First time Cabinet Grow, Hydro, CFL/LED

Ok here is the continuation of the thread I had going in the Grow Room Design section.

Just to bring you guys up to speed, this is my first time growing. I built my own cabinet, full details can be found in the other thread but basically it's a hydroponic setup, and for lighting I'm using a combination of CFL's and LED's. The Strain is Purple Voodoo which I got from my local dispensary. It's an indica blend. I'm using foxfarm nutes and pretty much just following their feeding schedule exactly though a bit dilluted to start. Seeds were germinated for about two days before flipping the lights on. As of right now I'm on the second day of lights, I noticed this morning that the plants were stretching towards the two day light bulbs I had in the middle of the board so i went out and bought more, plus a couple of splitters so now I am running 8 bulbs total, six of them daylight and 2 soft/warm lights plus the two LED panels...



Oh yeah and everyone please do comment and criticize where you see fit, this is my first time and would love the feedback and help!

Thanks!

All right update time...

So I am one week and 3 days in from the start of germinating seeds. My sixth seed had finally sprouted and I was six for six until I went away for two days for the holiday. before I left I had turned a couple of net pots in an attempt to dissuade some of the stretching that had been going on. Well in the rush to leave i neglected to notice that three of the drip emiters were no longer in contact with the cubes so i came home to three of my little plants lying down on their sides. I immediately turned the water pump on and gave them a good soaking. So far one of them has bounced back, one is questionable and one was too far gone. Check out the pics of my still healthy plants and one group shot... comments, criticisms, and questions more than welcome!

I'll try and get some pics of the inside of the hydro setup later on, it's pretty standard though, pump, air stone, mister...

Right now the plants are fed 4 times a day for about 15 minutes at a time evenly distributed throughout the day while the lights are on. For nuts I'm pretty much following fox farms feeding schedule exactly, though in dilluted quantities, started at about 300ppm and have been slowly building up to the 1000-1200 or so that it says in the schedule for plants in this stage... Currently I'm at about 700ppm...

oh yeah and strain is purple voodoo, an indica dominant hybrid i picked up at my local dispensary...

more pics... including the requested in the tank shot... down to four plants... it's been two weeks and a day since dropping the seeds into cubes for germination...

here's the girls (hopefully) this would be about three weeks since turning the lights on...

They are throwing out new leafs and little branches like crazy!

Little problem though the tips of some of the lower leaves are turning a little brown.

Any tips or suggestions?

I took a picture of a leaf that seems pretty bad off...

I see a little burn. I didnt come close to feeding my babies at that young age.

Ok I finally had some time to do a resevoir change today, pain in the butt that was, anyways i cleaned the system out and put in five fresh gallons of water. I figure I'm going to let them run on water for a day or two before i restart on very very low strength nutes... does this sound right?

all right here they are, it's been about a month since lights on. I cleaned out the system last weekend, and have them on very low strength nutes, about 350 ppm, the lower leaves still aren't looking that good though, little brown at the tips, any ideas?

feedback is much appreciated!!!

thanks!!!

time to flower!

switched to twelve/twelve cycles today.

I already see what I think are female preflowers on one of the plants.

changed up the lights, added some more warm lights for the new cycles, nutes are at about 500 ppm...

comments concerns? help?

thanks!

Oh man looking REAL good bro! Very green, very bushy. As far as before when you mentioned the lower leafs still looked damaged when you had a little burn the area which was burned wont go back to green it will jsut remain the color it is. So if you ever run into a burn again, so long as new or other leafs dont change colors, your ok.

Your looking real good right now though, if you started flowering within a week we will find out if you got females or males, lets hope for some pusshheyyy!

Thanks man!!

So i was feeling a little productive today, coupled with the fact that I have to go out of town for a week... made some upgrades to the system.

Added a scrog to hopefully keep them from growing too tall while I'm gone, as well as two additional cfl's under the scrog to help light up the lower leaves. Oh and I finally installed the mini air scrubber, they are starting to smell when I open the cabinet... don't want to raise any suspicions whilst I'm gone...

can't wait to come home next week and see how many girls I've got!!

Can we see how much the LEDs alone put out when they are on without the CFLs on?

unfortunately not, they are wired in together with the cfls.

I'm thinking after this grow I'm going to rearrange things though and mount the led's to the sides of the cabinet as supplemental and just have the cfl's up top, when I do that I'll take some led only pics. I will say though that they are pretty bright, when I turned them on when I first got them they lit up my wall nicely from about 15 feet away

BabyFishMouth said:

unfortunately not, they are wired in together with the cfls.

I'm thinking after this grow I'm going to rearrange things though and mount the led's to the sides of the cabinet as supplemental and just have the cfl's up top, when I do that I'll take some led only pics. I will say though that they are pretty bright, when I turned them on when I first got them they lit up my wall nicely from about 15 feet away

Click to expand...

I soooo wanna see it!

ok back from a week gone, i was soo excited to see my plants. starting to see signs of sex. the first pic is an overall shot. Pic two is what I suspect to be the male in the group. Picture three is of the types of flowers starting to show on two of the plants... looks like females to me eh? plant four is being a little slow to develop no distinguishable flowers yet.

am i right in my diagnosis?

all right here we are at i think three weeks into flowering, they are growing like crazy, i've been training to the screen with the two remaining girls and it's pretty much full up... here are pics...

Awesome, I would suggest bending new leaflings side ways to kinda SCROG it.

thanks man!

i'm really pleased with the way things are going. I just spent bout half an hour training everything sideways again and my hands came out all kinds of sticky!!! Here's some pics...