Just started my first ever grow

I just started my first grow ever in a DWC bubbler and I may not be doing everything the best way possible so if you have suggestions please let me know, I bought Feminized Northern Lights and Bubba Kush from The Seed Centre and they gave me 2 free skunk seeds. I am now germinating the 1 of each seed hopefully all three will grow. this is strictly for personal use and maybe for close friends I will not sell it so not a big deal if the production is a little low.

My setup is in my closet and is getting cold so I got a space heater with a thermostat to regulate to 75-80 degrees I am using Sure To Grow as the media because I was looking for something easy and stupid proof the next grow I may do in pellets or perlite but we will see I am gonna grow in a small 2 gallon tote I might go bigger now if all three plants live though. I am not going to do a second tote so my question is how often should I change the water in the tote, keep in mind it will have a bubbler and I will monitor the ph closely, the grow lights for now I will just use the CFL's I have a Lumen meter and in my grow box it reads just under 9000 lumens at the tote level so I think it will work for my purposes. tell me if you have any ideas.

Keep in mind I am on a very tight budget so no $150 lights and things like that and I live in BFE so I only have access to Home depot and walmart

since your budget is tight you gotta go ghetto,... I completely understand and relate to that.
I dont know what the sure to grow media is but everything else sounds ok since youre not concerned with quantity.
I would definitely find a way to cool/heat the res whichever you may need. res temps are supposed to be no lower than 60f but never higher than 70f and you might wanna get some hydrogen peroxide. Ideally you want the 29% stuff you get from the dro shop or the 35% food grade kind, but 3% regular pharmacy bought will work the kind you put on scrapes and cuts.
if you dont have one already, you should get a PH meter and a TDS meter... PH IMO being the most important of the two.

True that you are going to have to go real ghetto. In DWC you have to shell out some dough for PH meters, PPM Meters, air stones , etc...

I have a cheap PH meter from lowes for 5 bucks seems to work ok and I also have a digital aquarium thermo that I will watch closely but the res is in the grow box with the space heater so it should be ok....does anyone know when I should change the water.....I am assuming I just watch the PH and once it becomes unregulatable then I should change it? also will CFL's be ok for the grow light or should I get something different I have seen a few lights on craigslist that are not to bad bout 75-80 but if I dont need to buy them I dont want to.

Change weekly at first then once the plant gets larger it will drink more. You will top off daily with PH'd water during the grow but that amount will increase as the plant grows so later you may only get 4-5 days between reservoir changes. It depends on how much you add. Ideally once you add back in the amount equivalent to your reservoir size then you need to change your nutrients because they have been diluted.

Change your res about every week to be on the safe side .

me85222mustang said:

I have a cheap PH meter from lowes for 5 bucks seems to work ok and I also have a digital aquarium thermo that I will watch closely but the res is in the grow box with the space heater so it should be ok....does anyone know when I should change the water.....I am assuming I just watch the PH and once it becomes unregulatable then I should change it? also will CFL's be ok for the grow light or should I get something different I have seen a few lights on craigslist that are not to bad bout 75-80 but if I dont need to buy them I dont want to.

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the mainstream opinion is that cfls are suitable for veg but not for flowering. I think applied correctly they work fine, thing is they do not have penetration power, so they wont penetrate the canopy very well, a way to get around this is by training the plant, either scrog or LST for example. tho, if you could afford better light you should get better light. Before you go and spend more on lights tho, What have you gotten to combat odor? THIS WILL BE A MAJOR ISSUE! so deal with it sooner rather than later, I suggest you get a fan and carbon filter, You can get them off flea bay for around 100 bucks give or take a bit. then when you get better lights, ( HPS or MH) you will already have a fan capable of extracting the massive ammounts of heat these create.

Also I think they say a good grower can get anywhere between about .45GPW (grams per watt) in a scrog or LST

its in my back closet so my plan was to install a fart fan in the closet and vent it out side, I will see if I can get better lights at some point but I will wait till the flowering stage mayba a month and a half away from that yet, might s well spend the money on HPS setup if I have to spend the money. thanks for the suggestions keep them coming cause I dont know what I am doing

I think you can get some dense ass nugs off cfl lights. Try just placing CFL's on the side to supplement the light. They can get as close as two inches from the buds without burning them. Best of luck

I am new to the game also and using CFLS.

Your biggest issue will be overfeeding. Esp w/ too much N. The feeding guidelines on the bottles is for MH/HPS and were written in 1992 when CFLs did not exist.

Too much N= ph goes up then you are using PH down which is ammonium sulfate (more N) and urea phosphate (even more N). And then cycle goes on and on and you have a res full of too much nitrates.

So if your like me and have well water that is 7.0+ ph but with only a base of 150ppm you are adding N 100+ppm over base to get the ph down to 5.5.

I have not found a n-p-k ratio in the GH line to fit my needs so I am going off reservation and buying a big bag (they only come in big bags) of JR Peters 5-12-26 hydroponic prod#77251 commercial greenhouse fertilizer. If there is no CAL I will add epsom salt.

I think the key to CFL grows is that 1-2.5-5 ratio. High K is the key. Must likely the n from the addition of ph down will bring the actual ratio up to 2-2.5-5.

The more you know about row crop and turf and tree ag will give you a better understanding of the hydro world.

In the landscape industry Lesco sells a 5-10-31 w/2% iron product that is applied to northern bluegrass turf in June so the turf can survive the stress of a usually hot and dry summer.

The Peters product is for hydro in a greenhouse. Most greenhouse production takes place under the low level natural lighting of winter.

keep the light close and plan on everything taking about 1-3 weeks longer than with an hid light

how many plants was in the pic......I am thinking of getting HPS setup if the price is right for me dont know if its worth it yet I'm no professional so dont need a pro setup.....but then again it may be worth the price I pay dont know may have to weigh the pros and cons, also I am looking at the different nutes to use I think I will go with the alaskan fish plant food because its available at my lowes but will need a ph balancer and a PPM meter also I am growing in stg media and iam concerned about the water in the media getting moldy, my Kush and Northern light are germinating okay with temps between 74 and 81 it slipped up to 83 at one point but thats because I moved the heater to close. but the skunk is not coming in I dont think now anybody have any ideas.... and any comments on anything so far thanks for all the relpies so far

that was one plant i vegged it for 2 months and flowered for 11 weeks

I think my Northern Lights died dont know why if you can tell by the pics, here are some pics his neighbor id the Bubba Kush and he is fine so dont know what the deal is also have pics of the stealth box

any ideas of what could be the problem I dont know if its dead or not I checked and watered this morning and the leaves are opening and they are nice and green it has the 2 cotyledon leaves and two regular leaves, if you can see the stem is really thin right in the middle area I dont know why.

they seem to be doin alot better I am redoing my res system because this morning I found my kush was dry as a bone and was leaning over so I am doing a timed water system instead of a manual, also just picked up the recipe for success and 29% H2O2 so I should be ready for veg in the next 2 weeks or so heres a new pic. Thanks for the help

i always kept my babies in a dome when there that small. just my $.02

when should I remove them fron the dome and should I have the larger one under light

me85222mustang said:

when should I remove them fron the dome and should I have the larger one under light

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I keep mine for about 2 weeks or until they have a good amount of roots .. Just use PH water in the dome. Roots should look like this in 2 weeks.

I am just over a week from germination I think I am at 8 days today, my kush is the only that is growing I killed the northern lights but the kush isnt growing very fast I feel that he should be bigger by now his adult leaves are getting a little bigger but not much I tested the ph and it is real high I dont know why though because it is RO water that is a day or so old so I will attempt to lower it. Keep in mind I dont have any local Hydro shops closest one is an hour away, what else could I use to lower the ph that wont hurt the plant.