400w RDWC, Arduino Controlled - Starbud & Sour Amnesia

400w RDWC, Arduino Controlled - Starbud & Sour Amnesia

So, I decided to start a journal for this grow, mostly to help keep track of the grow. I'm growing feminized Starbud and Sour Amnesia (from seed). 4 plants total, two of which are 'guaranteed' to be females and two I am rolling the dice on. The seeds came from Hortilab.

I'm running a 4 bucket custom RDWC, with a 400w MH / HPS light. The system is a replica, home-built undercurrent-type of setup. My grow room is partially automated with an Arduino YUN controller for temperature control of room and reservoir. I'm growing in a cold-climate attic space (only in winter), so cooling is not an issue. I heat the space with the light and a supplemental, small, space-heater when lights are off. This year, I isolated and insulated the entire DWC bucket area with foam and it is temperature controlled with a waterproof temp probe and a dedicated fan. This, so far, has been effective to keep temps in the res at 65-68 deg, while the main grow area is at 75-78 during grow hours. I will post pictures someday if anyone would like to see. Still new to the forums and posting photos. Working the bugs out of the controller system took a lot more effort than expected.. but was rewarding.


This is my second year growing in this DWC system. Last year, I grew some bag-seed (7+ year old seeds I saved that grew awesomely) and some Afgan with fairly good results. Love the Afgan. Made a bunch of rookie mistakes. Started with four plants but only had two at the finish. They were both stunted from an early case of damping-off, which will NOT be repeated this year. I learned a lot last year, being my first grow in DWC-territory. Overall, I was very happy with the end-results from last year. Hopefully, with luck and experience, this year will be even better.


The game so far:


12/1
Seeds were started. I have a stand-alone heating-pad system (in a cooler) to start seeds. I found the best way to ensure consistent water levels is to weigh the rockwool cubes. At 35 grams, they are watered perfectly. Drops down to 28 grams - add water, repeat. This would have saved me some seeds last year.. but we live and learn. Seeds popped up quickly with tap root on bottom of rockwool. Damn, they move fast!

12/7
Scurry to get DWC system clean and running again. Lot of cleaning with bleach, h2o2, and sanitization. There will be no PYTHIUM killing my plants this year, dammit. Rockwool cubes are placed into netpots with hydroton and some other lava rock I had. System is slowly coming together, working out controller bugs. Added foam and dedicated fan to insulate and cool reservoir. The buckets are not bubbling yet, just holding the netpots and seedlings while I bottom feed (dunk bottom of netpots in buckets once daily).

Slowly increase MH light setting from 50, 75, to 100% power and lower on top of seedlings. Seedlings stretching a bit, surprising - given that a lot of people say you don;t need a lot of light during this stage. At full-power, and close to seedlings, they stop stretching and start growing.

Seedlings doing well.

12/11
Added some low-level nutes to the system.

12/15
Start grow log.. yup, here we are. Seedlings are growing, although one is curling, distressing. Overwater? Underwater? What is it? I finally get around to testing EC of RES - 400! Dammit, I have the tools and am not using them! Flushed netpots with PH corrected water and waiting to see recovery. Will lower EC in RES to 200 tomorrow. That was a silly mistake.


Photos to follow.

12/16
Flushed pots with PH'd water last night and diluted PPMs in res to 250 from 400! I'm still doing rookie, dumb moves. Three of the netpots now have one or two roots sticking out and heading down to the res water. My one seedling that alerted me something was wrong (leaves curled under - the tell-tale 'rams-horn' of over-nuting) is stretching out the lower leaves and looking a bit happier.

No air bubbles turned on yet, will bottom feed / dip for a day or two, then switch on air. Had problems last year with over-watering due to air bubble action... do not want a repeat.

System is behaving as designed. Res is keeping between 65 and 68 with room fluctuating 75-80 during day and 65-70 at night.

Sorry, no pics yet. Soon.. patience, soon.

12-17

Let Bubbling Begin! wahahaha <evil laugh>

Turned on the air, checked the PH and PPM. Good to go.

Some photos.

The setup. A converted attic space.




Roots are coming out nicely. They are ready to begin sprtizing with bubbles from 2" or so down.




A Starbud seedling, looking a bit dry in the morning.


Rear Starbud.




Sour Amnesia on the left.



The temp sensor for the grow area and the res with motor and water temp sensor.


A portion of the internals of the system. PVC junctions to buckets. Small pump in res circulates water from inline 'dirt' filter (coarse, cleanable filter not shown). I circulate cooler air from outside through the foam cooler enclosure when res temps get above a set level.



my solution for noisy air pumps.. and this one was not too noisy to begin with. silence.

12-21
Seedling roots have all touched down in the water. They are slightly yellow, which worries me. I double-checked General Hydro's website for PPM info - and they call out for 400ppm. Rookie mistake #3 (believing posts rather than reading manufacturers info).

Adjusted nutrient PPM to 400 and will see if this improves color (I suspect it will). Added H2o2 for good measure, planning to run sterile res this run.

12-23
Made a system adjustment in the res cooling. Had not insulated the controller bucket nor recirculation hose, and could not keep res temps below 70. Now, they are both insulated, also covered small gaps / openings to keep cold air in better. Res temp cooling system now able to keep up and getting a range of 65-67, when temp at freezing (32) outside.

Upped nutes to 500ppm last night.

Pics are from last night, they both have another node shooting up now. Day 23 from seed for both.

Starbud is going STRONG, despite the starvation diet. Roots shooting out everywhere on bottom, many touching down.


Sour Amnesia is limping along, fairly certain I under-nuted it. Roots are growing rapidly, which seems good. One is a 'runt' seed anyway, but I started two seeds - running with two. Green color is slowly returning now that I have upped nutrients.

Day 24

Flushed the DWC water last night. Upon draining, I found lots of crap in the water... slime. Not sure if it was dead or alive, it has been 3 weeks since I last changed RES. I have been adding H2o2 regularly (low doses, 2ml per gallon). Although I scrubbed the crap out of this system, there may have been junk inside the system from last grow, unsure. Topped off with new nutes @ 300ppm currently.

Starbud is still growing fast, nice and green. Roots look healthy.


Sour Amnesia
Neither plant looking that good. The non-runt is very yellow. The runt has greened-up a bit, but looking wilty. Can't figure out why two are thriving and two are dying in the same RES water, same conditions. Any thoughts? Let me know.

Day 25 from seed.

The RES change seems to have done some rejuvination. Initially, the plants looked droopy after the swap. I increased the water level slightly, that may have waterlogged the new roots. Lowered water level by 1" and upped nutes to 400ppm (increase from 300).

Starbud


Sour Amnesia - both growing, both still looking pale / yellowish. Runt, still runty.

All plants improving. Found a chart from Undercurrent that recommends a declining PH, from 6.3 - 5.5 to harvest. I upped the PH to 6.1 as suggested.

I've turned too many knobs to know which was the right one, but something seems to have helped.

At the end of day 25

Starbud


Sour Amnesia

Shit! The Pythium strikes again. I've kept the RES at 70 or cooler for the entire grow so far, this really pisses me off. Not too surprising, given I battled it last grow - you can only sterilize so much apparently. I bleached and h2o2'd everything very carefully before starting this grow.

I added some bleach last night that has done some initial magic. Growth took off again when I put the bleach in... I found the right dial. Trying to decide if to go sterile RES or to introduce Subculture M again. The subculture left my res filled with debris last grow.

Hopefully, I've caught it early enough. Roots are just a tinge brown, the RES is clear, the plants seem to be showing signs of recovering already. Will give a sterile RES a chance for a day or two and watch improvement closely.

70 is too warm. I keep my reses in the high 50's to 60. When I let it get warmer problems would start.

Well, my res temps typically fluctuate between 65-68, it has only hit 70 for a half day in two weeks. I monitor all this via the controller I built. I could bump it down a bit, but going much below 65 seems a bit much. Still, I thought all the BS I went through to keep the RES at 65 would pay off... and the stinky P came back anyway.

Keeping a close eye on things. I planned to just run a sterile res this run, but after reading Heisenberg's treaty on the brown-slime that is incessant, I'm wondering if I need to rethink?

All plants still in stable, or declining health. Bleach stabilized and reversed decline briefly but it seems the decline has begun again for two plants.

Starting Subculture M. I'll take a dirty RES and PIA beneficial microbes over plant loss. Hard to tell if bleach is just getting used quickly (eating organisms) and then ineffective, or if this is a 'super-bug'.. errr what.

Time lapse for each of the four after adding bleach.

Starbud 1


Starbud 2


Sour Amnesia 2


Sour Amnesia 1

FU Pythium!!! This means war, my microbes are kicking some ass right now.

Wow. 24hrs after adding Subculture B & M, there is already a noticeable improvement.

Plants were looking very heavy before bedtime last night. Subculture B & M were added to the RES. RES level was raised about 1" too. Foil added to cover netpot top. PH has been climbing a bit... apparently this is normal after introducing beneficial microbes.

Last night and this morning comparison.

Starbud 1


Starbud 2


Sour Amnesia 3 & 4

Well, today plants are looking a bit droopy again. Checked roots, they have dark spots and look like thy have more slime than before. The subculture B & M made the RES so brown, it is like mud. Not sure if the roots are brown from the good or bad microrganisms. Again, very frustrating.

Not sure if I should switch back to bleach / sterile RES or continue with the micro-organisms. I will give it one more day for improvement, may switch back to bleach if things decline further.

Starbud 1 & 2


Sour Amnesia 1 & 2

Update. I upped the nutrients last night to 600ppm, dunked netpots and and washed roots in the RES. Showing signs of improvement this morning (mid-afternoon for them). Phew, maybe the microbes are working after all?

Plants started wilting again with brown roots.

So, yesterday eve was a complete scrub-down, res change, refill, add clear-rez. Air-stones were covered in 1/8" film of slime. Sand filter was filled with slime. Roots were filled with slime. Cleaned everything the best I could, with strong bleach. Washed roots.

Today? Plants looking better, but again, have brown roots. Plants are in stasis, not growing, not dying. Washed all roots in strong h2o2 solution (20 ml per gallon) - rinsed in res and returned to service.

Makes me relish the days when I'd just buy the stuff.

Forgot about an ozone generator I had.. long story. Hooked it up to a venturi on my res circulating pump. Initially, it seemed to work great. Today, plants look droopy again. Tried dosing for 30mins. Good. Dosing for 15mins, looking droopy. I'm stuffing the ozone to the water venturi for a solid hour.. will see how the plant responds. Roots still look like they have dark spots on them.

Trick will be to inoculate root-zone with o3 too. I stay out of the room when the ionizer is on... just in case of o3 nasties. May have to break that rule, just once, after the o3 injection to dunk the netpots in the ionized water.

stay tuned.

Hey dude, hope you get it under control ASAP! Sub'd up to see how it all goes. Best of luck

Im subd for this one. Been wantin to make an arduino/raspberry pie controlled grow system for a while!!!

OK - note to anyone who think of using ozone. Be smart. I stupidly, likely, dosed myself with o3 by entering the room after the o3 generator was on. F'n stupid. The more I read about ozone, the scarier it is.. that thing is going back on the shelf till I find an alternative to killing germs.