Need Help with small hydroponics setup!!
- Thread starter donnlinno
- Start date
curious.george
Well-Known Member
Cloning is when you cut a branch off a plant and make it grow roots and become a new plant. The new plant become a genetic duplicate of the original plant.
It is important for many reasons:
1) When you plant a bunch of seeds you will get some male plants and some female plants. Male plants must be killed! So it is hard to get a bunch of female plants with seeds but with clones if the original plant was female the clones will be. So it solves that problem.
2) When you grow plants even from expensive seed banks only a few will be the best pot in the world. Most will be ok, good, but not great. So if you want to grow only super nice weed it is necessary to grow seeds, take a clone before flowering, and then if the plant is amazing, make the clone from it a mother for a bunch more clones a grow many amazing plants. You will be bummed if you have killer weed but you do not preserve the DNA and then you have ok weed and only a memory of the killer weed DNA.
3) SOG - Sea Of Green - This is a syle of growing where you plant a lot of small plants instead of a few big ones. The advantages are bigger yields faster and more dense buds. This is ideal because the light you will use will not have good penetration like the sun does so the bottom of the plant will be starved for light and grow shitty buds. With a lot of clones you grow just colas which is nice. This 3rd reason is not as important as the first 2. There is a lot of stuff here and on the internet about this.
Fuzzotany
Well-Known Member
Here, my A-Z on it, gonna post it in DWC forum too.
SUPPLIES:
1) Rubbermaid container (4-5 gallon per plant) – DARK so little light gets through – if some does you will need to paint or tape over the box’s outside to block it.
2) Air pump exceeding the capacity of the container (40 gallon pump for a 25 gallon jug) – dual outlet reccomended
3) Air tubing (8-10ft)
4) “T” attachment for air tubing (only if using single outlet pump)
5) Two air stone strips (should be more than 12” long)
6) Hydroton clay pellets (little balls of expanded clay)
7) Rockwool cubes
Net pots (look like little cups made of mesh) 2” to 3”
9) PH liquid tester for water (litmus strips work too)
10) CFLs (compact fluorescent light)
11) General Hydroponics 3-Part System (look it up online)
12) Ph up & Ph down (liquid)
13) Electric timer
14) Optional – to ease draining you may want to buy a drain valve and pvc glue to make a drainage system.
RULES:
1) Water should be 5.5ph – 6.0, if any higher/lower, fix it. (Should take a week to elevate from 5.5 – 6.0 sitting in the res)
2) Ph should be adjusted AFTER adding nutrients
3) Water temps should be 60-70F – ice packs can be used in water.
4) Plant temps should be around 75-85F
5) Distilled water should be used whenever possible. Filtered waters can be used – be weary of those that add fluoride as this can kill plants.
6) Lights should have a rating of 2700K to 6500K (this is Kelvin scale – should be on every bulbs box)
7) Follow nutrient directions
Clean the bucket every time you change the water/nutrient mixture. A wipe down with a clean rag should suffice.
9) Lighting should amount to 7,500 to 10,000 lumens per sq ft.
SETUP:
1) Use a hole saw and make holes for in the lid of the rubbermaid container for your net pots (SAFETY NOTE: MANY HOLE SAWS OVER 2” WILL NOT FIT INTO MOST BATTERY POWERED DRILLS. CORDED DRILLS ARE EXTREMELY POWERFUL. IF YOU HAVE NEVER USED ONE REMEMBER THEY ARE DANGEROUS AND WILL FLY OUT OF YOUR HAND IF THEY ARE NOT VERY STRONGLY SECURED WHEN BEING USED AND WILL SHRED WHATEVER THEY HIT BEFORE THE BLADE STOPS.
2) Drill a hole for your air tubing
3) Align Airstones in your reservoir for even distribution of air bubbles over the surface of the water (suction cup airstones work well for this)
4) Mark the level of your net pots bottom inside the reservoir, this will be your water fill line, calculate the amount of water used to fill it to that mark and use that to define your nutrient concentrations.
PROCESS:
1) Germinate seeds – this is easily accomplished by keeping seeds in a moist (not soaked) paper towel in a warm, dark area.
2) When you see little roots sprout from the seeds, transfer them into rockwool, keeping the root pointing down near the bottom of the cube.
3) Rockwool should be watered lightly in 5.5PH water from time to time to keep it moist
4) Seedlings will sprout, when they do put them under the light of 1 CFL that’s always on. Note: 3+ CFLs for 6 sprouts, and the lights should be kept no further than 2 inches from the seedlings to prevent stretching.
5) When roots pass through the rockwool, place seedlings into the system (do not add nutrients yet, but PH the water)
6) After the plant gets its second set of leaves, it should be okay to start adding nutrients to the mix at 1/4 strength
7) When the plant gets a little bigger you can start adding more light, CFLs should stay close, metal halide should be kept about 7” away.
After you’ve had the lights on 24 hours a day for about a week, switch to an 18on 6off light cycle.
9) Over the course of a month, gradually raise the nutrients to 75% of their suggested value.
10) Watch your plants grow, if you want to give it a shot move up to 100% of the suggested nutrient value, be weary of yellowing leaves as this can indicate nutrient burn.
11) After 4+ weeks you may see preflowers at the node sites (this is where the stems make a Y) if you see these you’re ready to go into a 12/12 light cycle. If you still don’t see them after 6 weeks 12/12 should be safe anyway.
12) One to 2 weeks into 12/12 you should see signs of gender. Females produce small white hairs while males produce balls, eliminate the males ASAP.
13) Watch your ladies grow.
14) Usually flowering can last 7 weeks or more, plan for this because the last 2 weeks you’ll be eliminating your use of nutrients and working strictly out of water.
15) You can pinpoint when you want to harvest by observing the trichomes (you’ll need a magnifier for this, at least 30x), they should be lightly cloudy, but not clear. The cloudier the more of a body high you get. Trichomes are small stems leading to little balls, they populate your buds, are extremely small, and look like lower case i’s. You don’t really need to magnify though, the plant looks “done” when it’s ready.
16) Harvest time – pick a branch, cut it off. Trim the leaves off that aren’t covered in resin. Hang the branch (or segments) on a string in a dry place until they are smokeable…but you’re not done yet. Cut everything down into small nuggets and place them into sealed glass jars and toss them in a cool dark room. Open the jar once daily, if your nuggs are excessively damp, dump them out for half a day. Toss the nuggs back in the jar, seal it for a day, leave it open for a day… do that until they’re as most or crispy as you’d like.
17) Smoke it up.
SUPPLIES:
1) Rubbermaid container (4-5 gallon per plant) – DARK so little light gets through – if some does you will need to paint or tape over the box’s outside to block it.
2) Air pump exceeding the capacity of the container (40 gallon pump for a 25 gallon jug) – dual outlet reccomended
3) Air tubing (8-10ft)
4) “T” attachment for air tubing (only if using single outlet pump)
5) Two air stone strips (should be more than 12” long)
6) Hydroton clay pellets (little balls of expanded clay)
7) Rockwool cubes
Net pots (look like little cups made of mesh) 2” to 3”9) PH liquid tester for water (litmus strips work too)
10) CFLs (compact fluorescent light)
11) General Hydroponics 3-Part System (look it up online)
12) Ph up & Ph down (liquid)
13) Electric timer
14) Optional – to ease draining you may want to buy a drain valve and pvc glue to make a drainage system.
RULES:
1) Water should be 5.5ph – 6.0, if any higher/lower, fix it. (Should take a week to elevate from 5.5 – 6.0 sitting in the res)
2) Ph should be adjusted AFTER adding nutrients
3) Water temps should be 60-70F – ice packs can be used in water.
4) Plant temps should be around 75-85F
5) Distilled water should be used whenever possible. Filtered waters can be used – be weary of those that add fluoride as this can kill plants.
6) Lights should have a rating of 2700K to 6500K (this is Kelvin scale – should be on every bulbs box)
7) Follow nutrient directions
Clean the bucket every time you change the water/nutrient mixture. A wipe down with a clean rag should suffice. 9) Lighting should amount to 7,500 to 10,000 lumens per sq ft.
SETUP:
1) Use a hole saw and make holes for in the lid of the rubbermaid container for your net pots (SAFETY NOTE: MANY HOLE SAWS OVER 2” WILL NOT FIT INTO MOST BATTERY POWERED DRILLS. CORDED DRILLS ARE EXTREMELY POWERFUL. IF YOU HAVE NEVER USED ONE REMEMBER THEY ARE DANGEROUS AND WILL FLY OUT OF YOUR HAND IF THEY ARE NOT VERY STRONGLY SECURED WHEN BEING USED AND WILL SHRED WHATEVER THEY HIT BEFORE THE BLADE STOPS.
2) Drill a hole for your air tubing
3) Align Airstones in your reservoir for even distribution of air bubbles over the surface of the water (suction cup airstones work well for this)
4) Mark the level of your net pots bottom inside the reservoir, this will be your water fill line, calculate the amount of water used to fill it to that mark and use that to define your nutrient concentrations.
PROCESS:
1) Germinate seeds – this is easily accomplished by keeping seeds in a moist (not soaked) paper towel in a warm, dark area.
2) When you see little roots sprout from the seeds, transfer them into rockwool, keeping the root pointing down near the bottom of the cube.
3) Rockwool should be watered lightly in 5.5PH water from time to time to keep it moist
4) Seedlings will sprout, when they do put them under the light of 1 CFL that’s always on. Note: 3+ CFLs for 6 sprouts, and the lights should be kept no further than 2 inches from the seedlings to prevent stretching.
5) When roots pass through the rockwool, place seedlings into the system (do not add nutrients yet, but PH the water)
6) After the plant gets its second set of leaves, it should be okay to start adding nutrients to the mix at 1/4 strength
7) When the plant gets a little bigger you can start adding more light, CFLs should stay close, metal halide should be kept about 7” away.
After you’ve had the lights on 24 hours a day for about a week, switch to an 18on 6off light cycle. 9) Over the course of a month, gradually raise the nutrients to 75% of their suggested value.
10) Watch your plants grow, if you want to give it a shot move up to 100% of the suggested nutrient value, be weary of yellowing leaves as this can indicate nutrient burn.
11) After 4+ weeks you may see preflowers at the node sites (this is where the stems make a Y) if you see these you’re ready to go into a 12/12 light cycle. If you still don’t see them after 6 weeks 12/12 should be safe anyway.
12) One to 2 weeks into 12/12 you should see signs of gender. Females produce small white hairs while males produce balls, eliminate the males ASAP.
13) Watch your ladies grow.
14) Usually flowering can last 7 weeks or more, plan for this because the last 2 weeks you’ll be eliminating your use of nutrients and working strictly out of water.
15) You can pinpoint when you want to harvest by observing the trichomes (you’ll need a magnifier for this, at least 30x), they should be lightly cloudy, but not clear. The cloudier the more of a body high you get. Trichomes are small stems leading to little balls, they populate your buds, are extremely small, and look like lower case i’s. You don’t really need to magnify though, the plant looks “done” when it’s ready.
16) Harvest time – pick a branch, cut it off. Trim the leaves off that aren’t covered in resin. Hang the branch (or segments) on a string in a dry place until they are smokeable…but you’re not done yet. Cut everything down into small nuggets and place them into sealed glass jars and toss them in a cool dark room. Open the jar once daily, if your nuggs are excessively damp, dump them out for half a day. Toss the nuggs back in the jar, seal it for a day, leave it open for a day… do that until they’re as most or crispy as you’d like.
17) Smoke it up.
MostlyCrazy
New Member
Nice job. You got it down!
curious.george
Well-Known Member
When the plant is about a foot and a half tall you will be able to cut a clone and try and make it grow roots. You can continue to take clones until the plant is flowering. You want to make sure you have one successful clone before flowering starts.
hmm, 1 plant. If its a male you will be bumming. I would grow at least 6 or 7 to be sure you have 1 female.
why only 1 plant? don't you like to smoke a lot of weed? I do. You should grow at least 5 or 6, unless you dont want a lot of weed.
But you really should be worried! It happens to so many people. They think they wont make any mistakes but then the they do. I did. It would be really smart to grow 1 hydro plant and 9 soil plants. That way by the time you have clones of killer female plants you will have learned from your own mistakes for a bigger hydro grow. A few CFL's and some soil and you can start the process of getting those female clones.
Well yea I love to be high but its all just gonna be a new and learning experience. Nothing worth worrying about if I get a whole bunch a weed great if not its no biggie and now I see what your saying so I prolly should use soil. Could I get good dense high crystallized weed with soil? I guess now I need to learn about that now I no its more simple tho...
curious.george
Well-Known Member
Absolutely!! Soil or Hydro the you can get dense weed with lots of crystals. That aspect of the grow is mostly controlled by the genetic code in the seeds. With hydro plants grow faster so you would get more. That is why cloning is so important, you will start many seeds but only a few will have the dense high crystallized weed. Hydro might give you 22g of it while soil will good give you 16g. Good soil is light and holds a lot of air like hydroponic mediums.
Note: You can not get dense crystallized weed with out bright lights and healthy plants. If its like 120 degrees in there even good DNA wont help.
MostlyCrazy
New Member
Donnlinno,
Here a link to the light I recently purschased. I bought the 250 watt HPS. Great customer service, great price, shipped on time and work great for my 3' x 4' flower area.
http://www.htgsupply.com/growlighttypes.asp?categoryID=1&subcategoryID=155
Curious - you sound like you have plenty of experience and are good at communicating the "true" info. Keep it up. Good Karma coming your way.
I have a 4' x 7' area. I put up some panda film with a zipper to segment my grow area from my flower area. veggers to the right and flower to the left. I started by planting some bag seed. When they start alternating leaves ( not paired up equally) then the plant is mature and you are free to clone you ass off. I took two clones from all 6 in the bubbleponics set up I have and then threw them into 12/12. IN about 2 weeks they showed which ones were female. I kept those clones and pitch the rest along with the male plants that revealed themselves. Now I just clone my clones at about 3-4 all female plants per pot. MY particular strain of bag seed looks to be a sativa/indica cross and gets about 3-4' tall at cut time. I get between 2-3 oz per plant. I use FIM and LST to control the number of buds, height and light saturation. CFL's are good for vegging but the 250 watt HPS is killer for my space size in flowing. If you are going to go cheap, do it in veg. Vegging is the developemental state and you can still make mistakes and get a good vegger. It's flowering that requires more attention to detail. This is a learning experince and you will get better with every grow. If you keep up with the thread we can help and get you to our point faster than you think.
Here a link to the light I recently purschased. I bought the 250 watt HPS. Great customer service, great price, shipped on time and work great for my 3' x 4' flower area.
http://www.htgsupply.com/growlighttypes.asp?categoryID=1&subcategoryID=155
Curious - you sound like you have plenty of experience and are good at communicating the "true" info. Keep it up. Good Karma coming your way.
I have a 4' x 7' area. I put up some panda film with a zipper to segment my grow area from my flower area. veggers to the right and flower to the left. I started by planting some bag seed. When they start alternating leaves ( not paired up equally) then the plant is mature and you are free to clone you ass off. I took two clones from all 6 in the bubbleponics set up I have and then threw them into 12/12. IN about 2 weeks they showed which ones were female. I kept those clones and pitch the rest along with the male plants that revealed themselves. Now I just clone my clones at about 3-4 all female plants per pot. MY particular strain of bag seed looks to be a sativa/indica cross and gets about 3-4' tall at cut time. I get between 2-3 oz per plant. I use FIM and LST to control the number of buds, height and light saturation. CFL's are good for vegging but the 250 watt HPS is killer for my space size in flowing. If you are going to go cheap, do it in veg. Vegging is the developemental state and you can still make mistakes and get a good vegger. It's flowering that requires more attention to detail. This is a learning experince and you will get better with every grow. If you keep up with the thread we can help and get you to our point faster than you think.