PC Case grow - Stealth + Perpetual + LST

I feel the same way, Jedi. V, your setup is badass I must say. I just made one myself but planned on going hydro. I was thinking if I could have 2 seperate DWC pots with one veg and one flower going at the same time with some LST or topping that would be awesome to harvest say every 3 or 4 weeks. I think it would be a little bit more work with two different containers with diff ppms and such but I think the speediness of hydro is awesome. Any thoughts or seen anything like this?
Preciate it.
Chas

+rep

Cheers yz
I just posted up an album for Xander that would prolly fit the bill for you. Have a peek. It came out backwards doh! so start at the end and you'll suss it.
https://www.rollitup.org/members/v12xjs-albums-xander.html

Love bike racing. Do you follow British Superbikes?

Hey man thanks for the link. Im about to check it out. Unfortunately not up to date on the british superbikes though. I was just a bored teenager growing up in cough bullshit cough America so I killed some time with some dirtbikes and kept the name ever since.
I just put together a pc setup with a fatass 250w cfl 6500K and another 2700K to switch to for flower (but now im not so sure if Im gonna try to set up a perpetual system) both of which i found on ebay. At least i might be able to use a light that big in another bigger setup later on. But I have skeptical friends who think that might be "too much light". I thought it was the heat that would kill a plant instead of an excessive amount of light, Any thoughts on that one? Im hoping as long as I keep the temp at good levels i might get some decent smoke so ive got 3 case fans in their to keep it as cool as possible.
And actually I just slaughtered 6 seeds trying to germ in a paper towel and then transfer into rockwool but I think that overwatering or a lack of heat was to blame. I just don't know when to take my sproutlings out of my makeshift humidity dome and put them under light. My sprouts just usually looked burned and my two leaflets would never open up. Sometimes i even got purple stems on them.
Any hydro help or maybe even rep points you could give would be much appreciated

Hey yz
My bad. I should have remembered racing round dirt tracks on an old Suzuki RM chasing those Yamy YZ's.
250watts in a case is a lot of light and You can have too much. It results in white leaves and very sick looking plants. Not sure what level is too much in a case though.
Heat will be a big issue for sure and I doubt 3 fans would keep it cool through summer.
If the seedlings are burning up then heat could well be the issue. I think in most pc cases 150w would be the max in terms of temps and that should still give well over 10,000 lumens which is plenty of light for a good harvest.
If you can tame that light then your buds will be fearsome. Google Mr Micro's nanomachine and have a look at the fake wall he fitted at the back of his case. If you could do something like that and have the ballast and the bulbholder outside of the growspace then you have a fighting chance of using the bulbs you have.
If you aren't familiar with rockwool then check out the instructions for that too as it's very acidic when it's new and needs treating before use. I tended to use the rootriot cubes for that reason and I left the dome on them for about a week to let them get established. With your current setup, humidity will be very low, so try putting a cup of water in the case when the seedling go in just to raise it up some. The young plants like high humidity which is why they do ok in the domes.

Just a thought on strains for you. Most of the available seeds are bred to do well at around 75-80F but you can still buy seeds called Landrace strains which should cope with hotter temps. Some of the African/Nigerian strains might do well in your environment.
Good luck with it.

Hope you dont mind me chipping in again Airflow is very important in enclosed micro grows YZ, a good 100mm ruck type fan will pull all that hot air straight out for you while pulling in fresh room temp air on a constant flow through the plants. Its possible to maintain a temp of just a few degrees above room temps this way. It may even be slightly too powerful for a pC case grow, anyone use one this way? Of course the size of them makes stealth more difficult in a PC case but a small bedside cabinet type grow can accomodate the fan, ballast, sockets etc by sectioning off a part of the top and hiding everything in that, it can also be sound proofed with insulation. I have seen a brilliant example of this, a small lockable wooden bedside cabinet with a 250 HPS and 4 plant DWC that produces an average of 3.5 dry OZ each run in a very small space! ..... I wish it was mine!! From outside theres not a clue of whats going on inside. I think if you are looking at 250 watts of lighting then maybe you should conside something slightly bigger than a PC case maybe?

So many brilliant ideas about nowdays, I recall a guy who grew in a lockable metal gun cabinet under his bed, honestly! Light one end, pot the other and the plant was simply trained along the lenght of the cabinet towards the light and held down by weights horizontal grow style. He did well with it too. Clever stuff.

I think Im gonna be ok with my light - 125 watt dual spectrum cfl - 3 built in fans - and thanks V12 - I'm gonna do 2 for sure now...

I thought I'd be pushing it abit with 3! Good luck with Xander - are they cereal containers ur using? you have made them look as if they were made for growing in?! LOL

CV, is this a friend of yours that grew horizontal style ? Sounds awsome! complicated - but awsome!

Dude by far best pc grow ever!! i would like a few pointers please add me and message me because i could use your help on making mine

RedEyeJedi UK said:

CV, is this a friend of yours that grew horizontal style ? Sounds awsome! complicated - but awsome!

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Hi RedEye, it was a guy I used to know well on a small forum, he posted pics as it progressed. basically if you think about it it was just a standard grow! Pot was upright of course at one end and as they grew he just LST'd them using fishing weights until the stem was bent horizontally then just continued to train them along the lenght of the gun cabinet. The tips would all naturally turn upwards even though the light was at the other end so he kept on weighting them down as they grew He got a solid dry OZ+ from 2 small plants in that box which I thought was good going. Wish I still had the pics but hopefully you can sort of see how it worked from my dodgy description! He had an inline fan at the light end and passive intake holes at the other so the air flowed straight through the plants. The cabinet was laid on its side under a double bed so he could open the door for access. Gun cabinets are made of steel and obviously have very secure locks on them They come in different sizes and designed to be secured to solid walls in cupboards etc

Yeh, I agree CV - that really is clever thinking! Where do people learn to do this stuff?

LST is another thing I wonder about aswell - (it must of been a man that invented this!) refereing back to a comment made by the PC growing god himself V12 "Keep her in the dark and bend her over a lot" LOL

u should try paperclips and clothspins, they are ez to shape and clip to just about any pot or jar side.

v12xjs said:

Thanks FS. I have a 125w 2700K envirolite and I recently added a little 12w 6500K cfl to give 10% blue light. I did this because my grows seem to me to start giving yellow leaves a bit early in the flower stage. I know the buds take nitrogen from them so I wanted to be sure the buds have all the nitrogen they need.
I'm not sure if 10% is just right, but you can see the first yellowing leaves in the first pic below and that's about 3 weeks later than in previous attemps, so I'll stick with it for now.

Here's some more pics then. An individual shot from day 52 and a family pic from day 53.

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You know, i have had no problems with cutting those lower leaves off when they brown or yellow. it allows the plant to re-allocate nutrients to healthier leaves and the buds!

It's been busy in here today

Greets CV.
Thanks for the input. I couldn't agree more about fresh air. The inline fan would keep the heat at bay for sure and that would be a killer system, but those fans make a right racket so all thoughts of stealth would be out the window. The pc cases have no sound deadening capabilities where maybe a wooden cab would be good. Agree that a bigger growspace may be the way forward for the 250 watters.
A gun cabinet eh? What did he do with the gun? You have to marvel at some of the ingenuity involved in growing weed

Hey RedEye. Glad to help. I haven't tried one of the dual spectrums, but I do think there's some merit in having both even for a 12/12, so make sure and post up some pics.
Yup. Cereal containers from the pound shop and to hell with the expense
I think you will need a bit of lst in due course. Nothing hard about it though and you'll be a dab hand in no time.

Welcome helpmegrow and cheers for the props. My mailbox is a bit full just now but I'll tidy it up and drop you a line later.

Hi there outdoindo. Thanks for stopping by. Really appreciate the tips. Got any pics of your setup?

OutdoIndo said:

You know, i have had no problems with cutting those lower leaves off when they brown or yellow. it allows the plant to re-allocate nutrients to healthier leaves and the buds!

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I have to say I agree with you OutdoIndo, like so many things about this hobby some people will tell you not to do one thing while others do it as a matter of course I'm one of those who also removes yellowing fans and never found it a problem.

v12XJS..... would you say in conclusion that a skilled PC case grow like yours could sustain a moderate user? In my cabinet I reckon I get just enough to cover my 1/2 to 3/4 OZ per month requirement, since I 'lost' my larger scale grow I have cut down quite a bit but I want to try and push that up to a steady 1oz per month. I guess this should be one of the first questions we should ask ourselves when setting up a grow and work from there?

Fan leaf heathen!

Yes CV, the pc just about covers my needs but no spare change and any problems sees me rushing back on the streets for a top up
Have to say that I thought your rig was screaming out for a scrog but it seemed churlish to criticise such a nice setup

It's because I would like a little extra that I'm playing with sphagnum moss and the hempy experiment. I'll keep you posted on both.

Hell yeah, this site is so cool. No web warriors! Finally mature peeps to share with. My grow room (closet corner) is very simple and to me innovative. Mind you, I am only using 6 CFL's, a cheap blue & red LED panel (which turned out great for me) and the backside of some mylar-like christmas wrap, along with an Ionic Breeze. Also keep in mind that these plants are all just 35 days old, and each was treated very differently! 2 were topped (the bushiest one was topped very early), all were bound and trained with paperclips and clothspins to keep them lowriders Here are a few pix, sorry about the quality, my real camera was stolen. Any comments are welcome. Today I trapped a small wolf spider and dropped her into the biggest pot, hoping she will make herself at home somewhere in the vicenity.

If you look closely at pic 35-4, you can see the blue and red striped light provided by the LED panel.

Thanks for taking the time to post your journal, and for showing interest in mine!

Also, in reference to pruning and grooming, this baby is a beast, and it seems the more I groom her, the more she blooms!
I think she may be ready within the month, that's only 2 months total, from a seed! Makes me giddy. sorry if i already posted the pic, just wanted to emphasize the one that I have been trimming and pruning, and obviously she was not topped.

Hey Outdo
Little wolf spider on guard. Meh
What with floridasucks and his pink-toed tarantula, and CerebralVibrators description of a fish tank being used as a nute reservoir you'd need to drop a herd of rhino in there to impress me these days.
A tiger at the very least
Really interested in LED's myself. Once they are fully exploited they will be perfect for a microgrow.

No need to repeat yourself you know
Nice plant though. Is that the only auto or are the others just a bit behind in development?
Gotta say I think you would do so much better with a reflector above those lights.
You got lots of interesting ideas there, you should put up a journal of your own.

thanks for the advice V12 - I'll be buy another 2 lights in the near future, 1 blue 1 red (Should I go for 100w? or lower do ya think?)

Outdoindo, that is some serious LST work dude! starting them so young! I like it! LOL , The others look nice too! (Paper clips, now thats an idea - must get some tomorrow)

My babies are only just in there first rockwool cube, gonna get them in a second cube then start LST in the DWC - Will be posting pics as soon as I get it started with it!

Het RedEye
Bit wasted and I have a few grows I'm looking in on so I mix things up now and again. Didn't you say you had a 125 dual spec bilb? Much more than that in a pc case and you will get heat issues, but if I had a dual spec I would be looking to add flowering light.
DId you sya your bulb had 3 fans too? Tell me more...

yeah the only single cola, and i can't cover it without the heat and f'ing humidity shooting through the roof. right now it stays right between 75 and 87 degrees and between 30-40 percent humidity. with the covers or a top, they both shoot up 10 percent I know ur gonna say to ventilate better, but it's ok. but thanks for the pointer, any help is always welcome here. i plan on going closed box next-go-round