Anti's MicroStealth Cab Design (Dr. Bud Method)

[DemonsGate]

Hey Anti, your plants are looking great. It looks like training all of those girls is going to be a bit time consuming. Have you noticed any difference in growth between the half & half containers and the 20oz bottles?

My seedlings are getting big fast, hopefully I can pull some clones off of them this Friday. I've also picked up some more genetics. I'll soon be popping some Satori, Bubblicious and Cali Orange Bud seeds. So I could potentially have a 6 strain grow with the Hashberry, Kalichakra and Thunk I have growing now .

 

[Agent-Smith]

They are looking really good. May I suggest hurd cracking to reduce the stretch or maybe cut off most of the main stems fan leaves if you still have some stretch to go, that will slow them down some.

 

[Anti]

Noticed difference between 32oz and 20oz thus far:

Noticed difference between 32oz and 20oz thus far:

Have you noticed any difference in growth between the half & half containers and the 20oz bottles?

The 20oz has hit ceiling height, too, but it took a bit longer than the 32 oz did. Most of my 20oz turned out to be males but there were only 5 or 6 to begin with so it's hardly a scientifically valid sampling.

But to answer the spirit of your question, I'm looking around for something better than 20oz soda bottles (basically, squared ones like the fiji water bottles would be ideal). I'm thinking that if I drop my clones into 20oz bottles, I can give each one a little more room to breath. The 2.0125 sq ft of space in each chamber allows for 25 half and half containers in 5 rows of 5 each. It'd allow for 30 or more 20oz bottles. If I use 20 oz sq bottles it might fit as many as 35+.

My seedlings are getting big fast, hopefully I can pull some clones off of them this Friday. I've also picked up some more genetics. I'll soon be popping some Satori, Bubblicious and Cali Orange Bud seeds. So I could potentially have a 6 strain grow with the Hashberry, Kalichakra and Thunk I have growing now .

I'm jealous! I probably could've cloned a lot sooner if I had more experience, but I thought I knew what I was doing the last time I attempted a semi-serious microgrow I ended up with a cab full of male clones. (I had started with only 3 plants and incorrectly sexed the preflowers. I was so sure I was right. Ah... experience is a helluva teacher.) As is, I'm taking everything as slowly and steadily as I can, so that if I make mistakes they can be minimized. I probably should've topped these plants right before I switched the lights... lesson learned.

Once I get a successful harvest under my belt I'll start worrying about fine-tuning a system. Right now, I'm trying to learn by watching. And the next round will be all with clones, so I'll have a room full of little girls reaching for the sky.

I wish I had the easy access to genetics that you cali guys seem to have. The med licensing alone is a powerful attraction to me (to move there.) I function much better with my medicine and I'm a happier, more productive citizen when I have it. Why can't they enforce the spirit of the law rather than the letter? America is the land of the FREE, right? Right? (...right?...)

 

[Anti]

Oh... on a strange note.... forgot to mention when I was discussing how unruly everyone is. There are three plants that have NOT had to be bent or tied down.

One of them is my last-one-standing AK47. She's staying within the footprint (so far). Almost like she was made for it.

 

[DiscoBiscuit]

I love it when they behave.

 

[Agent-Smith]

How's it going?

 

[SativaDreams]

hey man just showing some love, beautiful setup. I'm wondering how you hide the 2 feet of box behind the cd shelf? Wouldn't the CD case stick out 2 feet from the wall??

I hope someday I can run a setup like that!

 

[Anti]

UPDATE w/pics! Day 62 from seed, 31 from 12/12

UPDATE w/pics! Day 62 from seed, 31 from 12/12

Well, it's been two whole months (62 days) since seeds came out of the coffee filters and went into the half and half containers!

The plants were watered a few days ago and I took a couple of pics while they were out of the cabinet:

day 59 (day 28 of 12/12)​

Yesterday, I had the cab open to check on the stretch situation and... there wasn't one. Nobody asked to be bent over further. Which I appreciated very much. So I decided to take some more pics:

day 61 (day 30 of 12/12)​

I was so excited that I didn't have to spend any time training plants that I decided to let two of my little starlets shine on their own.

Here's the Magical Mystery Seed that I'm calling TriTop. (She topped herself.):

TriTop at 2 months
​

And finally, here are some pictures of my AK47:

ak-47 @ 2 months!​

It's hard to see it in the pics, but the leaves are definitely starting to sugar up.

I'll be watering again tonight and will try and get some more close-up pics. It's been challenging to get decent shots up close.

 

[Work2much]

The structure of that AK is pefect for SOG. You might want to take a late clone or three or think about re veg to continue the bloodline. I've always considered AK47 an underrated plant. All those uber $$$ elites and I can still get just as happy off of a little AK.

 

[Anti]

On the subject of cloning:

On the subject of cloning:

The structure of that AK is pefect for SOG. You might want to take a late clone or three or think about re veg to continue the bloodline. I've always considered AK47 an underrated plant. All those uber $$$ elites and I can still get just as happy off of a little AK.

Oh, yeah. I totally neglected to mention that I cloned as many of the plants as I could. (A few had only the main growing tip, no secondary tips big enough to clone.) So there are 3 clones of this AK in a plastic storage container that I converted a few days ago. They've been in there for almost a week at this point. When these plants are ready to harvest, I will be dropping clones in to replace them. Once I start with clones, I'm going to start SOGing for real.

At least a month before that, though.

 

[DemonsGate]

Yesterday, I had the cab open to check on the stretch situation and... there wasn't one. Nobody asked to be bent over further. Which I appreciated very much. So I decided to take some more pics:

...

I was so excited that I didn't have to spend any time training plants that I decided to let two of my little starlets shine on their own.

...

It's hard to see it in the pics, but the leaves are definitely starting to sugar up.

I'm glad to see everything is going well. I haven't cloned my plants yet, I had quite a few leaves yellowing on my plants starting at a little under 2 weeks old. I diagnosed it as a nitrogen deficiency, I've started adding nutes to the water and it appears things have stabilized, if things still look good by this Friday I'll be cloning for sure.

 

[Anti]

QUICK UPDATE for loyal viewers:

My camera went on vacation this week. It'll be back friday. I'll post updates this weekend.

For the moment, plants are at same height that they were tied when I watered on the 14th. So stretch appears to have stopped. Colas are getting visibly larger/denser almost daily. I have no idea what to estimate as far as yield at this point. If I can sneak away with 2 cured oz that'll hold me over until the next harvest and that harvest will be the beginning of the perpetual SOG. (with 13 plants, that'd be an average of 4.3 grams per plant. Seems more than reasonable to me. But what do I know?)

Clones are sitting pretty in the clone cab, will start transplanting them into soil at first sign of healthy roots.

 

[Cozy Amnesia]

Awesome thread!

 

[ganjamohanja]

hi anti
just read through your thread,and congrats on the build and the grow so far your cab is one of the best designed i've seen around!!!

but i do have one question,

if you can only fit 25plants into your flowering area and you want to put 5 clones
into start flowering and take out 5 fully flowered plant's per week then by my reckoning you'll need a strain with a 5 week flowering time!!

don't know if you've given any thought to this? but i to am planning on a drbud style grow as well,i want to harvest 4 plant's a week with a strain that takes 8 weeks to flower so 4*8=32 plants in my flowering space at any given time.when you say you want to harvest 5 plant's a week of ak(which has a 8-9week flowering time) then that's at least 5*8=40 plant's in flower and thats only if you have an 8 week flowering ak pheno if you've got a 9 week pheno then thats 45 plant's you have to have space for! so with the space you've got you'll be able to harvest 3 plant's a week.

 

[Anti]

i can only fit 25 of the 3x3 containers. But I'm planning on using 20oz bottles similar to Dr. Bud. With those, I can fit 32-35+ in the same space. I suppose I'll work it out on the fly. At the moment, I've got 13 potential mothers to choose from, and I don't know which if any will be worth keeping around.

Your thoughts are valid, though, and I appreciate you bringing it up. It'll give me something to kick around in my head while this harvest finishes up.

 

[inandout]

Did you prime before you painted the black? I only ask because it looks really good being able to see the grain in the black.

 

[Dopeboy668]

This is the most well designed cab iv'e ever seen. Truly inspiring for all us micro growers out there. Such efficiency its amazing. If my cab comes out half this nice i'll be more than happy. Keep up the great work Anti. Awsome!!

 

[Anti]

Did you prime before you painted the black? I only ask because it looks really good being able to see the grain in the black.

Nope. Didn't prime it. I bought flat black paint and used 0.5 inch "furniture grade" plywood. There are two or three coats on each piece, all applied about 20-30 minutes apart. I was really pleased with the way the wood grain showed through, too. Took just under a gallon of black paint to do the whole cab.

 

[Anti]

This is the most well designed cab iv'e ever seen. Truly inspiring for all us micro growers out there. Such efficiency its amazing. If my cab comes out half this nice i'll be more than happy. Keep up the great work Anti. Awsome!!

Thanks, bro. Good luck with your cab! I recommend you spend a month or so reading this site intensively. Just about anything I have thought to ask has been answered a thousand different ways.

I have tried hard to document this process for everyone's benefit. If I succeed, I hope people will take what I've done and improve on it. If I fail, I hope people will learn from my mistakes (as I certainly will.)

I've got 12 clones transferred into half and half containers and waiting for the room to open up. They'll get between now and harvest day to veg. I'm going to do a better job of LSTing this second run while I wait for my moms (this batch) to reveg to the point I can start cloning.

So far, my two favorite plants (based on look and smell alone) are the AK47 and Magical Mystery Plant #3. #3 honestly smells better than the AK. AK has more sugar on the leaves. It's a toss up.

I'll try and get some pics tonight and get them uploaded tomorrow.

Thank you for your kind interest.

 

[Anti]

UPDATE w/pics! Day 72 from seed, 41 from 12/12

UPDATE w/pics! Day 72 from seed, 41 from 12/12

Ok. So I had them out yesterday for their watering. Camera came back so I got some pics to share with you (and for posterity.)

Left Chamber


Right Chamber


Young Ladies Toweling Off After Their Swim​

I decided to take pictures of my three current favorites. Favoritism is based on:

#1 Appearance
#2 Aroma
#3 Size

So.... in third place we have....

Magical Mystery Plant #6
​

Our runner up....

Magical Mystery Plant #3
​

And finally, we have my precious AK47:

Serious Seeds AK47

AK47 - Day 72 (41 of 12/12) Last pic is detail of bud​

I bought a 60x to 100x hand-held magnifier from Radio Shack but it's a piece of crap. I'm planning to return it and then just bite the bullet and buy one of those $40 bionicle eyeclops USB hand-held magnifier. That way I can just snap pictures to my PC and drop them into photoshop. Less squinting.

I'm truly indebted to RedGreenery concerning the separate fans/glass partitions for the lights. I'm reading all kinds of horror stories of temps in the 90s and higher with people using far less wattage than I'm pushing (~250w per side!). My cabs sit in the high 60's during lights out and in the mid 70's during 'daytime'. All of the suggestions that changed this cabinet's design seem to be working out in a big way, as I hope these pictures can attest.

I misted all of the plants on at least a daily basis with water + 4 drops of super thrive per gallon of water, ph'd at 6-6.5 until the first hints of bud development. Since then, they've been watered about every three days and left alone between feedings with no foliar spraying. I take the doors off daily to make sure nobody has grown into the glass, but otherwise I leave them alone.

Harvest is just around the corner now and is finally starting to look like a reality. I'm psyched! Stay tuned for more!

Your thoughts, insights and experience are always appreciated!