Dave's First Grow - started Dec 8, 2010

Daveroller - I sub'd and can't wait to see this baby take off!

I like that you post your nutes - can you post the PPM as well? Hows your rez temp?

Still not sure what the problem is with my little plant. I wasn't monitoring the nutrient level in my reservoir, so thought it could be over-fertilization. But I checked it last night and the levels seemed to be ok:
... pH=6.49, EC=2100, ppm=1049

Anyway, today I changed the water and scrubbed everything in the res down with detergent and even bleached the pumps and rinsed them thoroughly. Also boiled all of the Hydroton pellets and rinsed them thoroughly. Flushed out the plant's starter plug thoroughly with tap water. Added the nutes & fresh water:
... pH=6.03, EC=2046, ppm=1023

(This is from adding 44 ml Sensi-Grow A, 44 ml Sensi-Grow B, 22 ml B-52, 22 ml Voodoo Juice to 3 gallons H2O. Also added a few ml of "pH UP" to raise the pH level a bit.)

Before cleaning out the res, the water was murky & brown and smelled foul. That couldn't have been good!

Here are some pics from today of my poor plant:


New growth looks okay, but that hasn't been lasting very long. Not very many roots are visible sticking out of the starter plug and overall plant growth seems slow up to now. I hope that my intervention fixes the problem. I'll be monitoring pH & EC daily from now on.

The water in the res is nice and cool, around 70 degrees F or less.

More seeds arrived in the mail this week, so I'm planning to sprout 2 more plants to keep this one company.

Plant started growing faster after I changed the stinky water and rinsed/sterilized everything that contacts the water. New leaves are nice and green and growing pretty fast now. Res water is still clear and clean smelling.

Pics from 12-30:


Pics from 12-31:


Pics from 01-01:


The last photo shows my new fan that blows air at the plant. This will cool it off, make the stem stronger and help the plant breathe better I hope. It's just a computer fan that I bought for $10. I have another one that I'll mount after I get more vegetation.

I planted 2 more seeds in starter plugs tonight. This time the plugs are coconut coir, I think. Put them in net baskets hanging in my sprouting tub, which is on top of a heating mat. Placed plastic dome over top of tub.

pH, EC measurements and adjustments:

12-28:

• pH=6.49 (borderline high)
• EC=2100
• ppm=1049

adjusted pH down:

• pH=5.98
• EC=2520
• ppm=1257

12-29:

• pH=5.38 (too low)
• EC=2040
• ppm=1017

adjusted pH up:

• pH=6.03
• EC=2046
• ppm=1023

01-01:

• pH=6.69 (too high)
• EC=2120
• ppm=1057

Res was down a bit, so added 1/2 gal of water, then adjusted the pH down:

• pH=5.80
• EC=1855
• ppm=929

Res water temp has been 65 degrees F every time I've measured it, so that's good.

• Thinking of trimming off the sick leaves tomorrow, but not sure if I should.
• Anyone have advice on that?

01-02:
pH=6.08
EC=1891
ppm=945
Temp=67 F

Not to get overly excited about every new leaf, but it's my first grow, so I love to watch the progress.

New pics from last night (01-02):


So far the new leaves are looking much healthier than the first 2 pairs, so I think that whatever the problem was, it's fixed now. Fingers crossed.

your plant seem to be somewhat stunted, but that could be shock from you sterilizing earlier. I would cut way back on the nuts, and watering again. I have a feeling its over watering man. try just feeding once every other day, try running the nuts at about 400-600 ppm. It shouldn't need all that fertilizer just yet. Your plant should show signs if it needs more watering or higher ppm of fertilizer. You might just be rotting the roots man.

bluntly hell said:

your plant seem to be somewhat stunted, but that could be shock from you sterilizing earlier. I would cut way back on the nuts, and watering again. I have a feeling its over watering man. try just feeding once every other day, try running the nuts at about 400-600 ppm. It shouldn't need all that fertilizer just yet. Your plant should show signs if it needs more watering or higher ppm of fertilizer. You might just be rotting the roots man.

Click to expand...

I'm afraid you might be right. I'll cut back on the watering schedule so that the starter plug won't always be soaking wet. Maybe I'll move the feeding tube lower so that it doesn't keep saturating the plug. I don't see any roots dangling out the bottom of the net basket anymore and don't see any new leaves today. Not encouraging.

I'm learning as I go. Hopefully, I'll be able to rescue this first plant of mine and grow it to maturity.

Initial readings:

• pH=6.23
• EC=1944
• ppm=928
• temp=70 F

Added 1/2 gal of water and got these readings:

• pH=6.23 (no change)
• EC=1727
• ppm=864
• temp=69 F

Wanted to lower pH a bit, so added a few drops of pH down:

• pH=6.09
• EC=1732
• ppm=867
• temp=69 F

The tubes in a good spot man. Are you feeding from the tube and spraying the roots on the bottom? Another question to man, Are you using regular tap water? If you are consider buying distilled or getting a filter of some kind. The chlorine in tap can have a hard effect on plants. I found hydro Really confusing at first, but the time the plants grew best for me was when i put almost no effort into growing it lol.
I think your doing pretty damn good for your first grow. Starting out is hard, it looks so easy until you realize all the variables involved in growing. experience is your best friend man! Honestly, i check my plants once a week. my buddy takes care of them, and he doesn't know the first thing about growing anything. he just waters them every few days. I never fertilize lol, have one 400w light, but the plants are starting to smell out of control and are looking pretty decent. Point is, to much love can kill brotha!

bluntly hell said:

The tubes in a good spot man. Are you feeding from the tube and spraying the roots on the bottom? Another question to man, Are you using regular tap water? If you are consider buying distilled or getting a filter of some kind. The chlorine in tap can have a hard effect on plants. I found hydro Really confusing at first, but the time the plants grew best for me was when i put almost no effort into growing it lol.
I think your doing pretty damn good for your first grow. Starting out is hard, it looks so easy until you realize all the variables involved in growing. experience is your best friend man! Honestly, i check my plants once a week. my buddy takes care of them, and he doesn't know the first thing about growing anything. he just waters them every few days. I never fertilize lol, have one 400w light, but the plants are starting to smell out of control and are looking pretty decent. Point is, to much love can kill brotha!

Click to expand...

Thanks for the advice you've been giving me. I'm not sure how to make the roots come out from hiding in the starter plug and start venturing down towards the reservoir water. Tonight I tried moving the feeding tube closer to the inside wall of the net basket, so that it doesn't keep soaking the starter plug. I also changed the interval so that it now only pumps water for a minute every 2 hours.

I haven't attached any sprayers inside of the tote under the plant yet. Haven't found any good spray nozzles so far. I probably need to do this and when the roots come dangling out, I'll increase the feeding frequency to about once every 15-20 minutes to keep the bare roots from drying out. I'll see if I can rig something up this week.

No, I don't use tap water, just pure water that was filtered by RO.

If you want to stimulate root growth, i would suggest hooking up the sprayers underneath and just feed from the bottom, not getting the top part wet. Honestly, i wouldn't get sprayers, I would go full on bubble and get a powerful air pump and some good air stones.

bluntly hell said:

If you want to stimulate root growth, i would suggest hooking up the sprayers underneath and just feed from the bottom, not getting the top part wet. Honestly, i wouldn't get sprayers, I would go full on bubble and get a powerful air pump and some good air stones.

Click to expand...

Why wouldn't you use sprayers? Is bubbleponics better? I'm already using a good air stone. I cobbled together something tonight that I can try tomorrow. Just have to drill some holes in it, attach sprayer nozzles and hook it up to the water pump.

My 2 new seeds sprouted today. Whew! It takes a while for these to sprout. Put 1/2 strength nutes in fresh water today, so that I can start growing the seedlings before next week. The new starter plugs are much better than the ones I used originally.

Today I installed a new sprinkler system inside of my reservoir, to water the plants from below. Here's what it looks like:

Just some CPVC tubing, my main water pump and some sprinkler fittings. Had to drill out the inside end of the CPVC pipe to 1/2" to make it fit the output from the pump.

Here are some photos of it inside of my res:

Works great! It sprinkles water pretty evenly around the top of the res. The airstone is still in the water, still aerating away. For now I set the timer to sprinkle 5 minutes on, 5 minutes off. This is MUCH better than having all those messy hoses inside the res running out to the pots from above. A lot less stuff for the roots to get tangled up in, too.

Here's a little video clip of the sprinklers in action:
[video=youtube;MZVYF7LCnAQ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZVYF7LCnAQ[/video]

Also set the 2 new seedlings in the system after they got over an inch tall. Cut back the nutes to about half yesterday and am only using half of the fluorescent lights. Hopefully, that won't hurt the older plant.

Tested the water this morning:

• pH=6.11
• EC=1070
• ppm=522

I think this should be okay, since the starter plugs for the seedlings are saturated with pure water. That should act as a buffer against the nutrient-fortified water being sprinkled on the net pots.

Here are the latest photos of my plants:

My older plant continues to have bright yellow leaves in the new growth, but its older leaves are green. According to my book on marijuana plant illnesses, it looks like a possible iron (Fe) deficiency.
Here's the photo from the book:


The only problem is that if I increase the nutrient level of the water, my new seedlings could get nutrient burn. Right now the nute concentration is about half strength for them. My seedlings are more important to me, because the older plant has been sick already, so I'll sacrifice that one if I have to choose. So I'll keep feeding them half strength until the seedlings can handle full strength.

No pictures of the garden today, since it hasn't changed too much from last time. But seedlings are getting taller.

I changed the feeding schedule again, to make it closer to the recommended ebb & flow schedule that I read somewhere. Now it's set to:

• 5 min every 4 hours

The sprinklers give the pots a good soaking whenever they come on. I think that 4 hours might be long enough to let the exposed roots get some air. Not sure if this is the right way to go, but I'm still experimenting.

New photos.

01-09:

It's very dry in my house now, because we've been running the furnace & heaters a lot to keep warm. So I put these clear plastic containers over the plants to hold in some humidity.

Roots from front seedling:

Roots from back seedling:

The seedlings continue to do well. Just overnight their leaves got visibly larger. Now they're bigger than the first "fake" rounded leaves and more leaves are just coming out.

Close-ups:

Front seedling:
Back seedling:
Old plant:

Seedlings are still my main priority, so not increasing nute level yet in order to spare them from nutrient burn. But I sprayed some nutrient solution on the leaves of the older plant. Upper leaves show signs of an iron deficiency. But since I started foliar feeding, at least the veins are getting darker. Not sure if it will live, but it's a good way to practice nursing a sick plant. We'll see how it does.

01-08:
pH=6.10
EC=1046
ppm=526

01-09:
pH=5.85
EC=874
ppm=434

Water temp has been consistently around 66 degrees F.

The older plant seems to just not want to grow! Great work on the sprayer system man, looks great! The only reason i suggested going full bubble is because of all the oxygen that would get pumped into the rooting zone, and also sometimes nutrients can be thick and clog up sprayers.Anyhow, The newer plants are looking good man. Honestly, i would take the older plant out of the system and just stick it in a pot of soil. Leave the other plants growing in the hydro! That feeding schedule seems pretty aggressive to me. With my first hydro grow i had a hard time finding out how often to feed the plants. Honestly man, cut it back to once a day at the max right now. I would only water every other day or until the growth medium became somewhat dry. When the plants got a bit bigger i started feeding more often, like 2 times a day.

bluntly hell said:

The older plant seems to just not want to grow! Great work on the sprayer system man, looks great! The only reason i suggested going full bubble is because of all the oxygen that would get pumped into the rooting zone, and also sometimes nutrients can be thick and clog up sprayers.Anyhow, The newer plants are looking good man. Honestly, i would take the older plant out of the system and just stick it in a pot of soil. Leave the other plants growing in the hydro! That feeding schedule seems pretty aggressive to me. With my first hydro grow i had a hard time finding out how often to feed the plants. Honestly man, cut it back to once a day at the max right now. I would only water every other day or until the growth medium became somewhat dry. When the plants got a bit bigger i started feeding more often, like 2 times a day.

Click to expand...

I understand your advice about bubbleponics. I am using a nice air stone & powerful air pump, so the water being sprayed is oxygenated. Do you think that after the seedlings grow a bit, maybe I can set the timer to spray fairly often? I was thinking something like 10 seconds of spray every 10 minutes. Remember, the water does have a lot of air in it, so it shouldn't drown the roots.

That damn older plant is dying! For some reason the roots aren't growing out the bottom of the pot like the seedlings' roots are, so I think that's why it's undernourished. I'm probably going to dump it pretty soon.

Anyway, thanks for your advice, bluntly.

Pics from earlier today (01-11):


I really like how the roots are growing out of the pots:


pH=6.02
EC=911
ppm=453

Unfortunately, the leaves wilted bad on my older plant, so I'm probably going to throw it out tomorrow.