Marineman's second run - 600w revised bio buckets - Blueberry OG Kush

I'm back! I'm waiting for my my car to get an oil change, so I decided to start my new thread for my current run. Right now I'm at about the second week into sprouting from seed. Pics will be up soon.

I settled on Blueberry OG Kush. Bb being one of all time favorite strains.

This run I switched to DynaPro nutes, i hear good things.

Bout all i got till I can get home and snap some pics. Hope we get another great group of people here again this time around!

Pics

Pics

Just got home and thought I would post those pictures that I promised. Before I do that, I thought I would go over the big changes that I made to the new system.

6 Buckets (same)
100 quart cooler rez (was rubbermaid, just seems so ghetto looking back on it)
1800 GPH external rez mag drive pump (up from 800 internal rez pump)
Created a singular return line to the rez and made a hose manifold for the intake to buckets.
5x5x8 Secret Jardin DR150 dark room 2
Stealth 100 reverse osmosis filter <---Will be here later this week
DynaPro Grow and CalMag

Should be noted im running a sterile rez untill the sec after i get my RO system and get it cleaned. Then will be running bennies in my system. I had a bit of a problem with cyanobacteria and thats the main reason i ordered the RO system.

(see first run link in my sig for comparison)

The real credit for the new system should go to cravin morehead, he inspired it all, i just added a few of my own twists to an already great setup and my pops.


Sorry bout the angle, but you get the idea

More pics

More pics



Please feel free to ask or comment on things you may have questions on.

Oh hell yeah Marine you got that room lookin Squared Away... I'm subbed

Raz

so how did that first run turn out? what type of weights and how was the smoke? And if I may ask what type of relief are you smoking for? Pain, PTSD, enjoyment? Any reasons why you picked BOG over the NL5 x Skunk?

Hey homie, thanks for the kind words on my new system! As far as the results of the last run, you can see the exact moment I harvested, cause my posts plummeted lol. The amount that I harvested wasnt all that impressive and most of the buds were quite airy, but hey, it was my first ever attempt so I cut myself a little slack. I never measured the final weight, but I got about 10 large mason jars filled out of it, so not too bad. I am considering rerunning that strain, minus the big bud cross, so like a pure white widow, or maybe a black widow. Ive actually heard that black widow is even more potent and white than the white version. I actually was surprised at how much I enjoy puffin on my last run. It has a real earthy taste but is soooooooooo smoooooooth! And now that its had a few months to cure in the jars, the first few drags on a joint tastes like I dipped the end in sugar. I feel like it has a great blend of even mind and body high. Definitely a "little dab'll do ya" strain.

The main reason that I began growing my own was/is because I had an accident when I got back from Iraq in 03. I would say what happened, but it was a notorious accident and I just dont need the attention incase someone ever read this and have the light bulb light up. Either way I have alot of nerve pain from that incident, and for years when I got out, the VA prescribed me an absurd amount of opiates for the pain. At its worst, I was taking 80 percocet and just as many oxicontin every fucking day... Dont ask me how im still alive, cause im clueless on that front. Second reason is, I have some gnarly PTSD from being deployed. On that subject, I think I have finally given PTSD my own definition: When a pure hearted, good person, sees how cruel humans can be to one another, and his/her brain is trying to cope with what they have witnessed. I dont wish that kind of pain on my worst enemy. Anyway, I just feel like weed has really brought me out of my shell again. I used to be a complete extrovert, then when I got out and was on all the pain killers, became a complete introvert. Im beginning to make my way around to being me. Also, im not ashamed to say I go to therapy for it, and if i light up on my way to my appointment, it helps me to be able to get all the shit that has built up, out. For me, its a way to step back from myself and really evaluate my life and puts my nerves at ease when I bring up shit that is hard to talk about.

Its interesting you brought up just why I smoke, ive been thinking of opening a thread that is for vets, and discuss just how they are helped by this great plant. Kind of a private study.

Oh and I should prolly say that I also use it for enjoyment as well, I think were all in that boat lol.

As far as why I decided to go with BOGK over NL5 x Skunk (or shiva skunk) was just because blueberry is one of my "new favs" and my buddy suggested it and I was sold, that and I would like a little extra time to find a straight NL strain without the cross.

Damn...

I just finished typing a bunch of stuff and when I went to post it, it was wiped...

Bottom line... I feel ya, I know how it is with the Ptsd, I would welcome a vet's forum, my girls are coming along, dogs are good for us who suffer from ptsd its almost like being around other vet's who understand what's going on with us and they help us id those triggers that can push us over.

Gotta go my GSD is telling me that I'm close to the edge.
Stay Frosty My Friend
Raz

just found you, im in. i'll be in the back taking notes and lighting tokes...

cm

Ok, so I just got done with a battle with some nasty snot looking bacteria (cyanobacteria) and just cleaned my system from head to toe. So now that everything is clean I'm just waiting on my new RO filter system to fill everything back up. Gotta say, I'm super excited to have RO now. Did a little experiment:
Tap water 8.6 ph 126 ppm
RO water 7.0 ph 6 ppm

Huge improvement. This time I also brewed a tea that I found on icmag that richyrich came up with.

RichyRich Hydro Tea Recipe and Instructions:
1. Add 4 gal of RO or bottled water in a 5 gal bucket.
2. Add 2-3 cups of EWC's and/or Ancient Forest.
3. Add 1/2-1 scoop of Great White.
4. Add 1/2-1 scoop of ZHO.
5. Add 30-50mL of Aquashield.
6. Add 5mL of Root Excelurator.
7. Add 25mL of liquid Carbo Load or 25mL of molasses or 1tsp of brown sugar per 24 hours of brew time.
8. Bubble the brew for 24-48 hours.
9. Fridge your tea max 7-10 days.
10. New rez add 1-3 cups per 10 gal.
11. Add 1 cup of tea per 10 gal every 3rd day.
12. Watch and enjoy your amazing roots and yield.

That's his recipe, I couldn't get/want a few of the things on the list, so here's what I made.

ZHO - amount prescribed
Hygrozyme (same concept as aquashield) amount prescribed
Molasses - amount prescribed
GH Root Accelerator - amount prescribed
Let brew in 5 gal bucket with air stone for 24 hours.

Just added some of the tea, as I just started the system back up. Hoping the tea will jump start the bennes in my system and win the bacteria arms race.

I also got a battery hooked up to the computer fan mounted on my lid, and I was at about 69 degrees before I had the fan going, now I'm steady at 60 degrees with it running. Not bad for just a fan and not having to buy a chiller. I have a float charger connected to the battery, which is a 12 volt motorcycle battery. Works well.

Really excited about that new pump in this setup. 1800 gph = 30 gpm = buckets cycle one every minute. I like those numbers.

One thing I was hoping to pick up was a new sunleaves trapezoidal hood for my light. But the RO system chewed up most of that budget. Most likely next month I'll pick it up though.

Lastly I did add a bag CO2 creator and that seems to helping green things up even more. Everything is looking super mint green. Super pretty. Will post some pics soon.

Pic updates-

Just thought I'd put those pics up I promised.


My new nutes


CO2 Bag


Stealth 100 RO system


Richyrich's Hydro Tea


Rez temps are staying nice and low

120mm computer fan connected to 12v motorcycle batter, charging using a float charger.


These ladies are growing nicely, started with 6 seeds. 4 germinated and I pulled two due to poor growth. But it looks like a good race between the last two for which will get cloned.

@Raziel Just a FYI, cravin morehead (makes me laugh every time i say or type that, and you cant say that name in a serious fashion without giggling like a school girl. I defy to to say it 5 times in a row without laughing each and every time) who just joined the party, is the one I was having that conversation with that you commented on in my last post. ("wish i would have been there for this conversation") Dude is rock solid! He helped me so much on my last run, and my new and improved setup is all based off of his design. Just tweaked a few things to make it my own. Anyway, hes a Jedi when it comes to these bio buckets.

Also I wanted to add a little more to our conversation we had about what kind of benefits (physically) that I get from smoking. There are some massive benefits to pain management. Alot of my injury was nerve damage, so I absolutely get relief for that. If I can get away with a few tokes, instead of being on all those pain killers... All...Day....Son. Wish someone would have told me about all the benefits of this plant 10 years ago. Here's how I in-vision that conversation would have gone.
Dude: Hey man, you know I take a few hits of that good, and I feel great all day and don't focus all the time on the pain. Not to mention you can get off all 11 of those prescriptions...
Me: WHY ARE WE NOT DOING THAT SHIT RIGHT...NOOOW!?

At least that's how it went in my head...



So, now im about to put some Buddy Guy on the stereo and light up. First of the day is ALWAYS the best!

You know I'm glad I'm not stoned right now.... looking at that hydro tea you made had me thinkin of the head on some heineken dark... and it wouldn't have made it to your girls..lol

CM, you know I used to know someone when I was active in the corp's who last name was morehead, not until I read your post did I put it together that he was "Cravin" More -head....ROFLMAO. Hell what man doesn't???? or woman for that matter. lol

So tell me what the hell happened? How did you get the slime? and don't tell me you let some stray come over and you forgot to get out your jimmy. Back in the day (on the Rock) they used to tell us to stay away from the strays cause there was some strains out there that even a jimmy wouldn't protect us from.

That RO filter looks slick, is it a whole house or just a under the sink model? I've been thinking and thinking about going that route but I keep hearing BT in the background saying that he only used tap...So until my girls tell me that they just can't stand what's in the water I'll do what any self respecting former Marine would do "overtake and penetrate" naw just work around it. lol

I'm still trying to work out my new system, which is a hybrid UnderCurrent, Bio-Bucket system (I wonder if I should call it a Bio Under Current Bucket system?) and put a couple of foggers in the planting chambers for the benefit of the roots. I'm sitting on the hardware but have a couple of months to make any real decision.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to gaining some wisdom from CM and from you too Marine, my head aint' to jarred not to be able to still learn. Well the smokin light has just lit and I want to go check in on the girls, so I'll holla later.

Stay Frosty My Friends
Raziel819

ps. I'll take a couple of photos and post'em up to my album in a bit so you can see how they're cominnnnng. <BGrin> cravinmorehead......lolololol

Yoooooo!

So that slime im 99% sure it came from some benificial bacteria starter I got from the pet shop. I was thinking it would just jump start my rez and could cut down on inoculation time. Wrong. Its some super nasty shit. I did a fuckton of research and its common name is brown algae aka cyanobacteria. Its calling it brown algae that threw me at first, because the shit that was growing in my rez and buckets was growing in a light-less environment. So apparently it doesn't need light to grow. Anyway this stuff was getting on my nerves, so I nuked everything with bleach and 29% H202 and started from scratch. So the tea is just a one stop shop for a natural way to get a healthy rez going in the right direction. Im back up and running since last night, and the second I get my rez inoculated, I can move the girls to the main buckets. Ill give em a few weeks to fill out and take 6 cuttings and begin from that point. Not sure what I should do about holding onto the mothers though. Got an unused cabinet that Im not using that could work for a one bucket setup...

I really dig the RO setup. Its a hydro specific model and its just for my grow. It hooks directly up to any water hook up you might have ie washer and dryer hook ups in my case. It has two tubes that carries water. One is your clean water tube, that I run to my rez, and the other is your waste water tube, which I just run to the floor drain. It has a 2:1 Waste to Usable water ratio. Which is pretty damn good, because a lot of the other models I looked at before I purchased the one I did, have anywhere from 6:1 to 3:1 ratios. The way I see it, they provide huge advantages. Besides just being clean and free of any contaminate, it allow me to add 120ppm of my own nutes and not what the city puts in it, and as those ppms go down, so does the amount of ph adjust you need to get to the desired ph. Used to take like 50ml of ph down to get to 6.1 for me with tap, now to go from 7.0 the ro gives me, it takes maybe 5ml in the same system. And the less ph adjust, the less ppms you're adding, and the more nutes you can add.

Im interested to see what you come up with for a design on your new system. Foggers would be dope too. And im amazed the kind of growth you are getting from straight LED's. Im impressed. I have 2 1'x1' LED's that I got a few years ago when I first started tryin to grow, and was thinking of using them in addition of my main light. Either as under canopy light shooting up, or one to each side of the main light shooting down. Im sure they cost a fraction to run when compared to my main light, and could add some extra spectrum, because Im not sure im going to switch bulbs this run, might just run the one I have in now. (Always get MH and HPS mixed up, the bright one lol) By the way, what are the stats on youre setup, meaning ph and ppm?

And you're right about the strays man, gotta stay away from that HOOOOOOOOOE TRAAAAAAAIN! Thats what we called it anyway. Yeah, we lost many good men to the choo choo. Can I get a moment of silence for all the good marines who rode that train dirty and it made their dicks fly off? Ahhahahaaaa!

Time for some damn football son! MURICA!

Rah Tuffel

I'll put some more pic's up in my album only got a chance to get some shots of Cash, Critical had gone to bed already, will get some in the morning after she wakes.

What in my setup?
Bio Undercurrent Buckets with 18" waterfall
360 gph inline mag pump
170 gph subm pump (used for top drip feed)
1@ 48 lpm air pump (used to supply extra air to totes)
2@ 10gal totes
1@ 36gal trash can rez
1@ water cooler compressor (DIY)
1@ TopLED 96x3w Reflector w/Veg-Bloom switch
1@ DS100 (50 x 3w) Led w/Veg-Bloom switch

I'm going to nix the top feed on my next run and may include the foggers instead, not sure if I'm going to use them in the veg chamber or put them into the grow totes. The other thing that I did on this run that I may do differently has to do with the seedlings. They were put into the system right after they popped, and I really didn't like their root growth, I believe that they suffered because of it.

Oh, I didn't say that I kept the height of my water about 4/5 inches below the net pots. I thought that with the (timed) drip rings that my roots would follow the water down to the current and get the air that they needed in the process, it didn't happen like I thought. Also, I think that the low height of the water further inhibited the development of bennies into the system. So if the foggers don't go in to the totes the water level will be raised to just touching the net pots.

One thing that I really like about this hybrid system is this. With each of my totes being bottom fed, if my pump dies then they are just like reg DWC totes and I don't have to worry about the water being suctioned out leaving the roots bare nor do I worry about the rez over flowing since water seeks its own level.

As far as Ph and PPM levels... well my tap is over 8pm and 250ppm it really sucks, but after adjusting the ph down to 5.2 I've been able to keep it in a range of 5.5 - 6.2 constantly without having to add ph up or down. But all in all the girls kept the ph and ppm straight, (i'm loving that), after adding nukes in mid veg and beyond my ppm hadn't gone over 1260 and the only time it did that I pulled out about 3 gals of water and replaced it with 3 gals of distilled and that dropped my levels down to under 1000 ppm. Other than that no problems.

One thing of note that I do have to add, I had one time during this grow where I added a hydro tea, the roots were starting to get slimy, it clear right up after two treatments. What I think happened is that I had dirty hands when I went in to pull the roots out of the drain/feed pipes and provided food for the nasty fungus. The first treatment cleared it up and the second on was preventative.

Well enough for now, the game is over Indy kicked ass...

Stay Frosty My Friend
Raziel819
Semper Fi DD

Good morning, I got the shots of Ms Critical placed them in my album link is in common marine jargon.

Stay Frosty My Friends
Raziel819
OohRah

Dog, those girls are looking great. They are gonna produce some fine smoke. I love home grown, connoisseur quality smoke. Just wish they (politicians) would get over themselves and legalize the shit, so people can come out of their basements and claim stake to the amazing things they create. But that's another conversation. Ill be interested what you think about the NL x Big Bud cross. My last was white widow x big bud. Looking great man!

Hey Marineman, lookin real good !
Say, where can I get the CO2 bag?
Do they come in different sizes?
Thanks

Hey fishywater, I got that bag at my local hydro store, but im sure you could find them online as well. They dont come in different sizes (the kind I got) but they come in grow and flowering strengths. Flowering being the stronger (more ppms) of the two. I got the flowering one for that reason, Im not going to run a weak one in the beginning, just to have to pull it and put another one in, and you cant seal them up, meaning one you activated the whatever its is that makes it do its thing, you gotta run it till its dead. I think its made from mushrooms that mix with a bacteria that makes it ferment and produce C02. They are supposed to last around 6 to 9 months, plenty of time to see if I like the results. If I like the results, I may look into getting a small tank for the next run. It was $30 if I remember right. Thanks for stopping in.

Thanks dude its certainly a learning experience bring these girls up and just when you "Think" you got it down you do something stupid that lets you know you ain't there yet.

I saw those bags sometime back and had put them on the list to try. I really like the fact that they aren't just sitting around waiting for someone to buy using up all the co2 in the process. I had tried those co2 bags called exHale which are pre-activated, sometimes at my hydro-store they're sitting around half brown/black and the sales people are trying to tell me that they are still good and even tried to sell one to me. And they still wanted full price (~$35) for one of those half used up things...

Stay Frosty My Friends
Raziel819
ohhRah

Im baaaaaaack!

Ok, so I had a big hiccup in this run with the bacteria that was growing in my buckets and on the rocks, and my original ladies shit the bed. I think they had just been through so much and didnt have the easiest life. So the new seeds should be here next week. Same strain (BBOGK).

Like i said, the last 2 weeks have been trying to combat my bacteria problemo. So I called around to some universities and hydro stores, and they seemed to all think it might be an airborne fungus or mold. Which could very well be true. During my first run, I dont know how many times I spilled water everywhere. I do have drains in my basement but Im sure there were things that never got dried out completely, so thats where I could have started having problems. So what I did to correct the problem was I purchased a copper sulfate vaporizer. ($100) Ive run it three times, for two hours each day. So hopefully that took care of any airborne baddies floating around. I also completely stripped and cleaned my entire system, even replaced all the lava rock. I also am brewing up another batch of richyriches tea.

4 Gallons RO water
1 Scoop of ZHO
50ml of Aquashield
5ml GH Root Accelerator
50ml Molasses
3 cups of GH Ancient Forrest in a sock (like a tea bag)

I have two days left on brewing for the tea, and fingers crossed, this will be the beginning of a beautiful run.




I also picked up this bad boy as an early Christmas present to me. And I HAD to upgrade to the custom made big boy bowl. I dont fuck around son... Marine Corps green Raz!