Check out this 20 plant grow under a single LED grow light.

[chazbolin]

I'm starting this thread at Day 23 from rooted clone (Day 18 of flower). I have 20 plants with a mix of Smash Berry and Blue Dream in 5 gallon buckets. The buckets are being bottom fed on a flood and drain system from a fish tank filled with Tilapia. I'm using lava rock at the bottom 4" of the buckets with Growpito spun rock media filling the rest of the bucket. The lights are the Impact Series from Inda-Gro utilizing the attachment UV-Pontoon. Based on modest 2 oz return per plant this puts us at 2.5 lbs per light. But we shall see. I'll provide weekly updates with a smoke report and finished weights at the end.

http://inda-gro.com/IG/sites/default/files/pdf/ImpactSeries9.pdf
http://inda-gro.com/IG/sites/default/files/pdf/ImpactSeries9.pdf
http://www.growpito.com/

 

[HiloReign]

I see you're very much still active, honored to follow this one. Looking clean and the impact series looks like a sweet build with cool features...

 

[InTheValley]

Nice, Got my thumbs up, cant wait to see harvest for sure.

 

[GrowLightResearch]

h Growpito spun rock media filling the rest of the bucket

Why Growpito vs. some other media? Appears to be doing very well. I'm thinking I may want to try it. Where can it be purchased?

 

[PSUAGRO.]

Chaz is back, nice grow brother...........hyroot said you moved to CO? Everything good?

 

[chazbolin]

Thanks everyone. It's great to be back! We have been steadily moving along with the induction lamps since 2010. But the reality is that the industry is going to switch over to LED and really the time is now. IMO this light is packed with the features that should be available when using this type of technology. The plant response and yields will speak for themselves. I've never pulled less than a gram/watt and my last run before the UV-Pontoon was completed ran 1.5 g/w. It's documented on FB in the 151 Farms FB page under lighting trials. The 1.24 we posted in the trials did not include 4 plants that harvested under the same light 5 days later.

So here's what's been going on. As many of you know I've been bottom feeding these buckets through the lava rock for years. But the one thing I was never happy about was the root aeration from the air being pushed up into the root zone by the rising water in the buckets. With Growpito that has been solved. I have it and if anyone reading this is near our 151 farm in San Diego I would welcome and encourage you to make a trip out here and see what it is we've been up to.

Lastly this whole 151 Farms thing, which was originally started to give us a place to run grow lights and controls (not just ours) has turned into a cause unto itself. To see what I mean I would invite anyone interested in learning more to go to our FB page @ 151 Farmers.

 

[chazbolin]

Hey PSUAGRO! Yeah the CO thing was short lived. I can't handle partners I guess. I'm back in Diego now working the farm. We need to get together when you're able!

 

[OLD MOTHER SATIVA]

thanks my next step is aquaponic cannabis..we have done trout and salad greens etc..

look forward to seeing how you do

 

[chazbolin]

Day 23 of Flower Update and I must say the resin oil and trichome production is really good for not even 1/2 way there. If anyone wants to learn more about how we're growing with a Closed Loop Aquaponic System go to: http://151farmers.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Closed-Loop-AquaponicsV1-1.pdf

 

[PSUAGRO.]

Looks like you guys are using mid-power packages, can you go over the specs a little more?==4000k,5000k,600nm blend? what chips/bins? 2.4 umol/j confirmed in a sphere/gonio?

that growpito seems like an evolution from that dutch stuff , forget the name right now

thanks chaz

 

[thisusernameisnottaken]

So you can give fish tank water to your plants without any nutes?

 

[chazbolin]

No cannabis needs additional nutrients that are not available in straight fish water. So we add trace minerals through a top watering every 4-7 days. The dosing system is a good way to give the plants what they need without introducing those trace minerals from heavy top watering that don't get along well with the fish. It's known as dual root zone and it gives you the benefits of both hydro and aquaponics. This presentation gets into it in more detail; http://151farmers.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Closed-Loop-AquaponicsV1-1.pdf

 

[natureboygrower]

No cannabis needs additional nutrients that are not available in straight fish water. So we add trace minerals through a top watering every 4-7 days. The dosing system is a good way to give the plants what they need without introducing those trace minerals from heavy top watering that don't get along well with the fish. It's known as dual root zone and it gives you the benefits of both hydro and aquaponics. This presentation gets into it in more detail; http://151farmers.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Closed-Loop-AquaponicsV1-1.pdf

just found this thread.great things you have going on here!subbed

 

[chazbolin]

Looks like you guys are using mid-power packages, can you go over the specs a little more?==4000k,5000k,600nm blend? what chips/bins? 2.4 umol/j confirmed in a sphere/gonio?

that growpito seems like an evolution from that dutch stuff , forget the name right now

thanks chaz

I think you're referring to Maupito and I'm not even sure their still around. Grodan seems to have displaced them. As to this spectrum we used a combination of 3500K, 5000K, 660nm strips and a small amount of the 730nm at lights on which is exclusively used at lights out to initiate the Phytochrome Photoequilibrium as the 730's run on lithium ion batteries to instantly trigger the flowering response at lights out. As to the 2.4 uMol/J listed, no it has not yet been tested in a sphere but was calculated using the mfg's 140 L/w ratings on their SMD strips through a Summation Equation process as detailed on page 8 para 3 of the link. http://inda-gro.com/IG/sites/default/files/pdf/plant-lighting-resource/1-Measuring Plant Light with Technical Comparisons.pdf I believe we were modest in our PPF calculations to the extent that I believe the 2.4 uMol/j is likely to go even higher however once I have the sphere test results I will post them. Below is the SPD for the main LED light and the SPD for the attachment UV-Pontoon.

 

[chazbolin]

Day 30 (L1-L3) update. As you look down the trailers you'll see that we have 5 lights with 3 of them(L1-L3) set up on UV-Pontoons with L4/5 running with straight LED and no Pontoons. Also the plants under L4/5 are at day 14 of flower and they are all in Growpito spun rock media, not the coco-soil mixes you can see under lights L1-L3. I think you can see for yourself that the Growpito as it is bottom fed is getting much better aeration in those buckets. The L4/5 plants are fatter and healthier from what I can see out of those plants in the coco-soil mix. It's not that the coco plants aren't looking good but I can definitely see that the Growpito plants are farther along in plant size at 1/2 the time. In these image you'll also see the main electric panel and the controls bypass switch. This is a simple way of using the toggle switch mounted on the side of the electric panel to move main lighting control over to a 24 hour analog timer if there are ever any issues with your tablet connectivity or should you have a systems glitch.

The entire system including a propagation/veg area and 2 ton 13 seer mini-split is ran off of a 2 pole 60 amp circuit breaker. At no time does that main circuit ever exceed 40 amps per pole. The flowering trailer with all the lights running in full flower setting with the 3 attachment UV-Pontoons consumes a total of 3900 watts. The thermal contribution from the lights is 13,300 btu/hr which for our 2 ton mini-split rated @ 24,000 btu capacity is not a problem at all. The flowering bed measures 4' x 25' = 100 sq-ft total area or 39 watts per sq-ft of lighting load as currently configured.

Keeping in mind that these are not ideal environmental conditions in that the trailer is not insulated and we're not using supplemental CO2 we have factored these low end production values at:
1 plant/sq-ft at low end production of 2 oz per plant this would come to 200 oz (12.5 lbs or 5600 grams) of top shelf quality in a 7 week finish. This extrapolates out to 1.43 grams per watt or 56 grams per sq-ft.

These are worse case scenarios. The other thing to consider in reducing costs would be our controller which can run every other light at a checkerboard feature. What this does is take L1, L3 and L5 lights to 100% output for 30 minutes while L2 and L4 run at say 50% output. Every 30 minutes the controller will flip that so that L2 and L4 will run at 100% and L1, L3 and L5 may only drop down to lay 70% output. These are ALL user defined settings. The bottom line is you've just cut your electric bill down by 20-30% and you've reduced your thermal contribution within the room.

 

[chazbolin]

Day 46 on the front set and day 29 on the back set. Since the last post I added a Sentinel CO2 controller and running it @ ~1200 PPM. I've also got the Dent submeter which you can see to the left of the electric panel working with the software to watch the main meter Time of Use and let me % load shed to keep from moving into a tier increase before the end of that billing cycle. It's not ready for the market yet but it will be on the 151Controls website when it's ready for prime time. I do like the lower canopy development I'm getting on the Impact lights. It's a pretty uniform coverage and the way the strips are mounted spread out over a larger surface area for mounting means any kind of canopy movement is letting those photons get lower down onto the plant.

If anyone is in SD and would like to visit us hit me up.

Next up final harvest and with the UV it looks like we might only be just another week out on some of these ladies.

Cheers!

 

[chazbolin]

Today is day 55 and the 20 plants under the first light (L1) are done. I set the plants up outdoors in the buckets so you can see them in the light better. It's astonishing when you see them moved out into the sunlight to think all these plants were under one light! If you look closely at the black 5 gal buckets you can see the water line where the fish water runs up into the bottom of the buckets each day. Our top water schedule for trace minerals is every 4 days. Keep in mind 18 of the plants that were under L1 had been a coco/soil media and 2 had been the Growpito. Under L3-5 we're all Growpito. We're still another 2 weeks out for them to finish but I can't wait to see them done. The plants in the Growpito are about 30% bigger with more flowering sites. Next update I'll have the weights and a smoke report. I'll keep the thread open to close out all the plants under L2 thru L5 which will give us a net yield over 100 sq-ft. Cheers!

 

[Hybridway]

@OneHitDone

 

[scatmandu]

Why Growpito vs. some other media? Appears to be doing very well. I'm thinking I may want to try it. Where can it be purchased?

@OneHitDone Come check us out at our website which you'll find through the google machine. @chazbolin can certainly get you connected with us. Thanks for the interest.

 

[OneHitDone]

@OneHitDone Come check us out at our website which you'll find through the google machine. @chazbolin can certainly get you connected with us. Thanks for the interest.

Who am I looking for?

Looks like Darryl has done some solid work once again with testing a lot of different led spectrums / configurations...
Would be interested to hear his thoughts on a strictly vegetative led for produce such as lettuce. Maybe @chazbolin can chime in?