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Micro Adventures with Mr. Sparkle

Hen

Member
...i use General Hydroponics MaxiBloom at 600ppm/EC 1.2 to keep it simple, as i see no sense in buying water like other nutrient brands, and have it fed out of a 3.5 Liter reservoir.

Just curious...Have you tried other hydro nutrients? And any particular reason you skip MaxiGro for the first few weeks?

Thanks.
 
M

Mr. Sparkle

Just curious...Have you tried other hydro nutrients? And any particular reason you skip MaxiGro for the first few weeks?

Thanks.

I actually use MaxiGro as well, it depends on what each box is doing, if i'm running only photoperiods then they get maxigro for the whole time they are in Bogan, but if i have autoflowers in there then i'm running a mix, Ashla was running a Maxibloom dominant mix of 3:1 to 4:1 just cause i felt the little bit extra nitrogen that Maxigro supplied was beneficial.

As for others currently i'm running something else in Ashla but i just switched over a week ago and don't want to divulge that yet as i'm just playing around, as there is no need to have anyone copy something that may not work, and it may take a bit to dial it in.

I mainly use to do organic soil/soilless mixes so i haven't tried to many, I've tried the odd other hydro nutrient, but haven't tried a lot, though that's mainly because i have an issue with most hydro nutrients out there, it's not that they don't work cause people get excellent results from them but its with that fact you're just paying $$$ for all those bottles of mainly just water "really diluted nutrients" then they try to sell you in as many bottles as possible so they can make more money, not that i'm saying you can't fine tune things depending on how your plants are running, but the marketing hype and all that waste that is created with the packaging and transportation of those products, just doesn't sit well with me.

So saying that unless it's a nutrient that's either really concentrated, isn't a rip off, or isn't just hype then i havent activily pursued anything, i still keep my ears open for things that work.

Sorry for the rant...
 
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M

Mr. Sparkle

I have been fighting the urge to COB for months now... I am mentally designing a water cooled COB setup that would replace my current flower box full of screw in LEDs... I just down have the time to work on it...

Unless running a really hot COB, or you have a space that isn't that efficient heat wise and you want to keep it as cool as possible, water cooling is probably not needed, old cpu heatsinks have worked pretty good for me, also with water cooling that just one more thing that can go wrong. But it does have the "cool " factor but really probably overkill.
 

Gnz

Member
I need a new small veg cab.. so if you plan your simple box for a little over a square foot, I'll try and replicate it on the other side of the world as a test!
 

Hen

Member
I actually use MaxiGro as well, it depends on what each box is doing, if i'm running only photoperiods then they get maxigro for the whole time they are in Bogan, but if i have autoflowers in there then i'm running a mix, Ashla was running a Maxibloom dominant mix of 3:1 to 4:1 just cause i felt the little bit extra nitrogen that Maxigro supplied was beneficial.

As for others currently i'm running something else in Ashla but i just switched over a week ago and don't want to divulge that yet as i'm just playing around, as there is no need to have anyone copy something that may not work, and it may take a bit to dial it in.

I mainly use to do organic soil/soilless mixes so i haven't tried to many, I've tried the odd other hydro nutrient, but haven't tried a lot, though that's mainly because i have an issue with most hydro nutrients out there, it's not that they don't work cause people get excellent results from them but its with that fact you're just paying $$$ for all those bottles of mainly just water "really diluted nutrients" then they try to sell you in as many bottles as possible so they can make more money, not that i'm saying you can't fine tune things depending on how your plants are running, but the marketing hype and all that waste that is created with the packaging and transportation of those products, just doesn't sit well with me.

So saying that unless it's a nutrient that's either really concentrated, isn't a rip off, or isn't just hype then i havent activily pursued anything, i still keep my ears open for things that work.

Sorry for the rant...
Ah, ok. Thanks for sharing the MaxiGro info.

I agree with your opinion about the fertilizers. It's currently not possible to get MaxiGrow here in Finland, and importing is really expensive. The only importer I found that does import GHE only gets the liquid stuff. We do have a Finnish brand fertilizer, but it's only for soil, I believe.
 
M

Mr. Sparkle

Ah, ok. Thanks for sharing the MaxiGro info.

I agree with your opinion about the fertilizers. It's currently not possible to get MaxiGrow here in Finland, and importing is really expensive. The only importer I found that does import GHE only gets the liquid stuff. We do have a Finnish brand fertilizer, but it's only for soil, I believe.

Soil Fertilizers can be use, it's actually what i'm testing right now, sure their makeup can be different, but some are very similar, we just have to take into consideration that most hydro nutrients have calcium and magnesium added, or is added with a supplementary add on.

Also depends on what medium your using to grow, if it Coco we can get away with using and doing things that you could do with soil and there are a few grow out there with people getting excellent results from just general fertilizer.

My take on it though is you don't hear about it as much because of all the hype and targeting of supposed canna specific nutes, and the amount of people who run the stuff and recommend it to others without them actually trying things that aren't specifically canna targeted, also the people who say use Miracle Bloom For example get flamed by the nutrient elitist saying the stuff is garbage and will ruin your grow, but yet they have never tried themselves, think its incredibly inferior or it's that typical situation of they tried it when they first started out and had horrible results due to a lot of other reasons, but then blame the nutrients for the bad grow.

Really you can gett pretty much anything to give good results it just a matter of workign with them and tweaking things.

I need a new small veg cab.. so if you plan your simple box for a little over a square foot, I'll try and replicate it on the other side of the world as a test!


Well my plan may have changed and im looking at just making a wooden box, but it will be less than a sqft possibly and might be done with led's eventually as they are just more efficient, heat and light output wise, still just ideas at the moment though
 
M

Mr. Sparkle

Weekly update:

Bogan going along fine, The two dark devils the lower halves are fully seeded with the odd seed up top because i didn't isolate the halves when pollinating, the plants are more or less done, but the seed are not, i was gonna wait another week anyways before i even started to look.

Also have two new clones another C99 thay way or may not stay around and a Lemon Kush.

Ill be starting some seeds probably today but i first have to decide what to run next, i'll report back with what i'm thinking.

Also i increased the nutrient concentration after i did some calculations so we will see how it turns out.

FvMkVdS.jpg


Ashla well i kinda went on a hacking spree more than i needed too, things were getting out of hand, lots of people say don't remove your fan leafs as they are the solar cells of the plant, but when working in a small environment with as many plants as i do, you have too in order to slow down their growth or they will all end up in the roof and being burnt by the lights, so its a catch 22 if i had plenty of space and could raise the lights consistently higher if needed i wouldn't touch the fan leaves but i'm not in that situation.

So what else, i moved over the C99 clones, and am doing a half experiment, two of the clones were left normal, whereas the other two i topped a half a week before throwing them into flower, i want to see if forcing the growth to go into the side shoots will help with the initial stretch, and hopefully have a couple bigger side shoots as with this specific plant, its a stretchy sativa dominant plant that just like to reach and drop little nuglets at the nodes with quite a bit of space before the next one till it hits the main bud.
The fourth one from the left was the biggest and was topped aswell but i would've liked to put the plant in earlier, so she might need to get topped or lst later, i fully expect having to with her.

Also the Critical Jack got topped pretty much just after being thrown to flower, just to play around as well.

megRNla.jpg


Also Chopped down the last of the Sensi Seeds - Orange Bud, it will not be continuing on as their is other plants and genetics that interest me more.

24xLIo6.jpg
 
M

Mr. Sparkle

Well threw 5 Seeds into a glass of water this morning once they drop there off to paper towel and a bag.

I was debating between quite a few different strains but i went with some of my own crossing "FJM" which these are the last 5 seeds of, and its a regular photo-period strain, it comes from a fruity sativa dominate plant crossing from 5 or 6 years back, but its probably gonna be a bit random at what we get out of it, i'm exciting though as ive been wanting to finish off these seeds for awhile.

I kinda want to go back to bigger pots and fewer plants, but i still have a good 75+ seeds of stuff i want to run left, which doesn't count all those soon to be seeds in this current run, so if i ran them all out to completion were looking at about a year still to go, But probably closer to 8-9 months realistically, unless i do early selection and only allow plants with qualities i want to finish out which is probably what i might do for this final stretch before i do a seed run of the winners.

Whats your opinion?
 

Arf

Member
They look kinda strange with the fan leaves removed. Never tried it myself, I can see how it lets more light to the lower buds. How many weeks into flower do you start pruning them off?
 
M

Mr. Sparkle

They look kinda strange with the fan leaves removed. Never tried it myself, I can see how it lets more light to the lower buds. How many weeks into flower do you start pruning them off?

when its needed, id prefer not to pluck them, but it either before going into flower or the first couple weeks that way they can recover, but usually what happens is i figure they will be alright but then they out grow each other and then because they sense less light due to so many leaves and they start to reach to try and get past the other plants, kinda like a pine tree forest, so i usually have to hack then to try to keep things under control.

Some plants definitely do not working doing this, while others you may only see slow down for a day or two.

This is great work. I am deeply impressed!

Thanks
 
M

Mr. Sparkle

Weekly Update:

Bogan is doing fine, i increased the nutrient concentration a reservoir fill ago which was about week and half or more. The plants look a bit more vigorous but i think they can be a bit better but im gonna wait another couple reservoir fills before i change anything just incase we get slow nutrient build up.

The seeds are gonna need another week to two to be really good, also half trimmed back the reversed darkdevil to just parts holding some self pollinated seeds, as i don't need the plant to produce pollen anymore one as its already done its job plus i also have about 0.2ml of pure dry pollen, which is more than enough to do many future plants if needed and is viable when i use it.

Definitely need to cut back the mother plants though, maybe today.

FXyxle7.jpg



Ashla also doing fine, i changed the nutrients a couple reservoir changes ago just to play around, but the initial reservoir fill i did was by accident twice the strength i wanted it to be, and the reason why the blueberry's at the back are dark green with a bit of tip burn.

So here's what happen mixed up the new nutrients to what i thought was around 600ppm as thats what had been doing well, but i had to use about twice as much dry product to get there even though the NPK ratio of the new stuff is higher, which made me scratch my head and wonder but i decided to run with it.

Couple days later when i was still scratching my head i dived into it a bit deeper as something didn't seem right logics wise, To get to the point i didn't even think that my ppm meter which i know is just a conductivity meter, was reading different results because the nutrients werent the same and that the different compounds could be more or less conductive that what i was using before. "Slap to forehead moment" so i hunted down the specific NPK concentrations and how that calculates out to Actual PPM concentrations molecular weight wise. Which i did a couple tests of using a measured weight of the nutrients vs a standard volume of water, and how that correlates to the actual PPM vs what my meter was reading.

Well turns out the new stuff was being run almost twice as strong as i wanted, and that even my old nutrient concentration was possibly 65% of where it could be, which was another "palm to forehead moment", just goes to show you even if you have been growing for awhile you can still make mistakes when trying out new things but in the end you can learn from those errors.

As for the rest took off the bands on the plants as they were starting to get to tight and they didn't need them anymore, couple of observations between the topped and untopped C99 clones and how that relates to me but i'll wait longer till i comment on that, and whether or not this new nutrient grows as well as the old stuff, but with that i will want to go back to the old stuff and run just with it for a couple months with some more C99 Clones for comparison.


i1MRtSv.jpg
 
M

Mr. Sparkle

thats some amazing work!

Thanks, i'll be watching your grow as i kinda wanted to do a smaller grow just for the fun of it but with just running one 13w store bought LED


For the others following this thread, only 2 of the old FJM seeds popped, and one happens to be a trifoliate, i've had tri's before and they tend to actually be slower in growth and yield than the regular plants, so we will se how this turns out.

DYTipzX.jpg
 
M

Mr. Sparkle

Weekly update:

Bogan: looking a little bare but is good, ill probably start some more seeds today, but heres the run down i took out the two old mother plants and replaced them with new clones, the two FMJ's are just starting, the Think Differents are starting to flower, and the pollinated Dark Devils are almost there.

More detail about the Dark Devils, the reversed one i was using for pollen i chopped and also got about 40 seeds from it, the tall one in the center still has another 7-14days before i'm done with it as i pollinated it about a week later than the short one in the corner, which im gonna leave another week to finish whats left off it, i've already plucked about 75 seeds from it.

In the end should have a bit over 200+ seeds which will be nice.

0fusG0S.jpg


Ashla: My soil sensor kinda crapped out when i was moving things around due to a little to wet tray, as a solder joint failed, but im not sure if it was before or after i moved stuff, think it was starting to flake out before but then me moving things caused it break, no issues came up other than running a little too wet for a couple days, now coincedently some cheap stainless steel rods i got from eBay specifically for new sensor probes arrived Wednesday so ill probably be remaking the senor today along side some more flexible wire.

Other than that, the Blueberrys only have a week or two left, they are a little nitrogen saturated at the moment due to the one issue i mention a week or two back but im fine with it, the C99 clones are coming along, and the other 3 randoms are doing alright "Purple Kush which isn't purple yet and i dont think will be, the Critical Kush which is wanting to be a bush, and a critical jack at the same stage of the C99's

F8pCtDD.jpg


Harvest, also chopped down the two C99 seedling today, tiny bit of tip burn, again from that issue i mentioned a couple weeks back, but they are alright, also noticed a tiny bit of bud mold on the surface of one of the lower buds where it would of been buried in the corner and had little to no airflow, But the rest is fine So they will be tasty once dried. Oh also kept the bottom portion of the one plant that i pollinated as it still has a couple weeks left before its couple seeds are done which will only be about 10-20 seeds, just wanted to see what the cross could yield.

9tbZAPm.jpg



As for some new seeds to start whats your vote:

Im thinking either some

AK48 - Nirvana Seeds
Left over Bahia Blackhead - KC Brains
or something else ? i do have some other KC Brain genetics to try, Leda Uno, KC33 , and some Swiss xT which i don't know why i got as its a indica dominant stoned type plant, and i like my up beat clearer sativas.

Also have a few of my own crosses, which were composed of some Mandala Seeds, Karma Genetics, Mr Nice, and i think with some Nirvana PPP mixed in there some where.
 

neural_rust

New member
Ah, ok. Thanks for sharing the MaxiGro info.

I agree with your opinion about the fertilizers. It's currently not possible to get MaxiGrow here in Finland, and importing is really expensive. The only importer I found that does import GHE only gets the liquid stuff. We do have a Finnish brand fertilizer, but it's only for soil, I believe.

Well you could order maxi gro/bloom from cultureindoors.com.. I called the importer, but he hasn't done anything about it, so I went and ordered from the net.. -From Finland also..
 
M

Mr. Sparkle

Well you could order maxi gro/bloom from cultureindoors.com.. I called the importer, but he hasn't done anything about it, so I went and ordered from the net.. -From Finland also..

Oh wow, that's a nice site. BTW it's cultureindoors.eu ;)

Sucks that you guys have such high VAT's and import rules as that's a good 3 times the price of what i can get it locally, if i was in a similar situation i would definitely be looking at what i could find reasonably cheap at your local garden/general store, currently my flowering box is running off a general all purpose fertilizer for references and is doing pretty good apart from the initial accident, i'm gonna wait till the last batch of C99 clones run through before i switch back to maxibloom for comparison purposes.



Also gonna add another little update to this post as well.

Picked some more seeds off the one Dark Devil this morning, now have just over 125+ off that one plant with still more to come, but i also chopped of some of the mid buds that never got pollinated or had very few seeds which i already plucked, Once dried should be a tasty smoke.

Heres some pics

Some non seeded Dark Devil Nugs, smelling tasty
jUcaaKu.jpg


Current seeds off the one smaller Dark Devil
EUw2BPB.jpg
 
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