Get a Harvest Every 2 Weeks

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cream8

Well-Known Member
wow...im just catching up on this thread. i have to say hands down one of the most informative threads ive read online period..thank you for taking your time away from those healthy plants to take all those pics and school us, and answer almost every question anyone asks. sometimes more then once! just wanted to say thanks A TON. you will see the karma coming back to you
 

Al B. Fuct

once had a dog named
wow...im just catching up on this thread. i have to say hands down one of the most informative threads ive read online period..thank you for taking your time away from those healthy plants to take all those pics and school us, and answer almost every question anyone asks. sometimes more then once! just wanted to say thanks A TON. you will see the karma coming back to you
heh, thanks for that. :)

I do rely on folks to do some reading; the times where you see my shortest replies or when I ask them to go read more of the thread or hit the FAQ is usually when something fairly basic has been asked- and I'm harvesting.... which is pretty often!

The time I spend on here is actually resting/diversion time. I type at about 90-100wpm and do this in between bouts of working in the op. Sorry, but growing dope, while a pretty good working arrangement given the real short commute and lack of bosses, is actually boring as batshit after a while. This op is organised on production line principles. Once I have something nailed down, the process simply repeats. Over. And over. And over. And over.

There's no water cooler in this job to gather around and shoot the shit. It can be an extremely lonesome occupation- in fact, it has to be a very lonesome occupation if you're going to have the job for any length of time...

Makes me sad to see folks struggle with things I've worked out years ago, so I don't mind helping ppl succeed.
 

cream8

Well-Known Member
makes alot of sense. i could see how the production line aspect of it could get old. but im just in awe and hope to be growing at this level and utilizing these techniques in the near future
 

Al B. Fuct

once had a dog named
While I appreciate your awe, I'm here to tell you that it eventually wears off. ;)

Growing at this level, as you describe it, as opposed to hobbyist level grows, has some conveniences and compromises. One production line compromise is the watering system. I run pots of absorbent media in flood systems because this is the simplest, very lowest maintenance and highest reliability system in existence. Other methods like DWC, NFT & aero can yield somewhat better due to better oxygenation of the roots. However, these methods all are much more maintenance-intensive and some have the odd Achilles heel in which a comparatively simple fault can trash months of work.

When you live with the op 24/7/365, you can check things all the time- but after a while, as I said, the blush goes off the rose a bit- and you need time off. When I have a batch of clones in the box (which is most of the time), I'm in the op daily, every 12 hours, for watering. The mums and flowering plants can go about 48 hours without me looking in on them. At best, I can have 2 consecutive days off- but I have not had a proper holiday in many years. I do have an emergency automated tank top-up system on the shelf ready to go, which can use dehumidifier water to top up all 5 tanks and mathematically should be able to deal with the task unattended for up to 2 weeks, but pH and nute strengths are not monitored nor tended to. You can buy automated systems to manage both, but they're thousands of bucks- and I'd need 5 of them.
 

panhead

Well-Known Member
Hey Al,i stole your idea for your bud dryer & modified your plans to fit my skill level for making such things so there were changes to the design,i keep the dryer in a room with 40% humidity & average temps of 76 degrees,is the added heat being supplied to the dryer from your heat sink an issue of importance that i should try & replicate.
 

Al B. Fuct

once had a dog named
Hey Al,i stole your idea for your bud dryer & modified your plans to fit my skill level for making such things so there were changes to the design,i keep the dryer in a room with 40% humidity & average temps of 76 degrees,is the added heat being supplied to the dryer from your heat sink an issue of importance that i should try & replicate.
First of all, remember that you can't steal what's being given away. :)

The importance of the thermostatically controlled heating element in that thing isn't about whether it will work or not- it'll certainly work without it. One without a heater will work much better in a warm ambient environment as you have found (though your 40% RH is a bit high for fast drying)- it is mainly about consistency of drying speed and maintaining quality through a strict limit on max temp.

No matter which way you slice the baloney, even just air motion though the box will put the brakes on mould from very soon after you put the buds in. Mould hates a draft.

Glad it's working for you. :)
 

panhead

Well-Known Member
Thanks Al,i just wanted to make sure to give credit to the designer & not claim it as my own.

Anyhow i kinda figured that the even drying speed & the moving air was the most important issues at hand,im still trying to figure out a store bought off the shelf remedy to control the temps,i have a few ideas but nothing concrete yet.
 

Kuji

Active Member
The system seems quite simple, but I'm guessing the complicated part(at least starting out) is finding the correct flood time and times per day according to the grow media and type of strain. Maintaing proper nutrient level and ph also seem to be skills gained through practice and expirience.
 

Al B. Fuct

once had a dog named
Anyhow i kinda figured that the even drying speed & the moving air was the most important issues at hand,im still trying to figure out a store bought off the shelf remedy to control the temps,i have a few ideas but nothing concrete yet.
I don't think you'll find a ready made air heating element with temp control. Edmund Scientific once had a little bit of everything, but they don't seem to have the plethora of Army surplus and whatnot they once did.

You could modify a commercially made dehydrator but it would involve adding a HD dimmer to the heating element circuit and replacement of the thermostat in case the commercially made unit's tstat does not go down to 29C. Many don't go below 38C. By the time you get done modding a commercially made dehydrator, you will have spent 2-3x more than the cost of a homebuilt unit- and the volume capacity will be much smaller than a cheap plastic storage tub.

Al can you check out my thread on the 18hr alternative light schedule & give me your input. It would be appreciated. :peace:
A link would be good.

I will tell you beforehand though that monkeying around with anything other than a 12/12 cycle for flowering is not a good idea. Lots of ppl have played with all manner of odd flowering cycles over the years; the net result is smaller buds harvested more often. I solved the harvest frequency problem without loss of bud size by running 4 independent systems, staggered by 2 weeks.

The system seems quite simple, but I'm guessing the complicated part(at least starting out) is finding the correct flood time and times per day according to the grow media and type of strain. Maintaing proper nutrient level and ph also seem to be skills gained through practice and expirience.
Not complicated. The strain is generally unrelated, unless you have a particularly scrawny phenotype that doesn't require watering as often as more vigorous types.

You're looking to water absorbent media when the pots have lost about 1/2 to 2/3 of their absorbed water weight, either by the plants using the water or through direct evaporation.

If using highly absorbent media like RW floc, watering time is 1x at lights on until the flood depth is about 50mm for advanced plants. Plants in wk1-2 can be watered every other day.

If using clay pellets, which hold almost no water, rather must be dampened periodically by flooding, even very small plants will get flooded 2-3x/lights-on with the last watering not much later than 1.5-2h before lights off. No watering is required in any media during lights off.

Maintaining pH and nute strength is also simple but is often overcomplicated by new hydroponic growers, who are tempted to maintain nute strength at the same level all day every day. One should not be overenthusiastic about making corrections. In particular, one should not add water and fresh nutrient mix to a half-eaten tank of nutes. Tanks should be dumped, cleaned and mixed fresh every 2 weeks but topped up only with plain water and pH corrected on top up between dumps. The reason for this is that you don't know how much N, P & K remain and in what ratio they exist one to the other in a half-eaten tank. Just measuring the ppm won't tell you, either. If you had a device that measured the individual elements (also known as a mass spectrometer, costs a few tens of thousands) and separate bottles of N, P, K & micronutrients, then you could reasonably micromanage your nute strength.

Real people like you & me with $100 EC meters should rely on the chemists at the nutrient manufacturers to get the ratios right- and should only add nute concentrates to plain water when mixing fresh sauce. Tapwater will be somewhat higher in pH than you need, so when you top with water, you will be adjusting pH downward each time. I would not bother topping up tanks every day- you can top up and correct pH 1-2x a week. You should be adding H2O2 50% grade to your tanks at 1ml/L every 3-4 days, so you can top up at the time if you like.

If you can hold these concepts in mind, you have all the experience you need to properly manage your nute tanks.
 

We TaRdED

Well-Known Member
hypothetically speaking- if you were to add one more 1kw light, how would you do it? it seems like your setup is perfectly setup for 2kw.

my best guess would be give the last 2 crop cycles its own 1kw???

just curious:peace:
 

knowledge seeker

Active Member
hey man, when you are cloning you just dip the rockwool in water, no flood system, also where do u get loose rockwool. i am setting up for you're operation, will be in operation in about a week, any suggestions thanks mike
 

Al B. Fuct

once had a dog named
hypothetically speaking- if you were to add one more 1kw light, how would you do it? it seems like your setup is perfectly setup for 2kw.

my best guess would be give the last 2 crop cycles its own 1kw???
Yes, you're right- it's got a certain symmetry to it. Adding one more kW would be awkward, but I think you've worked it out. Kinda. I get no problems related to low light covering each pair of trays with a single 1000, so if you were going to add another light, you should probably add more tray space for the additional light. However, the first 2 trays are then something of a bottleneck in the pipeline as there's more capacity downstream than you'll be able to fill without expanding the upstream capacity, if you see what I mean. If you added 2 more 1000s, the answer is a lot simpler- just double the lot, lights and trays!

yeah, that's what I thought you were up to. :neutral:

Has anyone attempted it? Almost no one hasn't! Browse some other forums, you will find plenty of them, some with pix. The nut is that it is not the sheer number of on/off light cycles that causes flowering to complete properly, it's also the number of hours of exposure to (sun)light which transfers energy from the light into the photosynthetic process. Less energy in = less bud out.

hey man, when you are cloning you just dip the rockwool in water, no flood system,
That's right-



I just dip one corner of the cube into pH 5.8 water.

also where do u get loose rockwool.
I get mine from Ye Olde Hydroe Shoppe. Rockwool floc is also sold as an insulation product. If you buy it labelled for insulation use, do a bit of research and make sure it has not been treated with anything to inhibit fungus or algae growth. If a treatment will kill algae, it'll usually kill cannabis, too.
 

Al B. Fuct

once had a dog named
Quote:
Originally Posted by southfloridasean
Heres the link AL Has Anyone Attempted The 6 Hr 40 Min On/ 12 Hr Off Schedule?

yeah, that's what I thought you were up to.


The nut is that it is not the sheer number of on/off light cycles that causes flowering to complete properly, it's also the number of hours of exposure to (sun)light which transfers energy from the light into the photosynthetic process. Less energy in = less bud out.
There's an SI derived unit for illuminance exposure, the lux-hour. 1 lumen per m^2 = 1 lux. 1 lumen per m^2 for 1 hour is, of course, 1 lux-hour.

You could quantify the number of lux-hours given during flowering for a 12/12 arrangement for 8 weeks vs a 6.5/12 schedule for 8 weeks to predict how the plants will respond. In a 12/12 cycle for 8 weeks, there's (8w*7d)*12h=672 illuminated hours available, at whatever lux rate you apply. I'll let you math out the other way. ;)

I don't think there's any anomalies in cannabis plants when they get short days in flowering with 12h nights. Some other lighting aberrancies, like frequent interruption of the 12h dark cycle in flowering, have been known to induce hermaphrodism. I'd be looking for that in short-day flowered plants anyway.
 

Kuji

Active Member
Thanks for that very helpful reply. Information about the small things involved with the growing, I believe, is most important and helpful. Anyone can read up on hydroponics and gain a basic understanding of the process, but the nitty-gritty tasks involved with starting and maintaining a system often go unmentioned. Which is why this thread is so awesome!!!

Seriously, I'm learning almost everything I need to know from this thread. The last few times I read the thread I just picked a random page, but was able to find something significantly helpful each time. Good Stuff.

THANKS!
 

cordobayumyum

Active Member
Mr. Fuct,
"You are my sunshine my only sunshine". In all sincerity, your posts are immensely helpful and are an invaluable resource.
As a disclamer, I am only repeating information that I have read without any actual experience but some believe that an exhaust system hooked up to a thermostat can be a fire hazard because if there were a small fire the exhaust would allow it to grow bigger.

I do have a few questions that I hope aren't too burdensome.
Besides security, what about your grow regularly worries you? You mentioned that daily you check a pot from each corner of each tray to ensure that your pumps are functioning properly. It seems that you are also battling P.M. You probably watch these two things closely because in the past they were problematic. So, which things do you expect could be problematic in your grow?

What prophylactics do you use?

You wrote that it took you about three 12 hour days to manicure a tray. If each tray has 23 plants then it takes almost two hours to trim each plant?
 

stickyicky77

Well-Known Member
I don't think you'll find a ready made air heating element with temp control. Edmund Scientific once had a little bit of everything, but they don't seem to have the plethora of Army surplus and whatnot they once did.

You could modify a commercially made dehydrator but it would involve adding a HD dimmer to the heating element circuit and replacement of the thermostat in case the commercially made unit's tstat does not go down to 29C. Many don't go below 38C. By the time you get done modding a commercially made dehydrator, you will have spent 2-3x more than the cost of a homebuilt unit- and the volume capacity will be much smaller than a cheap plastic storage tub.



A link would be good.

I will tell you beforehand though that monkeying around with anything other than a 12/12 cycle for flowering is not a good idea. Lots of ppl have played with all manner of odd flowering cycles over the years; the net result is smaller buds harvested more often. I solved the harvest frequency problem without loss of bud size by running 4 independent systems, staggered by 2 weeks.



Not complicated. The strain is generally unrelated, unless you have a particularly scrawny phenotype that doesn't require watering as often as more vigorous types.

You're looking to water absorbent media when the pots have lost about 1/2 to 2/3 of their absorbed water weight, either by the plants using the water or through direct evaporation.

If using highly absorbent media like RW floc, watering time is 1x at lights on until the flood depth is about 50mm for advanced plants. Plants in wk1-2 can be watered every other day.

If using clay pellets, which hold almost no water, rather must be dampened periodically by flooding, even very small plants will get flooded 2-3x/lights-on with the last watering not much later than 1.5-2h before lights off. No watering is required in any media during lights off.

Maintaining pH and nute strength is also simple but is often overcomplicated by new hydroponic growers, who are tempted to maintain nute strength at the same level all day every day. One should not be overenthusiastic about making corrections. In particular, one should not add water and fresh nutrient mix to a half-eaten tank of nutes. Tanks should be dumped, cleaned and mixed fresh every 2 weeks but topped up only with plain water and pH corrected on top up between dumps. The reason for this is that you don't know how much N, P & K remain and in what ratio they exist one to the other in a half-eaten tank. Just measuring the ppm won't tell you, either. If you had a device that measured the individual elements (also known as a mass spectrometer, costs a few tens of thousands) and separate bottles of N, P, K & micronutrients, then you could reasonably micromanage your nute strength.

Real people like you & me with $100 EC meters should rely on the chemists at the nutrient manufacturers to get the ratios right- and should only add nute concentrates to plain water when mixing fresh sauce. Tapwater will be somewhat higher in pH than you need, so when you top with water, you will be adjusting pH downward each time. I would not bother topping up tanks every day- you can top up and correct pH 1-2x a week. You should be adding H2O2 50% grade to your tanks at 1ml/L every 3-4 days, so you can top up at the time if you like.

If you can hold these concepts in mind, you have all the experience you need to properly manage your nute tanks.
AL can you just mix some extra nutes and top off with the same ppm solution ?
 
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