Lil' Brodhi
Member
Are some of your flowers purple on the side facing the lamp? I experienced the same in my vert grows, curious if it happened to you too
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Triple stacked 3K automatic
- Thread starter ganjourno
- Start date
Dognponyshow
Active member
Very nice grow rig ganjourno, got any totals for us after it's dried up?
Tony_Soprano
Member
Nice work indeed!
Been a while since I updated this. First pull was great quality, but definitely some larf due to plants overcrowding in the corners. Around .75GPW off the first run.
Next run I had an issue in that I did not flush the coco well enough before transplanting. The starts didn't like that and they stunted up real bad and started to stretch. I was able to correct it but the damage was done, plants flipped too late and had major overcrowding. Final result was OK but a lot of larf, only around 0.5GPW of decent produce. Not up the the quality of the first pull.
Learning lessons from round two, prior to round three I made a few important changes:
- removed one column of plants and rearranged the room to give everything more space between each other. So now I have 18 plants instead of 21. This made a huge difference and the buds this time around are huge baseball sized nugs with NO larf to be seen.
- went from one screen per rectangular wall to a hexagon of six screens. This made it so that the room no longer has any corner spaces for overcrowding, and I left about 8" between each panel so that it is easy to reach around behind the screen and work on the plants better. Also makes for a more even and manageable canopy. This made a HUGE difference
- Added a custom-built diffuser baffle around the AC exhaust to more evenly distribute the air around the room. It was just blowing in one spot before which caused that part of the room to suffer wind burn, and other areas to suffer some mild heat stress because of low air circulation.
- I was using about 2" of chunky perlite at the bottom of each bucket to provide good drainage, but it was causing some algae growth and the smaller pieces were clogging my drain lines. Switched to cut squares of thick coco mat and it worked great! I'll post some pics when I remove them while harvesting.
- Flipped them very early, they were only about 12" tall. This was a good decision and the buds are huge this time around. Way less cleanup needed in early flower as well, since there was not a lot of crowding. Also shortened my cycle by a week.
- Switched to dual-arc bulbs. People say they don't work on digi ballasts but they worked fine for me. Good compromise between the spectrums and higher flowering response than pure MH. Will continue to use these from now on.
Issues I still have:
- The bottom row of plants is not showing the same level of bud development as the middle and top rows. I think they are getting a little overwatered since they are the closest to the drainage line that feeds into the sump. They are still producing nice buds, but around 3/4 the weight of the other rows. Also leafier. I'll try isolating them a bit better in the future.
- The diffuser I built for the AC actually cooled the room better, so my AC started cycling on and off since I had it set to 78, and it was getting to 77 then shutting off, back up to ~80 then turning back on. Issue is, the thermostat has a 5min cycle limit, so on the upswing the plants were getting full lamp heat without any cold air. Local to the plants facing the bulbs, it could have been as high as upper 80's, and this caused some exaggerated foxtailing during flower (though luckily not any quality issues). I didn't catch this until day 55, when the cooler fall temps exaggerated the issue. WHoops! It was an easy fix I just dialed down the AC a couple degrees so it would no longer cycle. It's holding steady at 76 now.
That's really it, this box is very close to dialed!
Pulling down round three this weekend, here's one of my favorites of this round about to come down! As you can see, great bud-to-leaf ratio this round:
Overall shot:
Lights off, you can see theres a ton of huge sticky buds this time:
Next run I had an issue in that I did not flush the coco well enough before transplanting. The starts didn't like that and they stunted up real bad and started to stretch. I was able to correct it but the damage was done, plants flipped too late and had major overcrowding. Final result was OK but a lot of larf, only around 0.5GPW of decent produce. Not up the the quality of the first pull.
Learning lessons from round two, prior to round three I made a few important changes:
- removed one column of plants and rearranged the room to give everything more space between each other. So now I have 18 plants instead of 21. This made a huge difference and the buds this time around are huge baseball sized nugs with NO larf to be seen.
- went from one screen per rectangular wall to a hexagon of six screens. This made it so that the room no longer has any corner spaces for overcrowding, and I left about 8" between each panel so that it is easy to reach around behind the screen and work on the plants better. Also makes for a more even and manageable canopy. This made a HUGE difference
- Added a custom-built diffuser baffle around the AC exhaust to more evenly distribute the air around the room. It was just blowing in one spot before which caused that part of the room to suffer wind burn, and other areas to suffer some mild heat stress because of low air circulation.
- I was using about 2" of chunky perlite at the bottom of each bucket to provide good drainage, but it was causing some algae growth and the smaller pieces were clogging my drain lines. Switched to cut squares of thick coco mat and it worked great! I'll post some pics when I remove them while harvesting.
- Flipped them very early, they were only about 12" tall. This was a good decision and the buds are huge this time around. Way less cleanup needed in early flower as well, since there was not a lot of crowding. Also shortened my cycle by a week.
- Switched to dual-arc bulbs. People say they don't work on digi ballasts but they worked fine for me. Good compromise between the spectrums and higher flowering response than pure MH. Will continue to use these from now on.
Issues I still have:
- The bottom row of plants is not showing the same level of bud development as the middle and top rows. I think they are getting a little overwatered since they are the closest to the drainage line that feeds into the sump. They are still producing nice buds, but around 3/4 the weight of the other rows. Also leafier. I'll try isolating them a bit better in the future.
- The diffuser I built for the AC actually cooled the room better, so my AC started cycling on and off since I had it set to 78, and it was getting to 77 then shutting off, back up to ~80 then turning back on. Issue is, the thermostat has a 5min cycle limit, so on the upswing the plants were getting full lamp heat without any cold air. Local to the plants facing the bulbs, it could have been as high as upper 80's, and this caused some exaggerated foxtailing during flower (though luckily not any quality issues). I didn't catch this until day 55, when the cooler fall temps exaggerated the issue. WHoops! It was an easy fix I just dialed down the AC a couple degrees so it would no longer cycle. It's holding steady at 76 now.
That's really it, this box is very close to dialed!
Pulling down round three this weekend, here's one of my favorites of this round about to come down! As you can see, great bud-to-leaf ratio this round:
Overall shot:
Lights off, you can see theres a ton of huge sticky buds this time:
Dognponyshow
Active member
those nugs look frosty ganjourno. kind of surprised the buds are foxtailing like that considering your temps are in check, intensity.
Well I mentioned I had this AC cycling issue, my temps were TOO in check so the AC would shut off when it got below 77. The thermostat has a 5 minute minimum cycle time so the plants would sit for 5min in front of the lights with no AC until it kicked back on. Not long enough to damage the plants at all, but this heat cycling is I think responsible for the foxtailing. It has been corrected now, we will see if the next run has the same amount of foxtailing!
X
Xray Kimono
I found that raising up the lights and going to only 2 rows of plants instead of three helped when I did a similar setup. It does away with the larfy bottom and the full length of branches with buds get enough light exposure... Should be no larf in vert.
X
Xray Kimono
Nice.
Dognponyshow
Active member
good that you can more precisely dial the room and airflow, those #4's are gonna blow up! i dig the dosa system tho.
nice job man . frosty as fuck. but still super green? no flush. or lowering of ppms as the end of flower nears? iuno I'm convinced that it helps with the burn and taste of the buds.. but some say otherwise.. ill stick to flushing either way.. but man I could imagine. 7-10 days of normal water on those. they would of stacked up . and got a lil less green lol.. great job tho..
I flushed for 12 days; they just didn't fade much this round. 
I'll do a runoff test before I chop today and see where they ended up. Not too worried about harshness, I cut a sample a over week back that had barely flushed at all, and it went down smooth. I always feed on the lighter side to avoid salt buildup and pH swings.
I'll do a runoff test before I chop today and see where they ended up. Not too worried about harshness, I cut a sample a over week back that had barely flushed at all, and it went down smooth. I always feed on the lighter side to avoid salt buildup and pH swings.
Miraculous Meds
Well-known member
glad to see u back on track!
u learned what I did when appropriately sizing ac's to run more consistently. helps against rh spikes too.
With that bottom row, plant the most vigorous rooted cuts, and I would use perlite or grow rocks at 50/50 with the coir just in the bottom. should balance out the moisture issue ur having. gl
u learned what I did when appropriately sizing ac's to run more consistently. helps against rh spikes too.
With that bottom row, plant the most vigorous rooted cuts, and I would use perlite or grow rocks at 50/50 with the coir just in the bottom. should balance out the moisture issue ur having. gl
