Thanks! I'm looking into the Aeroflo 60. For lighting, I'm looking at 2/1000w Cool Tube Digital Systems. I want to use the Eye Super Blue Bulbs. I want to start/clone/mother in the walk in closet using 2/90w UFO's and use the room for Veg and Bloom. What are your thoughts on Advanced Nutrients? Are they worth the cost?
Ancient this will be a very nice grow if put together correctly my dude I wish you the best of luck! Have you ever ran a hydro/aero set up in the past on a smaller scale? From personal experience I just wanna let ya know that if you dont have much or any experience w/hydro/aero you will def get much better results doing a soiless grow w/drippers or just hand watering. Ive been growing organic and soiles for awhile now and am tackling hydro for the 1st time and DAMN theres a lot more to it than it seems! Def not tryin ta be negative or anything like that man, Ive just been part of some decent size grows in the past and when taking on a grow of this size -12x12- for the first time its extremely important to keep things as simple as you can! Once you get into the grow youll be very glad that you did! When running a a whole bedroom you have a lot of dif aspects of the grow to maintain besides the plants themselves. Youve got your ventilation/AC, your electricity and lighting, timers, humidity and temp control, etc etc blah blah. Basically what Im gettin at is even the most basic grow at this size will have several aspects where things could go wrong or need fixing and its very nice when these things happen to have a simple system sustaining your plants that you dont have to worry about. With all the issues that can pop up when starting a large grow its very nice to not have to worry about your plants! If that makes sense???
As for your lighting the Horti Blues are great freakin lights for veggin but I used them flower and didnt get very good results. Youll have much better luck with Horti's Super HPS or a combo of HPS and MH at a ration of 3 HPS to 1 MH I hear works very well. Probably the best flowering lights available are the multi spectrum bulbs that have a 600 hps and a 400 mh in one bulb! Kind of expensive but so are the Horti blues.
And your def gonna need more than 2 1000s. A 1000 generally covers a 4x4 ft area maybe 5x5 but thats pushin it. For a 12x12 Id look into 600s, Ive got some dual 600 watt ballasts that are great! You can run 2 600s off of 1 ballast at 240 volts and really save on electricity. Rather than 4 1000s youd be much better off with 3 or 4 dual 600s, they put out more lumens per watt than 1000s and can be placed much closer to your plants which increases their efficiency even more!
Also stay away from light movers no matter what anyone says! They work good for adding supplemntary lighting but when used for your primary lighting they cause plants to stretch and you usually end up with much less density in your buds. I know you havent mentioned using one but it never fails when discussing multiple light set ups someone always recommends a light mover to save electricity!
Im currently using AN for the 1st time with good results so far, but in a large room like your talkin about it could get pricey and youve got alot of other things that are more important at this point! A fantastic recipe you might wanna look into is Tecnaflora's BC Line w/Fox Farms 3 soluble additives in place of BC Awesome Blossom. Ive been using that recipe for years and have gotten many friends to switch to it from almost every other nute line I can think of! The BC Line is pretty inexpensive and the FF solubles will cost you $100 for all 3 but they will last you for several grows. The line works similar to AN's too, youve got your base nute and booster, thrive alive is like b-52 or organic-b, sugar daddy is like carbo load or bud candy. Then your Fox Farm Solubles are for the 3 different stages of blooming. The Open Sesame works like Bud Blood causing your plant to transition from veg to bloom faster. The Beastie Bloomz works like Big Bud helping to develop multiple flower sites and the Cha Ching works like Overdrive making those flower sites swell and produce high amounts of oils. Im actually just trying AN's Connoisseur Line to see if it produces enough of an increase in yield/potency compared to my recipe to justify the increase in cost ya know!
All this is great info, thanks calloftheancient for posting this thread. I'm joining with a seasoned grower and am trying to get the basics. What are nutes? Is it a stage or what? I'm about to do two 12x12 rooms with 2 600w hps lights each and minimal chemicals.
Any information on chemicals for each stage would be great. Like what pH is good? How much water? We usually switch from 12/12 light to 14off/10on to get them to bud. Is this good? Anything useful would be great.
Funky Female you might wanna think about just doing one 12x12 and putting all 4 600s in there, a 600 optimally covers about a 3x3 area and only 2 in a 12x12 isnt gonna be anywhere near enough light for cannabis to thrive. Even 4 600s in a 12x12 will be a stretch, 9 600 would give you enough light coverage and leave you room to walk between rows or tables of plants. I just wanna let ya know before you get started so if you have a limited budget you can just focus on getting a good harvest out of one room for now and using that cash to finish your second room.
If your 2 rooms are right next to each other you should look into a flip flop timer for your lights. They allow you to run 2 lights off of one ballast on opposite 12 hour cycles. So basically when the lights are on in room 1 theyre off in room 2 and vice versa. This way you can get 2 lights out of each ballast!
Look into my Tecnaflora/Fox Farm recipe for a good nutrient line to use thats simple affordable and very effective. For PH you wanna shoot for about 6.5 in soil and around 6.0 in hydro. You wanna water when your plants need it, water until some runs out of the drainage holes in the bottom of the pot, then dont water again until the soil is dry and the pot feels light when you lift it.
And last but not least when you just want your plant to grow keep the lights on for 18-24 hours a day. When you want to trigger them to flower then you turn the light cycle to 12 hours on 12 hours off. 10 on 14 off will cause them to flower too but its not neccessarry. You can give them 2 more hours of light a day to utilze and theyll still flower, 12/12 is the perfect light/dark ratio to flower cannabis hands down. A seasoned grower should definitely know this, you might wanna dig a little deeper and make sure your partner knows as much as they claim before taking on a large scale grow like this!
Good luck and feel free ta hit me up with any questions you have.
-Chief G
