Alright so welcome to my new journal.. i will try to make it as detailed as i can so there could be a lot of reading.. this first post is going to be huge..
For those of you who are new there is a lot to catch you up on.. for those of you who followed my other journal it will be a review.. but i will try to cover everything...
to give you some back ground this is my 6th grow.. up until now i have used soil, so this is my first hydro grow.. i love organics.. but for convenience i have made the choice to switch over to hydro..
i just got done with harvesting my last soil crop.. i was hoping to hit a goal amount so that i could expand my grow room to include a 4000w HPS flower room... but i fell short of my mark so i am not going to be able to do that addition.. although i am sure i will talk about it plenty in the coming weeks..
so that leaves me with the setup i am going to run this grow.. which will be on the veg side of what is my entire grow room...
the area i am using for the grow is 5x9x7.. again this will be my veg room eventually.. but is dual purpose this grow... it is wrapped in black and white poly with a layer of IR block on under it... just for precaution i guess... i have used the poly to create a wall and section off the veg and what will one day be the flower room.. that room measure 7x9x7... i also have a seperate clone room that is 2x4x7... all these rooms are also wrapped in the black and white poly... i have a youtube video that shows better the sides... its from my last grow... but nothing much has changed except the hydro system..
i am using 4 sunleaves satellite IV high output floros right now.. they each put off 44,000 lumens.. i plan on adding 2 more in the next week or so... this will bring me up to about 7700 lumens sq/ft.. which will give me a nice grow...
the floros themselves are amazing.. each ballast is 420ws total.. and put off 44,000 lumens.. heat is minimal.. they do not get above 90F... in fact i can easily change the bulbs even after 24 hours of use.. they are warm.. but nothing to much... i know they can easily keep up with any HPS grow out there.. they are pricey.. but pay for themselves with efficiency.. i can run 4 of these and keep my grow room at 90F with no a/c...
which brings me to my intake/exhaust... which i dont really have at the moment..
as of right now the veg room exhausts into the flower room via a 400cfm exhaust fan... on the flower room side i have my a/c and carbon fan... i dont run the a/c because i found it made almost no difference at all... its a small btu a/c.. so i just dont run it... the carbon filter, which is actually a can50 with 400cfm 6" fan, exhausts into the flower room.. my thinking was the a/c would be pulled into the can fan and blow cool air in the veg room.. which it did.. just not enough to make it worth it.. so basically the air between the 2 rooms just circulates.. i keep the door to my grow room open to keep a steady supply of fresh air for the moment.. and since its just a few plants i have to worry about right now its fine..
i do plan on installing a fresh air intake over the next week or so via a box around a window.... this will also have a spot for an air intake to cool my HPS lights when i get them.. but thats way down the road... the fresh air intake will supply fresh air to my veg and flower room... i have a 16" air king oscilating fan to help with circulation and a smaller oscilating fan as well... and i plan on picking up a couple more as well...
alright enough about that.. stuff.. if you have any other questions about it feel free to ask... now to the fun stuff...
so as the thread states i am growing blueberry, white shark, chemdog, and og kush... the BB and WS are from seed.. and the CD and OGK are from clones i was given... when i germinated the seeds i thought my harvest would be done sooner than it was.. and i would have more time than i did between sow to transplant into the hydro system.. well i didnt.. and they soon out grew their starter cubes.. out of 8 BB and 7 WS only 4 BB and 1 WS have survived.. my germination method was good had i had the 2 weeks i thought i would have before transplant was needed.. but the seeds germed faster and outgrew their starter cubes quicker than i thought.. plus the girls i was waiting to harvest took longer... also the 2 of the 3 shop lights i have in my clone room were shorted out.. so a combination of the above 3 things lead to some deaths.... the clones had to be planted into dirt for 4 days and then transplannted in the hydro system.. i was not happy about this because that is a lot of shock to endure over a short time.. but all the girls i have going now are fine... today is day 3 in the hydro system...
so my garden consists of 12 girls....
3 - chemdog
4 - og kush
4 - blue berry
1 - white shark
they are all female except the white shark.. i dont know the sex of it.. but the BB seeds were fem.. 2 good friends sent hooked me up with these seeds so i have to do them proud.. rocky start huh??
the system i am using in an ebb and gro system with hydroton as a medium.. i have it flooding 6 times a day for 15 minutes right now... at least until the shock is over and they start growing again.. also due to the temp they seem to want to drink more... so until i get that in check as well, and as long as they respond well, ill keep up with the feeding...
i am using general hydroponics nutes... my entire line up is as follows:
flora gro
flora bloom
flora micro
floralicious gro
floralicious bloom
koolbloom liquid
koolbloom dry
diamond nectar
floranectar
and subculture B
i am also using a tall boy de-chlorinator for water purification...
as i said ealier today is day 3... when i sat the system up i tested the ec and ph before adding nutes to get an idea of where i was.. the EC was .6 and the PH was 7.8... after i added the first batch of nutes, which included the flora gro and mirco, diamond nectar, floranectar, and subculture, i ended up with an EC of .8 and a PH of 7.2... i used PH down to drop the PH to 6.0.. i use this day as day 1... at this point was i flooding only 4 times a day... and had 5 BB sprouts and only 3 OG kush..
the next day i checked the ph.. it had risen to 6.8.. the EC had also risen to 1.0.. oh btw, im using a milwaukee PH meter and a truncheon EC meter.. again i used ph down to lower the ph to 6.0 and left the water level where it was... the increase in EC didnt bother me.. at this time one of the BB sprouts was looking kind of sad.. but i was attributing it to shock and let it go....
today when i checked, again, my PH had risen to 6.8... i had to use PH down to lower it to 6.0.. which ends up taking about 20 ml... and yes, the meter is calibrated... the ec had also climbed to 1.2.. i checked the water level on a drain cycle to make sure they werent flooded and i had lost 15 gallons of water over the last 2 days.. i assume some is due to water retention of the medium.. and each of the 12 pots holds about an inch of water in the bottom.. plus the girls are thirsty from the heat.. which means they are sucking up water and nutes like there is no tomorrow.. so im happy there... ive seen good growth over the last couple days even with the transplant shock... so i added another 10 gallons of water and lowered the PH yet again to get back to a 6.0 PH and a 1.0 EC...
so it looks like i am going to need a lot of PH down and maybe a second purification system... i would like to try to get my EC of the plain water down to .2 or so... but i cant do that for a while.. both of the problems arent problems yet so we will just have to see how it goes...
**UP TO THE MINUTE UPDATE**
it looks like i will be adding 2x600w MHs to the veg room instead of the 2 additional floros... so i will have 4 floros and 2 MH's in less that 2 weeks..
now back to your regularly scheduled program..
so any ways.. thats about it.... there are a few pics of everything.. plus you can watch my youtube vid for a little more...
hope you all stay along for the ride!
sampson
i will post some pics later after i get them in order....
Sorry about your loss.
My wife raises too many Pugs, and although we haven't had a new litter in over a year now, it still freaks me out really bad if one of the little angels doesn't make it.
I double checked it with the drops and then tried to re-calibrate it again. No luck. 
So that might just work soaking it in the solution.