Sneaky CFL Ponics Grow

hay people

so here goes my first post, been one of those lurkers for the past little while. thought i'd just bump up what i've got going so far. never attempted to grow before, let alone what i've managed to achieve so far. guess i'm looking for some advice, tips and stuffs.



the setup itself is quite stealth too. right now, it's all inside a desktop box (yes, i know, it's lame) but i do have every intention of up scaling once i've gotten the hang of it. got some airflow going too, two 12cm fans (inflow & outflow). keeps it running coolish.

as far as lighting goes, running an 85w eurolux (south african brand) 6500k, 5100lm. running 18/6. had it left over from my marine tank days, should do the trick for now?



this is the fun part, for the ponics i pretty much browsed a couple threads and sites, headed down to the garden centre and picked up what i figured i needed. it's like a double pot, with the nets (rockwool + hydroton) suspended just above the water level in what were, two pot bases. nutrients fed to said pots via a little pump and some bootleg piping. there's an air stone in there too. speaking of nutrients, just got some GHE micro and bloom. seems to be working a treat.



with regards to what i'm actually growing, don't really have an idea. just chucked the seeds from some nice section into some potting soil and let them do their own thing. then took the two best looking ones and relocated them to the wool. guess it's a start.

so far the only problem i've encountered is, on the left plant, some leaf damage from what i presume was having them too close to the bulb. i've since lowered them a little. rad.

let me know what you think. would appreciate it.

tc10

im digging the mini hydro setup... be cool to see what type of yield you get out of it

So how much water is in there? Do you monitor pH?

i'm not really sure what to expect really. guess this is a little bit of a trial-run for me.

filled it with 1.6 litres, which is a little less than half a gallon i guess. got roughly 2.5ml of the micro and 5ml of the grow in there. i've got a ph tester. advisable to monitor it?

well this is day two in the box i think. finally got the fans running properly so the heat is way down, led me to raising the pots again. hoping they won't burn.



changed things around in the case, took those silly side panels away and just lined the whole thing, much more space. testing the ph neow. also, i think i broke the timer. or the bulb must be pulling too much from it because it clicks. need to do something about that.



also, thrown another 3 in for the ride. they've been growing happily along in the soil. on just plain water.

a little update. they're running 24/7 now. over the broken timer. just topped up nutrients, seem to dig it.

yesterday (23.10.2009)


today (24.10.2009)


they're all doing about the same, the one still has some leaf damage but that's chilled.

looks like an interesting grow should be fun to watch

looks good i wanna see how that hydro set up turns out

Looks like a nice little stealth grow. Good luck and keep us updated.

here are some taken from this mornings.



thanks for the interest guys, pretty happy with how it's turning out so far considoring it cost me around R250 (which is around $33) for everything minus the enclosure, but i had that already.



spied the first bit of root growth out of the net pots. seems like they're drinking nutes. just had to top it up now.

p.s. don't know what that white buildup on the hydroton is. think it's bad?

Hey, I was wondering how you got the PC case fans working like that without MoBo and power supply

Psilobloom said:

Hey, I was wondering how you got the PC case fans working like that without MoBo and power supply

Click to expand...

simply wired both fans to a 12v ac adapter i had lying around. heard of people using phone chargers etc. there must be a thread on here somewhere...

a little photie taken this evening...

The white build may be as simple as lime scale from water evaporating or it may be salts from nutrients. Shouldn't be problem unless you are giving them too much nutrients.

reg, some pictures. some intense white root growth is going on. so i'm pretty happy. this is day seven.







laters.

forum. awe. attached the pics from today (day 9) at the bottom. sick. everything seems to be rocking. just wondering. if i were to flower those in that space. how would i best go about doing that? methods and techniques wise i guess..

oh, got some seeds from whatever is the last picture (i have no idea) but it does the trick. pretty well. so if this all works out i'll start those.

oh #2 (yeaah), with regards to sexing. when in the grow can i expect to be able to tell? i presume i'd want to get rid of any males?

thanks

looks kike it might get tight in there can you move your light up a bit ? you will be able to tell the sex after about 2-3 weeks of changing the light schedule 2 12/12

a little end-of-the-month post.

at the moment, they're sitting on a box and some cd cases to raise height. so i've still got a fair amount of space left, here's a picture with all the crap below it removed so you can see.



then some plant shots, had a long long power cut this morning, which left them without any pump/light etc for a good 8 hours. but they seem fine.

i did top them (i think that's right) yesterday evening, both of them, as you can see in the picture below, seems to have worked, got 2 coming through. think that was a good thing to do?





there are some more shots in the little attachment box, along with the root growth. check it out.

thanks!

this is awesome, would realy love to know what u used as far as materials besides the bulb and fans looks great

hey, here's a bunch of pictures i took this evening (now). the amount of growth going on with the plant on the right is amazing. between the two of them, they're emptying the res every 20 hours or so. about 1.6 litres of water. gotta keep a close eye on them. left them for just under a day and one had grown into the cfl. problem.



these pictures were taken just before i topped the res up again, so you can see what's going on inside. it's really basic, just a tiny little pump, some hosepipe with a cap and then the feeder tubes coming from there. sure there are more pretty looking ways to do it, but this is budget.



check out the pics and let me know what you think so faaar. this is around the second week since moving them to the rockwool. any idea of when i should start the 12/12 and flowering nutes to keep them both within the case? picking up a replacement timer tomorrow.

thaanks

hey nice job there man. got a quick question though can you take a picture of how the system operates? the pictures that were above were to close for me to check out whats going on. i ave been trying to figure out how to get something similiar to this going for some time now.