Thanks all for great info!

hi all, would first like to say a big thank-you to all the people on this forum who have posted clear and coherent information about growing! It's been more than helpful and has made the learning curve somewhat less painful.

Quick comment to anyone new, read everything on this forum before asking questions, I'm pretty sure just about every question has been asked 10 times somewhere on this forum....and I can easily see why the old members get pissed at newbies going 'how do I setup a hydro grow?' without even clicking the search button

Anyways, was really wanting to get some comments on my one plant I have in flower under a few T5's. I wasn't going to flower it originally, wanted to keep it as a mother (got it as a clone) but quickly found it crawling with spider mites and gnats (yes yes, I know, should have checked!)

So I'm just budding it than going to get rid of all the soil and just go with my hydro setup I'm currently playing around with (thanks to all the info I found on this forum!).





Also, if anyone could guestimate how close they are to being ready? I really can't say what week of flowers it's in, but the hairs are beginning to turn red so I'm hoping only 1 or 2 more?

Here's some pictures of the clones I made of my original clone veggin in my diy drip system, any comments on how they look? Over, underwatered? Still tweaking my watering times, there in the small rockwool cubes sitting in hydroton with drip rings. So far they're growing like crazy and loving my 600W Gavita bulb, definitely worth the money.




Oh, and last question...(I know too many), is it odd for a plant to put leaves out in sets of 3? Just used to my other plants doing it in sets of 2, though I haven't grown nearly enough to know if this just happens with some. Here's the plant I'm talking about, grew it from bag seed. This is probably a dumb question lol



Thanks all! And thanks again to all the people posting great info and tutorials

Oh also, if anyone has ANY idea what strain I could be growing please let me know as I got no info on the clone.

cruzer101 said:

If your buds were under a 400w I would guess they are in there 5th to 6th week. I never flowered with T-5s I use them to veg but not flower.

Hang in there, you will get replies from T5 growers
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Yeah, I didn't really want to use them to flower myself, forced into it since I have to get rid of all the dam bugs in the soil grrr.

The bulbs I'm using are 3 philips f24/t5/841 HO, they are 4100k bulbs each making 2000 lumens. I actually thought they were a warmer light before looking up the specs, darn, all well the bud is still looking pretty decent, though I guess I should expect fluffier buds since it's under mostly cool bulbs (there is 1 32" warm flourescent bulb beside the plant).


If a t5 expert does happen to read this, are the 10k actinic aquarium bulbs any good for growing? I had to use 1 as, being the stoner I am, I broke 1 of the 4 T5's I have and can't fight the same replacement.

Dude, You got one of those?

I have read they are awesome little trichome producers. I want to add one and I am trying to figure out how to balance the wattage to a 400w HPS

I am thinking like 150w if they make one.
Or maybe drop down in wattage but I hate to do that.

OH yea, I hear ya about the bugs. after a while all those yellow stickys make ya dizzy. Went Hydro, Now only have the dam spider mites to deal with.

looks good..GL & GG

cruzer101 said:

OH yea, I hear ya about the bugs. after a while all those yellow stickys make ya dizzy. Went Hydro, Now only have the dam spider mites to deal with.

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You've probably already tried it, but woods insecticide along with grotek neem oil has worked really well killing spider mites for me. The woods kills the adults while the neem seems to kill the eggs quite effectively.

I started out just using safers insecticidal soap as I was scared of harsh chemicals, but it just didn't kill them all, tops 50%. And after that they got more and more resistant to the soap, and it did nothing to kill the eggs.

Oh, by the way, I have a Sunblaze t5 with the four 24" ho bulbs and I found hydrofarm bulbs and silvania work in mine.

I will trade you a 3000k for your 10k actinic aquarium bulb if you want. hehe

cruzer101 said:

I will trade you a 3000k for your 10k actinic aquarium bulb if you want. hehe

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Heh, you sure you'd want to? The actinic was a lot cheaper than the phillips HO....which is why it makes me believe the 10k isn't as good as using 3k or 4.8k spectrums.....can't find much on the forum about the actinics though.

The grotek neem oil is apparently quite poisonous as well, at least the label is telling me so. Which is great when you're a stoner, something else to be paranoid about! heh, it's not bad though, I just try to avoid inhaling large wiffs of it.....

Dam yellow sticky's, I've used a five pack and they're all full of gnats and they're still flying around....plus 4 things of fly tape! grrr lol cannot wait until all the soil is gone!

vicbudz said:

Heh, you sure you'd want to? The actinic was a lot cheaper than the phillips HO....which is why it makes me believe the 10k isn't as good as using 3k or 4.8k spectrums.....can't find much on the forum about the actinics though.

The grotek neem oil is apparently quite poisonous as well, at least the label is telling me so. Which is great when you're a stoner, something else to be paranoid about! heh, it's not bad though, I just try to avoid inhaling large wiffs of it.....

Dam yellow sticky's, I've used a five pack and they're all full of gnats and they're still flying around....plus 4 things of fly tape! grrr lol cannot wait until all the soil is gone!

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1.5" to 2" of sand on top of your dirt in the pots and a cup of beer left out in the grow and in one or two days you won't be seeing any more gnats and they'll die off fast.


Gnats are easy to get rid of. It's the damn spider mites that aren't.

cruzer101 said:

Yea not much here, check this guy out kinda funny and interesting at the same time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPcpt3Be28o
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Heh that guy was funny, some cool info but man was he baked hahaha . So you think the actinic is putting out UVB? Definitely sounds like a fair argument about the UVB...


I've heard about the sand thing, but to be honest I'm scrapping all my soil as soon as I harvest the one plant, I just flowered to get rid of it as I screwed up and didn't put proper drainage in my soil grow.

Read what I said above about getting rid of mites, so far it's still worked great for me, they haven't come back and it's been a week now. I have the red spider mites if it makes a difference.

random question...but I wouldn't think so....unless you have a strain that has a tendency to flower real easy.

sweeet... i was wondering how rare these were.... i had a 'triploid' plant growing for awhile. Instead of doing the 'mirror-image' opposite growth pattern branch for brach, it would have 3 at a time. It actually seemed advantages from a growth and 'light catching' standpoint. Try to keep that one alive man. If its male or female... and you clone it or what have you... you could breed it and if it is a heritable trait then you would have a plant which no one could doubt the validity of. I had a 'triploid' Jack Horror plant... Would of called it Triple Jack. You'd know if you got the right seeds or not, cuz all the seedlings would be triploid !!

DaGambler said:

sweeet... i was wondering how rare these were.... i had a 'triploid' plant growing for awhile. Instead of doing the 'mirror-image' opposite growth pattern branch for brach, it would have 3 at a time. It actually seemed advantages from a growth and 'light catching' standpoint. Try to keep that one alive man. If its male or female... and you clone it or what have you... you could breed it and if it is a heritable trait then you would have a plant which no one could doubt the validity of. I had a 'triploid' Jack Horror plant... Would of called it Triple Jack. You'd know if you got the right seeds or not, cuz all the seedlings would be triploid !!

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Ah somebody understood what I meant! Yeah I think you're right, growing in sets of 3 does seem to maximize the canopy coverage and grab more light. I would LOVE to clone this one and keep it as a mother, however, it hasn't shown sex yet! It's a random seed I had so I'm crossing my fingers it's a lady.

Though, if it does turn out to be male, I might just keep some of the pollen to try and make some triploid hybrids down the road, assuming it's a trait that would be passed down to the children.