FMJ's First Cabinet Grow - C99 x Apollo 11 from seed

Welcome to my first grow journal using my new DIY grow cabinet to grow some C99 x A11 and maybe a few other strains. Please feel free to make suggestions, comments, criticisms, and question. Any help is greatly appreciated. Many pictures, regular, updates, and details promised. Thanks for stopping by.

-NOTE -
Post 1 and 2 is are Cabinet and Materials (these two posts will be dynamic, i will add to them as the grow proceeds and i find i need items)
Post 3 is on Nutes im Using (Dynamic as well, will add to as i add nutes)
Post 4 on Then the fun starts with the grow

Break out the pics.
I love DIY.

Cabinet

I decided to build my own cabinet as I wanted a fully contained unit(veg, flower, mother) and could not find one on the market. I used the SuperCloset, CoolCab, Bloom box, and all the DIY cabinets on ROI for inspiration. I think i have developed somewhat of a cabinet/grow room fetish ..lol

Outside View - The cabinets are Sandusky Elite. Each cabinet measures 36" x 24" x 78". I used the 4 shleves inside each one to cut-up with a plasma gun and utilize in the cab for duct/covers, particians etc....


Inside View

FatMat Insulation for sound dampening



Painted with Kilz 2 Primer and 6 coats of Kool Seal Elastometric Roofing Paint that is said to be 90%+ reflective. I originally used panda paper but did not like how sloppy it looked. This paint is like rubber, it is easy to clean and looks good. There are no gaps whats so ever that any uglies can hide and grow in.

w/panda


Panda removed and painted, notice how much cleaner.





Utility chamber close-up.
-Still need to clean it up.
-The Sentinial CHHC-1 CO2 controler had to be sent back as they had a recall. It should be sent back to me in 2-3 weeks.



Added door to util chamber



Close-up of Flower chamber with light all the way lowered. (will be used with 600MH to veg sometime too)



Light ventalation and carbon filter for the flower chamber. This pic was taken looking up at the light. Notice how the cabs are joined together as to not sacrifice height of my flower chamber. Both the can 33 and the cooltube light have their own 478cfm S&P inline fans on speed controllers.



Close-up of veg and mother chamber.
-The shelf on the right has 2 ft above and blow it to hold 3 mothers.
-That metal ducting on the right is where the 20lb C02 tank will go. The white "box" it is sitting on houses my intake ducting for flower and veg chambers. Intakes are 6" with back draft dampners to keep all smell, light, C02 for coming in when exhaust fan is off.
-Veg chamber has own can 2600 and 100cfm S&P inline fan.



This is high level overview, please ask any questions for on specefics as i have many close-up pictures and can explain. You can also visit by build thread linked in my signature text. I have made a few changes since then but the majority of the design is in there.

If anyone can offer any advice on any changes/mods needed it would be greatly appreciated.

Below is a list of the items im using- (not nearly completed, will add as I go)

PH-TDS Meters-
Nutradip Tri-meter (for the veg chamber DWC)
Hanna Gro-Check Meter (for flower chamber DWC)
Handheld Hanna Waterproof PH meter (so I can check accuarcy of monitors/back-up)

Lights
Flower Chamber
-600 Watt Digital GreenHouse Switchable Ballast (HTG Supply)
-6" Cooltube (new model with black cord that comes out that top, be careful people will give deals on the white cord ones that restrict more airflow)
-Eye Hortilux 600 HPS Bulb
-SunMaster 600 MH Conversion Bulb
Veg Chamber
-270 Watt SunSystem 8 bulb 2' T5
-8 Blue Spectum GE Bulbs
-8 Red Spectrum GE Bulbs
Mother Chamber
-4 standard sockets
-2 -24 watt Red Spectrum
-4 -24 watt Blue Spectrum
-2 -42 watt Blue Spectrum (think thats what they are)

DWC-
- 3 -31 Gallon Rubbermaid RoughNeck Totes (multiples so I could double up for strength and have different lid arrangements as far as plant count)
- 4 -18 Gallon Rubbermaid RoughNeck Totes (multiples so I could double up for strength and have different lid arrangementsas far as plant count )
-GH Dual Diaghram AirPump (320 GPH-six ouput)
-12 -Multiple Airstones, mostly standard blue 12" and 5" Round
-4 - Air Dividers that split 4 ways. (so 14 potential oulets)
-.25 inch airline tubing
-2 - 350 GPH magneteic submersible water pumps ( was going to go areo, now may just use them for res changes or and if i add a res chiller)

Enviro Controls
-2 -S&P TD-200x 478 cfm 8" inline fans (one for light tube other for cab exhaust)
-1 -S&P TD-100x 94 cfm 4" inline fan (for veg/mother exhaust)
- Can Filter 33 rated at 200cfm (flower chamber)
- Can Filter 2600 rated at 50 cfm (veg and mother chamber)
- Hepa filter screen for intake air
- 2 Fantech 6" Backdraft Dampners
- 3 Speedster Speed Controls for fans
- Vent Cover to disguise intakes painted same color as cab

Brains/Electronics
-2- Continuos Monitors for temp-tds-ph (mentioned above)
-3- Temp/Hum Monitors (Flower - Veg - Outside of cab)
-Sentenial CHHC-1 CO2 complete controller (exhaust at certain temps and hum levels, control C02 PPM, etc)
-3 Generic Webcams to monitor cab from my computer (still need to set-up, had them wireless but that makes me nervous security wise)
-One looking at temps/hum/C02 PPM/timers
-One looking direcy at plants in flower
-One checking the 2 PH-TEMP-TDS Meters

What a great set up. What was the cost to set that up? If you don't mind me asking? lol

Nutrients and Related Items


- Basically doing Lucas Formula with some additions. Basically just grabbed what i found people liked, was popular, and easy to use.

I will update this with a list later, but what I currently have is in the pic below. (Pepsi can is just there for size refrence.)


-4 LB KoolBloom not pictured
-OregonRootsXL not pictured
-Clonex Rooting Gel Not pictured.
*That big middle one is 6.5 gallon GH Bloom.

***I would not recommend getting that 6.5 gallon GH Bloom shipped to you. The company I used sent it UPS and covered the labels with black tape. But there were tags all over saying "dangerous chemical" and warnings and shit and no return adresses. Dude even delivered it with a glove on... I am probably on some FBI terrorist watch list now for suspicion of making a bomb or something. I thought they would at least box it.***

Intro and Seeds

Now I have grown a few times in the past but only DJ Shots Blueberry in closets in apartments/houses i have lived in. I wasnt real serious and only used blood and bone and ph down and C02 via a timer(when i felt like getting it filled). Results were pretty good (lost a few grows though) but could have been better as my variables were all over the place. For the last year I have been flying to different cities for my job Mon-Wed every week so there was no way to grow. I got a new job with little travel and the travel i do do I should fly out and back the same day (at most back next day) the so it wont be an issue. I do have a MMC card because i have trouble going to sleep sometimes and dont like waking up feeling medicated. So I could go clones but figured i would go seed with the new cabinet and get a few mothers of my favoite strains and never germed a seed before. My am moving 1 last time in 4 months so this needs to be finished up before then.

Strains I got-

Hemp Depot - Joey Weed - C99 x A11 (wanted C99 but they were out)
Hemp Depot - Joey Weed - Blueberry
Hemp Depot - Joey Wedd - Apollo 11
Seed Bontique - Serious Seeds - AK47
Seed Bontique - White Label - White Widow

Seed Bank Experince-

Seed Bountique
-Good prices
-Paid by CC
-Recieved them in 16 days to SW USA.
-Good stealth

Hemp Depot
-Fair prices
-Only bank I found with JoeyWeed
-Paid via Money Order
-Recieved Order 14 days from dropping money order in mail (paid $5 extra for fast shipping)
-Great Stealth

This Grow
This grow I decided to go with C99xA11. I wanted the C99 without the anxiety. I dont know if the descriptions are accurate but figured i would give it a go. I am also moving one last time in November so for this grow i also wanted to grow low odor quick finishing strain. I think this strain meets those needs the best (at least out of the strains i have).

Description from HempDepot -

Cinderella 99 x Apollo 11
Indoor / Outdoor
Here we have a cross between two highly acclaimed plants. The mother was Brother's Grimm Cinderella-99 shown up above and the father was Apollo 11. C-99 is very well known for being super potent, having a mild citrus aroma and never giving hermies. Apollo 11 has an up happy high with a high calyx to leaf ratio. It, like C99 has a faint lemoney smell. The cross is easy to clone and combines the sativa high from cinderella99 with the happy stone from apollo11. The buds are tight and dense. Expect it to finish in 8 weeks or less.
Indoor flowering: 8 weeks.

July 4th (Day 1)

Germinated 10 c99 x A11 seeds.

-I just took 2" rock wool cubes and cut them into 1" cubes. I soaked the cubes in ph balanced distilled water for like 4 hours.
-I shook the cube hard so it would not be soaking when. Making sure I didn't squeeze the cube....
-I then too a pen and made a 1/4" hole in the center of the 1" cubes. I placed 1 seed into each hole and moved the hole edges back over essentilly closing the hole .
-I placed the 1" cubes into a Hot House propagation dome. The dome has a 8" dome and holders. It has a heat mat that raises the temp like 10 degree over ambient.

I dont have a pic of just the dome alone but you can see it on my center shelf. I shut the cabinet doors to make sure it was dark.

Note: The pic is old before the changes were made to cab. Just using it to explain where i kept the dome, see it in the middle there...

July 5th (Day 2)

18 Hours later and the seeds where starting sprout. I believe it was so quick because of the high temp and humidity of the dome. that cabinet i placed it on was a tight fit so it got pretty warm. Actually warmer than i wanted...but it worked.

Here is a pic with dome removed.



July 6th (Day 3)

At this point all the seeds at germinated but 1 (last one never did germ). Here is where i think i made my first mistake. I ripped open the rockwool to see what progress was made and reposition the root down. When i did this i was kinda squeezing the rockwool like a dumbass when i pressed it back together. Once i repostioned 9 of the root things placed the rockwool back into the propgation tray and placed it on my mother shelf under 2 24 watt CFLs. I left the dome off.

Here you can see i placed the tray about 8" from the cfls. How bout that support below it...lol.



Later that same day I had these....(sorry for the poor pic, wont happen again)

I will try to put mistakes in Red day forward...

July 7th (day 4)

Now maybe that light so close was too intense i burnt up one of my kids. I lowered it to about 10" from the cfls. Growth was ok but still no tap roots. I water the rockwool with ph balanced (5. distilled water nealy soaking it. I spayed them with distilled water about every 4 hours.

temp around 74
humidity around 40 (probably too low)


July 8th (Day 5)

So i wake up to find the 8 remaining seedlings droopy; so keeping up with the ass wipe moves; i water them again with the ph balanced distilled water. Today I spray them like every 4 hours agains with staight distilled water. Growth was minimal but they aren't streaching! lol....

Temp around 72
Humidity fluctuated between 30-50 (still lowwwww)

July 9th and 10th (Days 6-7)

Basically just watered them every 8 hours.

Wake up to find them droopy both days. I research and realized they are way to wet...(clones are so much easier). Concerned i havent seen a root yet; I kind of rip open the rock wool cubes and see very little tap root growth. But i realize i was making the biggest Noob mistake over watering and raise them again to 6" of the light. I was ready to give up at this point. Ended up leaving them alone all day pretty much admitting defeat.


July 11 (Day )
Wake up and check the plants expecting I would just start over with the Apollo 11 seeds today and pitch these. But i found a pleasant surprise. I find keeping my dumb self out of the plants lives actually caused them to start growing. All 8 were still alive and the rockwool was bone dry. I lift them up and see tap roots about 1/10-1/2" out of the bottom of the cubes!!

So i spray the bottom of the ph balanced rockwool with distilled water and rush around like a madman trying to set-up the net-pots. I have 3.5 inch netpots and hydroton rock things. I rinse the rocks and let them soak in ph balanced distilled water for like an hour. Next i placed 1" of hydoton on the bottom of netpot and placed the rockwool on top of it and filled the sides in with hydoton. I water the plants again from the top soaking them with ph distilled water( I don't learn).

I place them in the res. The res at this time is filled with tap water that has been out for two days. No nutes. The water level is like 4" below the bottom of the netpot. I read the water should just splash the hydroton. My airpump being 320 GPH did it from 4" away so thats why i had it at that level.

An hour later, I am worried i over watered the rockwool so I place them on top of the res to let them get some air and dry out for 6 hours.

I finally bring out the camera again with my renewed hope....



Temp around 75
Humidity fluctuated between 30-50 (still lowwwww)
Res temp 68
PPM (.5) 200 no nutes just tap water
PH kept going from 5.8 up to 6.3 every 6 hours. I took it back down throughout the day.

July 12 (Day 9)

So last night was the first night the seedlings were in the res. I wake-up and they look ok. PH was from 5.8 to 6.4 Jump online and order an 100 GPD RO unit on ebay as i hear tap water has this issue with the ph rising. I check the bottom of netpots, no roots yet. I also notice the rockwool is pretty dry again because the T5 was like 1" away ... Plants didnt seem to grow much. So did some research...


Changes I made -
-Raised light to 8"
-Changed from 8 blue bulbs in T5 to 3 red 5 blue.
-Raised my water level so it was 1" above bottom of netpot. I saw a few people having success with this and seemed to make sense to me.
-Added 8 drops of superthrive to the 15 gallon or water in rez
-Added about a teaspoon of oregonrootXL
-Added 5 ml of hygrozyme to the rez.


Plants seemed to do ok today. Some growth not alot. Some droopy some not. 1 taproot coming out of netpot about 3/8 an inch. Got clumsy and broke that about 1/4 inch off that.



Some pics from ealier tonight...

Notice i only have 6 netpots in the rez so i have that little rez over on the right w/ netpots in it under cfls. When i get the RO i will move 4 plants to the flower chamber and veg them there in the big res under 600 MH. I will keep 4 under the T5 in the 18 gallon res.



Some of the plants.

The ones under the cfls are growing slower.



These next 3 are from the 18 Gallon res w/ the six netpots. They are on their second set of real leaves...these bitches (i hope) better hurry up. Gotta keep my pimp hand strong....







So to this point.. i think i rushed my girls a bit. Maybe i should have given them more time before going in the res. I also think i shoud have stayed with distilled water in the res. I think i make changes too quickly and i have to let these kids do their things. I hope to see the growth explode when these roots hit the water and start developing.

From this point on my pics will be more consistent and measurements more exact.

Temp around 75
Humidity fluctuated between 30-50
Res temp 69
PPM (.5) 340
PH kept going from 5.8 up to 6.2 every 4-6 hours. I took it back down throughout the day.

Any suggestions or comments are welcome and most appreciated. I need to know if if i am doing something wrong and how to resolve.

Chiceh thanks for looking at the thread. You overgrowing you CoolCab on your first coolcab grow is what got me back interested in growing and staying w/ DWC over aero and ultimately leaving my closet for a cabinet. I think your thread took my virginity on ROI.

As far as cost goes im not really sure as I didnt add it up. I will get around to that though. I am still buying little things here and there. I intended spending about 2000 but i went over that amount. Found out quick how much the little things add up and keep adding up.

I will be watching your thread as I think we started around the same time...trust that i will be stealing all your moves..lol

Hey FMJ!

I've been waiting for you to get around to starting this journal up. Best of luck! Everything is looking great so far. subscribed

~rock~

Subscribed

im in subscribed

damnnnnn sick setup. i followed the thread when you were building that cab, def will be followin this grow. subscribed

Hey FMJ, I couldnt wait for this day to come where i saw you use your bad ass cab...

Man reading through all of these posts took me back.... especially the one about running like a madman finding net pots..lol... I think i have done exactly that...

So reading through i found a few issues bud.

I think you were heading in the right place when you put them into the little bubbler....

I would have put the water level up some ensuring that the rockwool didnt go dry on ya.... dry rockwool has killed lots of my high grade seeds by drying up too quick....

hehehe.... Before i switched over to dirt and hempy buckets, I kinda had the same issues you did.... the ph going up on you is normal on sucha small rez ... I noticed that some companies are better than others in there nutes. honestly i dont even need my tester anymore cause i know that adding my AN nutes will make it 5.6 every time when added to my RO water.

Light... WTH?..

what are you thinking about your lights man??? its on the other page but... 11 inches?? 8 inches/?/ wtf?... My cfls work great for seeds and clones and early vegging...and im only using 4 of them.. 24 watters.. all blue spectrum....



shit look how close this one got before i moved it...





Honestly i think you have a couple of issues... but they are not equipment issues... you are the m%^king cab king for sure.. I think your just getting overwhelmed with info man..... get back to basics and understand that a plants takes time to develop a good root zone... i have foudn the perfect watering method for seeds and clones...

In my inverted 2$ bucket that i bought as a humidity dome there is about a 1" rez on the lid when you flip it over.... i filled that with hydroton pebbles and then just place the rockwhool blocks on top.... i fill the little rez about half way up and let it chill for about 12 hrs or so... after that time i spray them down a little and fill the rez half way again.... the rockwhool stays wet and the roots do not dry out.



I dont know man there is a bunch more that i would want to point out for you but honestly i need to medicate...hehehe... ill see if you enjoyed this bit of info...

Yea i my my cfls within an inch but the seedlings didnt like my t5s that close.

Anyway 6 of the eight started taking off as they has some root in the water already. I just found out that i may have an opputunity to spend a month in Brazil so i may have to end this grow sooner than expected...sucks but i cant pass up the opputunity. In Brazil the dollar is still worth a dam.

Looking Good Bro, excited to see the ending results for your cab but brazil is a one in a lifetime chance and i hear the women down there are gorgeous!!! Either way hope to hear some news about whats going down with you n ur cab.

Hey Fullmetal
That is one killer cab,going to watch this for sure.Best of luck and keep posting.