My Budget 800w DWC Maxibloom Grow

Materials:

• 4.5' x 7.5' grow space made of Panda plastic and wood - $50 (Home Depot/Local Hydro Store)
• 400w wing w/ ballast and two HPS bulbs - $40 (Craigslist)
• 400w wing w/ ballast, one HPS bulb, one MH bulb - $40 (Craigslist)
• GH Maxibloom + PH Up/Down Kit + SuperThrive - $40 (Amazon/Local Hydro Store)
• Buckets/Pumps/Stones/Lids/Fans/Hydroton - $60 (Home Depot/Amazon/Local Hydro Store)

I started from three clones that I acquired from a fellow I came into contact after asking my buddy who works at the local head shop if he had any clones. Unfortunately this fellow's dog had ripped a hole in his grow room a few days prior and although I didn't realize it when I picked them up, the clones had both mites and aphids. Regardless, I had one Green Crack clone, one Pineapple Express clone, and one clone that the fellow had called "Nirvana" but has shown itself to grow and look exactly like some Papaya from Nirvana Seed Co. that I'd grow in the past.

They started out under a single 400w in the closet as I got worked to scrape together the pieces for my grow room. While they were in the closet the temperatures shot way to high and roasted all of them. I improved ventilation in the closet and let them recover for a week. At this point, the clones were still in the small pots of soil I had received them in and were rooted pretty well so I decided that now would be a good time to transplant them into the new room/buckets I had waiting for them. I washed all the soil off of the roots/rockwool plug in a large pot of room temperature, transplanted into net pot bucket lids, and filled all the buckets with 1/4 strength nutes and SuperThrive

After a week I switched to half strength nutes, and then after another finally to full strength nutes, and they handled it all superbly, with the only sign of trouble being almost unnoticeable nute burn on the second day of full strength nutes. From here I let them veg for two months (July 10 - Sept 10) primarily because they were growing very slow at first, especially the Papaya. I believe the Papaya was a clone from a flowering plant because of how tight the nodes were at the top, and for the first two-three weeks that I had it all that it did was put out more nodes all along it's 3" tall self with absolutely no vertical growth.

I switched to flower on September 10th and began seeing hairs on the Papaya just three days into 12/12, with hairs on the Green Crack coming at about five/six days and Pineapple Express at seven/eight days. I defoliate pretty heavily, and LST pretty heavily although I've stopped LST'ing since the flip to flower and have only defoliated twice during flower. As a result I have tons of nodes along every branch.

Currently 34 days into 12/12 flowering, and until today I was very disappointed with how slow they were flowering. But overnight they seem to have fattened up quite a bit, still not what I want to be seeing 35 days into flower, but perhaps I'm impatient.

I will add some pictures momentarily, as I'm about to go take them. If anyone could provide insight into the slow flowering or would like to contribute any tips/critique/advice you're more than welcome to. This is my first DWC grow, so any help is appreciated.

UPDATE: Now on day 43 of flower (my math was all sorts of messed up in the first post, I was quite medicated when I posted it) and have added all sorts of new goodies to the grow. Namely the following:

• 48" x 96" x 80" Solar Hut Grow Tent - $138 (Amazon)
• 1000w air-cooled HPS w/ Digital Ballast hangers, timer, etc. - $166 (eBay - digitalgrow)
• Mudder brand TDS and PH meters - $20 (Amazon)
• Enclosed swamp cooler vent and ducted into grow room, so I no longer have air conditioning in my house but it's getting cold anyways so who cares. - FREE (Some cardboard, paracord, thumb tacts and ducting)

I also have some fresh seeds on the way from various seed banks and will post a list below, as well as three more 5" airstones, more tubing, MOAB, and Dutch Master Zone.

Seeds Enroute:
• (5) Greenhouse Seed Co. Moby Dick (Feminized)
• (5) Greenhouse Seed Co. Kalashnikova (Autoflower)
• (1) Mephisto Genetics Fantasmo Express (Autoflower)
• (2) DNA Reserva Privada Tangie (Regular)
• (2) TGA Subcool Agent Orange (Regular)
• (1) Dutch Passion Brainstorm (Feminized)
• (1) DNA Reserva Privada Kandy Kush (Feminized)
• (1) World of Seeds Northern Lights x Big Bud (Feminized)
• (1) Cali Connection Black Kush (Feminized)
• (1) Humbolt Seed Organization Chocolate Mint (Feminized)
• (1) Blimburn Seeds Grizzly Purple Kush (Feminized)

I will likely start two Moby Dick, two Kalashnikova, one Fantasmo Express (OG Ghost Train Haze #1 x Ruderalis), and one Kandy Kush once they all arrive then continue to pop two more seeds every three weeks.

Enough about new acquisitions though, the new tent sent temperatures skyrocketing to 85-95 with the two open reflector 400w lights depending on the time of the day, whether I left tent door open, etc. so I purchased a 1000w fixture on eBay and routed the entire output of my apartment's swamp cooler to the grow room. The swamp cooler kept it at 85°F until the 1000w set up got here, at which point I switched them out. With the 1000w in the room, temperatures were staying at 87°F and while that's much better than 95°F, I was forced to leave the swamp cooler venting to the tent. Temperatures now stay steady at 77.5°F throughout the day, and around 65°F at night.

Flowering is still going slow, although I did learn upon receiving TDS/PH meters that I was running at 550ppm the whole grow instead of the ~1300 I should have been sitting at. Somehow I managed to fuck up the Lucas Formula despite weighing my Maxibloom out on a digital scale that goes down to 1mg. I've added Bloombastic at 3ml/gallon, bumped nutrients up to ~1300 and while the plants show no signs of nutrient burn or any deficiency, they still continue to flower incredibly slow. pH is checked 2x a day and is always between 5.75 and 5.85.

When I went just now to take pictures, I noticed that one calyx on a Pineapple Express main cola had swollen to be 4x the size of the others around it, as well as changing to lime green with no trichomes on it. I squeezed it slightly and it was incredibly hard, indicative of a seed. As I pulled my hand away my fingernail caught it and ripped it open. It absolutely reeked of weed when I did that, and out pops a tap root with two cotyledon leaves. WTF? No shell, no seed, straight up tap root with cotyledon right out of a calyx. I have it in a wet paper towel right now to see what the fuck is up.

I checked every plant all over for balls and as far as I can tell I don't have any hermaphrodites and that is the only place there was anything like that on all the plants. It popped up completely overnight, which confuses and concerns me. One of my neighbors was talking to me a few weeks ago about how another neighbor of ours had male plants on his porch growing with his females (the guy is clueless) and they pollinated my neighbor's entire outdoor crop. The male plants were harvested by that guy a month ago, but is it possible that the swamp cooler (which pulls air in from my roof) could still be picking up pollen and dumping it into the grow room?

I know this thread hasn't got much attention but if anyone has managed to read this far any help is appreciated!

Pictures below, first day of Week 7 (43 days)

I'm pretty sure the slow growth during flower was initially cause by defoliation during stretch, as well as nitrogen toxicity. Running 7g/gal Maxibloom had me at 550ppm so in the last two weeks I've bumped the dose up to ~1300ppm by doubling Maxibloom and adding Bloombastic at 3ml/gal. My main theory is that my Maxibloom has destabilized or something and is providing too much nitrogen, as it rocked up in the bag mid-grow and is now quite chunky.

MOAB should be here soon, so I intend to cut Maxibloom dose back down to 7/g and add MOAB. I have all the fittings and tubing on the way to upgrade to a six site UCRDWC using 5gal buckets and an 18gal control tote so hopefully I can get that set up by this coming Friday. I'll most likely make a new thread in the Grow Journal section once that is set up and I crop these plants out as the DWC forum seems to be pretty slow.

Noticed a small amount of root aphid larva that somehow got on one of the frozen bottles I put in my buckets, seriously questioning if that swamp cooler is bringing shit in from outside. I rinsed all the roots with warm water, boiled the tubing and air stones, scrubbed the fuck out of everything and did a full water change, adding back just Bloombastic and pH down to 300ppm on the Papaya and Pineapple Express, and 550ppm on the Green Crack to try and combat the nitrogen poisoning.

MOAB and DM Zone should arrive tomorrow at which point I'll add full strength of DM Zone, half strength MOAB, and half strength Maxibloom then continue to add MOAB until I'm around 1000ppm. I'll get some picture of the roots tomorrow before I add DM Zone, and then more root pictures if I see any difference/whitening. Luckily I haven't seen any more larva since I took measures yesterday, so hopefully the DM Zone will take care of anything left.

It's day 46 since the flip and the leaves are starting to claw more with the very tips of leaves burnt yellow. DM Zone arrived today, but no MOAB. I calculated the max dosage according to bottle of DM Zone and added 8.4ml per bucket as I run 3.5 gallons to keep the water right below the net pot. Also added was a half strength dose of Maxibloom, bringing PPMs up to 800 for Green Crack, and 550 for Pineapple Express and Papaya.

Undercurrent tubing and fittings shipped out today, hoping to receive them by Wednesday, but Thursday or Friday is more likely depending on where they are coming from. Having trouble with these damn seed banks getting my stuff to me, but hopefully they're here in time to have juveniles ready by the time I harvest.

Got some decent pictures before I turned the lights on this morning which I will include below. If anyone has any comments or suggestions about what I'm doing wrong, what I'm doing right, or anything else feel free to post, I'm always keen to learn new things and discuss my grow.

Green Crack:


Pineapple Express:


Papaya:

After receiving input from a couple of people I appear to have a CalMag deficiency from high levels of P/K and it makes sense as my tap water is 90ppm right out of the tap and 75ppm after I let it sit for a few days. I've read I need at least 150ppm to not need to purchase CalMag so I may just seek out some harder water or just get Epsom salts and some sort of calcium additive. Will elemental calcium (Vitamin D) from the grocery store work? Wouldn't be too hard to weigh a tablet, grind it up and dose it.

Ok i just read everything and ya, you fucked up in lots of places so far but hey, your gonna harvest so you win. Where do i start...
Ok so this weighing shit lucas crap your doing. Stop that right now. Read your buckets and plants. Your over feeding. 1300 is too high for any plant, and yours are with all due respect..pretty small aka light feeding. You should top out at 1100 for big plants, and when i say big i mean like twice the size of yours at day 49 or whatever.
The heat issue hurt your plants bigtime. Instead of growing squat plants you grew lanky branchy, wide internode spaced, leggy plants. Heat causes stretch. Lesson learned
Seems like you have money to spend which is good. Go buy some calmag, one drop a litre worked fine for me. You wont have to use calmag for the first two weeks, or the last two weeks. Just remember that.
Going into flower your ppms should be around 600-650. Unless your getting yellowing. Then up it a bit.
The plant eats the most in mid flower. Theres early flower, mid flower, and late flower. Early flower is the start of flower where i run veg nutes still because the plants are stretching and growing a lot still and veg food has more nitrogen. I bump it up from 650 to about 750-800.
Mid flower is when they are feeding hardest, ill hit 950 and may go to 1000 or 1050 if theyre huge and taking it well. Ill run half veg and half flower nutes for the first week and then all flower nutes after that.
Late flower is usually the last 2.5 weeks of an 8 week flower or 3 weeks of a 10 week flower. Thats where the plant slows down a lot on the feed schedule. You can drop off with the calmag, and reduce the food slowly but drastically. Meaning reduce it slowly but your bringing it down to like 600 two weeks before cut and about 450 for the last week where you can just pretty much get it down to almost nothing for chop day.
When your adding nutrients measure the ppms in the rez and mix food to make the rez right. Like if your aiming for 900 and the rez is at 850, mix the water to 950 and you should even out at 9. Obviously youll need to adjust this method to how much the plants drank in a day. The more you have to add, the less whats in there still will affect the ppm right? Fuck this weighing anything or using mls to judge shit. Mix up a bucket or two full of 950 or 900 or whatever and add or water down if you need. The feed isnt going to go bad if its mixed in a rez. If you have the room get a plastic 55 gallon drum on craigslist and cut the top out, then fill it up. Easy right?!
The biggest thing is to gradually bring up the ppms to 1000 in mid flower. Get a calender, use it, adjust it. On the next grow to fix any problems.
The next grow will be way better, climate is the most important thing, and you seem to have it handled. Also your not washing off any dirt this time so the roots will be more healthy, and hopefully i just gave you a better idea on how to feed. So ya, fly like the wind little buddy. And make sure all your air pumps, ballasts, and cords are off the ground. Hydro and electical dont mix. No mater how much you try not to, eventually youll knock over a bucket or have a flood. Trust me. @Alienwidow if you have any other questions.

@Alienwidow

Yeah, definitely got off to a bad start with the plants, and initially budget was limited hence Lucas Formula. A 2.2lb bag of Maxibloom is $13 and lasts the entire grow for all three plants.

I'm considering switching from Lucas, but I would like to keep it simple and as far as I'm concerned chemical nutrients are chemical nutrients the only thing that matters is how stable they are and the NPK ratio.

I've looked at H&G Aquaflakes, but for the price Maxibloom is hard to beat. I'd like to add a GH liquid nutrient during veg if you think it would help. I could pick up the trio but it's significantly more than Maxibloom and it wouldn't last as long. If you have any suggestions I'm all ears. One of the main reasons I like Lucas is because pH is so stable and when it does drift up it's because you're topping with water.

I keep everything hung up, I don't know if you can see in the pictures but every light cord is hung, and the air pump is hanging from paracord as I read it produces more and isn't as loud that way.

Next grow will be a six site 5 gallon undercurrent RDWC with with an 18 gallon reservoir and ScroG netting across the room/up the walls so I can get the most out of my space. I'll be looking to add a DIY water cooler chiller as soon as I can and another 1000w probably mid/late veg.

The grow is still budget, I'm just good at budgeting and am willing to eat Ramen if it means my plants will be happier. When you're stoned everything tastes good.

I like sensi a and b. Theyre so simple to use, ph stable. And the only other thing you need is calmag.

Not much to report, still not thickening up as much as I'd like. Running nothing but Maxibloom at pH 6.0.

Started germinating a feminized Agent Orange seed I got off dispensary bud and three GHS Kalashnikova Auto seeds. Planning on using the Kalashnikova as a buffer crop as I've seen a few grow threads with decent buds and yields ranging from 9-12 weeks from seed. I'll probably pop two non feminized Agent Orange seeds when they get here Monday and start with those.

@Alienwidow
I'm on day 51 how much longer do you think I should leave this crop up for? Will they ever get bigger or are they just going to stay this size and mature? When should I start flushing? I was considering flushing on day 56 as that will be 8 weeks but then they'll have nothing at all to grow with and they're pathetic as is.

The very tippy top of each bud (although more prominent on what will become the main colas) has seemingly overnight changed shape from a more rounded out nugget to a very point cone. In addition, these areas also seemingly overnight became very hard, almost unsqueezable.

After doing a ton of reading on whether flowering starts at 12/12 flip (how I've been tracking it) or when the first buds form and digging through some photos on my phone, I've realized that my plants are dead on schedule if I count flowering days from first bud formations. I know there is a lot of debate on this, but I do not want to be a part of it.

Simply put, if I subtract 10 days from the 53 days it's been since 12/12 flip, I'm left with 43 days or the first day of week 7 flowering. Now, after making almost no visible progress other than making small/medium bud sites everywhere for 4 weeks the tops have suddenly started to swell and gain the proper shape on the very first day of week 7. Needless to say, these plants have two weeks left and were never behind schedule in the first place.

Nice work ghost fox! Looking great! Im definitely eager to see how this turns out

Trichome shot from the Green Crack. Hoping they'll be ready to harvest around November 14th but the trichomes seem pretty clear with small heads so we'll see.

Picked up some CalMag that I'm dosing at 1ml/gallon. PPM's sitting at ~700, pH 6.0.
Will do a two day FloraKleen flush followed by a two day pH'ed tap water flush.

Nice shot!

Day 60, very tops look good but buds below aren't swelling and connecting to make decent colas so I went ahead and backbuilt the entire GC plant as it's the worst with this. Got a matured GC x PE seed off the PE and have it germinating now.