My grow moved indoors, Marie Jain could use a few pointers here :)

After three successful outdoor grows I've moved inside and am learning the ebb n' flow way! I moved from a larger house to a small apartment and although I have my med card I'm working out a quiet personal grow that my neighbors won't be bothersome about.

I'll include pics but my main questions now are about venting my heat, how many ppm is right for my 25gallon system, and what truly is a good way to use this system.

My heat is not too bad, but could use improvement. I use a passive system right now as noise is a factor once I moved from a big house to this little apartment. So the fan that I got (6" Hydroton) is loud as hell and I've not hooked it up.

I got an EC meter but I'm a nubcake and just am not familiar with the equipment. I can use it, read it, know what it's trying to tell me but I have no base to run from. What ppm/EC reading am I shooting for here?

In January I hooked up the cabinet and threw in some clones just to see if and how it works. I put in 3 clones of OG Kush and set the timer for the lights to 12/12 running from 9pm to 9am. I have the water pump set to run 5 times a day, 4 for 15 minutes and one for 1/2 hour.

These clones were about 6" when I got them and immediately dropped into flower and grew a bit taller and fatter. Now they are in full flower and already have cloudy trichs. I've had them in since January 16th, which makes it about 5 weeks of flower so far. I expect them to go another 2 to 3 weeks and then will pull them down and set up another grow in earnest. To me this is a test, just to see how the dang system works.

I'd seriously appreciate any help in tuning this up for a real grow though. Pointers guys! Drop me some advice here on nutes, air, EC meters, anything else you can think of that needs work.

OH least I forget, what about dropping the baskets altogether and just running in hydroton. I was thinking on putting in 6 or 8 new clones and just trimming them as center colas and see how that works. /shrug I'm open here, this is experimenting time for me for the next year or so.

My following post will include, build, setup and a few more pics.

The cabinet is 60" tall and 26" deep and 26" wide. It was a lot of fun to build, and I had a great time painting and putting the Mylar on prior to building the actual cabinet. Because we were able to prep each piece, the whole assembly went together really well.



Then we painted the outside so it could be moved and still look low key.




The equipment that goes into it are a 25gallon reservoir TurboGarden Ebb n Flow which turned out to be super easy to use.
1 400w Hydrofarms switchable lamp with a NextGen electric ballast. This ballast is so quiet and cheap compared to my older style 1000w lamp and ballast - serious savings on my energy bill and super quiet to boot




The pic above shows the cabinet right after it was moved and I started to unpack and hook things up.

Here is how it looked when I put the babies in, I just wanted to see how the whole thing worked.



So now that they have grown a bit I want to actually get this heat thing sorted out.





This is the fan:



But it is loud as hell for a small apt with a neighbor right above. I've let it passively vent so far, which leaves me with temps about 85-91 if I leave the door open a bit, which as I run this system at night is not a problem. During the summer though and if I ever have company over, this would become a problem...

The intakes are shown here - there are 4 four inch passive intakes. This is the inside view of one:




And the outside view (fire protection girls n boys, always a good thing):



and a shot of where the fan should go:




Please let me know if I should show anything else.

Lots of views but no comments or advice. Stop looking and start typing!

looks good. love the turbogarden and the cab. ventilation should be fine

Thanks, had tons of fun building the cab. For those near the Bay Area I had a professional woodworker help me build this outstanding box and he says he's open to making others...

I found the ppm answer thanks to ROI search functions. Thanks to whoever originally posted this link and in the cause of furthering education I'll repost it here: http://www.generalhydroponics.com/calculator/index.html

My experimental crop came out today. I ran the flower cycle for 54 days and it worked perfectly I'm happy to say. Sweet, fruity, and above all DENSE flower occured and are now hanging up to dry. Total yield expected about 3-4 oz from these 3 little plants so I'm pretty happy.

Yay for the new cabinet!

Ok so that grow is down and dried now, it produced a bit over 3 oz of green kush from 3 little 1 foot plants so that wasnt too bad

Since the cab worked so well I went out and got 5 baby Erkles, gonna enjoy watching those grow. Erkle has long been my very favorite medicine and I found a solid place for clones - WTG Erkle Man!

In other news we just had a fellow in here installing a new dishwasher (it's an apt remember) and he never even noticed the cabinet. I did drop the exterior hardware and made sure the doors were shut, but made no other changes. Worked like a charm /smug happiness

Don't mean to sound too paranoid but ppls are getting nuts about home invasions around here - cops are NOT helpful at all if there is a grow involved. One guy got beaned over the head with a crowbar last week because some punk kids wanted into his shed and he died

Can I just mention here that I love Erkle? It grows so easily, is always a beautiful plant and can I just point out that it has more bud site per inch than I've seen on any other plant?

<3 to Erkle growers

Marie Jain said:

My experimental crop came out today. I ran the flower cycle for 54 days and it worked perfectly I'm happy to say. Sweet, fruity, and above all DENSE flower occured and are now hanging up to dry. Total yield expected about 3-4 oz from these 3 little plants so I'm pretty happy.

Yay for the new cabinet!

Click to expand...

That is a good yield, great job!!

You asked about ppm's in your first post. You can try and look up your manufacture on the web a lot of times they will have an in depth mixing chart. Cutting Edge's is wonderful, it give you the mix to add, 3 part with or without additives, a mix for foliar spray and what the ppm, ph, and ec should read. I dont know what the ec is, but it is on there. Ppm's are going to be based off of your type of system and the stage your plants are in.

I am just starting with flood and drain also, I have had a couple successful grows with areoponics, I still have that 24 site going, but added one 4x8 w/50 gal res. and I am building another room for a second 4x8 set up. I have (2) 1000 hps over each set up. 1 a/c and 1 150 can filter centrally located circulating air throughout all three spaces.

Mary Jain, I have a very similar setup with the same fan, only mine is a 4 inch. I had to hang mine in the attic because of the noise. Being in an apartment, you probably don't have many options as you have to punch a hole in the wall at some point and have ducting sticking out of your cabinet. Fact is, you need to put your fan where it can't be heard and run ducting to it where it can't be seen. This is going to prove to be very difficult for you, I wish I had a better answer for you.
As far as PPM/EC a rule of thumb is: seedlings-300ppm, rooted clones-600ppm, max for a mature plant-1200ppm. As a starting point, mix your nutrients as per the manufacturer. Use your meter to read the ppm. Now you're able to detect drops or spikes in your resivoir is the basic idea. Test your tap water with it too. If it's above 40ppm, consider adding a Reverse Osmosis unit.

if you can do up to 15 plants for your legal grow you may want to do more of a SOG grow. i use rockwool minicubes in 6 inch pots and they only need watering ever few days.