Noobie aeroponic 2 cabinet stealth grow

rimfire

Active Member
For equipment I purchased a pre-built Personal Stealth Grow Box. You can find it on Ebay. Do a search for hydroponics and you will find a selection of cabinets priced up into the thousands of dollars. This was a price I could live with. Ask for a link to this cabinet for more info. While not a turn-key setup, it did come with a cabinet, an 8 light cfl setup producing 34,000 lumens (8 26W), exhaust fan with a 21 inch carbon scrubber. It’s has 12 spots for 1 inch net pots, an 8 gallon tub with an air stone and an ultrasonic fogger. Here’s a look.
 

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rimfire

Active Member
We shall see my good man. They may not be enough, and in that case I'll stuff a different light in for the next grow.
 

rimfire

Active Member
After I bought this on Ebay, I said to myself in a Sour Diesel stupor, Rimfire, you could make some thing like this a lot cheaper. So here it is.....

My other project for this grow is a cabinet that I purchased at a garage sale for $30 a few years back. Everyone in this house has seen it for a few years so it won't be an obvious new piece of furniture. It's dimensions are 30"W x 20"D x 32"H. This will be where I will keep 2 mother plants of some strain at some point, and where I will be growing my small stuff. (Biggie Small, Aurora Indica, and Lowlife auto White Russian. This cabinet will run at 18 hours of light/6 hours off 24/7. The tubs are modular, so I can mix and match my grow for the current situation. I will also do clones in this cabinet. I have a 125W cfl with reflector in transit, as well as an 110 cfm exhaust fan with carbon scrubber. I'm providing intake air with an 80mm computer fan.
 

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rimfire

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For seeds I started by germinating 2 Northern Lights, 3 Mango and 3 Kahuna 1 Feminized White Ice and 1 Feminized White Diesel.
I took good advice and started with good seeds. I used wet paper towels in a CD case on top of my cable box to germinate. Within 18 hours all 10 seeds sprouted.

My idea with this setup is to raise as many females in the taller cabinet as I can get. I have 8 seeds and my hope is that 4 will be female. I wiil veg and bloom whatever females I end up with in this cabinet.

In the second (shorter) cabinet I have 3 Biggie Small, 3 Aurora Indica, and 2 Lowlife Auto White Russian to be used in a garage sale cabinet. All have sprouted and are looking good. I hope I will end up with enough females from this cabinet to grow 3 or 4 plants to bud. These are short strains and should work in this cabinet. I plan on using the feminized White Ice and the feminized White Diesel as mother plants for my next grow.
 

rimfire

Active Member
I had a question about seedlings and nute and posted this question in the Hydro/Aeroponics forum.

"I running a 2" net pot aeroponic set up. I have a sandstone bubbler and a ultra-sonic fogger. I have Flora Nova Grow. How much and when do I need to feed new sprouts/seedlings using this method?" This is the reply I received from NORTHTIGHTS:

"Flora Nova is not a great nutrient line for aeroponics, it tends to settle out and produce particulates in the res. A two part nutrient like BC or Three part like General Hydroponics is better. Especially with an ultrasonic fogger, you must have the most soluble nutrients possible for the fog to uptake the salts and not clog. That and when I did bubbleponics I never got results from Flora Nova that I got from multi-part nutrients.
As for when you nute the seedlings... I would say a week or when you notice them turning a slightly lighter shade of green, signaling a need for nitrogen. Remember though, ultrasonics require a MUCH lower PPM/concentration of nutrients. Start at no more than 200ppm, 100-150 would be best. You can always add more but once you burn them it will stunt growth for some time.

Oh and try to make sure that the water at the bottom isn't TOO far away from the net pots, it should be rather easy for the plant to grow roots directly into the res. The fog alone is not enough water so they need to grow part of the root system into the liquid water.

And watch out for heat buildup! Ultrasonic foggers are notorious for heating the res temp way too much. Hence why NutraMist gardens separate the fogger from the liquid res. You might want to raise your res up an inch or so and have a fan blowing air underneath too keep it cool. If that is still a problem there are many DIY and professional solutions online.
Hope that helps!

I have been using BC Grow/Bloom/Micro. It's easy with simple to follow directions and the price isn't half bad. But I know a lot of people who like the General Hydroponics 3-part nutrient (flora series). I just have little experience with the original flora series because I have an unusual sensativity to whatever chemical is in that brand.

The only one-part nutrient I have ever had good results with is IONIC, and that is completely soluble with no settling out like Flora Nova, or at least not nearly to the same extent. But again, BC and the Original Flora series will usually give you better results at a better price.

Oh and the leafs of seedlings, the first real ones, are always going to be light green. I just meant if that begin to TURN light green AFTER developing. But you can usually start nutes in aero a week after, at least that worked for me.
 

rimfire

Active Member
Back to the garage sale cabinet. I have this cabinet setup to always be at 18/6. I'm running 1 125 W CFL in one fixture 5000K, and 2 26W 6500K in the other improvised fixture. In one tub I'll have 8 of the "short" strains. We will see how many end up female. The other tub will be for 2 mother plants that are currently in my other cabinet. They are Feminized White Ice and Feminized White Diesel. These will be used for clones for my next grow. I also have a cloning tub setup. All tubs can be mixed or matched depending on what is needed.

The attached photos show more of the garage sale cabinet. I'm running a 21 inch filter behind some computer stuff under my computer stand. I have weather stripped the doors and caulked so there is no light being emitted.

I'm running 2 fans inside the case, but the sound of the fans inside the case sound like it's coming from my computer. Sneaky.
 

rimfire

Active Member
Here is an update. My babies are doing well after some minor setbacks. As a Noob I knew I would make mistakes along the way, and I did. I had some trouble with keeping some of my sprouts alive. They either got to wet or to dry in the rockwool cubes. There is definately a process involved in getting a sprouted seed to produce roots through the rockwool. When they do get some roots down things seem to go a little better. I also had stunted some of my seedlings because they were to cold and my rockwool was too wet. After I got that straighten out the little shits started putting down roots big time and started doing really well.

I currently have them vegging in a DWC and I'm using an ultrasonic fogger. I'm feeding them Flora Nova 3 part at about 475 PPM. I have them under 4 45 watt CFL's 5500K and 4 26 watt 6500K. They see to be thriving. I have also decided to use a 250 watt HPS for flower in my other cabinet. I can probably use 8 26 watt CFL 2600K to flower them, but I want to make sure I get the best possible crop I can get, so I decided a 250 watt HPS was the way to go. My flowering cabinet is in my unheated basement and it is still to cold to put them down there, so I will let them stay and veg for a while in my veg/clone cab. I have also decided to try doing my first grow with a SCROG. In all my research in various forums it looks like a SCROG is the way to go for small cabinet grows for maximum yeild. I hope to have a couple of these babies turn out to be females so I have some moms for clones down the road. This seed thing is a pain in the ass. Attached a some pics to show you where things are at. There is a pic of my home made SCROG screen. The cool thing about it is I can buy different height legs for it. This currently has 10" legs. Any comments or suggestions would be greatly appreciated by this old grey beard Noob.
 

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