Newb Grow. Barney's Pineapple Chunk. LED + CFL - Bubbleponics.

Hey all! I decided to do a journal of my grow. I need a lot of help as far as advice goes as this is my fist grow. I already had one plant die and almost killed another. So urmmm ya, here goes.

Strain: Barney's Pineapple Chunk=fem
Nutes: Flora Duo A+B
Grow Method: Bubble Ponics
Lights, CFL 6500K x 4 x 23watt + Sunshine Systems 28w http://www.amazon.com/Sunshine-Systems-LEDGP45-GlowPanel-Light/dp/B001N4NKB8
Humidity: 45%
1x Co2 pads
2x 4" inline with filter.
1x Intake powered by CPU fan.

Here's my light system. Heat being an issue, I decided to go with LED's with cfl's supplemental (4x 23watt 6500k). The LED has good reviews so I went with it. $123.00..


Day 12 from sprout. Everything is doing well, I decided to not grow another plant I had in a 5 gallon bucket next to this one since something was very wrong with it. So I wont bother showing you a picture of the sick one.


Day 15, I darn near killed this plant! Look at it! Turns out that I decided to move the bucket center stage and the overhead LED was trapping heat from the 4 cfl's located on each side of the bucket.


I was heart broken! My little girl! But I decided to hold on to her and try and bring her back.. She came back to me!! Hehe.. I had to trim her up since some of her fan leaves were crusty. Gee, you think it's time to get a cooling fan yet?


Bought a big-ol fan and put it next to my lil girl and now she looks like this. Sorry if the picture is twisted but you'll see the bounce back. Day 18.

Now I am wondering if it's time to top or hold off and pinch her instead. Thanks in advance for any advice.

*bump*. Trying to get feed back before hitting the rack.

Hard to believe this was 14 hours ago!

BTW, I will be adding 2x10w blue 660nm LED's home built with in the next 3 days. After that, I have 2x 50w red 430nm that will be added in. Please wait for pics :>

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Hard to believe this was 14 hours ago!

24 hour update.


Please forgive my double posts above. Kind of new at this.

If you would like to respond to my light situation, please feel free!

Added 2x10w LED blue homemade lights today. They are in the 455-460nm spectrum and that supposed to be great for vedge. The purpose is to penetrate the under growth to keep plant short and stocky.

1 pic shows LED fastened to heat sink. The next shows the 800 lumins each aimed at the under growth on opposite sides . The next pic is all systems go.







The last pic is of the plant 24hours since last pic. Notice the growth in one day!! I guess you have to click that one??

Man I aint gettin no love!

Also, the little plant in the dirt I thought was dead. It started growing again after put in soil?? Weird! Now I plan on stressing it to hermaphrodite it.

I am seriously starting to think I have a freakazoid on my hands here. Thing looks like it has 3 stalks not to mention that this thing is only 3" tall but has 13-18 nodes? What the hell is going on?

subscribed! looking forward to seeing how they do haha wow that little one looks like its going to be a beast!
Do you think the cfl supplemental lights will make a big difference? I still feel like the sunshine systems glow panel is still not powerful enough, even with just two plants.

nkoehler said:

subscribed! looking forward to seeing how they do haha wow that little one looks like its going to be a beast!
Do you think the cfl supplemental lights will make a big difference? I still feel like the sunshine systems glow panel is still not powerful enough, even with just two plants.

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Well the small plant was actually started as a bubbleponic plant. I thought I killed it but it came back to life in soil. Go figure. And I think your right about the panel. They are great for the extra color range but not so good stand alone. So yes, the CFL's are doing most the work if you ask me. I'm actually a little worried about the little monster. It's just "odd" looking..

Pretty soon I will be going to twice a week Vrs everyday. I just wanted to note some of the odd growth.
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thanks for the link subd'

ҖҗlegilizeitҗҖ;6676021 said:

thanks for the link subd'

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Welcome aboard! Even though you grow in soil and don't use LED's doesn't mean you can't spot a problem. 2 heads are better than 1 and this forum is awesome for advice! I look forward to any input you may have.

alley.walker said:

Welcome aboard! Even though you grow in soil and don't use LED's doesn't mean you can't spot a problem. 2 heads are better than 1 and this forum is awesome for advice! I look forward to any input you may have.

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yup lol and hey i probably will learn a thing or two about leds and hydroponics on the way

Up and coming 50 watt red 630nm for flower. I made the mistake of ordering the wrong LED driver. But It did work momentarily and this SOB is so bright that you wouldn't be able to look at it across the street at 12 noon. 2000 lums, Perfect for pc grow.
2000 lums may not seem that bright compared to HPS or MH. but consider this, 2000lums coming from the area about the size of a dime.

Fucking awesome dude, can't wait to see what that thing can do! Love that you are building the lights yourself, love DIY grow gear. I'm sub'd just for that LED lol. +rep

Silversun said:

Fucking awesome dude, can't wait to see what that thing can do! Love that you are building the lights yourself, love DIY grow gear. I'm sub'd just for that LED lol. +rep

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If I wasn't about to go to bed, I would be chatty about the red led. But as of now... Wuuuff.. My bud's purple haze has got me shleepy!. But thanks for the sub!! I look forward to viewing your grows once i have woken up.

Link to where I bought seeds. Yes they ship everywhere. I won't give up how, but they will arrive! Pineapple Chunk!
http://www.herbiesheadshop.com/barneys-pineapple-chunk-feminised-seeds-2418

First and foremost welcome to RIU and if no one has mentioned it to you yet to help you out... the plant looks to be deficient in magnesium... you can easily correct this with adding epsom salt couple of teaspoons per gallon of water and just use that gallon of water to water the plants with for the next 2 weeks and she'll perk right up

also if you would like to do this as it will be much better for your plants... you'll want to give the plants a wide range in spectrums from First from a high intensity bulb metal halide... high pressure sodium, multiple cfl's say 10 or so...

even though watts and "lumens" have nothing to do with making plants grow watts are about electrical and lumens are all about how "human" eyes perceive the light... the "intensity of light" is what you are looking for per plant and that is generally only produced with a ton of cfl's or any other type of high intensity fluorescents, hps, mh bulbs etc..

even though those high intensity light bulbs say their color "temperature" in kelvins are 6500k or 2700k or 7500k etc... they are still putting out light in many wavelengths in the spectrum... which is good for the plants health...

you're only gonna want to use led's to just dial in the peaks of the chlorophyll synthesis which if you are going to do it yourself or buy then you ONLY want them to emit the peaks of 410, 430, and 460 nm for vegetative growth... then for flowering (but don't get anything lower than 640 nm) use the reds of 640 and 660 nm...

since you seem to be a techie as you look like you would understand this, heres a little bit of info about light for plants

PAR which is short for photosynthetically active radiation... is based on measurements in sunlight so only about 50% of incoming sunlight lies within the spectral range of 380-710 nm which is the range used by photosynthesis, which is what the range of PAR is...

Ultraviolet light waves which are shorter where UVA begins around 320-380 nm or UVB at 280-320 nm and have no role in photosynthesis...

They do however... cause chlorophyll and DNA damage to the plant... so i wouldn't advise using any bulbs that have any UV light it while in vegetative growth as it is not necessary and will only do weird things to the growth of your plants...

But one thing is great about cannabis and since the plant has developed through its years on this earth a wonderful ability to produce a protective defense against this radiation where it uses trichromes to protect it... and you only really want to be exposing the plant to it during the latter end of flowering with flourescents that emit any ultraviolets... say 30 minutes a day for the last 4 weeks, but only at low levels say 2, 2 foot reptile bulbs t5 for your space concerns... You'll get uber frosty buds

Light that is available for photosynthesis is called photosynthetic photon flux density is only able to be expressed as µmol m-2 s-1, or as watts per meter square...
and the light that hits the earths outer atmospheric layer is about 1400 watts per meter squared... but by the time it gets to the plant on the surface, only 50% remains, thus making full sunlight right around 700 watts per square meter... so if you plan on giving your plant or others in the future you'll want to try to give the plant as close to this as possible to achieve the best results

Full sunlight ranges from 70,000-100,000 lux and the highest number of luminous intensity when there is a highly reflective WHITE SURFACE ( so please try not to use metallic reflective surfaces such as tin foil etc that will only increase your HEAT situation

So if you can figure out how someone can go blind from "snow blindness" it is because the complete snow cover even in the arctic where there reduced intensity of sunlight as the sun doesn't even get much higher than the horizon hitting the earth at that point the white snow will reflect back a vast majority of the light making it that much more intense

Even then that is only one part of the spectral effect coming from the light source... Once the light strikes the leaf, it encounters not only chlorophyll
pigments but actually two chlorophylls a and b... also the cell's shape and size can bend and focus or scatter light depending on the cells wall structure.

Which is why measurements of light are mostly biased representations of light from the perspective of humans and
not that of a plant leaf that must use that energy to activate its photosynthetic pathway.

So anyways hope this may shed a little "light" on the subject (damn stupid puns cant help it lol)

enjoy the grow