack's hydro for flower and I don't even adjust the ph. Really stable stuff. So check your ph morning and night and adjust as needed. I would let it go up to 6.0 or 6.2 and bring it back down to 5.6. In flower you can run it a little higher, 5.8, 6.0. Hope that helps. Oh yeah, that stalk is fat!!!

 

[Schleep]

Hi, Schleep. Everything is going real well. Good thing you've got the ph meter now. 5.6 is great for veg. I used AN Sensi Grow for veg and I kept it at 5.6 and I had to adjust it day and night. Sucked. Now I use Jack's hydro for flower and I don't even adjust the ph. Really stable stuff. So check your ph morning and night and adjust as needed. I would let it go up to 6.0 or 6.2 and bring it back down to 5.6. In flower you can run it a little higher, 5.8, 6.0. Hope that helps. Oh yeah, that stalk is fat!!!

Yeah the stalk is my favorite part so far. That thing gets visibly bigger every time I look at it. By the time I switch to 12/12, I'm sure it'll be about 3/4" thick. But the leaves have me worried, and since this seems to be a pretty leafy plant, it looks like I might have a long road ahead

 

[RealHard]

No worries, you're doing fine. I messed mine up so bad in veg. It seemed one of em was always in shock. I learned a lot. You are too. This is the right strain for it IMO because I'm expecting a big yield off of one of my girls and I put em through a lot. I supercropped my girls and then after they stood back up I tied em down. I wouldn't want to deal with scrog inside buckets either. These people gave really good ideas of how to do it though. When are you planning to switch the lights?

 

[RealHard]

Sorry to repost but, I noticed you didn't get an answer on a question. Don't snip anything off. Everything's cool. The burn won't recover but, it's okay. When I had lower leaves that got burned I left them until they practically died,then just pulled it off. You're gonna see what's going on soon enough now that you can regulate your ph. Things should hopefully start to perk up and you'll move away from the problem.

 

[Bonavendura]

Remove leafs with 50% and more damage on them , the plant spends energy to fix them.

 

[Schleep]

As for your light leaks, I'm not sure how severe they are, but I recently found my Walmart carries insulation supplies. They sell this stuff called "Self-Adhesive Rope Caulk" for 3$ a pack. It's pretty much puddy in a 1/8'' wide x 35' long roll. It is like clay and can be stuck into the corners of your cab and help make it light proof. When you start flowering you need to get rid of those leaks.

I finally went to pick some of this stuff up yesterday at Ace Hardware and DAMN!!!!!! I can honestly say that NOTHING works better to seal light cracks than this "rope caulk". You can tear it off to be anywhere from 1/8" - 1" wide and it's super easy to work with. Each edge within my cabinet is 100% light-proof now. I just wanted to say thanks

BUT, the edged of the cabinet that are along the doors still leak a lot of light out the top and bottom of the cabinet.

Unlike the other edges, the door just touches the top and bottom rather than being nailed or glued to it. So I can't just put some rope caulk around there and be done with it because I have to open and close the doors. Any ideas on how I can close that gap?

 

[alpo]

did you look into weatherstripping?
a lot of people on this site use it for their cabinets...