Big Buddha Cheese grow Ebb n Grow w/ 2x600hps

20 Big Buddha Cheese feminized seeds
CAP Ebb N Grow controller w/ 12 buckets (might add 6 more)
4x8x7 tent
2x600W HPS air-cooled hoods
A/C Unit
Air pump in rez
Intake/Exhaust
blah, blah, blah


Day 1: Sprouted all 20 BBC seeds in Jiffy cubes under a heating pad and in a humidity dome.

All 20 seeds sprouted in 5 days! Nice seeds!

Day 14: All is going well. I had a 100% germination success rate. My tent and Ebb n Grow system is all setup and I'm ready to transplant.

Day 15: Ran a few cycles to make sure everything was operating properly and nutes (GH FLB) were mild enough for young plants. All is good. Yet, as I get ready to transplant, I walk into my grow room and see my dog munching on the Jiffy pellets of 8 of my babies!!! Anger & sadness never met as one before. I had to transplant into the buckets in a hurry, salvaging some of the pellets and transplanting others into new ones. Fed them all a mild B-1 mixture, I think I added some of the free Root66 that came with the system, too.

Day 17: Looks like 3 are not going to survive. I'm hardly even paying attention to them. They are showing severe root damage from the lower sections up.

Day 18-19: Notice my buckets aren't draining. Finally figured out it was one of the floats off tilt a bit. Leveled it out and draining just fine. I also added A/C to the tent.

Day 20: The buckets are draining properly. They are set to fill 4x's for 15 minutes cycles during light hours. I'm noticing a mild N deficiency (yellowing lower leaves) and quickly correct it by adding some GH Micro (hard water). I think it is most likely from the buckets not draining (overwatering), but I might just go to FNGrow for veg, instead of FNBloom w/ some Micro just in case the strain wants more N. Rez is currently at 750 ppm (.5 conversion), so I'll slowly top it up with Micro and see if that helps.

Day 24: Nutes up to 1000ppm (.5 conversion) and everything is looking pretty darn good. Still showing a very mild N deficiency. Tomorrow, I'm going to empty half of my rez and replace with R/O water, flood once or twice, and then add the FNGrow. So far, no major fluctuations in ppm or pH (my standing tap water is 220ppm & 8.2 pH). pH is staying at about 5.6-6.0 pretty consistently with the GH nutes. I'm also going to add 5 more buckets, and transplant the remaining dog attack survivors (3 did not survive). I've also picked the mother. She's lovely. Plants are showing good growth patterns. Short and stocky plants, pretty much what I expected from the strain. I think the FNGrow will help stretch them out a bit, but I don't want them too lanky.

Day 28: added 5 more buckets and transplanted 5 more. I had previously thought that 3 weren't going to make it due to the dog attack on the roots, however two are recovering well since I've been watering them with a diluted B-1 & Root66 solution, no nutes for a few days, and added nutes slowly each day after that.

So, one of the total 20 died. I gave it a funeral, where my dog actually seemed to feel kind of bad. Haha.

So far, I'm really liking this system. I'm also liking the mixture of FNB & Hardwater Micro on this strain. They are really starting to take off at only 13 days of veg, considering they were getting over watered (buckets not draining) the first few days.

Since I have two that are leftover, I'm going to build two DWC systems out of 18gal Rubbermaid tubs for future clones, or just put them in soil. Depends on how lazy I get this week. Roots are showing out of the cubes, so I have to do something soon. I also, saw some nice Blue Dream clones at the local shop. Hmmm....what to do, what to do.

Day 35 (20th day in veg):

These things really took off. I slowly added more nutrients every two days or so. My ppm now reads about 1200 (.5 conversion) and they seem to really love it.

Pics aren't great, i know. The first three pics are taken 3 days in a row (days 16-18 in veg), if you can believe. That's about when I started increasing the nutes. The last one is taken today.

They are about 12 inches tall. I'm thinking maybe 6 more inches and then flower. We'll see.

Looking good buddy!! Check out my grow in my Sig!!

Day 38 (23rd day of veg): Just over 3 weeks of veg in the buckets and these babies are now 18 inches. Just over a month from seed. Very nice! This CAP system is all new to me, and I honestly underestimated it. Didn't expect them to grow quite so quickly. In three days they grew 5-6 inches and consumed almost 1 gallon each! I love when I hit the sweet spot. Maybe you hydro guys are used to this, I'm not, but very well could be.

I will most likely be switching the lights this weekend, as this strain is about a 60% sativa, 40% indica...and with this system I expect the same growth rate in flowering, if not higher. Don't want them to top out my tent. Still, I couldn't be more pleased right now. If you have $200-300 to spare, this system is worth every penny. You might have a few kinks at the beginning, but most things are an easy fix.

Mrcool360 said:

Looking good buddy!! Check out my grow in my Sig!!

Click to expand...

Thanks, man. Looking good too. I can hardly wait for 9-10 weeks from now.

Your plants are looking great, subscribed. Looks like it will be a good ride

Day 49 (6 Days in Flower): Well, I put these babies in flower 6 days ago (Do the math, I'm hoping it's good luck. LOL). However, after being out of town for a few days, I came back to a FOREST! Due to the stress of my dog eating on some of the roots, half of them (the stressed ones) ended up being the size I wanted them...however, the other half are about 34 inches. I'm afraid they will top out the tent, so I most likely will be tying down a jungle in a few weeks. I'm thinking about getting another light and building another "room" off of half of the tent to maybe spread them out a bit and allow more light to get into the now dense canopy. Refitting buckets isn't exactly what I had in mind, however, so we'll see.


I also, picked up a free quart of 0-4-8 AN Hammerhead. Anyone have experience using this? I'm using FloraNova Bloom (4-8-7) as my base nutes at about 1200ppm (.5 conversion). Plants are looking super healthy, so I'm not sure if I will even use it.

I've got an ebb n grow myself- eagerly awaiting more updates!

P.S. Where did you find an ebb n grow for $200-300? Mine was $450 incl. shipping and I thought that was a steal...

Cool! I love mine. I bought it with a tent and lights, so I'm not sure exactly what I paid for it. However, there are kits to build the controller for about $100, plus rez, home-made buckets, and tubing; I'm sure you could build the same thing for that much. Growth is amazingly fast in this system. Most of the BBC plants were a sativa dominant strain, so some ended up getting over 6 feet tall including buckets. They can really take off on you in these buckets.

I'm flushing now and am harvesting most of the plants tomorrow. I'm interested to see what the root ball looks like.

I'm already growing the clones for the next run. However, this time I will be topping them low and just grow 4 main colas per plant. I'll try to keep them no more than 3 ft in flower. Still, it was pretty amazing seeing how these plants "naturally" grow. Some of the lower branches reached up and flowered just as well as the main cola. Lovely, albeit a nightmare to stake up. I'm thinking about growing in tomato cages too.

montanamike1 said:

I've got an ebb n grow myself- eagerly awaiting more updates!

P.S. Where did you find an ebb n grow for $200-300? Mine was $450 incl. shipping and I thought that was a steal...

Click to expand...

By the way, I recommend fitting shut-off valves between the buckets. It is much easier to flush the entire system, including buckets, this way.

the tramp said:

By the way, I recommend fitting shut-off valves between the buckets. It is much easier to flush the entire system, including buckets, this way.

Click to expand...

Sounds like a great idea here. Can you recommend a specific type that would work for the system? Can't find any suitable 1.5 inch plastic shutoff valves by googling, so if you can point me to something, I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks, and your grow is awesome - I'm jealous as hell, your babes look perfect!

i use the 1/2“ ones
http://www.berryhilldrip.com/SPD/green-back-valves-by-antelco--800015FF-1199317213.jsp