First grow, Rainforest 66, Secret Jardin

Glad to see you here, Email! I just noticed you have the link in your sig for your new white berry grow. I am about to check that out now.

nice grow, I'm sure it will turn out well for you. Smart to start out on bagseed, wouldn't wanna blow those expensive ass seeds. thanks for the picture, gotta get me one of those for sure. Good luck, in a few more weeks all those plants are gonna make ONE BIG MONSTA.

assrabbi is right - plants seem to explode in hydro - especially if you take pictures everyday for comparison.

Hey email and Kristus. Check this out, I dunno if u have seen these before. It is an electric siphon to get the water out faster.
Aquarium Fish Tank Electric Siphon Vacuum Cleaner-AQ62 - eBay (item 370060477335 end time Jun-20-08 11:21:54 PDT)

pimpnitjc said:

Hey email and Kristus. Check this out, I dunno if u have seen these before. It is an electric siphon to get the water out faster.
Aquarium Fish Tank Electric Siphon Vacuum Cleaner-AQ62 - eBay (item 370060477335 end time Jun-20-08 11:21:54 PDT)

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thanks for the tip!

An electric pump is exactly what I need. I have been having trouble finding one that wasn't made to drain a lake. Its easy enough to get the water OUT with a rubber hose, but getting the water back in is where its been a pain. Currently I am just lifting a net pot and tilting a rubbermaid tub full of water into it. At 8 pounds a gallon for water at about 20 gallons total you can see where the difficulty comes in. I know a lot of people have rather large reservoirs (much larger than mine), but I had a hard time figuring out how they did it unless they magically found one of the pumps I was looking for. Either that or they had a hose straight from the faucet. Unfortunately my better half draws the line at hoses going across the apartment.

kristus015 said:

An electric pump is exactly what I need. I have been having trouble finding one that wasn't made to drain a lake. Its easy enough to get the water OUT with a rubber hose, but getting the water back in is where its been a pain. Currently I am just lifting a net pot and tilting a rubbermaid tub full of water into it. At 8 pounds a gallon for water at about 20 gallons total you can see where the difficulty comes in. I know a lot of people have rather large reservoirs (much larger than mine), but I had a hard time figuring out how they did it unless they magically found one of the pumps I was looking for. Either that or they had a hose straight from the faucet. Unfortunately my better half draws the line at hoses going across the apartment.

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i picked up a siphon pump after the first time i drained it

email468 said:

i picked up a siphon pump after the first time i drained it

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Yeah I saw you mention that in one of your journals. How does yours work? By the definition of "siphon" I dont understand how that could be much different then what I am doing (siphoning with a regular hose). I looked them up and by looking at it I didnt understand how it worked except that maybe you dont have to inhale on the hose to start the siphon, but instead you have some sort of hand pump to get the siphon started. Can you point me to the place you got yours? I assume

I didnt get around to actually posting yesterday's update so I am doing it today. I noticed the new growth on plant 4 was starting to yellow at the base of the leaf. I had just got done giving them ph balanced water due to suspected nute burn, and it looks like this plant didnt take it so well. On an opposite note, plant 2 which has been the wilty runt the whole time has managed to produce a very nice set of newer top growth. The plant looks a little top heavy now, but that is fine for me.

I dont know if it is a coincedence, but when I filled the reservoir with only ph balanced water (for 48 hours) the plants started drinking a noticeably larger amount of water as well as nutes. Could be the lack of nutes from the cleansing, but I am going to say that they are thanking me for taking care of them The PPMs dropped by 250 since the previous day. Also, tomorrows update (Actually today) will show the PPMs to be down to 120 after another day. My tap water comes out at about 340 PPM so it looks like they are sucking up the calcium in the water. I guess it was a good move to start using FloraMicro Hard Water on my addition of nutes.

DAY 16 VEG - 6.19.08
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Ambient Temp = 74.3
Tent Temp = 78.4
Humidity = 61%
Original PH = 5.8
Adjusted PH = not adjusted
PPM = 230

I must have forgotten to take a pic of the last plant, but here you go. Plants 1-5 in order:

kristus015 said:

Yeah I saw you mention that in one of your journals. How does yours work? By the definition of "siphon" I dont understand how that could be much different then what I am doing (siphoning with a regular hose). I looked them up and by looking at it I didnt understand how it worked except that maybe you dont have to inhale on the hose to start the siphon, but instead you have some sort of hand pump to get the siphon started. Can you point me to the place you got yours? I assume

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it is pretty much the same as what pimpnitjc posted - except it runs on batteries - but i think i'm going to get one of those electric ones cause mine just stopped working! (how about that?)

so in the meantime - i've been siphoning just like you describe (sucking through a hose). you can also twist the water level indicator upside down and drain it out that way (but you gotta have it near a drain).

got mine at home depot or lowes - can't recall which but i think i'm going to check out online fish stores and get an electric one.

Longer post today...

The yellowing on plant 4 is noticeably worse today, and plant 3 is starting to yellow slightly in the same manner. PPMs were extremely low today. I guess I wasnt really prepared for the sudden, rigorous spurt they are going through right now.

I topped off the reservoir with 1 gallon of water with the following mixed in:

2 Tbs. FloraGrow
1 Tbs. FloraMicro Hard Water
1 Tbs Floralicious Grow
1 Tbs Rhizotonic
1/2 Tbs FloraBloom
15 drops PH down
1 ounce Love

I measured the distance from my 2 tallest plants to the bottom of the light and they are 15" and 16" away. I understand that they should be 18-22 inches from the light, but my "inside" thermometer probe usually never measures temps above 80F. The probe hangs from the roof and is about 14" from the light (you can see it in the full picture below). As of right now I do not have my light mounted with risers because they pissed me off when I set this up, and I ended up mounting it with zip-ties In fact if you saw the upper section of the tent you would see copious amounts of zip ties, duct tape, and even some twine which holds the light exhaust fan Anyways, since my light is not moveable right now I had to bring the plants closer to the light. I ended up with a nightstand for the base, then an ice chest on that, then the Rainforest 66 on top of that (Dont worry, its sturdy). So if I have to move my plants down they will drop 9.5" which is the height of the ice chest I would remove from the stack. That is more than I WANT to move them down. Hopefully I am not stuck with too high or too low.

On a side note...I spilled a small amount of water on the tent floor, and I got a cloth and got down there to clean it up. Well, that is when I noticed 2 small spiders light brown in color just kickin it with each other. Well, I guess they were spiders. I dispatched them with a swiftness only Afro Samurai could appreciate. I have to say that I have been living here for 10 months and have never seen any sort of bug other than the occasional flying dudes from outside. Then to see 2 of them partying it up in that bright ass, windy tent was something I didnt expect as I dont think it would be an ideal environment. Is this a common problem with tents and the like?


DAY 17 VEG - 6.20.08
================
Ambient Temp = 75.8
Tent Temp = 79.1
Humidity = 51%
Original PH = 5.8
Adjusted PH = not adjusted
Original PPM = 120
Adjusted PPM = 800

Full picture then plants 1-6 in order:

plants are looking good. i usually have some yellowing and the like with seedlings too.

the jump in PPM is pretty large - less than 200 to 800! up to 3-500 in between might have been better but GH nutes seem to be forgiving so i guess we'll see. if you see nute burn, then you'll know why.

I don't have any experience with tents but not all insects are bad. Some bugs are beneficial. Ladybugs for example - eat aphids (which are bad). Spiders are another good predatory/insect killer to have around. I prefer them outdoors though myself!

Yeah I got a little over zealous after seeing the low numbers on my meter. I also heard that you shouldnt adjust PH more than 0.2 per day, but there were several times I adjusted it from around 6.4 to 5.9. It didnt seem to phase the plants too much. Hopefully the large increase in nutes dont fry the babies. If I get too freaked out about it tonight I will siphon out some water and replace it with fresh ph balanced water.

Speaking of nutes I noticed that you are primarily using Fox Farm on your newer grow. Was there something particular that made you switch? I believe you, too, were on GH nutes before this grow. I guess it helps that they come with the rainforest, though.

he had hardwater and once he got the RO system, he could try other nutes

LoudBlunts said:

he had hardwater and once he got the RO system, he could try other nutes

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Ahh. I wasnt aware that hardness of the water had that much effect on your choices for nutes. A RO system is something I am looking at getting (that and a C02 gen), but I need to wait a little bit to recover from spending the $2,000+ on my current setup.

how to plan on using a co2 generator in your tent?

and GH makes a nute for hardwater....email could tell you more about that....i dont really fuck with GH

LoudBlunts said:

how to plan on using a co2 generator in your tent?

and GH makes a nute for hardwater....email could tell you more about that....i dont really fuck with GH

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I just recently switched to using GH FloraMicro Hard Water. I assume that is what you are referring to. As far as a C02 gen in the tent...with only the rainforest in there I am sure there would be enough room. I intend on getting a larger tent down the road and then using my current one for mothers. Hopefully I will get a house sooner than later and have my own grow -room- instead of a tent as my main grow space.

if you use a tank - you can just run the tube to your plants - the tank doesn't have to be in the tent.

a co2 generator would probably have to live in the grow room - unless there is a way to pump it in.

and use the micro hardwater is what i used when i used tap water. i am trying fox farm now.

This morning I drained half of the reservoir and replaced it with ph balanced water only. This should be about half of the nutrients that were in there yesterday. I also lowered the rainforest which puts the light about 22" from the plant tops.

DAY 18 VEG - 6.21.08
================
Ambient Temp = 74.6
Tent Temp = 77.1
Humidity = 55%
Original PH = 6.0
Adjusted PH = 5.8
Original PPM = 800
Adjusted PPM = 630

Looking good! you may want to add reservoir temperature to your stats. I mention this because i am currently fighting a high res temp issue that hopefully a chiller can solve.