My 1st Hydro Box Grow- Pics and Questions!

I use hydroton in my dwc i know what you're talking about i would just be worried about that stuff molding so i would try to keep it as dry as possible.. how high is the water level compared to the net cups?? Did you duck tape the sides too??

the plants actually look pretty healthy right now though

lol the water comes right to the bottom of the net cups. Just to the point it doesnt touch the dirt lol. Sorry I'm way too high to be typing

are those empty net cups letting in light?

ya they are a little

is that bad? ever with changing it once a week?

any light touching the water at all will cause algae over a little time. nute rich water is very easy for algae to live in.

Ok, first things first. You absolutely can NOT do hydro with soil or any "living" medium (in your case peat moss). You should start seeds and cuttings in rockwool or something similar. Put that in the center of the net pot and surround it with hydroton (little clay rocks). This will ensure that you never get your plants to wet or dry, it's almost impossible to fuck something up with that combo. They maintain a great environment for plant growth. You can also get some neoprene disk's (about $5 for 10 or so on amazon) and that will help support the stem while growing, and also keep the light out of your rez.
So, you need to get those girls out of that moss, and into some hydroton (too late for rockwool now I think). Wash the hydroton several times to get the dust and dirt out of all of it. Then you should use some clean water to wash the roots off and completely expose them. Make sure they are completely free of all the dirt. Since your roots are already growing through your net cup, it's gonna be a little more challenging, but not impossible.
Good luck buddy, keep us posted with how it goes.

Agree with peacefarmer, Rock wool is clean (sterile), hold/drains water great, easy to transplant. Those Peat Plugs are just going to be a pain in the a** throughout your grow, they will mess with P.H. and increase the risk of bacteria. If you start new plants, and cant get your hands on rock wool, just use those disk's Farmer was talking about (neoprene) , or pure hydroton. And keep water temp. in check....VERY important. (65-72 my personal preference) And get rid of that clear reservoir, lol c'mon dude

Keep it up man, will keep an eye on your grow

Forgot to mention, aerate the hell out of the reservoir! BUBBLES!

Just ordered 2 lbs of hydroton and some rock wool cubes to fix these girls up with. Will post more pics soon guys and again thank you for all of your help!

Still waiting on the hydroton kit to come in so I went out and bought (2) 55 watt 2700k CFL's for the flowering phase. Monster looking bulbs. Flushed the rez added some more nutes and hooked up my timer. These plants are some type of bag seed strain I'm experimenting with before I use the White Widow Fem seeds I ordered from Attitude. I want that grow to be perfect! Anyways, I'm starting these 2 on a 12/12 cycle today even though I feel it's a little early for them, I'm worried about running out of room and them getting too big for the box. Either way this is the trial run up to the super hydro widow grow that's coming up next so we'll see. Here's a pic of the girls(I hope!) today, they are going crazy!

Any advice on topping/lst'ing? Not sure which way to go on this one.

Looking good. one thing tho, those empty net pots should be plugged or covered to not allow light in, it has to be LIGHT PROOF, light allows for the growth of nasty shi* in your water.
For topping you would want to wait for at least the 4th node to pinch it, and for LST you simply tie down the branches/stem and "train" them to grow however you want, just be careful not to break the branch/stem.

Keep Stoney Faced

I wouldent top them if you're going to start 12/12 already, you should do that while you're still vegging

so they have time to recover

Man these plants are exploding! New pics taken today. 12/12 seems to be going nicely. I'll try and fine something to get those net cups covered up with. I guess I'll pass on topping them and just see what they do. Seem healthy enough to me.

nice man, keep it up

I put a little ozone generator in there for the smell but it's not working so great so I built a febreeze box out of a 5 gallon bucket today and put it in there. The smell is getting really strong. Smells great to me but I have company over practically every day and I can't have that smell in the house. Any ideas? What works for you guys?

As I mentioned, smell was beginning to be an issue in the house so I had to construct some type of air filtration system. Bought a 5 gallon bucket, poured 4 bottles of extra strength febreze in it and ran the exhaust fan from the box into the bucket with a fan on the top lid pulling air out of the bucket and into the air. It's only been running about 20 minutes now so I hope it works. Took a few pics of the setup and the girls. Tell me what you think!

Almost lost them last night! Checked in on them and noticed one of the plants leaves were curling down and the air pump wasn't working. The pump was mounted inside the box and got too hot with the grow lights and stopped working. Went out and bought a new pump and decided to change out the rez water and noticed mold in the net cups. So I had to hold them under the bath faucet and rinse all of the mold from the net cups they were in, filled it up with some hydroton and just gave them clean fresh water lastnight. Today I gave them a little bit of food and a couple of the leaves on the one on the right are still drooping down a little but they don't act as though they suffered any shock from lastnights major operation so that's good. I don't know what kind of strain these are as I got them from bag seed but I haven't topped them at all and I would say they aren't more than maybe 8 inches tall at most. The stems are getting really fat. Maybe some type of Lowryder strain?