Aero Bagseed Grow - The ANTI-Aerogarden

First off this is an experiment so results may vary and some things i do may seem a litlte weird


Second, i would like to thank filthyfletch for inspiring me to build this unit! Ill never go back, aero all the way.


Ok so basically here we have your average rubbermaid tote turned into an aero unit. 22 sites with 3" pots. 400GPH pump picked up at local hydro store for 25 bucks, PVC pipe in H shape with 10 sprayers installed. Not all of them are in use, only around 15. and three of them are clones that have been through hell and back as another experiment i will talk about in a minute

Some seeds were germinated in paper towels, and then dumped straight into hydroton, others were put into rockwool until they sprouted and then the cubes were inserted into the hydroton

All these plants are random bag seed, and you can ell each one has very different genetics!

The plants are now 3 weeks old, they did miss out on an entire week of growth because they almost all died from root rot. The res temp was above 80 degrees! I have learned that in aero you want to keep your solution in the mid-upper 60's. Once i got that all correct the plants took a few days to recover and have since BLOWN UP. you can still see on the first nodes where the leaves are pretty much dead
I'm treating with about a half cup of H202 every 3 days,

I have had some issues keeping the ph in check, as i do not have a digital meter yet and i am not good matching the colors up, so im sure ive stunted some growth there. Also i do not have any way to measure nutes yet (that meter is on order and should be here soon) ive been dumping fox farm grow big in there a little more at a time every day, and i havent reached a point where there has been any nute burn, and i am sure ive went past the "heavy feeding" dosage.. so im not sure what the deal is there. i would love to see what the ppm is at

Anyways, i just switched to 12/12 today, so im getting ready for the stretch and to toss out the ballsack laden plants..

I did practice topping on a couple plants and LST on one of them in here. However most of them i will be taking clones off of and them tonight and whichever ones turn out female will be put into my next grow in two weeks so ill have two of these units under my one 600w bulb


The last pic i posted of that small pathetic thing is a clone i took from a plant two days before harvest! The stem on the clone was seriously an EIGHTH OF AN INCH long. it finally has started to grow a root structure almost a month later and is showing some growth. Im going to put it into its own 5 gallon aero bucket under some CFLs and try to get it to mother out. My hope is that this plant will be able to give me enough clones in a month to start another round of growing, and after this ill have the game down enough to be able to justify ordering some real seeds. and ill have another light and enough setup to do a SOG


My final plans will be two 600w lights with four of these aero units, then a couple mothers under a small MH light in 5 gallon aero buckets or maybe just normal DWC, with clones rooting in rockwool under flouro tubes (that's how i do that now)

within the next week i will be flushing my tank and switching over to general hydroponic three part nutes and moving toward a bloom schedule, and i should have my digital ph and ppm meters by next week sometime as well.

Also i use reverse osmosis water that i get from a place down the street for a dollar per 5 gallons, and these little bitches have been sucking it dry the past few days.

really it's amazing, at first you are like "man these dont really grow much faster than soil.

once the root structure gets down in the solution good the plants just EXPLODE with growth.

I have been considering keeping frozen 20 oz or 2 liter bottles in my freezer and cycling them into the solution once in a while to keep the temps nice and cool. has anyone ever done anything like this? Also would a bubbler/airstone work good in this? since the roots do end up getting into the water, and this is basically a hybrid between aero/DWC, would some bubbles be beneficial to my cause?


Also i spent
10 dollars on the tote
10 dollars on sprayers
25 on the pump
less than 10 bucks on everything else combined

and i paid more than i needed to for everything, it can all be had cheaper.

you can get a 600w hps from HTG for 200ish


so for around 250, you can have this same setup

this is why i call it the anti-aerogarden. by the time you buy that thing, hack it up to get it to work right, try to add a bunch of CFLS and in the end it still fails, and even if you do get a harvest, it will be crap compared to what you could have done for the same amount of money you probably have into "aerogarden modifications"

so we'll call this day 1 of flowering. Lights are now 12/12 Pump is 24/0
good luck to me

Day two of flowering

They seem like they are already reacting to the 12 hour light cycle and have started a light stretch.

I took pics of my two favorite plants

the first one is just gigantic compared to the rest, stalk is bigger around than a sharpie marker and fan leaves are bigger than my hands. it really drawfed the other plants and while it's not even a foot tall the roots are about three feet long.

The second one i just liked the bushiness, but notice the roots are not very long. they have gained mass but have not went much toward the water latetly


I plan on taking clones off of the plants tomorrow. Lower branches are obviously not seeing enough light to keep them there, so im going to lollypop most of the plants. I still dont know the sexes so im just going to number them and their clones and toss the ones that are male.

Then i should be able to start another grow in two weeks with all clones and have two totes under the one 600w light

I am also building another tote to support a mother for my DWC setup. This will probably be using CFL's for the time being, but it will be decent in my basement since it will need little ventilation because of heat not being an issue.

My eventual plan is obviously a SOG style grow, I would like to go with 4-5 totes in total flowering, with 2-3 600w HPS lights. I still am experimenting around so i guess we'll know soon

Plus spring is coming soon, so it's time to get some mothers cranking out clones with the quickness

I am having trouble using attachments today for some reason...

nice thread mate. Good luck, yer tagged.

Nice looking set up you've got going. looks like the plants like it.

ok my uploads are working again

you can see my room is staying very COOL right now only 67 degrees on the canopy. I guess this is the advantage to the basement, althouth i am having to keep the closet door open right now or else it will get up to ~80ish in there

i need to get my venting installed

right now im just opening the door within an hour or two of the lights turning on and shutting the door an hour or two before they come on, even though the basement is dark i am making sure there's 0 chance of my sexing period getting screwed up, although i should have decent ventilation in a few days

You can probably see some damage on the lower nodes from when i had the root rot problem because of temps being too high and my ph being too high for a bit. live and learn

I will note that the plants go great no matter what as long as things are decently close to what they should be, it's hard to mess this up. But having PERFECT ph makes a BIG difference.

Day 3 flower



nothing exciting, didnt get around to the pruning activities today. i swear i will soon. Looks like they may have continued a little bit on their stretch

tonight im going to add 5-10 gallons of water to the res. it was lower than i expected when i checked it today. these babies are drinking that stuff right up!

I didnt have but 5 minutes to spend in the room so i didnt get to do anything besides check the ph and snap a few pics. hopefully by mid-week we'll start seeing some white hairs

Very nice set-up. Are the roots tangling at all? Also, is a hydro store the only place to get net pots? I can't find them anywhere.

Sweet grow. I'll be watching.
Good Luck with the white hairs!!

Peace

roots arent tangling so far. i imagine ill only have six or so plants once sexing happens so that canopy will thin out a little. I'll take a picture of the inside on tomorrow's episode of pimp my grow room

time will tell!

Where did you learn to build that thing? and what to buy for it?

I got a lot of the info on how to design it from filthyfletch, who is a member on here and often posts how-to's

after i took that i just improvised where i wanted to make it match my needs.
it is fairly straightforward.

i will post pics of the inside and stuff sometime. i have no real updates today. i was too busy to take pics today. hopefully i can work with it more tomorrow

The plants have started their stretch phase

I am flushing my res tomorow and switching over to GH 3 part that i picked up at the hydro store yesterday along with a syringe for exact measurements of nutes

I was using FOX FARM grow big previously.


I fail at pictures again today, i have had a lot going on and have just barely had enough time to take care of the bare necessities. It kinda pisses me off because i wanted to take a picture from the exact spot every day of flowering and then make a time lapse of it when i was done. Maybe once they are sexed

Im just hoping my one monster plant turns out to have vaginas.


I promise pictures tomorrow!

Well im posting this update as my light is about to come back on so ill have another one soon


This one is crap everything looks like shit. my res got really low and out of balance, i think the light might be too close so i have to work on something there.

anyways i flushed out the res and added 15 gallons of RO water. and switched over to a GH 3 part. half strength. and mixing equal parts for the transition from veg to bloom

i think my water was too cold and shocked the plants. im hoping when i go look at them in a few they are looking better.


Needs right now are hygrozyme to desolve some dead roots and some more h202 to keep it lookin clean
i also need a good ppm meter and a new Ph meter, im using color ph tests and i know it's hindering my growth.

All of my stuff was stolen last night when i was out for patty's day.

Nobody really knew about this stuff so im kind of freaked out, nothing else in my house was touched.

everything it gone though, all my nutes, timers, aero unit, light, ballast, ph kit, EVERYTHING

my car was even parked out front

Holy shit dude, that sucks! And it's pretty freaky. How many people knew about your grow??

obviously more than i thought.

I am really freaking out about this.

I just got all new nutes and stuff, all i was waiting on is some hygrozyme and my ph/tds meters and i would have everything needed to go start to finish (well my own RO machine would be nice)

back to square one, plus now that this happened im fearing doing anything else.

ph and tds meters came today

unfortunately my hydro unit and light are still stolen

I still can't believe your setup got robbed, man. Sucks bad.

Are you going to replace the lights and hydro and start again? At this point I'd still be a little shady about it, and I don't know that I'd feel altogether comfortable with it until I had moved somewhere else.

Good luck, though. If you do decide to grow again I'll stay here and watch it all go down, and hopefully I'll have enough experience to help out a little, too.