Mr. Micro's PC3 : Big Box Lazy Organic

[Mr_Micro]

Thanks for all the kind words guys!

Before I get to today's very special little update, let me take a minute to reply to those who have responded since my last update (yesterday LOL).


rcknrll - Yeah, I always go 12/12 from seed these days. I know it may sacrifice a bit of yield but if you give your plants any veg time when growing in a PC case (especially if you're growing hydroponically) than it's very easy for them to outgrow the available height in your cab in no time flat. Even with 12/12 from seed it's still pretty common for them to get a little too big in a PC case, so usually some kind of training is necessary.


Panconqueso - Thank you for the praise! I hope my designs have helped you and that your PC case is growing you good ganja too And don't worry, your english is just fine! You speak much better english than I could speak any other language



ripOG - Hey rip! Long time no see!
Yeah, I'm totally with you on the FFOF, I'm done with that stuff. I love the results I get from hydro and I love being able to know exactly what my plants are getting in terms of water, oxygen, nutrients, and Ph.

I never check my EC though even though I do have a meter. I guess just I feel like have always had great results just changing the water with fresh water with nutes at the recommended dosage once a week and then topping off with plain Ph balanced water as needed. Still have to check and re-balance the Ph once a day though, but such is the problem with a 1 gallon res I suppose.

But yeah, I'm done with soil for quite a while I think. Might try coco the next grow though, tngreen's simple hand watered method and it's DWC quality results have been looking really appealing to me lately.
And heck yeah, I certainly will build a small little cab to hold 1 or 2 males to collect some pollen from when I do my next grow. Making my own seeds just sounds like too much fun to resist





Whew!
Now that the replies are all taken care of, here's the completed form of some of those "modifications" I had been talking about doing to my PC case lately!






First up you can see that I replaced the rather shoddy looking light trap for the HPS air cooling exhaust fan with a little wooden box. I built it out of 1/4" thick fiber board and expoxied it to the back of the case. I also added a hinged front pannel with a little lock (to allow me to change the fan out quickly should the current fan ever die on me) and added a 3" flange to it as well. There's some weather stripping in between the front panel and the main part of the box to create a good air and light tight seal.

To the left of the new exhaust box you can see my EcoPlus air pump hung from an eye hook drilled into the back of the case now instead of inside the case. It's been wrapped in 4 layers of quilt batting to keep it nice and quiet with no vibration noise (I did make sure to leave a open hole in the batting for the pump's air intake).




Next I added a length of 3" ducting to the HPS's exhaust to direct all that hot air downward and out under the back of the desk so it wouldn't just go straight out the box and collect around the air pump that's hung next to the exhaust (the last thing I want to do is be pumping hot air into my res!).


But... I'm not done just yet :wink:



Not so stealthy looking now is it? Well, now you see it...



Now you don't!


I went and got some shelves from the hardware store, cut them to size, and used them to install a false wall underneath my desk to hide all my PC case's not so stealthy parts on the back of the case. Works great, was easy to do, and gives my whole set up a lot more stealth I think.




Well, I suppose that's all for today. I still have a few more modifications left to do, but I think I might just safe those for the next grow. Before I go though, here's today's obligatory open box shot!



Stay safe and grow smart my friends

 

[RudieJ]

oooh, very good for hiding the air filters!

 

[ScrubNinja]

Wow great desk mod, dude. Such a simple move adds so much stealth. I'd imagine it would cut down the noise factor too?

 

[Mr_Micro]

Jeff - Yeah, I'm done with the FFOF I think. Too many issues and too many unknowns. I'll stick with my little jacuzzi system ( ) for the rest of this grow and maybe try coco on my next grow. Seems even easier and the results look just as good.
And sure thing my friend, if you have any questions about small scale hydro I'd be happy to help you out in any way I can. That's the whole reason I make these threads, to hopefully inspire others to grow their own personal stash and share ideas about unique stealth growbox construction.
I'm really glad I could inspire you too! If even one person takes away some knowledge from one of my threads and uses it to help them safely and securely grow their own personal stash than I really feel like my time spent doing these grow threads was worthwhile


Rudie - Yeah! The new false walls work great and make my system a lot more stealthy. The hide all my equipment perfectly so now I'm not really concerned about security if a friend comes over to visit once in a while or if I get a surprise inspection from the landlord. Mind you the latter has never happened in the several years I've lived here, but you never know if it might some day. It only takes one slip up to get yourself busted so I try to make everything as stealthy as possible.


Ninja - Thanks! It was pretty simple to put together and it really gives the system a lot more stealth. It does quiet the noise a tiny bit, but not a whole lot since the vast majority of the noise comes from the vibrating airstone that sits in the bottom of the res. The fans are very quiet and I've effectively silenced my air pump, it's just that darn airstone that makes all the noise. Not too big of a deal though since the noise from outside the case sounds exactly like a normal large computer tower running to me







Anyhoo, it's been about a week since my last update so I thought it was time for some more pics and info on the plants

All my plants showed sex in the past week and everything worked out exactly as planned. On the last update I found that one of the Skunk #1 was female and one of the Northern Lights #2 was male, leaving one NL and one Skunk plant of unknown gender.

Well, over the past few days I found out my second Skunk #1 was a male and my second Northern Lights #2 was a female! So just as planned I go into flowering with 1 female Skunk and 1 female NL

That said, they've grown quite a bit in the last week so it's time for some pictures. As usual the Skunk girl is on the right and the Northern Lights girl is on the left.
It is now day 36 since they first popped their little heads up out of the soil they started their lives in.




(Curious canine contemplates conceptual chronic)








And for a new feature this week I decided to try my hand at a little artistic photography.
I present, "The Res-Cam"



Still needs a little work, since it's hard to get the lighting and flash right for underwater pics in such a small res, but I do think it looks pretty neat none the less.


Tomorrow I'm going to be finishing up a new lid for my res that will have only 2 holes spaced properly for my 2 plants and will also have a ScrOG screen attached so that I can ScrOG my plants while still being able to remove the res from the case for weekly water changings. Should work out pretty well I think, I'll be sure to post some pics when it's done.

Also, I usually don't like pruning my plants at all but I've learned from the past few grows that the lowest 2 sets of branches (along with the first 2 sets of true leaves) never seem to grow big enough to produce anything bigger than a few tiny popcorn buds in these PC case systems so this time I decided to prune off the bottom two sets of true leaves and branches on both plants.
Hopefully that will help the plants to not waste energy on the tiny lower growth and put more energy into making bigger buds in the upper growth.

Lastly, it always amazes me how quickly the Sensi Seeds Skunk #1 develops an incredibly strong odor. Even this early in flowering when I open the door to my PC a wave of funky skunk smell rushes out and about bowls me over!
The Northern Lights is really odorless at this point but the Skunk already smells wonderfully powerful even though it hasn't even begun to develop any real buds yet.
Fortunately my Can 705 carbon filter handles all the odor from the exhausted air just fine, but I still get quite a blast of Skunk funk every time I open the PC case door



Anyhoo, that's all for now I suppose, everything is going well in the world of my girls. Happy and healthy, just the way my SWC hydro ( or "jacuzzi system" if you rather ) plants almost always are.
So yeah, no more Oceans and Forrests for me, I'll just let em swim in the jacuzzi from now on.

Until next time, stay safe and grow smart my friends!

 

[kidkannabis]

Glad to see your plants came thru after switching to hydro..they look nice.. congrats on ur 2 females.. and great job on ur modifications.. u sure r handy sir... keep up the good work

 

[Mr_Micro]

Jeff - Hey again friend!
Well, I think micro DWC/SWC works great if you're just growing in a single tub but once you step it up to 3 or 4 tubs for flowering, vegging, clones, and mothers than you end up with a whole heck of a lot of daily maintenance to do since you really need to check and re-balance the PH in all those reservoirs every single day. It's not bad at all when you just have 1 res to worry about, but with that many you'd be looking at at least half an hour of work every day doing PH balancing alone.
Also, even a small hydro setup like this actually isn't all that cheap. After the cost of the tub, net cups, hydrotron rocks, rapid rooter plugs, air pump, air line tubing, air stones, PH test kit, PH Up & PH Down, and PureBlend Pro nutrients you're looking at spending $30-$60 or more.
In the long run it's pretty cheap to maintain, but the initial setup costs are rather large.

And oh yeah, I saw your new Micro Hydro thread! I'll have to pop in and share my thoughts tomorrow or the next day when I have a little more free time


Kid - Yeah, I'm glad too! I knew if they survived the transplant they'd do great once they got their sea legs I seem to have a pretty black thumb when it comes to soil, but DWC/SWC hydro has never failed me once.
And indeed I guess I am rather handy... I never thought about it too much but I don't think there's a week that goes by in my life that I'm not building something new. LOL I guess it's like how some painters just need to paint, and some writers just need to write... I just need to build things!








Okie dokie, it's now day 40 of 12/12 from seed since my girls first popped their heads above the soil they were born in. They've grown quite a bit since they got re-rooted in their new SWC home and I decided that this time around I wanted to try a micro scale SWC hydro ScrOG!

So I got a new storage container, made 2 holes for the net cups, and went about building a system to hold the screen in place attached to the tub. I wanted to attach the screen to the tub rather than the case itself (as shown in the pics of the case on the first page of this thread) so I could remove the whole SWC unit for weekly water changes, branch training, PH balancing, etc.

I think I did a pretty good job














It may look like the screen is mounted pretty high above the plants, but it's actually only 7.75" above the top of the lid of the res and will allow the plants roughly 7" of height above the screen to grow a nice thick canopy when all the risers under the unit are removed later in flowering.

Right now it does look way too high ( ) but all my previous experience with SWC hydro in PC cases tells me it should be just about right. There is that odd factor of the plants being stunted early on in life though, so who knows... they may fill out the screen, they may not! But if this grow goes like my previous micro hydro grows the plants should it their flowering stretch and fill out the screen quite nicely over the next 2 or 3 weeks.

And hey, worst case scenario if the plants stay stunted from their early in life soil trauma and never grow big enough to fill out the screen than I can just unscrew the support brackets and let them grow normally without any training...

So no worries



Anyway, that's all for now!

Until next time, stay safe and grow smart my friends!

 

[kidkannabis]

Damm You werent kidding when you said you NEED to build things!!! That screen looks pro-made, very clever Mr.Micro.. hopefully they do stretch that far into the sreen, but if they stay stunted, you dont HAVE to remove the screen or brackets as you plan to in worse case scenerio...IMHO if they dont stretch that far into the screen you can just cut or trim off a piece off each leg of the screen to lower it and that way you can still increase yield as appose to no trainig at all. Just my 2 cents. But very clean SWC ScrOG setup youve got there... keep it Micro!!!

 

[Huggie bear]

That is just a perfect set up! I am modeling my PC build pretty much off of this.
I plan to run a 100 watt CHM instead tho.
Was it possible to mount the light against sideways in your case to take advantage of the natural arc of the bulb?

 

[joesalamon]

Great looking grows as always. Your cases always have such a professional look to them.

Im about 4 weeks in to flowering now with a mystery clone and a white rhino. I had only LST my clone and I would have really liked to have a screen on top for scrog but didnt. You have the absolute perfect looking screens on all your PC's that I have seen. I must know where you got them because I would love to use it for mine.




Thats a picture of my clone, its almost 4 weeks in to flowering now. And has been growing in the same PC case as another white rhino, but that is much much much smaller.

But yeah, sorry for starting to jack your thread. Ill be here til the end checking yours.

 

[Mr_Micro]

Kid - Thanks a lot man! Yeah, I really do just need to build things sometimes But yeah, you definitely had the same idea I had when I built the ScrOG system. By making the legs out of wood rods and just drilling a few holes through them and bolting them in place it would make it easy to lower the screen if need be. Just chop a inch or so off each rod, drill a new hole, and it's as easy as that.
But hey, check out my new update below, looks like I won't need to shorten em after all :wink: Keep it micro my brother.



Huggie - Thanks a lot! I'm really glad you found my PC case inspiring! I too was thinking of using a CMH but I ultimately decided against it since all the plants I've seen under CMH tend to grow a bit taller and much leafier than under a HPS. And the last thing I want in a growbox this small is tall plants with lots of leaves I want to keep em short and full of buds without a lot of leaf material you know?
So I decided to just deal with the extra heat and stick with HPS in order to get shorter plants with higher caylax to leaf ratios

As far as mounting the light sideways in the middle of the case goes... well, I could have done that but it would have required me to chop up the main housing of the HPS unit to make it fit and then find some new way to secure it to the ceiling. So I guess I was just lazy and took the easy route of mounting it lengthwise. I think I'll still get very good results, but perhaps at some point the in future I'll figure out how to turn it the other way to make it a little more efficient.



Joe - Great looking girl man! It looks like you've really been taking care of her well, she looks quite happy But yeah, interested in knowing where I get the screens I use from? I'll be happy to tell ya!





They're "Closet Maid" brand hanging baskets that can be purchased at any Target for about $5. They're in the home storage and organization section I think. I just take a pair of wire cutters and cut them to the size I want, it's as easy as that. They're very sturdy, easy to cut to size, and look really professional I think, so for $5 they're a well worthwhile investment if you want to try your hand at ScrOG'ing.



Jeff - Hey again Jeff!
I hate to say it, but I don't think your idea for a single tub with mothers, clones, and vegging plants would work very well. The reason is that mother plants need about 1/2 to 3/4 ounce of PBP per gallon of water to grow well, clones need about 1/4 ounce of PBP per gallon to grow well, and vegging plants need anywhere from 1/2 ounce to 1 ounce per gallon depending on their size and nutrient needs.
If you want to do a perpetual setup than you should really keep your moms, clones, vegging plants, and flowering plants all in separate tubs so you can tailor their nutrients to the individual stages of growth.

I think DWC/SWC is a medium that is really well suited to growing plants from seed, but if you're thinking about doing a perpetual setup with clones and mothers than you might want to look into coco. Coco could use the same nutrients you use for DWC and might be a much more convenient way to keep mothers and clones. Then you could still use DWC/SWC for your vegging and flowering plants to get the big growth boost that these methods provide, or just stick with coco the whole way through and probably get equally good results if you've got your techniques dialed in.







Whew! Now that the replies are taken care of it's time for the weekly update!

Today is day 48 and it seems my little girls are going to fill in the screen just fine!

These pics were all taken last night (Day 47)...












And to think I actually wondered if they were going to grow enough during the flowering stretch to fill the screen! Only a week into the flowering stretch and they're already filling it just fine, so I think during the next week or two that they continue the flowering stretch they should fill up the screen quite nicely.

As you may notice I've done a lot of trimming underneath the screen. The bottom two sets of branches and leaves have been snipped off as well as many other small secondary branches and leaves in the lower growth that I thought would either be too shaded by the rest of the growth to take in much light or would never grow big enough to reach the screen.

I always do hate trimming, but it's an unfortunately necessary part of a good ScrOG and in the long run the plants will be way better off for it. Since they won't be wasting energy on tiny lower growth that never gets much light they'll be able to focus all their energy on producing a bountiful canopy of densely packed bud.




Well, that's all for now I think!
Until next time, stay safe and grow smart my friends!

 

[joesalamon]

Wow, great idea!!! I will definitely be going to pick up one of these for my next grow. Thanks a bunch, keep up the great work with yours too

 

[greenatik]

Hey Micro, first would like to say I have been following your pc grow/construction for a while now and it really helped me construct my case. I am working with a pineapple x lavender clone, 19 days into flower, and everything is looking great.

i plan using a scrog in a server case with a few seeds straight to 12/12 on my next grow. was thinking dwc but coco is treating me great. really inspirational thread, didn't think it was possible to grow in a case till a few months ago and your thread made it a reality for me. thanks again

 

[H&L]

Awesome lay out man, that's stealth as hell!

 

[kidkannabis]

Any updates Mr Micro??

 

[oohcow]

Hey Mr. Micro.

So you are saying that you bought a Secret Jardin...DR40... and it was really crappy? Damn i was looking into this as I wanted something bigger than a PC but didn't have that much room (wanted to keep it stealth). Did you get teh darkroom edition and not the street edition? Did it still leak light? That is a very big dissapointment.

I smoke more than a PC case could provide for me and I am in an apartment just like you so i need my stealth... Any recommendations?

 

[mosfetti]

oochow, did u consider a perpetual grow? just like 9 plants, or more (if u can fit them into a pc-case), SOG style.
you just put a clone every week at 12/12 (without veg), for 9 weeks (average blooming time), and harvest every week a micro plant (that could be from 5 to 20 grams. depends on strain, environment, and of course luck).
I don't know your smoking standards, but it's just better than none!

 

[oohcow]

well would i use another pc case to hold a mother? can a mom fit in a pc case?

 

[mosfetti]

of course. u can hold more than one! just keep it small

 

[Mr_Puffanpass]

Any updates Mr.Micro? Looking forward to your grow show

 

[Mr Bubbles]

mr mirco please give us the final update. My box is a replica of this so im hoping i can see what to expect from it.