SickSadLittleWorld
Well-Known Member
Hey guys. I’ve been on hiatus from RIU for about 5 years now due to a lot of personal/family issues and going-ons. While I haven't stopped growing in the meantime, I have had to deal with less than ideal conditions and vertical space constraints, so the end product hasn't been remarkable by any means. Now that I have a large unfinished basement to grow in (with 12 ft ceilings), I’ve decided to step things up a bit from DWC buckets to a 3 week perpetual harvest Stinkbud-inspired aero/NFT setup (Thanks Stinkbud!). I am a CO med card holder, so everything I am doing is 100% legal under state law. Compared to the space I’m working with and some of the crazy setups here in CO, my setup is very small fry but still should produce 1.5 lb+ a month with minimal expense and effort.
Anyone is welcome to comment here and learn from my methods or offer solid, logical suggestions/criticisms to improve my setup but please be constructive and think through your comment before hitting the reply button. This grow journal is no place to parrot cannabis forum-specific bullshit like defoliation, flushing, cannabis-specific nutrients, etc. My methods aren’t foolproof or flawless by any means, but my patients and I are more than happy with the results.
So why aero/NFT? The theme of my growing method is lazy and cheap, yet savvy and having experimented with growing in soil, coco, hempy buckets, dwc, I’ve found this method to be the easiest and cheapest for ME…YMMV. The grow setup is completely automated to the point where I can literally walk away for a week or more and come back to thriving plants. I work a nasty 36 hour, 12 hour a day shift marathon over Fri/Sat/Sun and working down in the garden is the last thing I want to be doing when I get home from work those days. I use commercial hydroponic nutrients, so my biggest cost is electricity to run the lights, which is probably less than $120 a month. All my hydro setups are DIY using Stinkbud’s thread as inspiration (made a few modifications I’ll cover later). This setup could be similarly replicated for probably around $2000-2500.
OK, so I can grow a plant all the way through the cycle using this setup no problem, but the challenge this journal will document is the transition to a perpetual setup yielding x amount of bud every x days. Perpetual is always something I’ve strived for but the coordination and timing is something I never could seem to get right. Once I get that down, dialing the system in for maximum yields while eventually utilizing CO2 enrichment is my end game.
Setup:
Lights: 3 600w HPS flower (10 on/14 off), 1 400w MH veg (GLR: 12/1)
Nutrients: Hydro-gardens.com Chem-Gro Hydro Special Formula 5-11-26, CaNO3, and MgSO4. MKP is supplemented during late bloom. I gauge my nutrients using PPM at .5 conversion factor instead of EC, sorry all you EC purists…just easier for me that way. Veg is about 850ppm, early flower 1000ppm, and mid-late bloom 1300-1500ppm. pH kept at 5.7 in all reservoirs. RO water is used exclusively in reservoirs since tap water comes out at 320ppm. <$100 worth of nutrients should last many years of growing at my capacity. Thank you to the forum member that mentioned this company and their nutrients. I love the results and the cost savings!
Environment: Flowering space is a small corner of my basement about 6’x12’ with 3 600w HPS with a flowering unit under each. A 6” fan pulls air through the 400w in the tent and pushes through the 3 600w hoods outside the tent to exhaust toward the ceiling. The room being in a basement naturally remains fairly cool but is additionally air conditioned, maintaining around 75 degrees with lights on. No CO2 enrichment…yet. No res coolers, they stay consistently at 74 degrees being on the concrete floor. No odor control, don’t need it for the strain I currently grow…we’ll see about the recent additions.
Hydro setups:
I do my cloning and veg in a 3’ x 3’ tent with a piece of panda film in between the sections to shield the clones from the full intensity of the fan wind and the 400w MH. The clone section uses a 2 bulb T5 fixture.
Cloning setup uses a homemade aerocloner made exactly like Stinkbud’s aerocloner with 18 gal Roughneck tote, 396gph pump, and 6 EZ clone 360 deg nozzles. The only modification I made is the use of 3.75” net pots + neoprene collars instead of the 2” ones Stinkbud uses, leaving me with 11 cloning sites. Entire setup is designed around 3.75” net pots to grow bigger plants. Cycle timer set to 1 min ON, 8 min OFF for all my water pumps. Straight RO water, pH’ed to 5.7 added to cloner.
Veg setup is a simple two 25 gal tote DWC setup with a 571gph air pump feeding three stones in each tote, plenty of bubble action, six 3.75” net pot sites per tote. Flowering units only have six sites per, so the veg time per plant is 6 weeks…should grow some serious monsters. With 12’ ceilings, I’m not too concerned.
Flowering units are similar to Stinkbud’s except I use 5” fence post instead of 4” and used 3.75” net pots with hydroton as a medium, and added more slope to the pipe. Also went with a much larger 27 gal reservoir, so there’s about 5 gal per plant keeping the pH more stable and allowing more time between checking and res changes. These flowering units are cool because they are super portable (comes apart in 6 pieces for easy transport), easy to get under the plants, easy to check/change the res, lightweight, minimized leak possibility, and silent (when water isn’t running). The major downside of the setup is it lives and dies by the cycle timer and water pump working 100% of the time, a failure of either of those will kill the plants in no time.
I have built two of the three flower units in preparation for going perpetual, but until I have plants large enough to put in the third unit, there is no rush to build it yet.
Strains: Been growing Lemon Skunk for about a year now. It is a good smoke, very social and cerebral high, dense rock hard nugs, smells great, easy to trim, but the plant is the slowest growing strain I’ve ever grown, even in hydro, and as a result, yields are shitty. Just picked up some new genetics yesterday: Pineapple Express and Blueberry Diesel from clone, supposedly big, stinky producers. Also, looking to get a hold of a high CBD strain floating around the area for straight up medical purposes to round out my genetics with a nice mixture of hybrids and indicas. Not much of a full on sativa guy, looking to relax and melt into the couch when I toke.
Alright, enough blabber, let’s get on with the pictures….
Whole room setup (room for the third flowering unit, nutes in buckets on table):
Inside the clone/veg tent:
Veg Tubs (Top two are BD, Left bottom 4 are PE, Right bottom 2 are LS):
Flower Aero Setups (6 plants in left unit: 4 are ~5 weeks into flower, 2 are ~3 weeks into flower, mother in 5 gal DWC 1 week in. 2 in right unit put in yesterday):
Oh and 12oz Lemon Skunk harvest from 4 plants in previous 3.5 gal bucket DWC setup:
Anyone is welcome to comment here and learn from my methods or offer solid, logical suggestions/criticisms to improve my setup but please be constructive and think through your comment before hitting the reply button. This grow journal is no place to parrot cannabis forum-specific bullshit like defoliation, flushing, cannabis-specific nutrients, etc. My methods aren’t foolproof or flawless by any means, but my patients and I are more than happy with the results.
So why aero/NFT? The theme of my growing method is lazy and cheap, yet savvy and having experimented with growing in soil, coco, hempy buckets, dwc, I’ve found this method to be the easiest and cheapest for ME…YMMV. The grow setup is completely automated to the point where I can literally walk away for a week or more and come back to thriving plants. I work a nasty 36 hour, 12 hour a day shift marathon over Fri/Sat/Sun and working down in the garden is the last thing I want to be doing when I get home from work those days. I use commercial hydroponic nutrients, so my biggest cost is electricity to run the lights, which is probably less than $120 a month. All my hydro setups are DIY using Stinkbud’s thread as inspiration (made a few modifications I’ll cover later). This setup could be similarly replicated for probably around $2000-2500.
OK, so I can grow a plant all the way through the cycle using this setup no problem, but the challenge this journal will document is the transition to a perpetual setup yielding x amount of bud every x days. Perpetual is always something I’ve strived for but the coordination and timing is something I never could seem to get right. Once I get that down, dialing the system in for maximum yields while eventually utilizing CO2 enrichment is my end game.
Setup:
Lights: 3 600w HPS flower (10 on/14 off), 1 400w MH veg (GLR: 12/1)
Nutrients: Hydro-gardens.com Chem-Gro Hydro Special Formula 5-11-26, CaNO3, and MgSO4. MKP is supplemented during late bloom. I gauge my nutrients using PPM at .5 conversion factor instead of EC, sorry all you EC purists…just easier for me that way. Veg is about 850ppm, early flower 1000ppm, and mid-late bloom 1300-1500ppm. pH kept at 5.7 in all reservoirs. RO water is used exclusively in reservoirs since tap water comes out at 320ppm. <$100 worth of nutrients should last many years of growing at my capacity. Thank you to the forum member that mentioned this company and their nutrients. I love the results and the cost savings!
Environment: Flowering space is a small corner of my basement about 6’x12’ with 3 600w HPS with a flowering unit under each. A 6” fan pulls air through the 400w in the tent and pushes through the 3 600w hoods outside the tent to exhaust toward the ceiling. The room being in a basement naturally remains fairly cool but is additionally air conditioned, maintaining around 75 degrees with lights on. No CO2 enrichment…yet. No res coolers, they stay consistently at 74 degrees being on the concrete floor. No odor control, don’t need it for the strain I currently grow…we’ll see about the recent additions.
Hydro setups:
I do my cloning and veg in a 3’ x 3’ tent with a piece of panda film in between the sections to shield the clones from the full intensity of the fan wind and the 400w MH. The clone section uses a 2 bulb T5 fixture.
Cloning setup uses a homemade aerocloner made exactly like Stinkbud’s aerocloner with 18 gal Roughneck tote, 396gph pump, and 6 EZ clone 360 deg nozzles. The only modification I made is the use of 3.75” net pots + neoprene collars instead of the 2” ones Stinkbud uses, leaving me with 11 cloning sites. Entire setup is designed around 3.75” net pots to grow bigger plants. Cycle timer set to 1 min ON, 8 min OFF for all my water pumps. Straight RO water, pH’ed to 5.7 added to cloner.
Veg setup is a simple two 25 gal tote DWC setup with a 571gph air pump feeding three stones in each tote, plenty of bubble action, six 3.75” net pot sites per tote. Flowering units only have six sites per, so the veg time per plant is 6 weeks…should grow some serious monsters. With 12’ ceilings, I’m not too concerned.
Flowering units are similar to Stinkbud’s except I use 5” fence post instead of 4” and used 3.75” net pots with hydroton as a medium, and added more slope to the pipe. Also went with a much larger 27 gal reservoir, so there’s about 5 gal per plant keeping the pH more stable and allowing more time between checking and res changes. These flowering units are cool because they are super portable (comes apart in 6 pieces for easy transport), easy to get under the plants, easy to check/change the res, lightweight, minimized leak possibility, and silent (when water isn’t running). The major downside of the setup is it lives and dies by the cycle timer and water pump working 100% of the time, a failure of either of those will kill the plants in no time.
I have built two of the three flower units in preparation for going perpetual, but until I have plants large enough to put in the third unit, there is no rush to build it yet.
Strains: Been growing Lemon Skunk for about a year now. It is a good smoke, very social and cerebral high, dense rock hard nugs, smells great, easy to trim, but the plant is the slowest growing strain I’ve ever grown, even in hydro, and as a result, yields are shitty. Just picked up some new genetics yesterday: Pineapple Express and Blueberry Diesel from clone, supposedly big, stinky producers. Also, looking to get a hold of a high CBD strain floating around the area for straight up medical purposes to round out my genetics with a nice mixture of hybrids and indicas. Not much of a full on sativa guy, looking to relax and melt into the couch when I toke.
Alright, enough blabber, let’s get on with the pictures….
Whole room setup (room for the third flowering unit, nutes in buckets on table):
Inside the clone/veg tent:
Veg Tubs (Top two are BD, Left bottom 4 are PE, Right bottom 2 are LS):
Flower Aero Setups (6 plants in left unit: 4 are ~5 weeks into flower, 2 are ~3 weeks into flower, mother in 5 gal DWC 1 week in. 2 in right unit put in yesterday):
Oh and 12oz Lemon Skunk harvest from 4 plants in previous 3.5 gal bucket DWC setup:
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