First Time Hydroponic Grower

So this is my first time growing indoors as well as my first time doing hydroponics... I've been through a little trial/error getting my setup the way it needs to be, but I'm just about ready to pick my clones and come plant them in the system.

Its a homemade system, with inspiration from a few other systems I've seen. It's pretty basic... \
-I have an 18 gal. res on the bottem shelf of this cabinet.
-Inside the res is a submersible pump hooked to a 1/2" tubing
-The tubing runs to the upper shelf of the cabinet where the 6 plant tray sits
-At the end of the 1/2" tubing is a drip sprinkler with eight 1/4" spouts on it
-From 6 of the spouts i run a 12" peice of 1/4" tubing with a driper on the end of it, to each individual plant
-The excess water collects in the tray and runs down two drains i installed
-Both drains have a 1/2" tubing fit to the bottem of them that runs back into the res

I'm using a 1000 watt Lumatek digital ballast... w/ a 1000 watt metal halide bulb (till its time to flower). Off of my duct blower I'm venting the lamp as well as leaving an open duct to vent the room. The exhaust for the blower runs through a duct into the attic.

So... the help I need at this time is a detailed explaination of how to plant my clones when I get them home (they'll have a decent root structre already).

As you can see in some of the pictures there is 6 holes cut in the lid of the 3x3 tray to house the plants. My Hydroton rock is still in the bag...
Lets say I walk in the door with my 6 clones in a little tray ready to go. Whats the steps I go through to get them set up?

How much light should I be giving them at a time and how frequently?How close should the light be to the clones? (remember 1000 watt bulb)
With the nutrients seen in my pics is there any particular recipies that anyone recommends?
I have a big bag of Growcubes as well as the Hydroton rocks... should i be mixing the two together? or just use the Hydroton?

How many times a day should i water them? should i only water when they are getting light? How much water should they get at once?

I know thats like a million questions, but if anyone out there feels like answering it will be greatly appriciated

-Mitus

Looking good! all thats left is a little cleaning and to go pick up the clones

-Mitus

ps: the other pics are what we got to after we finished all the work . "LA OG" & "Green Crack"

also a pic of the ppm/ph meter i got fucking expensive... lol

Looks like you're off to a very good start, you've certainly picked out a nice set of supplies. You'll be up to your ears in your own hydroponic bud in no time!

I noticed in your supplies you opted to go with GH for your first hydroponic grow. What was your decision-making progress on that?

I'm just curious because that's what I did too, but I switched to Advanced Nutrients and have been much happier since. With hydroponic you can get some amazing results and AN seems better able to deliver what I expect so it is always among my supplies now.

After completely setting up everything i came to realize the drip sprinkler/vinyl tubing i was using was not going to work.
I got some advice from the local hyrdro store... so what i did is take 10 foot piece of 1/2" SOFT tubing (vinyl or w/e, not sure of material, but they sell it at aquarium stores) and twelve 1 foot peices of 1/8" tubing. I used this special tool to pop the 1/8" holes in the 1/2" tubing and then shoved a peice of 1/8" tubing in each hole (giving 2 drip lines to each plant, 12 lines total). Each 1/8" peice is mounted into a spike that holds it still and points it in the right direction.

I got a chance to play with my new ppm/ph/temp meter. Its pretty cool, much different then what i'm used to using.

Anyone have any tips on how to clean and take care of my Hanna HI9813 ?

So after 2 weeks of grueling setup, mistakes and obstacles I'm finally looking at 6 little clones... hope these fuckers do their job like i'm doin mine!

Day 1 Complete !

-Mitus

You're on your way! Good Luck!

Oh, just follow the directions on the Hanna meter for cleaning, storage and calibration. Be extremely careful with that probe. If it breaks it's almost as expensive as a new meter. I'm on my second probe in about 4 years.

My PH seems to climb 0.2 each day. I'm keeping it at an average of 5.9 - 6.0 . My PPM in my 20 gal of res water is about 940 today and it was about 910 2 days ago. Are my #s flucuating normally? Is my PPM too high or too low? I'm not familiar with PPM very much so if anyone feels like jumping in and clearing it up for me that would be cool!.

My 2 OG Chemdawg clones seem to be growing much faster than any of the 4 UK Cheese clones. I'm gonna try to keep daily measurements from here on in.

Mitus said:

My PH seems to climb 0.2 each day. I'm keeping it at an average of 5.9 - 6.0 . My PPM in my 20 gal of res water is about 940 today and it was about 910 2 days ago. Are my #s flucuating normally? Is my PPM too high or too low? I'm not familiar with PPM very much so if anyone feels like jumping in and clearing it up for me that would be cool!.

My 2 OG Chemdawg clones seem to be growing much faster than any of the 4 UK Cheese clones. I'm gonna try to keep daily measurements from here on in.

Click to expand...

Drop your PH a little......around 5.6 and LOWER the PPM....940 is WAY too high for new clones. If it is rising (from 910 to 940) either the plants are using more water than nutes (thereby increasing nute concentration) or the combined effect of the plant usage and evaporation is is doing the same thing. Personally I don't go above 300 for new clones.

That PH fluctuation you're seeing is minimal. Be happy with that.

Hey this is my first hydroponic grow and i have got everything i need except the PH up and down bottles and the mix's whats a good mix's? how does it all work. All im looking for is what kind of liquid nutrients (example, pure blend gro 1-.5-1 and just take that and add water with the PH level of 7) would that work? But as i said this is my first hydro and just trying to the basics done. i have already had a few harvest of organic.

Day 6:

Did my first water change today. I've been steadily keeping my ph between 5.8 - 6.2 . Last week my ppm was around 900ish and the plants are looking great. Lots of new growth and they're getting taller each day.
With this water change I up'd my nutrient portions a little since they've gotten a little used to their enviornment.

Here is some pics of the Chemdawg OG clones !! I'll post the pics of the UK Cheese clones in a seperate post.

-Mitus

Here is the pics of the UK Cheese Clones (Day 6)

-Mitus

one of the four cheese clones was much whimpier looking when I picked it up (compaired to the other 3). It is still keeping its "runt" status, but does have some new growth so not all is lost. The other 3 however are growing a LOT. I can't wait... droooool

Ph and ppm fluctuation is normal, you have to adjust it daily... Lower your ppm to 500 and raise slowly, when you over feed them you burn them out so they are stressed and will growth slower wich will result in lower yeild

hey man,

everything sounds normal. i would definetely leave them at what you've got going if they are all showing new growth. Getting some roots down and putting on some new leaves will help more and more towards stabilizing the plants and then you won't have to worry about killing them with experimenting with the ppm. Nice new growth man. Have you decided how you will be growing these plants technique wise- as in scrog, sog or lst or anything? Or will you just let them grow?

I'm not very familiar with any techniques on how to let them grow. Care to explain? Whats scrog or sog? Any suggestions on where I could do some research to learn some more?

-Mitus

Mitus said:

I'm not very familiar with any techniques on how to let them grow. Care to explain? Whats scrog or sog? Any suggestions on where I could do some research to learn some more?

-Mitus

Click to expand...

https://www.rollitup.org/view.php?pg=faq&cmd=category&id=71

well you have 6 plants. in that size res a they will quickly start to overshadow each other, so you probably won't want to veg them more then about 30 days. i would guess they be around 30 inches tall or so. Now, if you cut off the side branches by clipping their grow tips as they grow you will end up with 6 tall main stem plants that will produce coke can sized main cola buds from the top down. This is call sog, sea of green.
If you let the branches grow out you will get overlapping very quickly, so you could take a screen of chiken wire. mount it a foot above the plants when they are short. as they grow taller through the screen, bend the growtips under the chiken wire so as to force the branches to grow horizontaly. You will end up with a dense mass of plant in a relatively short space. This is called scrog, screen of green.
You could also spend lots of time bending branches with weights or string tie downs or ups, all to give your plants the best light exposure that you can. These are all light stress techniques, LST. I use an LST tech called suppercropping where you pinch the stem of the plant enough to squish the stabalizing tissues so that it has to form a knot there. It strengthens the plant and also makes the growth above the injury grow faster.

The type of grow now is yours to decide, i would decide primarily on the room size. A small res and system (ie netpots relatively close together) can still grow large trees, just more difficult to proide the day to day maintenace.

They're averaging 20-22 cm in height at the moment...

I still kind of feel in the dark about this PPM thing... just being honest... i know a few of you have tried explaining a lot to me and I do kind of get it... I'm just not really sure what is too high and what is too low... i was just following the instrucitons on the back of the bottle for "General Purpose Mild" for the first week, then moved on to the next one on the chart. After reading what a few people had to say I got the feeling my ppm was too high yesterday so i changed out 5 gal portion of the res water and replaced it with clean RO water. I got the ppm to drop conciderably and is now about 1100? compaired to the 900ish it was last week. Is that still too high? I've had a few people tell me that for a drip system thats not too high...

Sorry if these are stupid questions... gotta learn somewhere

-Mitus

Supercropping sounds interesting... care to explain more?

Mitus said:

They're averaging 20-22 cm in height at the moment...

I still kind of feel in the dark about this PPM thing... just being honest... i know a few of you have tried explaining a lot to me and I do kind of get it... I'm just not really sure what is too high and what is too low... i was just following the instrucitons on the back of the bottle for "General Purpose Mild" for the first week, then moved on to the next one on the chart. After reading what a few people had to say I got the feeling my ppm was too high yesterday so i changed out 5 gal portion of the res water and replaced it with clean RO water. I got the ppm to drop conciderably and is now about 1100? compaired to the 900ish it was last week. Is that still too high? I've had a few people tell me that for a drip system thats not too high...

Sorry if these are stupid questions... gotta learn somewhere

-Mitus

Click to expand...

I tried to help you out with this before but you seem to want to do it your own way.

It IS too high and you're getting higher as evidenced by 900 a few days ago and 1100 today.

Although this isn't exactly entirely correct (which would require a much more detailed explanation) it may help you to understand. Assume you took distilled water and measured it with your meter. It said 35 Parts Per Million. (tap water may give you 100-300 PPM depending on how "hard" your water is.) That means for every million parts of water you have 35 parts of something else. Forget what that might be. After you add your nutes you are adding something ELSE to the water. Now you measure it and you get 535 PPM. What you have is 35 ppm of whatever was in the distilled water to begin with, and an additional 500ppm of nutes for a total of 535 Parts Per Million. As the plant drinks water it should also be using the nutes at the same rate. If it's NOT you will see it in your ppm readings. If the PPM is HIGHER today than it was yesterday the plant is using MORE water (or some of the water is evaporating) than nutes which makes the concentration of nutes (RELATIVE to the amount of water) go up. If it's using more nutes than water then the concentration (ppm) will go down. You have LESS fertilizer per million parts of water than you did yesterday. You are trying to achieve a situation where your reading today is as close as it was yesterday indicating that both water and nutes are being used equally. Its actually better to see it dropping a little indicating that the plant is using all the ferts and could probably use a little more (higher PPM concentration). Now you may wonder why you change your nutes every week (or two, depending on preference)when you still show some measurement of PPM because "my meter shows that there are still some nutes left". It's because you have no way of knowing WHICH elements (in your nute mix) are being used faster or slower than the other elements.

Yes, you can probably run higher PPM's in a drip system than say an aeroponic system but I still say 1100 PPM is WAY too high for new clones. Forget what the bottle says....you have a meter. When people tell you to go 1/2 strength most of them are assuming you don't have a way to measure PPM so they're doing the right thing and suggesting half strength so you don't overfert. Remember...your nute bottles DON'T say " If you mix at our recommended dosage you will end up with blah, blah PPM. Mix it the way they suggest in terms of RATIO.( So many ML of grow for every ml of micro, for every ml of bloom) and if it ends up to be 1000PPM and you were trying to achieve 500ppm just dilute it before adding to your system. You'll still have the same ratio of Micro, Grow and Bloom compared to one another but it will be a weaker solution. Keep a close eye out for signs of overfert....Dark, dark green leaves, leaf tips burned, etc.

Good luck.

that is a concise explanation.
1.Water level drops PPM goes up: Drop your nutrient strength in relationship to the PPM rise.
2. Water level drops PPM stays the same: You may be able to fine tune you nutrient strength, if growth is vigorous leave it alone.
3. Water level drops PPM drops: Raise you nutrient strength in relationship too PPM drop.

that thing has been bandied arround on the site too, if it helps.

The main difficulty about ppm is it is strain and situation dependant. I have never run a drip system, but i would put my clones on 500-600 ppm till they showed good root structure, i guess you could estimate at a week or so to put a good network of roots down. Then i would move it up to between 1100-1500 ppm for the vegging phase, and i would stop putting it up if i saw nute burn. During flower, i'd raise it slightly to perhaps 1750-1800 if they don't show any nute burn it's good. Then the last week of the flowering cycle is flush, so strait water then.

Thanks for the tips guys