bounty29's New and Improved 150w Cabinet

[bounty29]

Alright everyone, I figured this wasn't really my second grow anymore, so it's about time I get a new thread started.

I've got a new cabinet put together that I haven't grown in yet, but I have very high hopes for it. I think I fixed all my mistakes from my first run, and greatly improved the general growing space.

Here's the details first.

Ventilation: 8" x 8" Darkroom Louver for passive intake, 4" 175cfm Vortex for exhaust
Lighting: Four 15w Cool White CFLs for the first week or two of growth, 150w HPS for the rest of veg and all of flower. DIY air cooled hood for 150w HPS
Dimensions: Cabinet - 14" x 22" x 70" ... 2.14sq ft...28wpsf for seedlings and 81.8wpsf for veg + flower
Security: DIY Carbon Filter, 18" x 4" and uses 5~ lbs of activated carbon, vacuum sealed door (thanks vortex!), speed controller for vortex to bring sound down.
Plants: 1 SD IBL Clone to be flowered in a 7.6 liter (about 2 gallons) container, hopefully female, 5 Mountain High Mix freebies, flowering in 2 liter bottles.
Nutrients and Soil: They're all in a potting soil right now with no nutes, just perlite, peat, vermiculite, and some lime maybe. I'm getting a bag of Fox Farm's Ocean Forest or Happy Frog, whichever I can get my hands on in the next few days. (I'd prefer Happy Frog). I will be feeding with either PBP in either tap water or PBP + Cal Mag in Distilled water... or I might scrap the PBP altogether and make a few organic teas and supplement the Fox Farm soil, which I'm hoping will feed my plants from the time I transplant until they get into flower. I'd like to give them a high N tea during the 3rd~ week of veg, in hopes of a better female:male ratio.


(The cardboard is just suctioned to the hood for now, so that the air goes through the carbon filter, I'll be getting glass for it in the next couple days.)

Tentative Schedule: Veg Sour Diesel clone another week, transplant to 2 liter bottle, veg until I can see a good amount of roots on the bottom of the 2 liter (1 more week?), transplant to flowering container, veg for another week and then go into 12/12. I need to make the 12/12 flip coincide with the 5 freebies, so I think I'll veg them until I can see a solid root mass on the bottom (1.5-2 weeks?) transplant them to the 2 liters, let them veg for a few days to a week in there, and then flower. I'd like to start 12/12 around the beginning of August, which gives me a little over two weeks for all this. I'm going to be leaving for 5 days near the end of August, so I need to figure out what to do. I'd like the stretch to be finished before I leave so the light won't need to be moved, and I don't know if there's anyone I want watering my plants so I'll probably have to rig something up.

I'm planning on the SD taking 75-90 days for flowering, which means I won't chop that until mid October to early November. The freebie mix should all finish before that, probably starting to be ready around 55-60 days, which would be late September, early October.

Here's the SD IBL cut and the five seedlings, and a shot of how the layout will look in flowering. Instead of the two black buckets, there will just be one, with the SD, and the freebies in the 2 liters.


Info about the DIY air cooled reflector
Info about the DIY carbon scrubber
Info about previous grows (Links in sig)

That's about it everyone, I'll be probably be doing updates weekly, with plenty of pictures. I'll try to refrain from posting too many boring ones before flower, and I'm working on my photography skills so we should get some good budshots in a few months.

Thanks for checking out my grow!

 

[bounty29]

Reserved for Smoke Reports and Harvest Pictures

 

[Guest]

nice bounty, im on board for this one

 

[big bang]

Looks good! How loud is that fan?

 

[HeadyPete]

Looking good bounty. i am in!

I was looking at your second grow, and that chart you did with the different ph and tds readings of your water and nutes was excellent! That PBP is really acidic stuff, as you show, and it is fucking up some people cause they aren't balancing with ph up. The have all kinds of def issues. Most guano or fishmeal based nutes are very acidic and need adjusting.

I am about to start with the BioBizz system of PreMix dry soil amendment, Gro, Bloom, and Top Max. I am curious as to the ph of these products and how much adjusting needs to be done.

Do you measure the ph off the container runoff? I'll bet it comes out lower than when it goes in....natural biological action tends to lower ph, especially if not using lime in the medium.

Good luck with your crop, bud!

 

[NOFpuXnk]

YES! FUCKIN EH!
I LIKE!
i just bot my 150hps somthing like that would be awesome

 

[Black Ra1n]

Nice clean setup bounty, 150's are fun and you end up with quite a bit of great bud.

Take care.

B/R

 

[bounty29]

rkrone- Good to have you around. I'm interested to see how things turn out.

big bang - The fan is silent. The shitload of air that it blows is not. It's a constant whooshing sound. I got the speed controller with it, and that will almost cut the sound in half, but the airflow doesn't seem to change too drastically. I just had some company here, and I had a box fan set up in the room with the cabinet, and the box fan was blowing on the medium setting. This is easily enough to drown out the sound of the cabinet. It wouldn't work by itself for stealth though, you need a cover sound for this fan.

HeadyPete - I was always curious to see how each additive affected the mixture. I know that was a pretty simple recipe compared to some of the member's here, but I like to keep things simple. Like I said earlier, this round I'm hoping to maybe use nothing but bubbled tap water and PBP, but I dunno if that's going to work out. I love the idea of the Lucas Formula. Keep it very simple, so that it can be replicated by anyone with ease, and get great results. I've recently been looking into organics, and you can make a soil mix that needs nothing but water the entire time. When I have space to mix up a ton of stuff like that, I'm sure that's the route I'll go. But until then, I'm going to try to keep the number of things going into my grow a minimum.

Black Ra1n - Thanks for the compliment, I always loved seeing clean setups. My cabinet still has improvements that can be made, but then again, whose doesn't? I feel the same way about the 150w, they're fun and can give plenty of bud. My gf and I really don't smoke that much, if we smoke whenever we want we'll use like an eighth a week, which compared to a lot of people, seems like miniscule amounts. That's alright though, because once I've got a couple mothers going I can have harvests every two or three weeks. I have no doubt that once I get into the rhythm of growing and harvesting, I'll be stocking up on different varieties faster than I can smoke them.

I really want to get more light onto those plants. If I knew what I did with my homemade floro tube I'd add another two bulbs onto there and give them 150w of overdriving floro power... but I seem to have lost it. I might turn the HPS on, but I want to get the glass for it before I do.

I've always used fluorescents to veg, and I've always had great growth, tight node spacing, lush plants, no stretching. That works, why should I change how I do things. Seriously, how does someone lose a 8"x20" board with light bulbs and electronics sticking out of it. My apartment really isn't that big...

Thanks for stopping by everyone, I hope I can give you guys a good show!

 

[Black Ra1n]

Hey bounty, I was at walmart a few months ago and found some 26 watt CFL's that are 6500K, I put 3 in my mother chamber and noticed almost twice the growth as compared to my 4, 5400 T8's, they were 8 bucks for two. Can't wait to see this cab perform for you.

B/R

 

[Guest]

Hello Bounty...your threads are great.Good pics and explanations w/o too much bs.Too bad about your last grow and the clones. My first cab was a C13 I built modeled after Maliboos.Passive intake etc.Very much like yours.Did you get your darkroom vents from B&H photo?? I need two of them for a closet I built.Can't wait to see how your new cab goes.Looks great..BL

 

[bounty29]

quick update

quick update

Alright, I just gave all the seedlings some 1/8 strength nutes and foliar spray. I know they don't need it, but I think it'll give them a nice little boost. I gave the SD IBL clone a 1/4 strength foliar and feeding.

They're all looking pretty good, I've got a fan on them so they've got pretty solid stems. There is definite variety in seedlings, I'm really curious how they're going to turn out. I like not knowing exactly what you're going to get, just knowing it comes from good genetics so it'll most likely be good stuff.





You can see the one leaf from the SD clone grew into the CFL, but I caught it before it did too much damage. Besides that, the clone is looking very healthy. I can see roots starting to circle around the bottom of the cup, I'd say the roots will be where I want them for transplant in 3-4 days. I still can't see the roots of any of the seedlings, but they should start to show up around the bottom and outside of the cup in a few days. I might have to go into 12/12 before the seedlings get too much veg, but it should be alright.

This is probably the most plants I can do at once with my cabinet, I'm hoping it doesn't get too overgrown. I expect the SD to stretch 2-3x, so if I go into 12/12 when it's... 12" tall I'd like it to finish it's stretch at under 3'. I doubt the seedlings will do this much, maybe half that stretch. I think I'm going to get some cinder blocks to put the 2 liter bottles on to keep an even canopy.

Edit: Jeez, I forgot to answer your question, sorry. Budluver - Yeah that's where I got it from. I got the two pack, and I have the one on my cabinet, and the other is on the last cabinet I grew in. I'm pretty pleased with them. I wasn't sure I wanted to spend that much, but it's definitely worth it.

 

[bounty29]

So since my last update I've gone out and bought a bunch of stuff for organic teas, I'm only missing one ingredient. The plants are looking great, I just took the CFLs out this morning a couple hours after lights on and replaced them with the 150w HPS. I still don't have to hood on it, so the air isn't going through the carbon filter, but it's not bad right now, they're still pretty small so odor isn't an issue. Anyways, here they are...








The sour diesel is now in a 2 liter bottle, it's moved into it's new home just fine. As of now, these are my plans for transplanting...

Once there is a decent amount of roots on the bottom of the seedling cups, I will transplant them into 2 liter bottles. I think instead of a traditional transplant, I'm just going to cut the bottom few inches of the cup off and set it in the two liter bottle, basically double potting them. A few days after that, as soon as they show new growth, I'll flip them into 12/12. As each plant shows it's sex, it will immediately be transplanted into one of the black bins. That means I will be growing out 4 plants.
Can I get 60% females out of the seeds?
Am I 100% sure the SD is female?

So: As females show themselves, they will move from the 2liter bottle up to an 8~ liter bucket and spend the rest of their days there. All transplants are into FFOF soil, so there should be enough nutes in the soil to keep the plants happy. I think I'll only have to do a couple tea feedings, I think I'll stick to a simple molasses and earthworm castings tea for regular waterings.

Also... I noticed all the leaves on my SD are 3 fingers only. Weird.

I think instead of the five 2 liters and two 8 liters I showed earlier, I'm going to go with this layout, just four 8 liters.

 

[ElGato]

well hell yes Bounty
lookin good bro, plants are off to a great start
cant wait to see how the SD turns out for ya



El Gatorooski

 

[bounty29]

As I mentioned before I'm going to be going to organic route with this grow and feeding the plants with teas. I'll be using these recipes to start, just something I've seen in several threads in the organic section.

If you want to use guano tea and kelp...

Guano Tea and Kelp:

Seedlings less than 1 month old nute tea mix-
5 tbs. Black Strap Molasses
1-cup earthworm castings/5 gallons of water every 3rd watering

Veg mix-
1/3 cup Peruvian Seabird Guano (PSG)
1/3 cup High N Bat Guano (Mexican)
1/3 cup Earth Worm Castings (EWC)
5 tsp. Maxicrop 1-0-4 powdered kelp extract
5 tbs. Liquid Karma
5 tbs. Black Strap Molasses
@ 1-cup mix/5 gallons of water every 3rd watering.

Flowering nute tea mix:
2/3 cup Peruvian Seabird Guano
2/3 cup Earth Worm Castings
2/3 cup High P Guano (Indonesian or Jamaican)
5 tbs. Maxicrop 1-0-4 powdered kelp extract
5 tbs. Black Strap Molasses
@ 2 cups/5 gallons of water EVERY watering.
You can use queen size knee high nylon stockings for tea bags. 3 pair for a dollar at the dollar store. Tell 'em you use them for paint strainers. Put the recommended tea in the stocking, tie a loop knot in it and hang it in your tea bucket. The tea should look like a mud puddle. Agitate the bag in the water vigorously. An aquarium pump and air stone will dissolve oxygen into the solution and keep the good bacteria (microherd) alive and thriving. Let it bubble a day or two before you use it. If you find you are making too much tea and having to throw it out, use 2 1/2 gallons of water and cut the nute amount by half.

Since I'm growing on a small scale, I wouldn't need 5 gallons of solution each time, so I modified the recipe for 1 gallon, which can easily be doubled or tripled as needed.

Seedlings less than 1 month old nutrient tea mix-
1 TBS. Black Strap Molasses
3 TBS. earthworm castings/1 gallons of water every 3rd watering

Vegetative mix-
1 TBS. Peruvian Seabird Guano (PSG)
1 TBS. cup High N Bat Guano (Mexican)
1 TBS. cup Earth Worm Castings (EWC)
1 TBS. Maxi-crop 1-0-4 powdered kelp extract
1 TBS. Liquid Karma (optional)
1 TBS. Black Strap Molasses
@ 1-cup mix/1 gallons of water every 3rd watering.

Flowering nutrient tea mix:
2 TBS. Peruvian Seabird Guano
2 TBS. Earth Worm Castings
2 TBS. High P Guano (Indonesian or Jamaican)
1 TBS. Maxi-crop 1-0-4 powdered kelp extract
1 TBS. Black Strap Molasses

Here's my seedling mix bubbling right now, I think I'll dilute it and feed them tomorrow evening. The roots on all the plants have really started to take off, I'm very pleased with their health and vigor. I'm curious to see if this basic tea will help kick things off for these plants. I always keep the black bucket full of water from the tub and have it bubbling 24/7 for de-chlorination.

 

[HeadyPete]

Great to see you using the organics and taking care of your health!

You bet that tea will do wonders. Research has shown that compost teas not only feed plants but inoculate against disease.

Yum yum looks good. I know my girls would love to come to your bar for a drink!

 

[bounty29]

Ok, another update. I know I said they'd be farther apart, but oh well, I'm bored and I need some advice. Hopefully someone might be able to tell me what's up. I fed the seedlings and the clone that worm castings + molasses tea the other day, and they've looked like they were overwatered since then. At first I thought that's what it was, because they were all drooped like normal(normal overwatering symptoms), but it didn't go away. It's been a couple days now, and they'll probably need water tomorrow, so they should have plenty of air to the roots. It's very clear they don't look as good as they did last update.

Would wrong PH do this? I forgot to check and correct the PH of the tea that I fed them, and just made up another small batch tonight and tested it and it was like 5.4 PH, which is too low. I should be using around 6.5ph right? I always get the numbers with hydro and soil confused, and I don't really know if this peat/verm/perlite mix is considered soil or soil-less or what the hell is going on.

If anyone could set me straight I'd be very appreciative, as would my plants. Anyways, here's the pictures to give you a better idea of what's going on.

MHM1


MHM2


MHM3


MHM4


MHM5


SD IBL (8 days ago - 4 days ago - today)


The way the plant looks has just changed. They were looking vibrant and strong and now they're pale and weak. What happened? Is the change in the stem color like that normal?

The roots of the SD cut are doing very well, they've shown a lot of growth in the past four days. Here's a couple shots of the growth, I'm pretty happy with it. These two shots are about 2/3 of the outside of the bottle. The other 1/3 doesn't have many roots there, must not be growing in that direction.



I know people advise against clear containers, and maybe that's my problem, but I like to know where the roots are and how they're growing. I didn't have any algea problems my last grow, and these are looking great. My flowering container, which I will transplant into as soon as the plants show definite sex in 12/12, is black, so if the clear container is a problem it will be taken care of.

My girlfriend just requested that I stop growing for a while after this run, and she has every right to do so. I'm just going to veg longer than I originally planned so that I can get the most yield out of this grow. I'll probably stop for at least 3 or 4 months so if I can get 3 or 4 oz I should be able to make it last.

And to leave it off, here's my lineup of organic ingredients. This should take me all the way through to harvest.


I'm growing some cat grass too. I guess cats like to eat it and rub on it or something (it's not catnip, just grass) so I threw some soil I had into a Sterlite bin and mixed some seeds in the top and put it in the kitchen. It's easy growing things when you don't have to hide them

 

[screwdriver]

Hello bounty29. I got a little 150 setup also. Sorry to see your girls so sad. I tried a guano tea last week and was unhappy with the results. I only add one tablespoon of molasses per gallon and maybe a little the next day. They will spring back for sure.
I got my cats some catnip and they looked at me like I was supposed to roll it for them. Then they just left the room.
Good luck.

 

[HeadyPete]

Hey bounty.

The cats will eat the grass, then puke up fur balls on your floor. It's supposed to happen that way.....

Just cover the containers when you don't need to see the roots. The light will fuck up your roots and that will affect yield.

 

[bounty29]

Alright, I've had the veg tea brewing for the past couple days and the seedlings felt light enough to be watered, so I gave them some of that. The SD pot still feels heavy, I don't know how much longer I'm going to have to wait before I can water/feed her again, it's ridiculous.

My cat loved the grass, but in the course of three nights he knocked the container over three times, so no more grass for him. I'll definitely plant some more, it was all like 6" in under a week so it was real easy.

 

[HeadyPete]

cats are so cool.....

i have :kitty: :kitty: :kitty: