First Grow - White Satin

onthecake · Dec 23, 2007

This is my first grow.

I have a pretty simple setup. Hydo Cabinet with air stone and a 20mm fogger. One 110CFM fan going to a 24 inch carbon filter.

8 CFL's all 6500K (will change when flowering). 6 are at 75W and 2 are at 100W.

I have planted 10 so I hope that is enough to get at least 5 females. This will be day 3 of the grow in 18/6 mode.

Any suggestions or advice are welcome. Dont really know when to start giving them nutrients. Have a PH-PPM meter on the way so I didnt want to add anything until I get a baseline reading. Planning on using BC Boost, Grow first along with Thrive Alive Red.

First pics.....

3 Days In

UserFriendly · Dec 23, 2007

since you don't know when you're going to receive the meter you should start out easy on the nutes. 1/10 the recommended dose should be okay. nutes tend to be acidic so just use them and don't worry about ph adjustment yet....umless you can obtain some litmus paper.

white satin will get you a bunch of friends, nice choice.

onthecake · Dec 23, 2007

Yeah. I am trying to hold off until i get it. Should be next week sometime.

I am somewhat worried that not all have sprouted at the same time. Guess I will wait tomorrow before I start to panic though.

onthecake · Dec 25, 2007

I noticed that the right side of the setup is not getting as much water from the fogger as the left side. As a result the seeds are not germinating or have just barely come to the surface.

I have a 20mm fogger right now but does anyone know if there is a bigger one available?

I have also heard that lowering the water level helps create more fog.

Any ideas would help.

onthecake · Dec 27, 2007

7 Days In.

6 of the 10 plants have finally gotten their roots down close to the waterline and they are looking quite healthy. I switched my lighting from 18/6 to 24 after reading some posts on here.

The other 4 are slowly coming along. I think I might have lost one of them. I plan on adding another air stone tomorrow and air more powerful air pump.

Also planning on putting some kind of riser below the fogger so it can fog closer to the waterline.

Still waiting on the PH/PPM meter to arrive before I add any nutes. I will post some more pics in the next couple of days.

onthecake · Dec 30, 2007

10 days from planting in I think I have lost 3 of the 10 plants. The dont look like they are going to grow anymore. Might take them out and move others over to make more room.

I installed a new air pump that puts out 4X the pressure as the previous one. I also installed 2 circular air stones (5 inch size) and removed the 12 inch bar air stone. The fogger was moved up a bit closer to the waterline and is putting a LOT more fog now.

I also started adding nutes 2 days ago. I only used a 1/2 of the recommended dose since I still am waiting on my meter to get here.

First pic is of my best looking plant. Rest of the pics our of the remaining plants and the setup underneath.

Do these plants look like the correct size for being 10 days in (that is 10 days from when I actually put them in rockwool/light)?

onthecake · Jan 3, 2008

14th day from seed in.

I have removed the last remaining runt from my box. All other plants look pretty good. I am getting a little browning on a couple plants but not to bad. Went ahead and moved the light up a couple rungs.

Finally got my PH/PPM meter. PH is reading a little high at 6.8 and PPM are about 550. Going to put some PH down in to get that down. Will probably change out water tomorrow night also.

Seems like growth has really started to speed up since I made the previous changes and added a bigger air pump.

Overall pretty happy with it. I wished I could have had all 10 seeds germinate correctly but 7 out of 10 is not bad for first time. Just hope I dont get 7 males!

tahoe58 · Jan 3, 2008

slick and compact and well setup! things seem to be going along pretty well. Good luck!

onthecake · Jan 4, 2008

tahoe58 said:
slick and compact and well setup! things seem to be going along pretty well. Good luck!

Thanks.

Just changed the water out. Plants looked healthy so I went ahead and gave 1/3 dose of nutes. Also checked PH.

Looking good at 5.7 and 500 PPM.

onthecake · Jan 6, 2008

Well. Over the last 2 days things have gotten worse. 3 of the plants have gotten brown spots on them and the leaves have curled under. The leaves are also crispy when touched.

The only thing I can think of is I gave them to many nutes. There seems to be some white buildup on the hydroton. I am going to flush them with fresh water and leave the nutes out for a bit to see if they get better.

Kinda confuses me why 4 of the plants look fine though. I dont think its heat stress because I am using CFL's and they are at least 5 inches above the plant with a fan blowing out.

Any ideas would help

onthecake · Jan 8, 2008

Well. It seems that I over nuted these ladies.

A full day after I flushed out the water/nute mix with new plain water they are looking 100% better.

The worst looking one is all perky again and looks about 1/2 inch taller than yesterday.

There are still some brown/dead leaves on some of the plants but I dont see any new spots and I see new green growth below.

Should I go ahead a trim the browned leaves off or just leave them alone?

onthecake · Jan 14, 2008

Been awhile since I have done an update. Things seem to be going a bit worse than last week.

After I flushed with water and left without nutes I started seeing brown spots again. This time I think it was an Mg def. I sprayed with epsom salt and went ahead and added nutes back at 1/5 strength. Seems like things have stopped getting worse but I dont know if I have screwed these plants beyond return.

I have ordered some clearex and some different nutes (fox farm this time).

Will try to flush with clearex and then start with a new set of nutes this week.

Any opinions if I should just scrap this and start over? Dont want to waste anymore time than I have to. Pics below of the poor bastards

onthecake · Jan 14, 2008

Also.. How long do I leave these in a vegetative mode?

I have heard during flowering they will grow about 3x the size they are when you start flowering. I want to make sure I dont run out of space.

6isafraidof7 · Jan 14, 2008

probably should have eased up on the nutes a little.. It's really up to you (and your amount of space) for the vegetative state. They can easily double in size during flowering. Are you planning on topping?

dankforall · Jan 14, 2008

They are starting to look nice good luck!

quadrophine · Jan 14, 2008

yeah, they look real nice. don't even think of scrappin it now. the plants are pretty resilient... just ease up on the nutes and if you think you used too much or the leaves start to look limp flush it. if you flower when they are like a foot, well my widow grew to about 2 and a half feet... give or take. i'm not that familiar with hydro or aero, but they look good. keep it up.

onthecake · Jan 15, 2008

Thanks for the responses.

I am going to flush them tomorrow when I get the clearex and then let them go one more week before switching to flowering.

I think a lot of the damage was caused by me not catching the problem in time. I just didnt think that using 1/3 strength of nutes would give me this many problems. This is the reason I got some fox farm and am dumping the technaflora stuff for now.

tahoe58 · Jan 15, 2008

hey man...looks like your in for a good save! awesome work! these plants are so totally resilient....of course there are always exceptions....as biological entities....filled with genetics and the potential for things to go wrong.....but the VAST majority...given light, water, nutes, and air....will grow....performance varies with balancing the proportionate dosages of those attributes.

onthecake · Jan 16, 2008

Well. Flushed with clearex tonight. Let the system run for about an hour with the clearex in and everything going but the lights.

Started week 4 of the fox farm hydro schedule with grow big hydro and big bloom. Will let them veg one more week and switch over to flowering.

The roots on some of these small plants are massive. Had to pull some apart from each other because I am worried I soon wont be able to get my board out of the cabinet without taking them out first. Right now I can get pull the board out without removing the plants because they are still a little small.

Will post some pics in couple days.

onthecake · Jan 21, 2008

The change in nutes seems to be paying off. I have not seen this much growth in this short period of time until now.

2 more days before I switch to flowering. I think its been a little over a month since I started germinating these things. Hopefully things keep going the way they have the last week.

Just in case you are wondering I have 7 plants total here. 4 in the middle and 3 in the back. There is one slow grower but its coming along still.

First Grow - White Satin

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