these are the fucking bugs im dealing with right now: flatid planthoppers/Anormenis chloris/woolly aphids/plant hoppers
New video!
Yeah the idea is that when your plant is young with one main tap root, you prune that and it'll divide up just as if you topped your plant.
The new vid makes your space look huge! I got two closets, man I wish I had a basement.
The plants in your veg area look great. Those two can probably take over the entire flower room if they get another month
i would go with the set it and forget it solution as you've got experience in hydro already... especially with all those plants!
Hey FriendinDeed,
New member here, but I started out with a home made system like yours when I first started years ago. I loved it, but definitely felt like the airstones and topping the buckets was a pain. It's crazy when you have to top a bucket twice in a day when they're drinking heavy.
I'm just going to kick out a few of my thoughts on what you were talking about at the end of this video.
I remember trying to flower in those 2 gallons and I felt like the roots got way to big for the 2 gallons, plus I was running more of them. So more airstones and topping of buckets. I hated that cycle, it felt like I was doing much more work. So I only ran that for one cycle then went back to 5 gallons with an extra week or two of veg time.I always wanted to build like a custom NTF system in the bucket with black poly tubing pumping nutrients through the buckets from a res. So if you decide on that, definitely document it. I'd love to watch.For your res, head to home depot and grab a 50 gallon wheeled trash can ($50). It's half the price of those 55 gallon drums and its on wheels.
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The way you're running, a tray would be prime for those setups. If you can find one for cheap on CL ($50), I'd make a run at it. Maybe a $150 to try the setup with a stand, res, tubing, tray. You've obviously got the skills. I only say this because it sounds like you're looking at reducing the labor time and equipment with the system you're talking about building.
If this interests you, I'm going to be posting pics of my setup here shortly. It'll be worth checking out based on the ideas your were kicking out at the end of the vid.
https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=288937
Anyway, just my 2 cents. Love the setup man. I've subbed. It brought me back. I loved running that type of setup.
Good luck with it all. Good vids
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Oh man, you're lucky! On CL here, those barrels are all bought up. They also run about $40 on CL in Denver. I guess that just comes with so many home grows happening. Anyway, sounds like you've got a good game plan set up. Plenty of ways to skin a cat.
I also worry about the single water pump system. You definitely have to keep your eye on it. I just had a friend smoked a little too much and messed up his digital timer. Those plants got dry quick and he wasn't a happy camper. Truth is though, if you're calculated like yourself, you'd be alright.
I did love how easy the DWC 5 gallons were. To kill that long veg time, I ran it pretty staggered out. You know three going in, three coming out. It was kinda of a pain for nutrient feeds. But if you have a consistent feed for flowering you can eliminate that problem.
Anyway, looking good man! Excited to see what step you take toward automation. There are plenty of options out there at your disposal!
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FRIENDinDEED, nice detailed update! I see what you're getting at now with that setup. It'll be exciting to watch.
Cool vege light. What's going on with that? Looks like it was an interesting project with the wires and all.
Again, just kicking out some stuff I was thinking about watching your vid.
1.) For shorter plants with a lot of node sites, I've found hps lamps to be the best light to vege. It really gets them bushy. It'd be tight to have two rooms alternating in your spot! (No moving of the plants)
2.) Thanks for showing your root balls. I had one cycle where they looked similar to that and it was due to putting the plants in flower too early. Typically, my root balls would look like the shape of the bucket when you pulled it out and it would be almost white. I was running the Bontanicare Pro series when I ran this system. Here's a pic:
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3.) The roots you pulled out look really dark, unless you just fed them. I thought I heard you saying that you just topped it off. In my experience, this usually was due to the plant not sucking up all the nutrients I was putting into the bucket. When I hit this, they would stall out on me. It also might be just the dye from your formula and I'm totally wrong. But if it is similar to my experience, this was how I handled super dark root balls:
- First I filled up bucket with plain water.
- Then I took the root ball and dunked it a bunch of times to clean out the left over nutrients. Afterward it would look much whiter and the bucket would have most of the spent nutrients.
-Then I'd dial the nutrients back a bit for that bucket (50%-75% of normal feed). Usually it would recover quickly.
I only mention this, because this looks identical to what happened to me on my first 2 gallon bucket run. I thought I could rush them into flower and they went nutrient lock out on me. I needed like two more weeks in vege to really fill out that bucket with roots. I learned through that experience, big root balls = big yields!
Anyway, sorry for rambling. Digging the vids, thanks for sharing. I think that system you're talking about building is going to be awesome for that setup.
Just a request for next vid: Could you show a little bit of that vege light? I wanna hear that story. Also, holding my breath for that setup, gonna be sick man! It's all a big process, thanks for sharing your progress man!
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FRIENDinDEED....my bad,
I just realized you were still vegeing those root balls. My bad, just disregard my comments. For some reason I thought you walked over to the flowering side.
In that case I agree 100% man. I always noticed cuttings would root out at different rates.
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**ive made the realization that some information that I found about the liucas formula may just be spot on. what it said was that for veg you should use a 5/10 ratio and in flower you should use the 8/16. going off of that I think im going to go back to the regular 1-1-1 for my vegging plants and the regular 8/16 ive been doing for the lowering plants. the whole 1-1-1 thing was my idea intialy cause I figured "hey im just vegging, how much would they need?" but looking at the nute situation I may just dial it back for the vegging plants to a 5/10 or even weaker since I don't have any of the GHgro left anyway.
hello man right now im running the lucas formula and it works great with full strength. but if you are growing in coco you would never feed 8/16 it would cause more problems for you then help. and cause lock out. but if you are in soil it would be the right way to go= clean soil not some ferterlized soil. i veg's at the scale 2-2-2 with gh 3 part and it works like a champ just to throw it out there its a easy way to grow and get nice results
go 6/9 in coco and then up abit when you see they need i would guess the only time they need it is mid bloom
and all is at a gallon im talking about
its all about keeping it simple ye im with you on that part, ppl truly underestimate 400's
In that clone veg area where you had the jacked up leafs, you could create a tray out of panda plastic and some duct tape so you can just pour your water on the table and the plants will drink when they want. That's the cheap way. What I typically do is rock those black cloning trays that are dirt cheap and just throw as many keg cups in there as possible. Fill up each tray with pH adjusted water, then I can get away with a few days without watering. Perfect when you leave town or just don't feel like watching the little ones.