600 Watt 5 x 5 tent 3 Strains First Grow..... in a long time

This is my first post, but I have been surfing these sites for years in hopes to get something started again. Back in the day I would have never considered putting something like this up on the net. Due to the fact that I have had my medical for about 10 years now in CA, and my wife is cool with the tent set up I have started again full force. I previously had a General Hydroponics 20 site aeroponics set up which was amazing. Because I cannot dedicate the time needed to maintain an aeroponics set up I have decided to go with COCO Coir. I am using the Sun leaves brand of Coir and it seems to be just fine for growing. I did wash the Coir about 4 times by soaking it in a huge tub of distilled water, I added water let it fill up, then drained through holes at the bottom mixing the whole time. I believe this cleaned it well, at least well enough to use for potting. I filled 10 3 gallon pots with the medium and mixed in vermiculite into the top while transplanting. My clones are all rooted in rockwool cubes - which I prefer and were transplanted well after the roots were showing. I have been using distilled water every feeding, I originally was setting the PH to 6.2 but due to some issues with an underdeveloped clone I have since lowered the PH to 5.8 and things are looking up.

I am using House and Garden COCOs A and B and am also using the Root Exculerator.

I have CAL-MAG and Silica Blast from Botanicare. - I have not added these to the feeding schedule yet. I have never used them to supplement feeding and am concerned because I have a big calcium deficiency. new growth looks great, but older growth is recovering slowly.

Strains -
4 - Girl Scout Cookies
4 - Skywalker OG
2 - Fire OG

Pots -
10 - 3 Gallon pots with 90% COCO Coir 10% Vermeticulite

Light -
600 Watt HPS 20 on 4 off

Tent -
5 x 5


anyways, I was looking for some people to give me some advice. im sure ill need it along the way. can you see from the pics dated 12/13/15 if my plants are experiencing CAL deficiency? my PH is on point, and everything seems fine, the new growth is exploding, but I cant seem to overcome the leaf curl on some of the older fan leaves. any help is appreciated.

So I added 3 ML of Cal Mag and 3ML of Silica Blast to 1 gallon of distilled water, added 1.1 mil of root exculerator from house and garden, then set the PH to 5.8 and gave them all a light feeding. here are pics from this morning. they look to be getting healthier, I am going to add an additional 2 inches of coco and vermeticulite to the top of the pots today as the medium is compacting some from the feedings. Do most of you fill your pots like this? or do you fill them to the brim? I am hoping to avoid a transplant up to a 5 gal and want to finish in these 3 gal if possible. any advice is appreciated.

Hello fellow growers, I am pretty sure no one is reading this at all but hopefully someone will chime in at some point. Last night the plants looked great, still noticed some deficiency on a few older fan leaves that were present on the clone when it was first taken. the only thing I can point to is that I had not added any CAL MAG or SILICA to the mix. One day after feeding it looked like they were doing pretty well, growth is coming along slowly and they are starting to branch out. so anyways because I had them on such a light feeding schedule before I decided to give my first half strength feeding.

1 gal distilled water
3MIL Silica
3.5 MIL House and Garden Cocos A
3 MIL House and Garden Cocos B
3 MIL CAL MAG
.8 MIL Root Exculerator
5.8

Here are some pics from today about 12 hours after feeding. they are definitely looking great, like I said before branching is starting and I am confident once I get the proper feeding schedule down I can move forward without any hesitation.

just curious if someone could help me out? I know I need to feed based on the plants needs, but to be honest I have just been using a 1 gallon jug between all 10 plants, if anyone in the world is reading this, can you tell me the minimum I should be feeding each plant? the amount I am feeding now seems to be sufficient but I have heard of others growing in COCO feeding lightly every day. should I be using more than a gallon between all 10 plants? I still get runoff with even the smallest amount of water, I could add one cup to each plant and still get a half cup of run off. anyways given that I have made my nute mix known, can I feed with that mix every day? or should I go feed water water feed water water feed water water feed ..........?

AngusMcKay said:

just curious if someone could help me out? I know I need to feed based on the plants needs, but to be honest I have just been using a 1 gallon jug between all 10 plants, if anyone in the world is reading this, can you tell me the minimum I should be feeding each plant? the amount I am feeding now seems to be sufficient but I have heard of others growing in COCO feeding lightly every day. should I be using more than a gallon between all 10 plants? I still get runoff with even the smallest amount of water, I could add one cup to each plant and still get a half cup of run off. anyways given that I have made my nute mix known, can I feed with that mix every day? or should I go feed water water feed water water feed water water feed ..........?

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Get it wet and water when it gets dry, dont wait till bone dry. A lil run off is a good sign they are wet. your plants will drink more when they get bigger. do you have a TDS meter to test ppms? if not you should. you might be over feeding but its hard to tell. what are your temperatures with lights on? if you are over feeding you should flush it with ph'd water and next go around cut back on the nutrients a bit and feed them light. I use COCO as well and i like to do a FEED, FEED, WATER schedule. ppms under 700 for veg and around 900-1100 for flower.

SapphireFire said:

Get it wet and water when it gets dry, dont wait till bone dry. A lil run off is a good sign they are wet. your plants will drink more when they get bigger. do you have a TDS meter to test ppms? if not you should. you might be over feeding but its hard to tell. what are your temperatures with lights on? if you are over feeding you should flush it with ph'd water and next go around cut back on the nutrients a bit and feed them light. I use COCO as well and i like to do a FEED, FEED, WATER schedule. ppms under 700 for veg and around 900-1100 for flower.

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Many thanks for checking this out and responding. that is pretty much how I have been watering and I do not have a PPM meter. I obviously need to get one and since that is the only real equation left out of this I am going to pick one up today on the way home. my temperature in the room never goes above 80, and at night my light keeps it at about 70. its cold in my garage, so it keeps it relatively comfortable this time of year. I will mix my nutes tonight exactly how I did before and I will check the PPM to see what I have been feeding. I knew I should have gotten the PPM Meter, but as I was accumulating all the crap to put this together, I left it out like a lazy fucker. I really appreciate you helping me out with this bit of information and will do exactly what you said and report back. the only reason I am using distilled water is my tap is 8.5 ph, out of control and hard to bring down once all elements are added. I suspect it has a very high starting PPM, but shit, its all just ASSumptions as of now. THANK YOU SAPPHIREFIRE, your help is greatly appreciated.

ANGUS

AngusMcKay said:

Many thanks for checking this out and responding. that is pretty much how I have been watering and I do not have a PPM meter. I obviously need to get one and since that is the only real equation left out of this I am going to pick one up today on the way home. my temperature in the room never goes above 80, and at night my light keeps it at about 70. its cold in my garage, so it keeps it relatively comfortable this time of year. I will mix my nutes tonight exactly how I did before and I will check the PPM to see what I have been feeding. I knew I should have gotten the PPM Meter, but as I was accumulating all the crap to put this together, I left it out like a lazy fucker. I really appreciate you helping me out with this bit of information and will do exactly what you said and report back. the only reason I am using distilled water is my tap is 8.5 ph, out of control and hard to bring down once all elements are added. I suspect it has a very high starting PPM, but shit, its all just ASSumptions as of now. THANK YOU SAPPHIREFIRE, your help is greatly appreciated.

ANGUS

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A good water filter from hydrologic will fix your tap water issue. The Silica your using should lower your PH a good bit. i use OSA28 silicon and it gets my PH down to 7 and i add a little ph down to even it out. works great!

Why are you using hps to veg

kushkilla said:

Why are you using hps to veg

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Hi there, thanks for checking out my grow journal. I guess I have always used HPS in the past, I should have bought a MH bulb to test out, but for some stupid reason bought 3 hps bulbs. do you notice a big difference in your rate of growth? I used HPS in my old Aeroponic 20 site set up and it kicked ass. is there really a big difference in veg growth?

SapphireFire said:

A good water filter from hydrologic will fix your tap water issue. The Silica your using should lower your PH a good bit. i use OSA28 silicon and it gets my PH down to 7 and i add a little ph down to even it out. works great!

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Great suggestion, I think im just going to get a RO system from home depot. I have my PPM meter being delivered tomorrow, thank you for the advice. I will post up here once I put the recommendations into action.

There is a noticeable difference. I use a bunch of CFL to ve

AngusMcKay said:

Hi there, thanks for checking out my grow journal. I guess I have always used HPS in the past, I should have bought a MH bulb to test out, but for some stupid reason bought 3 hps bulbs. do you notice a big difference in your rate of growth? I used HPS in my old Aeroponic 20 site set up and it kicked ass. is there really a big difference in veg growth?

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There is a noticeable difference in growth structure. I use a bunch of CFL's to veg

SapphireFire said:

A good water filter from hydrologic will fix your tap water issue. The Silica your using should lower your PH a good bit. i use OSA28 silicon and it gets my PH down to 7 and i add a little ph down to even it out. works great!

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Silica raises ph.

kushkilla said:

There is a noticeable difference. I use a bunch of CFL to ve

There is a noticeable difference in growth structure. I use a bunch of CFL's to veg

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I have a small T5 but nothing that would support all 10. I plan on setting up a room specifically for Veg and I am most likely going to use t5 lights to keep costs down, but to be honest this HPS bulb I have is the cheap o type. after this run, if my wifes radar is down I will buy a nice hortilux or something

Lookin good. It looks to me like a heat and PH problem. A good foliar feed when the lights turn off with cal/mag seemed to work instantly. Ever thought of training those ladies and bending them over a little?

chrondidily said:

Lookin good. It looks to me like a heat and PH problem. A good foliar feed when the lights turn off with cal/mag seemed to work instantly. Ever thought of training those ladies and bending them over a little?

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you hit it right on the nose. I have come to find that while the temp in the room is comfortable for me, it may be a little warm throughout the day for the little ladies, I guess I just was treating them like teenagers, but they are still pretty sensitive. I am installing the ducting this weekend for the cooling, just gotta get in there while the wife is asleep. I will also foliar feed with CAL MAG. I just wanted to lay off a bit due to possible over feeding last week. I am still waiting for my ph 7 solution to calibrate my PH meter. I am using the Checker by hanna its a cheap ass pen. but I am hoping it was somewhat calibrated when I got it. I will do some training starting this weekend. going to begin with FIM as I don't want to top them and stress them more. overall as of last night the new growth looked nice. small branches still peeking up and still coming out. after all this trouble shooting I have come to find that any issues I suspect of being a deficiency all started with a PH problem. so once I calibrate that I will have all things in order.

Happy Friday, things are coming into order around here! last night I fed them on a light mix until my PPM meter arrives today. my PH 7 Buffer solution arrived yesterday and I immediately tested my mix, it was 6.1, not terribly high, but wayyy too high for my liking and for the plants to thrive in. I added the following levels of nutrients and then PH`d the water to 5.75

2.5 cocos A
2.5 Cocos B
2.5 Cal Mag
2.5 Silica Blast
.75 Root Exculerator

I did this to two gallons of water and just soaked the entire pot. I used one gallon per five plants and then just waited till this morning.

The results were amazing. my PH being off just by .3 was throwing a wrench into the system and things were not jiving. I suspect the COCOs naturally high PH buffered this up even further. tomorrow I will test the runoff PPM and PH to really get an idea of what my root level PH looks like. I have also opened additional vents on the tent to allow more fresh air in, even at night with the ambient temperatures around 68 they look great. I will test the PPM or my current nute solution tonight and see where I am at, I may even need to lower them further. either way I am extremely stoked on the improvement, and cant wait to see what`s in store for tomorrow.

ANGUS

Well, had a company Christmas party on Friday night and was so trashed I didn't recover until Saturday night. anyways the time away from the plants was great because I got so see so much growth in such a short time. obsessing over them day after day makes the growth less noticeable. branches are growing well and the sex is now showing. I have two questions that I would like some help with if someone with experience can chime in.

1. I have heard of people growing in 2 gallon containers with COCO COIR through flower. mine are in 3 gallon containers but as you can see they are not filled to the top. if you have grown in coco, can you let me know if I need to transplant up to 5 gallon or if I can ride it out in these pots. my roots are starting to grow out of the bottom of the pots, but I have heard from many people that this is fine with coco coir. should I just remove the plant, add coco to the bottom and ride it out in the three gallon?

2. when should I flip these? I have Girl Scout Cookies and Fire OG and Skywalker OG. all three strains are my first grow. I am planning on flipping soon because sex is now showing on all

PPM was right at 650 last feeding
fed last night at 5.8 PH

also, just a side question, a friend told me something I do not think is true, but want to ask anyways, he told me not to flower multiple strains in the same room that they could cross pollinate the females. I don't even see how this is possible, I thought only males could cross pollinate with females. please let me know if what he is saying is true or not. I started from clones, so they are all female, no danger of males or anything like that.