Mars FC3000 Auto/Photo grow.

Hi, thanks for checking in. I recently won the FC3000 on RUI from Mars hyrdo. Big thank you to @MarsHydrofactory ! I stepped away from growing for I think close to 2 years. This is my first attempt to jump back in. I'm growing Cherry pie photo from Canuck seeds, Dinafem (rip) OG Kush CBD auto, and Fastbuds Purple Lemonade auto.

Pretty simple set up:
-Mars hydro FC 3000
-Acinfinity 3x3 tent
-Acinfinity 4" exhaust fan and carbon filter
-Megacrop 1 part nutrient
-Coco coir soil
-ph down to 5.8 to 6.1
-Blue labs PH pen
-Generic cheapo 500 scale PPM meter

I'm just sticking with Megacrop alone for my first run. I want to have a baseline to compare with for future grows when I will start adding further amendments. Yes, no calmag in coco even!. So there will likely be some uglies.

About the FC3000. It's a 300w bar style (4 bars) led. It has the Samsung LM301b diodes which is in my opinion one of the better price to performance/efficiency options when choosing a light. It uses it's own Mars Hydro Driver. What really sets this 300w light apart from it's competition is it's smart function. This makes it the hands down winner when looking at similar priced lights with the LMB301b diodes. I won't go into all the details of the smart function, it actually has a lot, but the main features I am using is the timer function and the dimmer function. Not paying for and messing around with timers is a huge plus and the app is super simple. For an in depth review far beyond the scope of this journal and what I can do I strongly recommend checking out Shane's review from Migrow and Dr.Mj coco. They have great unbiased light reviews with par testing.

From left to right
Front left- Cherry Pie Photo. I've been feeding 700 ppm Megacrop. 300 of that PPM is my tap water.
Back Left- Blueberry auto. It was supposed to be a photo period, but SUPRISE it was an auto. Thanks Canuck seeds for throwing that little wrinkle into my grow plans.
Front right- FB purple Lemonade 600 total ppm Megacrop
Back right- Dinafems OG Kush CBD 600 total ppm Megacrop. ( I really f'ing miss you Dinafem! )


July 25th. I set the light to 75% and it's sitting about 21" above the canopy

I forgot to mention, I've pretty much grown exclusively auto's. Coming back to growing I wanted to go photo's this time around. It hasn't gone totally smoothly, cloning has been a bit of a pain. I've managed to get some to root after 3 weeks but they are pretty far behind so I think I'm going to have to start to Flower the 1 Cherry pie in the tent with the auto's. Not sure how the auto's will feel about this but I seem to recall some auto growers mentioning on here they do it all the time without issue. If I'm going to continue with photo's I think I'm going to go with making my own selfed cherry pie seeds with colloidal silver. I'm done with the cloning hastle.

Going to bump up the Cherry pie feed to 800 total ppm (300 ppm tap water) and start 12/12 in a few days time. Light is still about 20" above canopy and 75%

Aug 10th

Little over a week since flipping 12/12. Feeding the Cherry pie @ 850 ppm and the auto's still 600 ppm. I've turned the light to 80% at about 20 inches above the canopy. I'm guessing the 2 auto's on the right have about 3-4 weeks left putting them under 90 days from seed breaking ground when finished. The temps in the tent aren't the best, dropping down to as low as 57 during lights out and up to 70 when the light is on. I'm watering about 3/4's of a gallon to each plant every 2nd day.



Some Cherry pie in veg waiting to replace the auto's.


They are all in different sizes because well, my cloning skills suck. 3 out of the 4 recently topped.

2 weeks now since I flipped the cherry pie on the left side of the tent. She's starting to show signs of flowering now. I jumped the feeding up to 950 ppm. I bumped the light up another 5% this week to 85% @ about 18" from the top of the canopy. They cherry pie seems to love it but the I see some slight upward curl on the edges of the leaves on the auto's. Looking back though my previous grow journals it seems my og kush and purple lem auto's have all finished around day 75. They are on day 77 now. I think the 12/12 light schedule has really slowed them down by a week or two.

Aug 27

Cherry Pie Canuck seeds


Dinafem OG Kush CBD Auto


Cherry Pie Veggies



Thanks for checking in. Any feed back or comments always welcome !

Zogs said:

2 weeks now since I flipped the cherry pie on the left side of the tent. She's starting to show signs of flowering now. I jumped the feeding up to 950 ppm. I bumped the light up another 5% this week to 85% @ about 18" from the top of the canopy. They cherry pie seems to love it but the I see some slight upward curl on the edges of the leaves on the auto's. Looking back though my previous grow journals it seems my og kush and purple lem auto's have all finished around day 75. They are on day 77 now. I think the 12/12 light schedule has really slowed them down by a week or two.

Aug 27
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Cherry Pie Canuck seeds
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Dinafem OG Kush CBD Auto
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Cherry Pie Veggies
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Thanks for checking in. Any feed back or comments always welcome !

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Looking good man! So in your experience the effect from auto bud = just as good as photo?

DrDukePHD said:

Looking good man! So in your experience the effect from auto bud = just as good as photo?

Click to expand...

I think it comes down to strain and breeder. Some autos you will like better and vice versa. From a growing perspective there is definitely some pros and cons to each.

Walked in on my autoflowers this week filing a Nitrogen abuse claim. I told them the same thing I told my kids growing up. They eat what's put on the table or go hungry. To many plants currently happening in different stages to make special meals for everyone. I'll be willing to discuss it again next week with them on chop day.
Hopefully @MarsHydrofactory doesn't come take my light away for plant abuse

Things much the same this week as last. The cherry pie is really starting to stack some nice bud sites. I'm slowly defoliating the inside of the canopy as we go to let more light in.



OG Kush


Purple Lemonade

It's the end of the road for OGK and Purple Lemonade Auto's. The Cherry pie has the tent to herself for a few days now until I get to some transplanting of the vegging pies.


The Purple Lemonade came down last week and was well under my average for this strain at just under 2 ounces. I really think that 12/12 not only takes longer for auto's to finish flower but may also effect the yield. The wife did how ever give the smoke report as 2 thumbs up !




The OGK is being processed as I write this up. I'll post the final weight next week.


Cherry pie Getting some 1 on 1 time with the FC3000




***NSFW*** a little up the skirt action..
.
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Until next week,
Take care !

The cherry pie is on week 6 of flower now. I'm feeding around 900-950ppm total. About 25 ppm of sea kelp and 75 ppm of big bud. The rest is Megacrop. The FC3000 is about 14" from the top of the canopy @ 90% power. I'm not seeing any sign of light stress and I'm thinking of bumping it up to 100%. My temps in the tent are anywhere from as low as 59 with lights off to 73F lights on. I'm a bit worried there isn't enough air circulation getting underneath the canopy. I only have one fan in the tent blowing down from the top. It's frustrating trying to find fans that will last and at a decent price. If anyone has any recommendations for a good fan please let me know.








Last weeks harvest of OGK turned out to be 2.5 ounces dry.

Zogs said:

The cherry pie is on week 6 of flower now. I'm feeding around 900-950ppm total. About 25 ppm of sea kelp and 75 ppm of big bud. The rest is Megacrop. The FC3000 is about 14" from the top of the canopy @ 90% power. I'm not seeing any sign of light stress and I'm thinking of bumping it up to 100%. My temps in the tent are anywhere from as low as 59 with lights off to 73F lights on. I'm a bit worried there isn't enough air circulation getting underneath the canopy. I only have one fan in the tent blowing down from the top. It's frustrating trying to find fans that will last and at a decent price. If anyone has any recommendations for a good fan please let me know.

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Last weeks harvest of OGK turned out to be 2.5 ounces dry.
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Any non-oscillating fan should have a long life.
I use PC case fans to get air movement under the canopy.
They have at least 10,000 hours runtime and are still working fine.
AC Infinity also makes some 120mm fans that run off a usb power source. They're marketed for AV applications but work well in the same role.

I also have some cheap ~ 10" generic Menards fans in the corners above the canopy. They're a few years old and still run perfectly. Again, non-oscillating.

Billy the Mountain said:

Any non-oscillating fan should have a long life.
I use PC case fans to get air movement under the canopy.
They have at least 10,000 hours runtime and are still working fine.
AC Infinity also makes some 120mm fans that run off a usb power source. They're marketed for AV applications but work well in the same role.

I also have some cheap ~ 10" generic Menards fans in the corners above the canopy. They're a few years old and still run perfectly. Again, non-oscillating.

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Thats a good idea the pc case fans. I have a ton of them kicking around. How do you power them ?

Zogs said:

Thats a good idea the pc case fans. I have a ton of them kicking around. How do you power them ?

Click to expand...

12v DC power supply

Billy the Mountain said:

12v DC power supply

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Can't tell you how much I appreciate your idea. I was just looking again on amazon at tent fans and it's pretty disgusting what they are charging for small fans and how long they actually last. The usb ones seem a bit cheaper but I'm not sure how I feel about plugging those into the little box adapters connecting them to the wall outlet.. Not sure I trust them 24/7 not to start a fire.

Zogs said:

Can't tell you how much I appreciate your idea. I was just looking again on amazon at tent fans and it's pretty disgusting what they are charging for small fans and how long they actually last. The usb ones seem a bit cheaper but I'm not sure how I feel about plugging those into the little box adapters connecting them to the wall outlet.. Not sure I trust them 24/7 not to start a fire.

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I wouldn't be concerned about the safety hazard of a usb power adapter. I've got a few that have been powered on continuously for 5+ years running my Raspberry Pi's. AC actually makes a 6.5V usb AC/DC adapter for the fans to get a bit more oomph. I've used it for a few years and it runs cool and no issues. You just have to be careful not to accidentally use is with anything else expecting the standard 5v usb output.

On to week 7 now with Cherry pie. The Mars FC3000 seems to be doing it's job. It's running @ 95% and I'll prolly leave it at that from now on. I was probably a little too gun shy with the light at first. I stuck 4 more cherry pie into the tent a couple weeks ago now and they have no issues @ around 19-20 inches above the canopy.



I'm thinking 2 more weeks?

Figured I'd post a quick lil video before the chopping is done .

The day has come for some cherry pie. Some final pic's before choppy chop.


Bowsers getting ready to party !






Thanks for checking out my grow. I'll give the final weigh in and wrap up this journal as soon as she's dry.

So it's time to conclude this journal. Thanks for everyone who stopped by to check it out. Big thank you to @MarsHydrofactory and RIU for hosting these great giveaways. I loved the light it did a great job. Final weight on the Cherry pie was just over 6 ounces.



Bowsers all lit up. 6 more jars to his stash pile.



Thanks everyone !

My second grow with the mars hydro fc3000 and cherry pie .

Harvest day

The results are in, 10.5 ounces.