Simple 400W Ebb and Flow (waiting for clones)

Ok, this is my current flowering setup ready for its first run. I have some experience with soil grows but this is my first hydroponic setup.
The current plant in the picture is an unknown three year old seed growing in soil.



400W HPS in cooltube (edit: have recieved my CMH bulb and is going to use it instead, with or without cooltube is yet to decide.)
70 liter res
65x50cm DIY flood table 14cm deep, flooding to 8cm
1000L/h pump connected with a quick release for easy drain/nute mix
40 liters of clay pellets
Analog timer set to 15 minutes every 3 hours

Ventilation is taken care of using two inline fans, one for cooling and exhaust and a smaller one for drawing cold air from outside. Both fans ducted outdoors. Negative pressure in the room keeping the soon to be smell in. Carbon filter will be added if smell becomes an issue.



This was some dirty pellets, this filth is from only ~15 liters of pellets.
Did rinse it well before adding it to the flood table.

The system seems to be working great so far, filling of the table does take under a minute and it drains ok, just leaving a few millimeters of standing water.

Im going to start off with my HESI soil nutes, using only the TNT (grow nutes) vegging for some time, then switching to 12/12 and Bloom nutes. By this time i probably would have got some hydro ferts, if not and the vegging is not a complete failure i might use the soil Bloom complex and Phosphorus Plus i already got.

My guess is that i would need a slightly stronger dose than in soil. Thinking of starting of with by the bottle dosage and increasing if needed. I do not have a EC meter yet so if anyone with HESI soil nutes and a meter could give me some numbers on the by the bottle mix i would appreciate it. The nutes of interest is HESI TNT and HESI Bloom Complex.
Anyone tried running (HESI) soil nutes in hydro? Input on this issue would be lovely.

I did mix up the TNT (50ml/10l) in the res and adjusted to 5.8 using 6ml of phosphoric acid and ran the pump with the hose disconnected feeding the water back to the res to mix it up properly. I have been running the pump on its 15m/3h cycle just to get an idea of how the clay is affecting the PH. After two floodcycles the PH is up to 6.0.
Going to be interesting to see if it keeps climbing without any plants in the system.
How does the plants drinking affect PH?

Will run clones of my mothers as soon as they are ready. The genetics i got to choose from is the unknown seed with some sativa, KC Brains KC 42, Nirvana Big Bud and Nirvana Blue Mystic. Still have to sex all the plants exept the mystery mothers.

These are my mothers to be.

5x23W CFL
Two 8cm computer fans running at 7 volts as exhaust.
Tin foil glued flat to the walls.





Plants in the picture above:

Mystery sativa | KC42 #1
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Big bud #1 | Big Bud #2
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Blue mystic | KC42 #2
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Mystery sativa

Lookin good. Get those clones and start posting updates! I wish you luck. And why isn't that flowering plant right under the 400W?

The pic is a few days old and i have adjusted the plant and light a bit since then, the hps is now hanging tilted a bit towards that one plant and i moved the branches around a bit, its hanging out over the side of the pot and tray towards the center of the table. Its all in the sweetspot now.

Yield on this strain seems quite low but it got a few more weeks to go. My oldest moms and the only plants i got sexed so far is this strain. Still unsure about what strains i will use this time around. I could just go with the mystery sativa and accept a not so great yield or wait longer to have my other strains sexed and cloned.

Got to get another cab going to veg some plants in since my mothercab is full. I got a DWC with 9 sites for that purpose, all i need is some lights and somewhere to put it. The lid already got 3" holes and I need to decide if im going to use netpots or just hang the plants from the lid supported by some plastic foam. Either way seems good.

As far as plant numbers i am thinking of running maximum 6x4 plants, but this first run i am going to use less. I do want the yield still so i got to veg in the tray but i have to wait 2-3 weeks before the current plant is done.
In this time i will have some clones for sure. May harvest early if the clones are ready sooner. Did take one clone each of the KC42's, currently rooting in perlite.

If i decide to run multiple strains i just might skip the sexing for now and just remove all but one of the males to get some more seeds and different crosses. The dieing roots from the males might fuck shit up but i take my chances trying to remove as much as possible without damaging the others too much.

Have used scrog before with great success and i might do it again.

Some pics of the clones, more to come.







Need to get some more lights going to run more clones.
For now im trying out running the two clones under a cold cathode ripped from a discarded scanner. Never seen it done before, hopefully it will be enough for just the two in this early stage. Lights on around the clock. No nutrients until i make the tub lightproof and the clones have rooted some more.


One of the clones had some rooting going when i transferred them to the bubbler, tips is just above the waterline receiving good spray. The plastic cups is a temporary solution, had to use the stuff i already had lying around and could not find anything better.

The cold cathode light seem to do its job. Clone #1 have been growing even more roots but the other one just sits there, no rooting. Both clones are green and seem healthy.



Cold Cathode lights have a few advantages, they are extremely thin and there is almost no heat. i can have leafs in contact with the bulb without burns. Mine runs of 12vDC but im sure there is other ballasts for use with a wide range of voltages. If i can get a hand on some more broken scanners i would test it out in a veg-cab aswell. I found that this scanner used an aluminium reflector/holder and is using that aswell. This gives me a narrow output from the lamp maximizing the little light i got. Also, it provides a cover for the very fragile thin tube.

For clones, two per tube seem to work nicely.
Check out these roots.

http://www.icmag.com/ic/album.php?albumid=8928&pictureid=168030

Five days later, plain tapwater.


This is what i smoke at the moment.

Hi 420.se,
Looks like you're off to a good start. I used E&F trays with SOG and got decent yields. I flowered the clones right away...ne vegging.

On the HESI nute comment. I haven't used those nutes but it's generally said that the manufacturers recommendations on the bottle are high. So don't go straight to that strength. Start at half-strength and then up from there. A safer approach.
Cheers,
ET

Wow man excellent work. I just searched for cold cathode because I'll be installing them in a PC case! It's awesome to see they work. Are you still happy with it? Do you know the wattage used? I made a thread about them if you have any input - it's here.

Happy grows.

ScrubNinja: I don't know the wattage but the output is about the same as a 11W CFL. So far it has been doing its job keeping the clones alive. The reflector is great but the area i can cover with one of these is really small, only 38*6cm. Would only recommend cold cathodes for rooting or maybe a small vegcab but until it is tested, nobody knows. My hunt for more scanners to rip the lights out of has failed so far, but I keep looking.



Two week old clone. Will need to add some nutes soon but the rest of the clones dont have any roots. Will a low dose make it harder for the rest to root properly?



System as it is today.
Clones are 2x Blue mystic, 2x KC42 #1, 2x KC42 #2 and the rooted one is also KC42 #2
Will try and get some plastic to replace the paper cloneholder so i dont get mold issues. Need more lights so i can use the bucket as intended. Also, my airpump is too small, i only get a fizz. Because of this i had to place the clones right over the airstone.

Excellent man. Thanks for the reply. It's definitely not the strongest light around but I'm thinking about making a scrog screen out of the PC kits. I'll have the main lighting giving it most of what it needs, so it's kind of a cool experiment. Will look awesome

Not too sure about the clones buddy. The impression I had is it's wrong to feed clones before they need it. If that helps. Good luck.

That clone looks glorious, but it will surely be far ahead of the others as far as its needs. I'd have a hard time with that decision. Maybe just separate that one from the rest, start giving it nutes sometime soon, tho.
Strange that the rest aren't there yet...
Good luck to you.

DWC:
The lonely rooted clone has been transferred to soil for sexing. The rest of the clones is suspended from disks of plastic foam squeezed in the holes in the lid. I have about eight clones that did root eventually and a fresh batch aswell. Due to the amount of clones i currently run 4x23w CFL. The cold cathode did a nice job but its not enough to light the entire area. Plenty of room left for more clones. Will replace the airpump to a larger one and lower the waterlevel a bit. All the clones are above the surface but the spray does not reach everywhere as it is today.

E&F:
Will not use the system until i got enough clones that i am certain is female. Its a shame to be this off schedule but i would hate to loose a crop due to dead male roots fucking shit up. Better safe then sorry. My CMH bulb did arrive and i will be using it instead of HPS. I still have not decided if i need the cooltube with the CMH. I got a hood with an exhausthole that i might use instead. Sound is a factor and if i need to crank up the cooling i will have to stick with the tube, loosing some of the UV-light. Will do some tests later on and figure it out.

Mothers:
Did transplant two into new pots. Pruned about 1/4 of the rootball and replaced with fresh soilmix. Its still just one liter but in a more cube shape than the old ones. Using juiceboxes for everything in this cab now. Next transplant will be into proper plastic pots. I suspect too much nitrogen in the motherplants caused the clones to be slow rooting, feeding straight water at the moment and will use bloom nutes later on as needed. The mothercab is spitting out more than enough clones if i just can keep them alive long enough for them to root. I got about 50% successrate and will probably get better. Im still new to clones, ya know.

Sexing:
The grow just keeps growing, now i need another cab for sexing since both of the cabs is occupied with growing plants/clones and i dont want to run 400W just for sexing. Will use the cold cathode for this job in some small box or something. I could also run the CMH at 18/6 and move my mothers there while i wait but i rather make another box and save some on the powerbill.

Thanks for stopping by.

Great to hear it's moving ahead, dude.