First time grow 400w scrog

[Asil]

Ok as promised here is my grow thread. I posted in the indoor hydro thread but I think this should be here. It all started one day when I was shutting off my sons tv in his room. I noticed that his light was on in his closet and when I went to shut it off I noticed three plants being grown under a incandecent light. I told him that he did know what he was doing and if his mother knew she would have a cow. Also if I was going to grow how I thought,LOL, I would do it. Thinking I knew it all, I meanhow hard is it to grow a weed, I went to Menards and got a tray and some soil and ploped some seeds into the soil. Also I picked up a couple of 42w cfl with 65k. These when in to a spare bedrooms closet and waited.

A few day later they sprouted and I thought I was the king of the world. It was about that time I started reading and reading. I tend to be impatient and I ended up over watering them. They died. Well it did not deture me and I regermanted some more this time I used Sure 2 grow cubes. Sure enough I had seedlings in a few days.The closest they where in got exteremly hot one day while I was gone and all four plants looked like they had wilted. Well to prevent the over watering I made a mini bubbler and paced them in it. The cubes I just didn't like and momma said they had to get out of the house. So I proceded to build a secert room in my shed. The room ended up being 2.5'x7.5'x8'. I wanted to make it bigger but didn't want to lose the intergerty of the shed. The shed went from 12x8 to 9.5x8 interioir demensions. With a hidden door and all. Also I regermenated new seeeds and planted them is rockwool. As of yesterday they all sprouted and are looking good. I am going to be using a DWC scrog. This will be a bagseed grow and I am going to be using the Lucas formula for my nutirents. I will have pictures of the seedlings tonight, but for know here is some of my room and a custom reflector I made out of 24 guage stainless. to go over my custom CFL fixture that held 7-42w bulbs. I since bought a daystar hood and lumatec 400w digital ballast, that I get to pick up tonight.

The room could have used a little more thought but it came along good, Thanks to this site ite fixed my venting issuse with out spending a ton of money on a 6" inline. I will be using the cfl lights for my clone and mother room.Ok here are some pics.

 

[Asil]

Well I have had the new hood and ballast running for 12 hrs over night and my temps are right at 80F. I have the hood 22" from the top of the DWC. I think tonight I am going to run duct work to my hood to draw the heat from it. Am I right in assuming that 75-80 degrees is the optimal temp. I would light to get my light about 1' from top of plants. Since theses are seedlings should I just leave light where it is for now till the is more growth?

 

[Asil]

Well my son is 16 and i can't really say much to him seeing as i have been smoking for somewhere around twenty years. Also i never have thought there was anything wrong with weed. As far as the temps channging i will have a a/c and a heater in there.

 

[Asil]

Well things are going well. I will get some pictures up a little later. I am going out to work on room. Since adding 400wHID my temps are up to 79-85. I am adding a/c into the adjoining room. I the ambient air coming into the intake in lower I think I can get the temps down. Plus I am going to run duct work to my daystar hood. Any advice? Should I goto 6" ducting. The grow room size is 2.5x7.5x8ft.

 

[Asil]

Some thing is amiss.

Some thing is amiss.

Things have been going really well. I went to check on the little ones today and one of the seven was laying on its side. The leaves where kinda of shrivled up. I check the ph a least once a day keeping it at 5.5. I did let the water go down to just below the net pots. Of the other plants 5 of them have roots shooting out of the bottoms, They are nice and white looking good. One plant that I have in a mini bubbler off to the side is preforming the best. Really starting to grow well for being one week tommorrow. The on that was wilted was my fastest grower. Well I know I need to add pictures so I will go out there and take some right now.

 

[Asil]

Pics

Pics

This is my best grower now. Starting to go vertical.

I don't know what happen to her?

This one looks good except for the yellow. It sprouted this way.
Ok heres the rest Sorry they are blurry.

Groups shot

 

[Bababooey]

Hey Asil, nice looking setup. I think you can get pretty good yields from that.
I think you should have the light further from your seedlings. Seedlings dont need much light at all. Having a 400 two feet away is a bit intense for most seedlings. Can you move the light 3-4 feet away?
Once they get established, start growing some actual fan leaves, then you can gradually move the light closer. Looks like you'll have good ventilation with the fans, and you said you were planning to get ac. You can have that light as close as 6 inches from plant tops if you can keep it 75-80 degrees at the plant tops during lights on. 400's dont penetrate well so you'll want the light as close as possible IF you keep temps at plant tops under control...
Also, once you have roots popping out of the netcpots, drop the water level below the pots. As the roots get longer, you can eventually drop the water level further. I have my water as much as 3-4 inches below the bottom of the pots, but thats only when they have sufficient rootmass formed in the water.
Anyone have any other suggestions?

 

[Asil]

Having a 400 two feet away is a bit intense for most seedlings. Can you move the light 3-4 feet away?

Bababooey, Thanks for stopping by. Yes I can move the light higher. Since the temps where good I thought it being that close would be good. I will move them up this morning be fore I leave for work. Thanks for the advice.

 

[Asil]

When do seedling begining veg stage? I know i read it somewhere and i know people say three weeks before nutes, could you start sooner?

 

[Bababooey]

I think the veg stage begins when the seedling starts sprouting actual fan leaves (3 to 7 fingered leaves).
When the plant starts growing in earnest, sprouting a new set of leaves/node every few days, thats when you know you're solidly vegging...
Jamie is right, with seedlings and small plants, you want to keep the nutes diluted: normal Lucas Formula is 8mL micro/16 mL bloom per gallon (and even that could be too strong for some plants). I'd start off at 1/8 with seedlings, bump it up to 1/4 when they're on their second or third set of fan leaves (second or third node, that is), bump it up to 1/2 when they're on their sixth or seventh node, etc.
You'll get the hang of it after a while...

 

[Elcap]

With seedlings in rockwool, I like to keep the res level in the bubbler a bit below the bottom of the cube so it doesn't stay saturated. I water from the top every couple of days until the roots have established through the cube and into the res water. BE SURE to let them dry out between waterings. Keeping a seedling in a continually saturated rockwool cube isn't a good thing IMO.

Once you've got roots in the res water, stop watering from the top/through the cube.

 

[Asil]

Well I just pulled that on wilted one when I got home from work. I moved my light up and put the best grower up in the res with the others.
I had a feeling that they would need nutes earlier. They are getting RO water and there is nothing for them to feed on. I am going to use the Lucas formula, The top off method, I heard that is the easiest and there is a guy running a DWC on another forum that get awesome results with two plants using that method. Seeing as my babies are a week old from sprout today I will start them on some food.
When I increase the nutes from 1/8 to 1/4 I should do a complete res change right? Ok time for some nutes! Let the growing begin.

 

[Bababooey]

Well, the Lucas formula says you should do a res change when your addback of tap water equals the amount of your res (i.e. if your tub holds 15 gallons, and you start off with fresh water and full strength nutes, and only add ph corrected water - no nutes- as the plants drink up, when your total addback equals 15 gallons, dump the res and replace with new, full strength nute solution).
When youre starting off a tub with light nutes and gradually bringing it up to full strength, you dont need to do a res change between 1/8 strength, 1/4 strength, etc.
Since you stated youre going to be doing the topoff method (putting nutes in your addback) youre basically not going to do any res changes until flush.
Careful with the topoff method; my tap water's pretty clean but even so I still need to do a res change every month or so or my nute ratios get out of whack and my plants start to suffer deficiencies (they still produce buds, just i think growth and development suffers). I THINK no res changes only works well with RO water and/or bio buckets, but you can give it a try and see if no res changes works for you. If it does, more power to you; that's less work.

 

[FirstTimer76]

Nice setup Asil. More pics PLEASE!!!! Tagged

 

[Asil]

Bababooey, Thanks for all your help. I think I may have miss stated how I plan on using the Lucas Formula. I want to use the topoff method with PHed Ro water. This being said do I use the addback method until i reach full strength nutes? Then just topoff with ro water? If so I need to go get a TDS meter. Unless there is another way to increase nutes strength with out one. I figured I had 14 gals in my res, So after reading the Lucas Formula again, for Veg it was 0-5-10, I added 0-17.5-35. This should start me at about 1/4 strength. I hope this wasn't to much to start with. I guess the plants will tell me.

I got my temps dialed in the are running between 76-81 degrees. But my RH is low it is 38%-58%. Should I be concerned? I have to get my screen ready. I figure they will be ready for it in about two weeks. What height do you think above medium for the screen. I was thinking like 16 inches.

FirstTimer76, Thanks for stopping by. I have done alot of reading and redesigning of my set up. I think I will be making one more change. I am going to go to seperate buckets and have a res. This will allow me to do water changes and test the water with out distrubing the plants. I also may run a pump to recriculate everything.

 

[Bababooey]

When you're bringing your res up to full-strength, you could just add nutes when you think your plant could handle it (instead of adding nutes with every addback). Besides, at seedling/early veg, your plants wont be drinking much water anywho. Once they get nice and big and start drinking in earnest, they could be using up a gallon a day or more....
Yeah, a TB of micro and 2 of bloom in a 14 gallon res, that's a low strength nute solution and hopefully shouldnt burn your seedlings. I wouldnt bump it up to 1/2 strength for a while though, not until they get to 3rd or 4th node and are growing well...
I dont think RH will be affect your plants too much; better dryer than too moist i guess. I THINK low RH doesnt become an issue until it drops below 40% but dont quote me on that. The low end of your RH is 38% but if it doesnt stay there all the time probably not a big deal...
Theres all sorts of different ways to do DWC; there's some great designs here on icmag and you can spend hours going through them all. I had a central res when i first started out; my only recommendation would be that hydro stores or hydro websites tend to carry better products for the plumbing aspect of it (things like watertight rubber grommets and stuff like that; home depot does carry a large selection of plumbing stuff but i found hydro stores to carry specialized products to make bucket lines watertight...)

 

[Asil]

I have no problem with leaks on designing the system. Rumpleforeskin on grasscity has a couple of great threads on his bubble buckets and grows. You should see his results from to WW plants.

 

[Bababooey]

Lol, that's funny, I also decided to do DWC after seeing Rumple's grow on grasscity!
Crazy stuff: he has a 400w, vegs 2 white widow clones for 10 days then switches to 12/12. After 60 days he's got a massive harvest, a bunch of colas big enough to hide your hand behind.
He uses a third bucket as a res. I built a similar system but had issues with water leaks from the grommets. Later on I picked up some rubber grommets from a hydro store, they were a much tighter fit than the ones I bought at home depot.
He also uses a water chiller and co2, which enhance his yield...

I decided not to use a central res, partly because i was tired of leaks (i never did try the new rubber grommets, im sure if i did i wouldnt have leaks anymore), party because i wanted the capability to have different strains in different tubs, in a perpetual grow so flush times will be different also. The central res though is a good idea in general, makes things easier. I'd use a water chiller if i had a res but then again my water temps are a tad on the high side...

 

[Asil]

Yeah rumples got that system dailed in. He canned his chiller. Now he is down to one plant I believe with almost the same yeilds he was getting with four. I never went with the grommets I use o-rings ang got them smaller then I needed. Also when I drill my thru holes I use a bit just big enough so I can screw the fitting thru the hole. No leaks first time out. As far as my grow it is amazing what some nutes and 24hrs will do. All plants have new growth and looking good. I came home early from work today and was going to sit down and do some reading on icmag. I lookd down at my temps on the remote reciever and I had temps of 95!!!! I quickly went out there and my duct off my light had came off and it was blowing hot ait into my room. That was quickly fixed with no harm done.
I really am having a tough time picking strains to order next friday. I posted on the midwest forum what I am looking at. Would appreciate your input.

 

[FirstTimer76]

Hey Asil thank GOD you caught that heat issue before it got outta hand. How about something from Nirvana or Mandala. Both pretty good breeders with some GREAT genetics & prices that can't be beat IMO.