Rookie Aero Flo Grow Together

IG420 said:

If you could do something different next time what would it be?

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hempyftw said:

Asking questions like that, your bound to succeed! Seriously, good question.

I wouldn't have let them veg so long. The canopy was over packed, which leads to them blocking light to each other. None of the shaded buds develop like the ones in the full light. The over veg also let some of the middle colas stretch too far, and get too close to the light/heat. This made those buds much smaller than their potential, it also shaded the side colas.

I would also be more aggressive with removing "sucker" branches. I have a bunch of lower under developed buds. They will all be thrown into some bubble bags though. No time to mess withem haha.

I will also be lowering my base nutes a bit for the next run, when I add koolbloom. You can see I got some slight nute burn.

Best of luck to you guys! Thanks for the kind words.

Back to trimming!

You guys will make me feel bad if you start guessing numbers. I set a goal to hit 1 lb. It might look like there is that much, but believe me, I have been let down in the past more often than not.

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SouthernHaze said:

Hey y'all I got a couple questions or internal debates on my hands. Some are not aero but hey it's also a rookie thread so here we go.

Question 1 : what r.o systems do ya like ? Or which ones have worked for you.

Question 2 : bubble or butane?

Question 3 : what inline pump would work good for this aero system



Haha I know a lot and very general subjects but any input will definitely help.

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JohnG said:

I put together this compilation of AK's methodology with his blessing. I have a lot of photos but I am unable to get them to load in this post. Send me a PM if you want the file with the photos. Enjoy.

Aerokrafters Method

OVERVIEW:
35 days vegetative - from cutting to bloom
topped to two heads
65 days bloom
14 day bottom prune & trellis

I'm trying to find out for each phenotype:
vegetative time, topping strategy
prune schedule
nutrient strength
#days for best chop

MOST IMPORTANT: Documentation

Blank Sheets





Completed Sheets:





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SEEDLINGS:

Container: 32 oz cup

Medium: Soil - 1 bag fox farms
1/3 small bag perlite
1 small bag worm castings

Lighting: T-5 use a 3 to 1 ratio of cool to warm then move under 430W Son-Agro HPS for sexing.

Nutrients: Here is the base recipe

In 5 gallon bucket of RO water with air stones add:

1 Teaspoon Subculture M
1 Teaspoon Subculture B
4 Teaspoons Black Strap Molasses
4 Tablespoons Peruvian Seabird Guano

Allow to brew for at least 3 days. It is common for a foamy head to rise and fall a few times as everything get broken down. There is very little odor for all of the shit goin on here.

How to use it:

1 - Take out the air stones.

2 - Add 1 teaspoon of each Subculture. We are refreshing the current brew and innoculating the next in one step here.

3 - Stir vigorously. Some people strain out their teas, but I found them more effective with all the particulates in it. If you do not stir, its possible to burn plants.

4 - Dilute into watering can 50/50 with RO water for large and older plants.

25% poop soup/75% RO water for smaller and younger plants

Do not use more than 3/4s of your poop soup bucket because we are doing a continious brew.

5 - For each gallon of soup removed, add back 1 teaspoon molasses and 1 tablespoon guano, then refill with RO water and return air stones.


I use this once every week, and use plain RO water for all other waterings.

Warning - chlorine and other contaminants will KILL the critters we are growing - use RO water.

This is by far the cheapest and best diet for vegging I have found. It allows you to use smaller containers for smaller root balls - without running the risk of auto flowering. It's great for AK47 and sweet tooth crosses that normally throw a fit unless they are in a 20 gallon pot. The air stones push the development of aerobic beneficials, while inhibiting the nasty anerobics.

Bonus Flowering Tea Recipe:
Just substitute Bat guano for seabird guano in the base recipe for a PK boost. For added micronutrients toss in some small bricked alfalfa cubes. Caution this brew has a stink. I grew super dank organic for years - using only these teas.

Technique: I use 32 oz beer cups for all seedling starts. The plants are going to spend up to 9 months in these cups.

My seedling run procedure:

I germinate seeds in wet paper towels in zip lock storage bags.

Germinated seeds are transplanted to beer cups and grown out to about 4 inches high in the germination station.

The seedlings are then transferred to the sexing table, where they are grown out until sexual primordia emerge.

When all the females are determined for the run, the plants are topped and grown out to develop shoots for clipping the clones.

It takes about 20-30 days for the plants to grow enough quality shoots to take good clones.

It is at this point that all individual plants will have their own label. I assign a number to each mom as I clip clones that go to the cloner. Positive identification for all plants in the room is a rule I never bend.

The plants in dirt go to the archive table, where they are stored while the clones go on through my processes.

The smoke test determines if the original plant is chopped, recloned for the archive table(interesting), transplanted to 1 gallon pot(going into shakedown run with other prospects), or transplanted to a 3 gallon pot(winner!).

In this pic of my mom room, you can see all of these work stations except cloner row. I schedule my room pretty tightly, as "hot bunking" is the rule in my haus.



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CLONES and VEGETATIVE

Container: Turbo Kloner 48 site

Medium: Neoprene

Lighting: T4 3 to 1 cool to warm ratio.


Nutrients:


I'd recommend 1 liter bottles: Old Nutrients = New Problems. I'll be tossing these soon, just out of principle.

Formulas:

I use 3ml/gallon for all three nutrients.

I will bloom 18 clones in the unit. I start with 24 to get the most even 18 to work with.

Nutes for Turbo Klone 48 site:
15 ml DM grow A
15 ml DM grow B
15 Potash Plus

This is my recipe - It provides an extra boost of K that helps all aero rooting. If you have a recipe that works for you here, feel free to use it. I have yet to find a veg nute recipe that doesn't work at all - just varying rates of effectiveness. If you have any doubt about what to use - follow mine - its cheap and the best I've found so far.


For me this works out to around 500 ppm and 6.4 pH. Target Numbers are 450-550 tds and pH between 5.5 - 6.5

Tips:

I don't top off the cloners - I just change out the res with new nutes when the solution level looses a couple inches. The cost is 5 minutes and 5 cents - cheap vs starving or burning your clones with add backs. Remember: When in Doubt - Throw it Out!

The cleaner, the better. Use bleach, take apart the pump, and soak the manifold. One of the problems with cloners is that they heat up. Heat + food + innoculation from you not cleaning = trouble with tribbles. Any time you get over 82 degrees - pythium will happily slime your pretty new roots.

Technique:
It normally takes 7 - 10 days for roots to start. 14 to 21 days and they are ready to plant - unless you follow my method where vegging in done in the cloner. Success rate is over 95%. Some strains take longer - seen some go over 28 days to root. I don't like things in the cloner past 45 days total.

I use a "healthy splash" of bleach in a 5 gallon bucket. You should be able to smell it. Make sure you rinse everything very well. Pucks are the problem here - the neoprene ones melt if left in bleach - and you really don't want to soak them very long anyways. Bleach left in the pucks does a strange thing - the cutting grows roots into the puck, not out the bottom of the stem. I replace pucks after 4-5 rounds - much cheaper than total cloner failure.

All 18 clones were of excellent health - perfectly topped and pruned to 2 heads with 2 shoots. They are all 12-14 inches high.

clones will be topped and pruned in about 20 days to two heads. We will grow those heads out for 10-14 days to get 8 - 10 inch tall two headed plants.

Topping and Pruning Clones

Its day 22 and I've let the clones roll for a couple extra days so they would be a touch big so I could even them out a little more.

Here we go!


Cloner Before:


Roots:


Clone Before:


Clone After:


Cloner After:



The strategy here is to get a very healthy base powering just 2 shoots. As you can see, it's a pretty severe top and prune. All of the new shoots are close in height to each other - this gives us a better chance of even clones - and ultimately - an even bloom canopy. They look a lil bedrageled now, but in 2 weeks we will have a very strong 2 headed clone - ready to go to bloom.

I always change out to fresh nutes(same recipe - 15A/15B/15K+) at this step.

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MOTHERS:

Container: one to three gallon container.

Medium: Soil same as seedlings.

Lighting: 430 Sun Agro HPS 24/7

Nutrients: see seedlings

Technique:

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FLOWERING

Container: AeroFlo 36 site.

AeroFlo Tips n Trix Warning!

Drain Tubes and Spray Lines

During setup these two things can make or break the run.

Drain Tubes:

Unless you are rooting clones in the unit, you want the drain tubes all the way down, all the time. In fact I ripped out the zip tie 'handles' to push them even lower. The more pooled nutes on the bottom of the root chamber, the more inhibited the growth. I put thin blocks under the footers of the unit to ensure the angle of the return flow leaves a quarter inch at most on the bottom.

Spray Lines:

These are the weakest link the system, and require the most attention. If you over tighten them, they break. Get a couple extras and throw em on the shelf - you will thank me at 4 am when you hear something that sounds like a knuckle pop, and look at the unrepairable $8 spray line in your hand that could kill your grow in 12 hours.

They can clog up and are difficult to clean. A thin layer of brown algal plaque accumulates over time inside the spray tubes, and there really isn't much you can do about it. Avoid adding organic particulates and any micro beneficials. The AeroFlo is a perfect brewing machine, and with all the extra oxygen, everything goes crazy.

The lines are hard to get clean. I have a long plastic under bed storage unit(thanks Casa dePot!), where all spray lines soak in lightly bleached water for 48 hours before power spraying them out. Even so, you must frequently check that they are spraying properly.

AeroFlo Tip:

Day 10 is about the last day you can mess with moving the net pots. I recommend checking your clone layout in the unit - making sure the placement of plants is giving you a nice amphitheater or bowl shape by height. Pulling out or moving plants beyond this time runs the risk of root damage. We have spent considerable time and energy to get those extra fragile roots. Yanking on em and stuffing them back in is asking for trouble.

Reservoir Temperatures: It's true that the lower the temp - the more dissolved oxygen the solution can hold. However lower temps inhibit growth. I use an aquarium heater(100 watt) to keep res temps above 65 degrees. I don't like res temps to go over 75, but with silica and zone I can go to 85 max for short periods without pythium. 65 - 75 degrees is the best range that I found for this application.


Medium: Hydroton

Temperature and Humidity: Optimum room temp is 75 degrees. Dark time dip down to 65 helps with colors.

Since the flo is a mist making machine - humidity is a battle. I rely on heavy airflow and oscillation. The plants never stop moving - ever. I'd like it to be 60 per cent. The plants respiration engine works better around there along with reduced chance of bud rot.

Lighting: 1000 watt HPS on light rail.

Light Rail:

The light moves about 3'. It travels from edge to edge of the canopy with a small pause at each end. Adjusting this pause allows you to control the "dish" or "pillow" of the canopy. The flatter the canopy at the end - the better the results. This method gives me a 5' x 5' x 3' cube of great even light to work with.

Nutrients:


Base Formula for start up and res changes:

After all that, it comes down to this:

Fill the 40 gallon res with RO water and add (in ml):

The order is important. Make sure the pump is running and you have topped off with RO water. If you see a milky precipitate on the bottom of the res, that would be your calcium.

110 ml DM gold A
110 ml DM gold B
80 ml pH down
50 ml Silica
50 ml Zone

Start by adding the pH down, Silica and Zone. Let this circulate before adding A & B. Doing this helps avoid Ca participating out of solution.

Wait at least 3 hours to take readings.

For me this results in a pH of 6.2 and 460 ppm. You should be pretty close to these numbers. If your plants are in the unit - they drag nutes and affect your numbers. Its a good idea to do this before putting any plants in the unit next time. It's not hard to burn plants if you are putting high concentrations in bursts through the system. Sides - you really need to know the exact amounts of these nutes you must have to get to these numbers. Next time follow the order and take a little pause between adding nutes.

Our target zones are 5.3 - 6.3 for pH, and 420 - 480 ppm. These change with strain knowledge.

Through the course of the run, we want the pH to drift through as much of this range as possible. Different macro and micro nutrients are absorbed at different pHs. There are nute availability charts floating all over the net - beware I have seen a couple mislabeled and wrong. Double check

Root masses will retain some nutrients. The bigger the roots, the more the nute drag. Starting fresh this isn't a big deal, but later in the grow, must be accounted for.


Adjustments, Additives and Res Changes:

Over time, the plants remove nutrients and add waste to the solution. To compensate we have to add those nutes back. In addition, the plants change what they absorb throughout the course of the run, so the menu changes with them.

The ppm meter is really just a measure of conductivity. It tells you how ionically active the solution is - nothing more. There is no way of knowing from this what is REALLY in the res. The only solution to the problem is to periodically change out the res. I have experimented the full range from weekly res changes to no res change ever. I found the optimum res life to be 2 weeks. There was no difference between weekly and biweekly res changes. At 3 week res changes and beyond, results tail off to 85% effectiveness with no res change at all.


Additives over time

For the first 2 weeks I use no additives only AB addbacks

weeks 3 - 4 I start to add a light flavor and PK boost in addition to AB addbacks. Over the course of this time, my target is to add 2 doses of 2 teaspoons Kool Bloom, and at least 1 dose of 50 ml Floralicious.

weeks 5 - 6 I bump to 3 doses KB and 2 FL + AB add backs

weeks 7 - 8 2 doses KB and 3 FL + AB add backs

week 9 flush

This is my base setup and is adjusted with strain knowledge.


Riding the wave and shooting ducks

So our goal is to monitor Tds and Ph throughout the grow. Reading the changes in the numbers and the plants overall "happiness" as we go.

So how do we react to what we see? Any time you add anything to the res, it can affect BOTH pH and Tds. By creatively using our "tool" additives, we can solve multiple problems with one shot.

Here are some rules of thumb for all the things we are using. Keep in mind that when the plants are actively eating, these numbers slide around a little. These rules will keep you out trouble. Remember less is more. 10 ml in 40 gallons sounds like homeopathic dilutions, but a drop in the bucket is all it takes sometimes.

20 ml A / 20 ml B Addback results in:

+45 ppm
very slight decrease in pH

This is my first response to dropping ppm. When the plants are growing at full speed this number drifts down. Fresh starts range higher.

10 ml pH down results in:

- .2 pH
slight increase in ppm

pH down is buffered which means that at the ends of our acceptable range its effectiveness changes. Be careful - a little goes a long long ways.

10 ml pH up results in:

+.3 pH
slight increase in ppm
Once again buffered and be careful.


2 teaspoon dose of Kool Bloom results in:

+20 ppm
-.2 pH

50 ml Floralicious results in:

+10 ppm
+.2 pH

With these numbers it becomes a sort of dance with the plants. They take a step and eat. You lead them and they respond back

Foliar Feeding: DM’s penetrator(now saturator) as a wetting agent and DM Liquid Light.


As for timing of sprays

I try to spray right around when lights come on. For me the rationale was to avoid mold and practicality - sprays are part of the res filling ritual. The open stomata scenario certainly makes sense. When I have sprayed at odd times, I didn’t see any difference. However I will add this to my pile of future experiments.

- Concentrations that I use

My every third day mix: 60 ml Saturator and 60 ml Liquid Light in 1.25 liters of RO water.

My every other day mix: 60 ml Saturator and 40 ml Liquid Light in 1.25 liters of RO water.

Do you always foliar feed?

No. There are two situations where I don’t.

Super picky delicate plants. A pheno of Jojorizzo’s crystal locomotive comes to mind. A spindly scrawny plant that produces the most beautiful pink crystal puffs that taste like cherries dipped in sweet Ronson lighter fluid. One spray application sends it into nitro overload - rams horning all the leaves overnight.

Super high trich plants. Too much foliar spray or spraying too long will inhibit trich formation. The reason is that the wetting agent is disrupting the wax cuticle every time you spray. Over spraying leads to thicker cuticles. I limit spraying these to the first two weeks of bloom if at all. An example would be the Sun Maidens I have in test - they will get little spray.

Some rules of thumb:

Don’t spray when buds are bigger than a fingertip. Putting liquid on buds is asking for mold. This comes out to spraying for about the first three weeks. Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday are my normal spray days. Everyone young enough in the room gets it. GLG will be an exception - its getting a more dilute version every other day. I’m trying to build the best bud bases I possibly can.

Apply with the lights out and the fans on. Even with wetting agents, leaves can get “stippled” with the lights on.

Expect a little leaf twist. Any more, just back up on the concentration.

Technique:

Spacing

I checkerboard sites for several reasons:

In the cloner and using my methods, there is not enough room to get high quality clones to go up to 45 days if every site is full. If you are flowering 2" clones, its possible to put 2 clippings per site - just watch out for root entanglement.

In bloom once again its about space, light and quality. In the AeroFlo its possible to fill every site, however the resultant jungle becomes very difficult to manage and the quality of finished product suffers. In a scrog you are flattening out the plant to max out light, while with my method you are exploding the plant into plantlets - only producing the highest quality tops. It's really about how you will most efficiently use light.

Plant numbers. By topping and checker boarding, I get the same number of tops - 36 - as a straight up SOG with twice the number of plants - while achieving much more control and higher quality results. Cutting the number of plants you have to deal with in half, while maintaining yield and improving quality, is a pretty good deal - considering the only costs are 2 extra weeks in the vegger, and a little extra work from the grower. This becomes even more of an issue with multiple units.

Each bud will have an 11"x11"x30" space to work with. At the end, I calculate the 36 buds will be packed in an array with the edge of each 5-6" diameter bud 4-5" away from those around it. Just barely enough room for airflow and light.

Support:

The Trellis

Plant support is something that has to be planned from the beginning - no matter what method of growing is used. A flopped, junglefied pile of plants will never perform as well as a grow where all of the buds are evenly held up to the light.

Cargo netting is nowhere near precise enough to afford the kind of control you need with these kinds of growth rates. The trellis allows every branch to be completely controlled.

Here is my solution:

The Trellis Block:


I started with something a bit more complicated, but whittled it down to this. The 3 bigger holes allow for optimum spacing of the canopy. You can see how I used this to spread GDP's canopy to the max.


Every growth tip is wired in position to maximize space and light. When wiring plants, make sure to leave a nice loop for growth, otherwise you can choke the stem or lop off buds with the wire. Secure stems above the V from topping - big colas can snap a stem at that joint if they are unsupported.



Branchy or thin stemmed plants need a second level of trellis to support buddage. Here is an example: My Cinderella Beta-Max at 48 days bloom.


The dowels are 4' long. I clip the tops of the vertical ones so the light doesn't snag em. Each root chamber will use 4 all together. With very heavy buds, the trellis is stabilized by running some across - boxing the structure in. With your longer chambers, you will need another 2', shouldn't be too hard to patch something together. It's like a tinker-toy - you can make it any way you please.

What is your rez change procedure?

Hook up the hose and let it start draining before turning off the pump. This avoids the root chambers backing up and flooding the floor.

Remove the pump and clean the filter. Doing this with every res change ensures that the system does not loose pressure. If your spray lines are dribbling - your plants are suffering.

Add 75% of RO water. Put in Silica, Zone, and pH down. Start pump. Top off with RO and add A & B.

I change out the res about every two weeks. After extensive testing - from weekly res changes to none at all - I found biweekly to be optimum. It is possible to go with no res change at all, however I found it to be only 85% as effective as biweekly res changes.

I use the opportunity of downtime to take apart the pump and clean the filter at res changes. Low pump pressure means less mist, and therefore less growth.
　
Stretch:

Knowing when the plant stops concentrating on making stalk and moves on to full blast flowering gives us two important pieces of information. First we can determine the height - which lets us plan future runs and trellis needs. Second, the dietary needs of the plant shift at this point. This is when PK becomes more important than N.

For most strains this is day 21 - 26 bloom. The peak of the bell curve is around day 23 for the strains I have dealt with. I'm certain that for tropical sativas this number slides considerably - but my OHaze only room(120 days+) is years away.

I determine and note this event by observation. The plants will continue to elongate slowly, but mostly bud - not stalk.

Pests: I try to prevent pests as much as possible. I found a single Hot Shot in the room is enough to prevent the borg(spider mites) and most everything except fungus gnats. Just never let them get wet - they are dangerous. To stop the gnats I occasionally toss a mosquito dunk into the RO cistern that supplies all my water. Between those things and generally keeping everything as clean as possible - its been a long time since I had vermin issues.

Advanced Techniques:
Basal Super Cropping

On the data sheet, you can see that yesterday(day 2) was pinch day.

Super Cropping, for the uninitiated, is simply pinching the stem until the hurd pops - just slightly crushing it. As the stem recovers it increases the vascularity and lignation of the damaged area. This causes good things to happen from the growers perspective:

More vascularity - to fix the damage, the plants response is to overgrow the stem. The shoot above the damage gets a lil more juice as a result.

More strength - we are going to absolutely need the strongest stems possible.

Slows vertical stretch - the biggest battle of the next 3 weeks in going to be getting the most growth, while keeping them as short as possible.



On the left branch you can see the pinch. This area will swell over time looking something like an insect gaull.

Basal pinches are dangerous because if you are inexperienced - its easy to pinch off or kill the only growth tip. I normally do not do basals, but later in the teens as needed. This plant will benefit enough from the procedure that its worth the risk.

I must tell you that this was a rather nerve wracking thing to do. I did wuss out on a few of the more tender shoots - their pinch didn't go all the way to a pop. For a brief moment it felt like I was in one of those old-timey operating theaters with rings of murmuring onlookers. But I felt the positive vibe, bounced back to the serenity of the garden, and got to work.

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