First Grow - Criticism Wanted

[5BY5LEC]

Sort of. I have been using equal parts of all three so far.
The Micro bottle says 1.25ml per gal for seedlings. 1/4 teaspoon per gallon.
I am using just barely over the recommended seedling dose for these plants (1.75 ml/gal of each). I mean they are green and growing fast as hell. I don't know what to say yet.
I mean, yeah the seedling dose. I don't understand how or why totally yet but by trial and error I have found that to work.
My PPM with base is 350-375 depending on what I am adding to it. Over 400 and they throw brown tips and start to look weird.

In a nutshell, I am using just over the seedling dosage and I am not changing it until the plants tell me.

 

[5BY5LEC]

Oh yeah, my base is 80ppm from the tap. The last two gallon refills I have used, I have added 1ml of CalMag to. So right now I have 2ml of CalMag in a 17-20 gallon system. I will keep adding via refill water until I see either a cal excess or a mag excess. I am doing this because I have a few small brown spots here and there. Brown spots seems to come with cal AND mag defs so I am just kinda playing around with it.

 

[thenasty1]

In a nutshell, I am using just over the seedling dosage and I am not changing it until the plants tell me.

thats the way. ladies that size or so want about 300-400 ppm in my system (rdwc). they will use less nutes in an rdwc system than other hydroponic methods, so the recommended application rate on bottled nutes will often be too much for them. listen to them, and listen to your ph/tds meter. they will tell you what, why, etc when they want something.

I am doing this because I have a few small brown spots here and there. Brown spots seems to come with cal AND mag defs so I am just kinda playing around with it.

looking back at your pics, the tips you were seeing were probably, imo, just a bit of nute burn. the crinkle and spots could be a few things. see if you can google up a copy of your citys tap water analysis to find out how much of what is in there. i think 150-200 ppm for tap+cal-mag is a good target zone. try to hit it right in the middle if you can.
that one on the right closest to your tent door is going to be a beast

 

[5BY5LEC]

Thanks! Yeah I checked and it looks like there is 7ppm of Calcium and 1ppm of Magnesium among other things. I can post the report I found up here.

 

[5BY5LEC]

Ok so I have been using calmag to get my tap water from 80ppm to 150 and then adding nutes to get around 400-450ppm. I have not seen a spot My PPM has been dropping everyday about 20 or 30 PPM's. I think I added too much PH Down or something because my PH was dropping for a couple of days. It seems to have stabilized once I added some fresh nutrients. Just kind of staying the course.

 

[5BY5LEC]

To clarify PH dropping it was going from about 5.8 to 5.4 over the course of about 16 hours so nothing too crazy.

 

[NrthrnMichigan]

You should do a quick study about scrogging. Now would be the perfect time to set one up to maximize your harvest. Instead of the plants growing up vertically, grow them out horizontally. Utilize every inch of that 5x5. Just my 2 penny's. Looks good so far, great job!

 

[5BY5LEC]

Hey you actually read my mind. My friend was showing me a scrog net he built with pvc and string. I just ordered a stretchy one off amazon cause, I mean it was only twenty bucks. I dont know how long it would have taken for me to build one but twenty bucks was reasonable.

 

[5BY5LEC]

And thanks! I am thankful to be at where I am, from where I started

 

[5BY5LEC]

So my PH was dropping after I did a res change but its weird because I noticed it was dropping a couple of days before the change. The water levels were also dropping as were PPM's, by about 10 or 20 a day. I added a bit stronger nutrients with my top up water and it seems to have slowed.
Thur-Fri Night they dropped from 5.8 to 5.4
Last night 5.8 to 5.7
I honestly think if the plants look fine not to sweat the PH too much unless it goes out of range. I adjusted it friday cause it was at 5.4 but that is the first time I have had to do that.
Instead of using PH Down I just let the natural PH of my tap water bring it down.

I think I am really close to finding the sweet spot for the PPM's. 150ppm CalMag + 250ppm nutes.

 

[Big Perm]

I'm digging your DIY. Good job.

 

[5BY5LEC]

Thanks! Here are a few more pics of it before I had anything growing in the thing. Awesome it actually grows stuff!
Alot of the pictures are from when I first tried to use uni-seals. I ended up taking it apart and using bulkheads instead.

 

[BaROne123]

View attachment 4170612
I dont know what to do with the second one but I am going to keep it around. It was kind of "buy them both or not".

Very smart/tech equipment you got there. My system is super basic in comparison. Not sure of yield yet.. if any. As for the extra light... spares are always handy. .... ps I'm a complete newbie/novice.

 

[BaROne123]

Nutrient Lockout?? Beginner Mistake haha? Too High PPM??
It took me about a day to realize this shouldnt be happening so I remixed the res the next morning. Exact same but with my starting base of 100, plus 150ppm nutrients. I did some reading and I think what was happening was a nutrient lockout from a WAYYYY too high PPM? At first I thought they looked like the pictures on here of dirt seedlings people overwatered. But in Hydro that equivalent would be low oxygen in the water, which didnt make sense to me; I just waited for a day at this point. To my eyes they looked better yesterday evening.

Here is the same plant tonight, the light just turned on. The LEC is like 30 inches from the plants BTW.
View attachment 4170628

Its sister plant. The leaves were totally yellow, drooping and touching the rocks. Now they are only half yellow and looking up.

View attachment 4170630

The little OG Kush. Strange with this one, it never yellowed. Could that be a sign it is a more nutrient friendly? It just soldiered on. It is growing so much slower than the others but honestly I am rooting for it most of all. For sure can see that some plants grow faster than others.
View attachment 4170631


This was a total dipshit move because I read everywhere that you start low with nutrients. Lesson learned.
Also, when people say stuff happens fast in hydro, holy shit take it from me they are not kidding. Your shit could die overnight. It can also thrive.

Wow. Your first grow. You seriously take beginner into a new league. I hope I have your tech knowledge and plant awareness after a couple of years or quite a few grows later.

 

[5BY5LEC]

You aren't kidding. I am really having to stay on top of it and research. I read about this for a looong time before even attempting it, so I mean I have that.
I hear you on yielding at all. If I yield anything I will be happy. The system has been doing me right though, it has been running great for almost 2 months straight.
You will! I mean its not incredibly difficult but it certainly is a challenge. It just takes practice/experience like anything else and if you have the patience to learn you will be just fine.


This is my little control area as it sits now. I cannot recommend that PH/PPM meter enough. It makes life easy and if it broke I would buy a new one.
Go out, touch a button or two and check the water level. That combined with how the plants are looking tells me everything I need to know for the day.

 

[5BY5LEC]

This one in the back does not get much love haha, but it is no slouch for sure.

 

[5BY5LEC]

Exact same strain but the two plants look different to me. The leaves are longer on one and short and fatter on the other.

 

[5BY5LEC]

So over the course of about a week I went from 400ppm to 340ppm. Figured out what 15% (what was lost) was and then added that back to the res in a gallon of water. Got me back to the original 400ppm I started with.
They have been drinking a little less than half gallon I think each 24hrs. I am at least a gallon low everyday.
Ph 5.8
PPM 390 (Already !)
Air Temp 74-81
Water Temp 66-69
RH 45%-60%
I am starting to suspect that the plants themselves are raising my RH but I am not sure.

 

[5BY5LEC]

Also, my PH still drops about .1-.2 overnight but it is a really slow drift so I am going to read about it for now but it does not seem like a problem. No rot and the plants are taking water and nutes.
GH Trio drops my water to around 6.5 so I just add that to the res. Maybe I will add a ml of PH up to see if it is just a buffer issue or something.

 

[5BY5LEC]

So I got some root pictures. I went put on the tyvek suit and went inside the tent to do some more tying down before flower.
I noticed one tiny little bug on the roots of one plant. There were no others. You can kind of see it in the picture on the middle right hand side. There is nothing flying or crawling around and just a couple of gnats on a stickytrap I have had up for around a month. I don't think it is anything to be worried about.
If I tried to pull the roots out of the bucket I would have to stand up. The are probably 3 or 4 foot long.
I am using Orca and a chiller BTW.