Newbie StealthHydro Bubbleponics grow with CFLs step-by-step; Afgaani & Shiva strains

[darkchildsks]

From what I have read it seems that you can never have too much light, so I would recommend running all of the lights you have right now if you can fit it in, the 125 in the middle, and an 85 watt on either side giving you a whopping 295 watts! and your plants would really love you for it, so long as you can keep the heat down.

Having more emphasis on the blue spectrum during veg will help keep your plant bushy with tight nodes which will help you get more bud sites, while emphasis on the red will help the plant put more energy into bigger tighter flowering, however, I've heard of people successfully growing start to finish with either just a blue or just a red spectrum, this isn't ideal but it does work.

my first grow I had two plants and just used the 2 lights that came with the system, cept for the last 2-3 weeks of flower I got a 150watt full spectrum that I added to beef up the buds. All and all I got 4-5 dry ounces of high quality bud, and I made a few mistakes that I learned from along the way so I'm sure I could have done better then that.


Well, I think thats all I got for now, keep us updated, I'm really enjoying this journal, keep up the good work! Happy Growing!!
Peace.

 

[redfoxx]

Thanks dark!

I definitely want to stick my 85W in there, but I'm just having a hard time figuring out where it would go. I'll post some pics of my new light tonight and maybe you have an idea. So far they're doing great, a 2nd set of leaves is starting to come out. I have a fan blowing at them now, i'll mount it properly tonight. I moved my air pump and mounted it on the wall as you suggested dark.

My 125W light is about 5 inches away from the tops now, the temperatures are steady at 74-82F now. The humidity was a little low this morning (32%) so I misted and put in a plate of water to evaporate, went up to 52%. Hopefully my multimeter ships today, I really want to know the quality of my water...seems to be doing very well so far.

None of my Shiva seeds germinated which i got from gypsy-nirvana. No wonder, they looked greenish and immature. So my White Widow is on it's way, i want 2 of those. So i'll have 4 Afgaani and 2 WW. My only concern now is that my sprouts are leaning a bit towards the left even thought i've placed the light really close...i wander what i can do...i'll post a pic once i get home to give a better idea. Thanks so much for your help!

Here are the pics!


Put a little water this morning to raise humidity to 50%, was 30.

Here are my older girls, they're 5 days old now. How do they look? The one closer towards the camera seems a little weaker than her other sister which is doing great.

These are the newborns, looking nice here. You can see how close the light is.

This is the new light I mentioned. Darkchild as you can see, there isn't much space to put my other 85W, to the right you see the fan. Maybe you have an idea for better light positioning.

Well can't believe this is going along OK so far. I'm a little concerned about the slight crookedness of the older girls, what do you think? should I do anything? Any suggestions or do they look ok?

Also my multimeter finally shipped. There's also a new piece of mylar which was added to the 3rd side here, you can't see it because it's behind where the camera and I were laying. Hopefully this gives it even better light insulation. I'll put up a small piece of wood to the right and finish off the enclosure this weekend.

Thanks for reading and good night! I'd love to see your journal dark!

 

[darkchildsks]

looking great man! Your light distance looks just right, maybe wait until your babies get a little bushier as I can see it might be difficult to squeeze in another light right now. I've noticed with this system you get very fast growth, within a few weeks, you'll hardly recognize them! Soon you'll be raising your light often enough that you'll find the space to add the lights. Keep up the great work! Happy Growing!
Peace.

 

[redfoxx]

Thanks! I raised the light just a bit, about an inch, last night because the younger sprout had a bit of yellow on one of it's leaves so i think it was a bit hot for it.

 

[darkchildsks]

ok, so this is me trying to upload some pictures this should be a picture of my first grow, and my original setup, I've made a few modifications since then, such as much more lights, and a beefier ventilation system.
Peace.

 

[redfoxx]

That looks awesome!! I'm a little space constrained. I'll be moving at the end of the year so I hope I'll have a lot more space at the new place.

So here are the pics of the day

My only concern is that the one in the back on the right is leaning a lot to the left for some reason and so does the from left (the little one). I repositioned my light a bit and brought it a bit closer. I have a fan blowing on the 24/7....stems looking nice.







Also got my White Widows today. Put 2 seeds to germinate to fill the remaining 2 empty spots....since all my nirvana Shivas went to waste and did not germinate (immature seed).

 

[redfoxx]

Hmm I've got a question now.... When should I add some more nutes? These plants are 6 days old now and the first time I've added nutes it was a tiny amount. I'm going to wait until Saturday and I think I might change the res....I'm finally getting my PPM/Ph meter tommorow. What should the PPM/Ec/Ef/Tds (/ = or) of 6+ day old plants be?

 

[redfoxx]

A quick update. My plants looked a little droopy on the 27th. I changed the water and nutrients last night and turned up my air pumps to the max because nongreenthumb said it might be overwatering and not enough air. I also aired the roots for at least an hour and a half.

The plants looked kinda the same this morning, they have considerably grown since the last picture so I'll post that tonight. I finally got my water meter, stupid UPS couldn't leave it at the door last night for some reason so just picked it up this morning. So I'll post my water readings tonight. Stay tuned...

 

[choppers4life]

looks good redfox, question did you leave plastic on R.W. and did you set the R.W. on top of tube like its say's in guide

 

[nongreenthumb]

A quick update. My plants looked a little droopy on the 27th. I changed the water and nutrients last night and turned up my air pumps to the max because nongreenthumb said it might be overwatering and not enough air. I also aired the roots for at least an hour and a half.

The plants looked kinda the same this morning, they have considerably grown since the last picture so I'll post that tonight. I finally got my water meter, stupid UPS couldn't leave it at the door last night for some reason so just picked it up this morning. So I'll post my water readings tonight. Stay tuned...

Ups how do they compare to usps, i've found usps lack brain power.

 

[redfoxx]

Ups how do they compare to usps, i've found usps lack brain power.

Well they're definitely 100x better than USPS. UPS is pretty good, FedEx is better. UPS just lies when they say that you can pick stuff up the same day after you get a delivery notice on the door....you have to wait until the next day.

 

[redfoxx]

Well well well. The pH strips I had turned out to be crap. Got my meter today and checked the Ph and EC level. pH is a whopping 7.5 and EC is fine @ .92EC. Thanks to nongreenthumb's help, I'm not making a gradual adjustment to the pH quality of the water. Once again shows you how important it is to have a water meter!
--------------
Update:

Ok the ph strips weren't actually as crappy as the multimeter turned out. It's complete shit, the pH wand broke down on me while i was adding ph to the new tank. DO NOT BUY FROM SH, nongreenthumb was completely right. Everything they have is low quality generic crap and you can buy the exact same or better stuff from walmart or better, ebay's hydro shops. For the 150$ i paid for this crap, i could've easily had a Milwaukee instruments meter which is high quality for 135$ off of ebay. I made the mistake b/c as most of us I was new and was afraid that I'll do something wrong, I also thought that there's something special about the unit, but there isn't, even the nutes are unknown and I ended up buying Ionic Grow and Boost which are high quality nutrients.

Hehe sorry for the rant, just very pissed from spending 2 hours refilling the tank last night and adding about 5 tablespoons of pH down and the meter still reading 7-8 pH. So ordered a Hanna pH and EC meter off ebay, total about 88$. I'll be returning this POS first thing monday to SH.

So here's an update of my fledglings. What do you think?

 

[redfoxx]

Well this proves it. The pH down solution SH ships is terrible and makes your water go bad.

I just checked the water this morning (i put in a new res on friday) and the pH shot up to 7.5 and it's murky and stinks as well as has white foamy bubbles in it.

So off to changing the res again...my plants were just starting to pick up.

Here are the pics....grrr thanks for crappy products SH.











Mehh, the net pots stink too, don't know if i should clean them or spray clean water on them or something.

 

[redfoxx]

Plants were starting to become really droopy. I had to go to a pet store and get ph down and grabbed a few 12" air stones. Changed the res, balanced at 5.8 pH & .85 EC. I really hope they recover from SH's ph down poison.

 

[choppers4life]

dude my day is all fucked up now! LOL. good thing i already baught back up on nutes to start general hydro, now im going to trash ph up and down and buy some or add vinger, or baking soda to get me buy, is the brown murky water from s.h. nutes or what if you know, i got to go take a hit. damn it man. LOL

 

[redfoxx]

Chop don't worry. This is a good lesson to stay away from SH now in general. I could've bought and built a great kit for the money i've spent, oh well, lesson learned and people informed. The nutes they ship, i don't have an opinion of, i don't think they're quality nutes that's all, because everything else is a cheap POS. My Grow Tech Grow nutes are gonna arrive this week, so I'll post an update.

A quick update, my pH shot up this morning again to 7.2. Had to lower it quickly to 5.8 again before i went to work. What might be causing this? Is this normal? Hmmm I suspect SH's nutes now

Oh well, if this doesn't improve this week, i'll start over and just grow in rockwool per nongreenthumb's method. It seems to work amazingly well and costs pennies to set up.

 

[Gyp]

How do the roots look? I know that one sign of rot is when the ph drastically rises. Are there any other additives in the res, like a form of glue that doesn't hold well under water?

 

[nongreenthumb]

Its just down to the shitty sh nutes, they are not balanced.

 

[redfoxx]

Its just down to the shitty sh nutes, they are not balanced.

Yep. I really hope it's not root rot. The roots looked OK a day ago as far as I could tell. They were pretty nice and white. Of course after drying a little, while I was struggling with high pH water, they dried up a little, but that was all. When I get home tonight, I think i'll see what happened. Pretty pissed right now.

Well if they die by the end of the week, i have a large black tray from my propagator, i'll get more 6" RW cubes at my hydro shop this Saturday if that's the case. I hope not, I really spent a lot of time, money and effort on these little plants. Oh well, good experience. Stand by for nightly update.

 

[redfoxx]

Here're new pics. I'm strongly considering killing these and starting with plain RW and going the RW cube method. It's just a little overwhelming having to change res every day with this system. Hmm well i'll know for sure by friday.







I mean the first one is my only strong plant. The one in front is weak and still drooping, the 2 younger sprouts on the left are droopy, the two on the right are grown in rw only, no tubing running to them and the one in the pot is a test soil grow.