second attempt at grow/room

hey there guys. i am in the middle of a build/grow and wanted to share my mistakes and hopefully get some feedback.

i started building a grow cabinet. i have never had a successful grow before. this is my second attempt. my first started with 12 plants, 7 died and the remaining were ALL males.

the seeds i am growing now are from greenhouse, so should be good. my amateurishness killed 4 of the 6 i germinated from a variety pack. the remaining 2 have major root rot and i am trying to cure it atm.

here is some pics of the cabinet i am building lemme know what you guys think!

The cabinet is a plastic one i bought from a office supply store for about 150$. its extremely lightweight weighing maybey 30 lbs total and standing well over 6.5 feet. its 4 foot wide and 2 feet deep. i mounted my 110 cfm inline S&P fan in the veg room on the top blowing air out the top and sucking from within the cab. there is spaces where the shelve connects that allowes air to be pulled from beneth. natually that isnt enough so i cut a 4 inch hole and mounted 4 inch recievers so i can attach a 4 inch hose to the bottom to will attach to a hps hood that can move up and down with chains.

the top room creates a vaccum when the door is closed, so that 4inch connection comming out the bottom of the shelf will have a vaccum as well. in the bottom chamber i cut 2X2 holes along the back bottom of the case to draw in cool air.

with no light in the bottom temps stay about 4 degrees higher than that of the room. so it appears to be working well. you can feel a considerable vaccum over that hole when you climb inside and close the doors lol.

dont see much room for a carbon filter and all my homemade ones turn out to be more of a mess with the carbon than help, but i have some ideas for it when they start to flower.

please let me know what you think and what i could do to make it better!

update on the plants. the great white is starting to grow again slowly. little one is gonna take some time if it even survives. i going to start sealing up the cab now and working on details. lemme know your thoughts. more pics inc soon.

Its looing good man. You may want to resize your pics to a smaller size they are bigger than my screen!

update on the plants: here is some pics. my first crop of 5 plants ALL turned out to be males. i assumed this was from the stress i put them through since it was my first grow. i heard it can make them male from stress. it appears i am screwing up again. what are the chances of having another sasuage-fest?


i cut the small holes in the bottom to allow air to come into the box from below. i figured that was suffecient surface area. the 4 inch hole in the shelf and the notches in the side where the shelf sits are the intake for the top veg/clone room. (which i am concerned about the height of). that little bubbler i made is one of the lowest profile i was able to find in wal-mart/lowes. any ideas to make it work better? maybey something would work better than a bubbler for mothers/clones? i have only ever used DWC, so its all i know. do you guys think another medium could be better for clones/mothers? what about below in flower room? how many plants you think i should go for? what is an easy way to change the water? maybey some experience could save me from more major headaches.

thanks guys.

the roots are taking forever to regrow and plants are still at a standstill, but alive it seems. should i try to physically remove some of that algae that is still clinging to the roots from before? or would be touching them do more harm than good?

how do i go about getting people to actually give feedback? am i not in the right place?

wtfirl said:

how do i go about getting people to actually give feedback? am i not in the right place?

Click to expand...

They're just waiting for your pics to load... j/k

Looks like a viable set-up, but you may want to switch the black wire with the white wire from the green extension cord; and use the green wire to at least ground the box. I know that hasn't given you a problem, and "if it isn't broken don't fix it", but if there is ever a problem, then your new breaker will trip and not the breaker controlling the green extension cord.

im no electrician, but i dont know about having a breaker panel inside the grow box, get a pic of your roots up, lets have a look, i know when i got root rot plant growth was at a stand still and i hope you dont have that, if your not using any organic nutes you may want to try hydrogen peroxide if not already using it, it kills any bacteria in your rez, you can also spray your roots with it, let us know if you wanna give the peroxide a try and i can give you solid instructions on how to use it, also whats your rez temp?

thanks for the responses. concerning the breaker box. i bought a small one and put it in there to try and make it as safe as possible. i know the home has its own breaker, but i figured a seperate one for the box sure wouldnt hurt. and about the grounding and colors. i never understood the ground wire lol. i have no idea how it works, but i have always known it would work withhout it. but i want it to be safe, and if i didnt hook up that ground correctly ect, it might be just wasting cash with the breaker box, or it might not even trip. some advice on how to do that would be awesome.

yes, my plants have compeltely stopped growing and having gained a leaf in weeks. roots are slowly stating to regrow, ill post pics soon. i have indeed been using h202 every day, but i was just reading how that can be bad. so steer me in the right direction concerning the h202.

i cant control the root rot. even in pure distilled water with 6.0 ph their roots are covered in a gel-like substance. i have been adding about 2 tsps of h202 a day in thier 2 gallon bubbler for a week now. thier is no light getting in the bottom whatsoever and the water temp is 75 F. The Church is on its last leg. i just tried pulling some of the garbage off its barely existing roots and all but 1 tiny root the size of a thread is clinging on. it has almost no leaves left and hasnt grown in a new one in almost a month. i am afraid to germinate anymore seeds because it took a month to get them and it cost me tons to order them. i am afraid the same fate will acost them as well.

what am i doing wrong? this is really frustrating. i have been working over 6 hours a day for almost a year straight and i havent got 1 single bud yet. my house is a wreck from non-stop construction and revamping of grow rooms bubblers and everything else that goes along with it. dispair is setting in.....

ok h202 first, if its store bought 3% you can go 2 tablespoons per gallon, if its foodgrade or plant grade 35 or 50% 1-3 ML's per gallon which are a drop , what i highly advise you to do is if you have a hydro shop near you to get hygrozyme, this will save your plants, if not get it online, you have root rot from having a 75degree waters, that is the point where pythium forms, no matter what, you have to try and find a way to get your water colder, 68F is ideal but under 72 and your aces, i know for sure the root rot is the reason for growth completly stopping, when i looked at the pix and you said growth stopped i asked to see roots., hygrozyme is about $40 a quart but worth its weight in gold, this is the key to your success and like giving your plants a condom, now once you get your hands on this stuff you need to add it to your water, in turn the water gets real nasty, this is good since the h'zyme is eating up the dead/dying roots, and these roots fall into the water, to expedite this process i suggest you change the water daily with fresh water and hygrozyme, do this for 5 days and you should start to see perfect white new roots, as for using h2o2 with hygrozyme you can but not suggestet, since a little too much will negate the hygrozyme,h2o2 eats all bacteria and all other beneficial stuff in the water, for the time being continue using the h2o2 but its gonna be a serious battle, from what i told you and what you are using now you will most likely need to up the dosage of it(depending on brand strength)...ok this solves one issue, lets get back to trying to get you growing without pain shall we? your cab looks really good neat and clean, i know how it feels having all these materials all over and time spent and the money, this shit adds up all the trips to lowes or home depot, now i see you have a larger bottom setup for the cab, whats your plan for lighting? HPS and MH? before you procede with HID lighting you need to either figure out how your gonna get the water temps down or scratch the whole hydro adventure altogether, intense lights are gonna be a heating nightmare if not properly exhausted in that cab, since you said you have stuff all over the house, you live alone or wife that dont mind you grow? can you spare a closet somewhere? anyhow, your options are waterchiller for the rez(atleast$400) and thats not practical for a cabinet, tossing ice packs into the rez sucks and only works for a little bit and why risk halfway thru a gro to get pythim again if you forget and you have soil, you can probably line up atleast 3-4 nice sized plants on the bottom level in there in 3 gallon pots...so there you have it, let me know what you wanna do, we can do this thing together if you like, almost forgot, when u add h2o2 it lasts in the water for 4 days until it is no longer effective, so dont over do it cus it can fry whatever roots you have left

awesome reposnse morris! wow ok, i figured my water temps were perfect at 75. how is it possible to even grow hydro if it cant get above 70? i havent ever seen a temp guage on anyones grow below 80 degrees. if thats true i will have no choice but to abandon hydro, because i cant get the house into the mid 60 with the air conditioner. would honestly have to be somwhere in the 50's honestly if i wanted the cab temps to be in the 60's. i dont know how to grow in soil, and it looks very difficult and messy, and i have read its not as fast as hydro. as for pics of the roots. there wasnt anything to take a picture of. the great whites are looking decent, and the church has lost all of its roots. nothing left. there is a brown algae growing around my bubblers. i dont see how this happens. that water is distilled water thats less than 4 days old, and i have even the net pots covered and overfilled them with hydroton to let in NO light.

will this hydrozyme completely save me in the future? because if i cant keep 2 tiny plants alive for a week in my veg room, how in the hell am i going to keep a mother plant permenantly? can you even keep a mother plant in hydro permenantly? i havent any more money to spend at the moment, but i am planning on ordering a 400 watt hps when i get the cash. right now i have 20 100 watt replacements and 1 300 for flower already wired if i have to use them. to give you an idea of the air circulation and exhaust, i fired up 15 100's and 1 300 cfl in the bottom chamber for 45 mins. the temp rose to a max of 87. thats with just the top 110 cfm fan running. i have a 1k cfm blower that i will attach to the back of the box, on to the exahust of the other to help pull even more.

to answer your question about a closest: i am in the process of tearing down everything i had built in the closet. my entire setup was in there and well fit too. it was awesome, minus no freash air.....the air from outside the house is FAR too hot to cool anything. it actually pumps the temps WAY higher pulling in outside air from my hot ass attic. so i made this box and tore down the closet. i figured the box would be able to suck in room temp air that would actually cool the rooms. i dont have much room in the top box huh? will i be able to keep mothers/clones in that? what should i do next?

well you got enough cfl wattage to get up and running no problem, even from start to finish, although i never used floros for anything but seedlings and clones, a decent sized closet can recieve fresh air by you going inside it a few times a day, it will even cool it down when you go in from the a/c from your main rooms, the key here to cool down a closet is to pull the air out, it will suck out humidy and the hot air generated from your lighting, since hot air rises, you would want a fan or even a bathroom exhaust fan, up high and it depends on room size and cfms, i think with all the effort you put it, your gonna have to scratch hydro until you can figure out how to cool the room your gonna use, go soil and use the closet, you can use that cabinet to make clones and veg and keep the closet for flowering, this way you can harvest and have fresh vegged plants ready to go into the closet, you can get yourself a harvest every 60days with both units going

whats the dimensions of your closet? you can use the large fan you have to pull out the hot air, as for the cab, 87F is too hot for hydro, the water will come to within 3degrees of the air temp, and to use the 1000cfm blower in the cab is crazy overkill, it might blow the plants and break stalks or suck out a whole plant, get the soil many times hydro has to fit the situation, it cant be forced upon a grow space without the right attributes, if you do go soil dont use miracle grow your first time, you may have issues with it, soil is cheaper i can almost gaurentee you will have very good results

the reason i abandoned the closet was because flowering in there will be a problem. i live alone, so i would rather have the house smelling like pot than the entire block. i had tons of holes cut in it for exhaust and intake ect, but the temps are considerably higher in the closet. i really dont see how its possible then to even grow hydro if your room temps have to be in the 50's to keep your tub under 70. i have never used a hps light before so i have no idea how much heat they put off. in comparison to my cfl's anyone have a ratio or idea? like 5 100 watt replacements = 150 watt hps worth of heat? i just made that up, but whats a realistic ratio?

i rather not place all my faith in a diy carbon filter. i have made like 8 of them and not even the 1000 cfm blower can pull through them fast enough to cool 20 lights. if i made it less restrictive, the entire neighborhood could potentially smell it from blocks away. the wind is mega calm and my attack has vent ports. 1 breeze would literally skunkafy the entire block. i dont want that kinda risk. with the cab it can stink away all it wants and it all stays in the house. another problem with the closet was air conditioning. since the intake from teh attic was far too hot, i closed it off and just sucked freash air from the house into the attic. but that blower pwns so hard it sucks all the AC right out of the house on low. the ac has to run fulltime to keep the temps in the house reasonably comfortable. its like i really was cooling down the neighborhood. and the temps in the room would still be in the high 80's.

something that has been weighing on my mind is this: why didnt this happen in my last grow? my temps were FAR hotter than now. never below 90F the entire grow and i had 5 6 foot tall male plants in good health when i cut them down. so without any consistancy i feel lost. i dont see a definative answer to why the algae is comming so strong now.

so soil hmmm. what about all my nutrients i have bought? they are all for hydro, ph balancing and the likes. how would i test the nutrient lvls? (not like i have a tds meter) but i have no idea about soil. people talking about flushing and whatnot. i have terribly insanly mindblowingly hard water. i wont be able to afford to flush them with distilled water all the time. doesnt the water have to drain through the bottom of the bucket each time i water? is that feesable indoors? boy i still have so much to learn.

wtfirl said:

i cant control the root rot. even in pure distilled water with 6.0 ph their roots are covered in a gel-like substance. i have been adding about 2 tsps of h202 a day in thier 2 gallon bubbler for a week now. thier is no light getting in the bottom whatsoever and the water temp is 75 F. The Church is on its last leg. i just tried pulling some of the garbage off its barely existing roots and all but 1 tiny root the size of a thread is clinging on. it has almost no leaves left and hasnt grown in a new one in almost a month. i am afraid to germinate anymore seeds because it took a month to get them and it cost me tons to order them. i am afraid the same fate will acost them as well.

what am i doing wrong? this is really frustrating. i have been working over 6 hours a day for almost a year straight and i havent got 1 single bud yet. my house is a wreck from non-stop construction and revamping of grow rooms bubblers and everything else that goes along with it. dispair is setting in.....

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I used the areogarden for a while before I went to ebb&flow, now I'm able to go away for 4 days straight. Ph is important, I checked mine at least 6 times a day, until I got the ph tester pen which made it easier to test I was using a pool tester, alot of work! I used Hydroperxiode (HP) to get rid of the slime. I put it in a spray bottle and sprayed the whole resovoir and plants with 3% off the shelf HP (it didn't hurt my plants). Bleached everything and changed my water often when I seen the first slimy stuff appear again, I used distilled water in the areogarden and bleach everything again and I now I use city water in my ebb&flow - I don't see that slimy stuff and I use HP to spray around my resovoir every now and then just to keep it away.

i bet if you go to soil you'll be happy,being your 1rst timer.i use soil and it is the easyest way, yea what 2 week mabe longger but atleast youll have bud man. I say why make it harder than it should be. With soil temps wont be that big of a factor for ya. but that my 2 cents

in soil they will be able ti withstand those temps, you dont need it too be 50, just 72-75 for hydro, algea is green, if your roots are brown its pythium, algea is not that bad, or not nearly as bad as root rot, cut man is right on, personally i cut holes in walls and throw window a/c units to cool rooms and use air cooled hoods with thier own carbon scrubber attatched, i spare no expense, but you can get a lovely crop with those cfls you have and the closet, HTGsupply.com has a 6inch filter/fan combo for 199, if the odor troubles you like that then thats your answer, this will also keep heat in check, and its half strength at 424cfms, that should be your next investment, along with a couple bags of fox farms ocean forest soil and some moss and perlite to mix in it, i will help you if you like, i consider myself an expert soil grower, but no longer use it,,,,look at my avatar, you want a plant like this? dead the hydro

ok, i have been thinking about this delemia of my hydro vs. soil. it what your saying is true, then i have no choice but to abandon my entire hydro systems. how much slower will they grow in soil? how do i adjust the ph? what soil do i use? whats smallest buckets i can use to flower? i remeber reading so many different ways people mix thier soils. i cant afford to order anything else online. i have about 20 bucks to work with. i should get started right away because the root rot is starting to get worse on the great white shark now. i was hoping maybey a soil transplant might save them. can root rot happen to soil? can it spread to the soil from this hydro setup? is root rot like a virus that can spread? or is it more of a "condition" that happens to them if the grow conditions are wrong?

well it sounds like soil is the way to go. possibly less of a headache too it looks like. the flowering cabenet is 2 feet by 4 feet and 5 feet tall. i was planning a Scrog grow in there and hoping for a 250 or 400 watt hps when i get the cash or find one at night a little too low to the ground. which would be a good size for it? and does scrog sound like a good idea? will that work ok with soil now? its saturday and i have time to work and 20 dollars. i have a lowes and a wal-mart close. what should i pick up there? maybey i can save them. what soil should i buy a t lowes? can i use my hydro nutrients? how do i test the ph? do i need to test it as often? since i am somewhat familar with the mechanics of hydro is there a rule or schema that will apply to soil? its hard to find a soil guide since so many different methods are used, and i cant tell whats worth it and what is overzealousness. i had a major case of overzealousness when i spent 5 hours creating a complicated CO2 generator with 2 fans in it and all sorts of stuff. which according to what i have read now, was a complete waste of time, cardboard and duct tape.