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Greetings. Another great day to be a grower, as the plants have just started to show pistils. There is a little burning evident but I'm confident they will grow right through.
Fed them today, ingoing was EC0.85 pH5.9. The return water came out at EC 0.7 pH6.9. The high pH worrys me a little but the girls look good so i'm just going to continue feeding them at 5.8-6.2 as long as they do.
@Closet Trics
I feel your pain about the runoff, i had issues with that in a prior system. You have to have a tray of some sort to catch and direct the flow. One of the best parts i have found in addition to the tray, is the flood/drain fittings like this 1/2inch Fill/Drain. Basically it pinches to the tray so there will be no leaks, The top and bottom have 1/2" connections, the top 1/2" connection is covered by a grill, but i remove that.
In my setup i have one acting as a normal drain with a hose hooked up to the bottom, but only to reduce the waterfall noise and give me a place to attach the return filter(made of pantyhose). Since setting this up I've learned about coco mats, which are basically just coco fiber mats that fill your tray edge to edge and prevent any coco from getting to the drain, with that i wont need the pantyhose filter. The second is setup with the bottom connected to a water pump(on timer), and the top connected to my main feed line. This line then has all the individual feeder lines connected to it. For easy res changes the main feed line can be disconnected and hooked to a longer line to a drain. Due to my plants completely filling the tray though, its easier for me to hook up to the recirculation pump to empty the res. Also with the drain line being 1/2", can use an inline connector to extend the drain all the way to the bathroom, doing drain to waste for the initial flush, or any future flush.
Also since all the water travels up/down from the reservoir in tubes, i was able to make a hole in the reservoir lid, and gorilla tape all arround where the tubes went in to make a light-tight seal, if the water just fell into the reservoir this wouldn't be possible. Another random tip, find the 1/2" feed hose somewhere other than home depots garden section. The hose they have is black and stiff for year-round outdoor use. The package i bought with the tray/stand/res came with rubbery blue tubing that was 5x easier to work with.
About the ph/ec, they will vary based on whatever is coming out of your pots. I understand in a healthy hydroponic system the pH should rise, and the EC should go down. These are the same characteristics I'm seeing in the runoff from my plants. As long as the res is significantly larger(gallon wise) than the amount of runoff, the change will be minimal, but measurable.
@caligreen
Thanks for the quick reply, fielding the easy questions
And heres the pics, overall for Flowering Day 11. You can also see in this picture i got my temp sensor off the ground and hung it from the ceiling. Taped to the cable with gorilla tape, i love this stuff . I'm reading 74 degrees, 46% humidity right there, with the side sensor reading 70 degrees, 57% humidity.
Great write up on your system dude i got it all figured out now.
i like the panty hose idea for a return filter to keep your nutes that much cleaner ( even though my pump still has an inline filter on it). I currently grow with Grodan grow cubes with great success and great growth rates so i think the runoff should not affect the ph of my nute solution ( GH micro and bloom with thrive alive red label and alittle cal mag plus) much. i switchd over from aeroponics to grow cubes in 2 gal pots because i was tired of buying hydroguard and fucking with root rot ( that shit sucks unless you have a water chiller ).
I might try this setup on my next pull since it seems pretty maintenance free besides the nute changes. thanks for the info
Another day, but not much to report this time. Stretch is still on-going as i had to raise the light 2 notches. Decided the plants should be ready for regular waterings, set the timer for Saturday, Mon, Wensday 6 minutes each. before lights come on. I'm going every other day as the plants seem to take a bit to dry out these pots. I'll have to update the watering timer weekly for that since 7 day weeks dont match every other day waterings.
@Georgia Green
You musta posted while i was doing my last update, got in right before me. I had to look up what a kudzu was, thanks for the compliment! The ladies do seem to be growing well
Heres the day 13 pics. Tomorrow is the planned day to trim the bottom 1/3 to prevent popcorn. Going to also try and make a clone or 3 at that point if theres some oportunistic spots. I'm thinking about taking all the ladies out of the hut at that time too, and putting the 4 smallest in the middle again. Chances are i will be too lazy though
F'n Beautiful hurricane! I really need to get my hands on some hindu skunk! Im still waiting for blue sky to get ther shit back on track tho! soon..Ill be watching bro!
How about at night? If it goes around 55 or above 60 then your gonna have mold problems, just a warning my cab gets around 60 at night and sometimes I get sad
Gorilla tape? Is it made by the gorilla glue people? How does it compare to duct tape??? I'd love to try some if it's better duct tape always seems to give up and loosen over time. PEACE
Greetings for day 23. Good and bad things happening with the garden. The good is that stretching has finished and bud production is about to start in full swing. The bad is that a case of over fert is working its way through all the ladies. To try and take care of this a cpl days ago i flushed 24G of RO+tap water @ph5.9 EC0.2 through the system in DTW. Beginning of the flush read ec0.8 ph6.8 end of the flush read ec0.35 ph7.1. No clue how the pH went up but it did. Since then i mixed up a weak reservoir at ec0.6, and have been feeding them that the past couple days. I'm not sure how to tell when they are ready for more nutes, but i want to leave it low until the ladies look happy again. I don't want to sacrifice too much of my harvest by underfeeding them though, as I've never heard of full flower at ec0.6.
@clowntown
Thanks for the kind words
@SackausAmerika
It sure looks nice, although in person the imperfections are much more obvious and i always see problems. Right now dealing with nute burn, so I'm sure i cant dream of an gpw on this grow. BTW this isn't an ebb and flow its coco drip.
@Caligreen
Hmm, i haven't been looking very often but i think its been 40-45 during their night cycle, which is daytime for the rest of us. My min/max says its been up to 62 though, i just reset it now and will see tomorrow if it hits high numbers. I'll take note to watch that as the buds swell.
@NorCalNiceGuy
Thanks, and i can understand why your worried about Blue Sky some people have gotten burnt. If i already had an established garden with genetics the situation might have gone different, but with no genetics possibly sick is better than nothing. Also i know I'm going to deal with problems, as there are multiple bushes in my neighborhood that have what appears to be powdery mildew. Have some serenade laying around in case but I'm not seeing any yet.
Anyways heres the pics, we have a couple overview shots and a soon-to-be bud. Sorry for the so-so images but the camera battery was dieing and i couldn't find the charger, didn't wanna take a bunch of shots and not get them onto the computer w/ a dead battery. Also just noticed icmag has changed image sizes again, to 700x525, gotta remember that when i crop images next time.
Hurricane
edit: reworked the exhaust with an additional 25' of insulated flexible duct. The exhaust now goes out the window. I reset my min/max yesterday to get a better hold on my levels. In the last 24 hours its been raining so perhaps this isn't the best comparison, but my min/max is 68-76degrees, 45-61% rel humidity at canopy level. Will see what it is with the exhaust now going out the window.
Yo dude things are really moving along! They are really frosty already, and good work finding out what the problem was bro. Keep it up we want to see spears!!!! PEACE
I must've been thinking of ebb and flow when I posted haha. As far as the over fert, I think it shouldn't have too much of an effect on the buds since you caught it early.
my partner just finished an 8k watt show of this with 24 ladies, and scored 12 lbs. i got 6 and they are funky fresh... ripper heady stone. heavy. im running that exact PK and is solid purple and fucking nearly done at 6 weeks, im flushing and will cut at 7 weeks. amazing, my cuts came from the same area. wanna see pix?