First attempt: DWC, 6 plants, 3 strains, 400W.

myselfship

Member
My first grow, sort of (the other doesn't really count). Here are things that I have:

- 400W HPS with batwing reflector. It's hanging from a chain at the top of my closet.
- A large bin with three plants, a medium bin with two plants, and a Waterfarm with one plant.
- An Aerogarden. At this stage I am done with it, but I used it to germinate and raise four of the plants before I put them in DWC/WF.
- Com-100 TDS meter, currently calibrated and working. I currently keep all the plants at about 500-600ppm.
- Hanna Ph meter. Not currently calibrated. We're going to visit a hydro store and fix that problem in a couple days. The last times I tested my water with a drop kit, around 6.5-ish. Right now it could be causing some issues but I'm going to wait till I have accuracy and then start maintaining precise Ph levels.
- 10-amp timer. It is controlling only the light. They're on 19/5 right now.
- An oscillating fan on the wall.
- 6" 250cfm inline fan at the top where the heating vent used to be. Blows air out of the closet. I bought it from HD for $35. They say this one is weaker than the famous $150+ ones you see online, but it does the job better than anything else I could come up with. I am planning on installing a custom carbon filter on it.
- A double Aquaculture air pump pushing air to two 12" airstones, one in each of the big bins.
- A louder airpump that came with the WG. I used hemp rope to tie it to a plush toy that is inside of a basket that's attached to a pegboard. This dampens most of the vibration.
- Analog thermometer/hygrometer. The temp has been 82-88, usually around 85. I don't think it will be a problem at all once I start flowering in a few days. Humidity comes and goes, between 75 and 40-ish.
- Botanicare Pure Blend Pro, Pure Blend Grow, Liquid Karma, Cal Mag Plus.

My tapwater is about 45ppm, but I've been using mostly distilled water. If not distilled, I let the gallon jugs sit around for a few hours or days.

Plants: One night about three months ago I was high and while packing a bowl, I noticed a couple seeds from a very good strain. I had no interest in growing really, but because I had a pot of crappy soil that I pulled out of the closet, I decided to stick some seeds in it and put it by a window. Then I forgot about it. I think I even left to go somewhere for a few days, I didn't really water them daily or anything. Anyway, two of them came out, and proceeded not to die for a couple weeks. I'd occasionally give them water. Eventually I found some crappy fluorescent growlights that I bought at HD a year and a half ago. They kept crappily raising the plants. I actually had the lights laying on top of two computer monitors.

One day I whimsically bought an AG. After I got it, I put some new seeds in it, and began looking around and found RIU. That's when my real learning journey began. Four plants survived in it, and I gradually bought the other equipment, painted my closet white, and at first tried to grow the potted plants in the closet on CFLs. They looked like they wanted to die. I bought some MG soil from WM and put them into two separate pots. They responded by turning yellow, and one plant pulled out a mini-revolver and began threatening to shoot itself. Around this time I received my 3.5" rock wool cubes and net pots, and they were the first plants I put into DWC. I still expected 0 chance of success, as they were about 8 inches high, had about 10% the leaves that the plants in the AG (2-3 weeks old) had despite them being 2+ months old. The transplant wasn't perfect: I shook off as much soil as I could, made holes in net pots to pull some of the existing roots through (I did the same for my AG transplants which worked awesomely), placed the stem in the middle of a rock cube (I cut them from a side to the center). About a centimeter of the cubes were submerged in the water.

The two plants slowly regained their will to live, as you will see in the attached pictures. They are turning out to be sativas, so I am very curious about them. I will make a separate reply for all the pictures. At any time, please feel free to comment and provide suggestions. As it's my first grow, I am aware that I am not an expert and will not act that way.
 

myselfship

Member
dying_01.jpg
This is one of the plants as it's suffering in the high-Ph pot of soil.
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This is them shortly after I put them into DWC. Note the yellow leaves on the far left one (the one that was threatening to shoot itself), they have all fallen off and it began a new solid growth about a week ago.

Here are the Aerogarden pics:
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In that last picture, you can see a small new plant coming out. This is one of the ones I planted in a pod that never germinated. It's younger than the rest. We'll call this one "Flippy". The one on the middle here somehow lost its first stem, and immediately spawned two stems. It's been solidly growing like that since. We'll call this one "Siamese". The plant on the far left is the oldest and bushiest, we'll call it "Alpha", it's the one that went into the WG. The remaining plant we'll call "Whatever". This may sound insulting but I expect that it will have a sense of humour when it grows up and it will have to understand.

And here's all the recent stuff, all taken today:

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The waterfarm with Alpha is on the near left. By the far wall is the big bin with Whatever, Flippy, and Siamese. Their roots are two pictures down. All looking good. I call it Flippy because it's been flipping its leaves on occasion, I'm guessing it's because of the surface being reflective. It hasn't done it today because there are more shadows now due to heavier foliage, so it will probably stop flipping.
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The WF roots:
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And here are the post-soil sativas. They might be a crossbreed but they definitely have the narrowest leaves here, so that's what I'll call them for now.
sativa_01.jpgsativa_02.jpg

Well, that's all the information I can think of for now, I will post updates with pictures every few days. Any suggestions so far?
 

myselfship

Member
Oh, so actually I do have some questions. As evident, I have a plant that has a couple dozen branches, and a plant with only a few working leaves. Realistically, can I get these Sativas to produce anything at all if I start flowering in a few days? Or should I start flowering, leave the sativas in there, but abstain from flowering nutrients until they look ready? Holding off from flowering is problematic because of how big those other plants are growing.
 

myselfship

Member
Well, turns out there is an awesome hydro store near me less than half an hour away. I got the Ph 7.0 calibrating solution and have started keeping my plants at !+5.65-6. It's interesting to note that the Ph levels of my custom DWC boxes were more around 6, while the plant in the WF was around 7. I had to drop it down and I began giving it and the other big plants some PureBlend Bloom. I'm gradually shifting the hours towards flowering, right now. I just set it for 14/10, in fact, and will shift to 12/12 tomorrow. Pictures:
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The three plants in the back. Flippy is still flipping its leaves despite having grown above the rest. I just take the flipped leaf by the stem and twist it back gently, and it stays. Ph 5.65, around 600 ppm right now.
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A picture of everything. I moved the sativas to the left.
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I changed the water in the reservoir for the sativas. Some gooey stuff was accumulating, but not too bad, considering there was still soil left in the net pots. Gave them a fresh mix of PureBlend Grow, Aquashield, Cal-Mag, totaling ppm was around 450 and I finished with 5.56 ph.
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Someone must tell me what is wrong with this plant. Is it too wrinkly? Should I stick another bubbler to the bottom of the waterfarm or something? I'm going to go browse the forums for other WF grows I guess and see what I'm missing. But if anyone has any advice to give, it's appreciated.
 

myselfship

Member
The weakest Sativa has sprung crazy roots today, I just don't feel like taking a picture at the moment. The leaves it had grown in the DWC till now are dying for some reason, but at the top is a fresh new thickening green stem and fresh foliage, so I don't know. The other Sativa plant also has some old leaves it's discarding, but over 95% of it is green. I added half a teaspoon of PBGrow. Set the timer to 12/12, so as of the next cycle, they will be officially in flowering. The WF plant is still wrinkly but moisture seems to have returned to the big curling leaves, the stems aren't tilting weakly anymore and it looks healthier to me. I will probably flush its reservoir tomorrow night.
 

myselfship

Member
satties.jpg
I'm actually not sure if these are even all that sativ-y anymore. They do have a different growing structure than the other plants still, but the thickness of the leaves is becoming more ambiguous with the other plants.

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Managed to get a good shot of the WF without the HPS. Notice how the plant looks all wrinkly. This was yesterday. I drilled a hole and added a 4" airstone to the bottom of the WF, and another bubbler went into the three-plant container. They're getting air from two different pumps now.

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The roots in the big container with three plants. The second picture is zoomed in on Flippy (left) and Siamese.
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These are the roots from the Sativa-like plants. I'll still keep calling them Sativas for the remainder of this journal to simplify things for myself (since no one else seems to want to post at the weird times that I post).
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A shot of everything. This is after the wrinkly plant had already spent several hours of day, 12 hours of night, and 8 more hours of light with the added bubbler at the bottom of the WF. I think the bottom leaves are looking different and the curved sunleaves on the plant aren't as dry anymore. Things are all looking good, I just have to clean the big reservoir sometime soon.

Oh, I added an 80CFM fan at the bottom of the closet, it's actually blowing into a custom filter I made by modifying a kitchen fan replacement filters (I also made a big one for the 250CFM). They all cost me less than $50 and I no longer smell the fresh weed smell when walking in, so they're doing the job for now. I also snipped the very top off of Flippy as it's getting way too high. Comments welcome.
 

myselfship

Member
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I still had the HPS on. As I was taking pictures, it went off. I took the opportunity to snap the following, alas not very organised:
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I changed the reservoir on my three big plants. The Red Stem plant immediately fell over like a weakling. I think what happened was it was relying too much on the wall to lean all of its new growth against, and never got to stand up on its own. I turned the net pot around till the plant was able to lean on Flippy. Oh, I filled the new reservoir with flowering nutes only. Most of this week has been transitional as far as nute combos go, I don't have specifics. I can say I keep them around 400ppm and 5.6-6 Ph for now. And I'm not sure of the genders yet.
 

myselfship

Member
I was away for 36 hours, the plants looked quite different when I came back. There's definitely lots of flowering going on, but I'm confused about the genders. Will try to get good pictures later tonight maybe and see what we can do about identifying.

I would like to note that adding the extra air bubbles seems to have improved all plants and now all of the leaves look normal to me. I am kind of concerned about having a height problem. I might have to take the HPS out for like 30 mins sometime to mod the closet so that I can raise it. I'd prefer to avoid it, but I guess I could give it two more feet or so if I absolutely had to.
 

myselfship

Member
Well, had some hermies. The WF, the "sativa" ones. Actually, they could've been male. They definitely had pods. Basically, my oldest plants turned out to be bad. But we sliced them up and will make cannabutter, see how that goes. Here's what's left:
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This actually makes it a lot easier for me to manage the grow. They're all in one DWC reservoir now, 600 ppm/5.6 ph were the last stats I took. I did have to raise my HPS light past my original design. I am thinking next grow I will have a screen.
 

myselfship

Member
All is looking good. Ph is 5.5, they survived the 600ppm just fine. We did spot hairs on all three plants, but I wasn't able to get a good shot. Here are some decent shots I got after I heard the HPS go off.
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myselfship

Member
I newfangled a way to raise the light by several inches, as it was getting a bit too close (14 inches or so) to the tops of the plants. I raised it by about 7 inches. Here's a picture of the most developed bud.

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myselfship

Member
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The tallest plant still has the slowest developing buds compared to the other two. But it definitely has hairs.
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And a good bud picture from one of the good plants (their bud sizes are roughly about the same). (They are the plants that are on the left in the above picture).
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myselfship

Member
Not much new going on. All the plants are alive and well. The biggest one is finally beginning to show man random hairs but doesn't yet have the buds that the other two have. Here is a picture of one of those buds. I tried taking a bunch of pictures up close after the HPS came off, but this is the only one worth posting. I raised the lights some more today too, probably another two inches. I might end up needing to add a small fan to blow near the HPS light. Anyway, the bud:
oishii.jpg
 

myselfship

Member
This must be day 27 of flowering. The plant with the two stems is the most impressive one and I'm sad that I didn't clone it, but I will try reviving it after harvesting. The fast-growing plant has started blooming, while the smallest plant is mostly overshadowed by it. We'll probably take off some of the big plant's branches as time goes and they become somewhat usable. And now for the images:


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That was the late blooming plant just now, with a zoom in on one of the produced buds. I really only began seeing proper hairs about a week or so ago. Here is a view of it from a side:
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There you can see the buds from the shortest plant. Which is this:
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And here is the best looking plant. First the stem, then the buds. This is the one that has two stems.
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myselfship

Member
My Ph tester went out and it was 2-3 days before I got a new, much better one. When I came back I found the Ph had gone down to 4. I brought it to 5.6 this plant morning and overnight (their day) everything's looking good. I trimmed some yellow leaves down at the bottom. Pictures will be in the next message once I have them ready. I'm quite pleased with the way my first grow is going. \
 

myselfship

Member
Here are just a bunch of shots I took a few minutes before the HPS went off and a few after. Enjoy the pictures!
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flash_02.jpgflash_03.jpgflash_01.jpgthe_bud_01.jpg
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the_bud_02.jpg Yeah, two pictures of this bud. It has a twin, I swear, you just can't see it in the pictures. Well, you sort of can. You can see a couple leaves from it. Just look for leaves that seem to show the same pattern that are about 2ft to the right of that one.
 

myselfship

Member
These were taken on 11-12:
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This is the last remaining plant shortly before harvest, around 11-28-ish.

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I harvested and clipped on New Year's, took me over a day to deal with the large plant.

My first hydro grow is finally over and I have learned many things from it. The big plant overshadowed the other two plants and thus was able to yield 10X the amount of both of them combined. The big plant was Indica dominant and the other plants were more Sativa dominant. Indicas take longer to flower, hence that big plant was the last one remaining.

Of course, I did have those two clones, one of the big plant and one of the small plant. They are now half a week into flowering, and my AG has germinated two (of two) bagseeds. They are supposedly BB Kush but I've read about all the renaming and misnaming of strains. It was a good toke, nonetheless, so I'm happy about it. While I flower the two clones and build a better garden (I'm going to use two waterfarms, a WF controller reservoir, and any other custom containers I make myself out of buckets) I can continue to experiment with bagseeds a little more till I actually decide to start ordering.

Oh, gf and I smoked that entire plant in two weeks I guess.
 
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