Fully Working Fridge Grow DWC 500W LED

Hello growers. First time posting here.

I live in Brazil and it's almost year-round summer.
Always had problems with temperature when growing in a closet and HPS with the internal closet temperature during the summer time hitting almost 45 degrees celcius or more!

So this time I'm trying to grow in a Fully Working Fridge to keep the temperature down.
I brew beer as well so this fridge has a temperature controller and it keeps on 20-23 degrees celcius.

Using a 500w LED Panel, but I think I'll add some CFLs as well.

For the air flow and exchange, the idea is to use a Carbon Scubber to constantly filter the internal air, a CO2 generator DIY style with two plastic bottles, using yeast (not ready yet) and a air humidifier.
The carbon filter will also reduce the odor and the fridge door is well sealed.

I guess it's like a big sealed grow room with air conditioner, but smaller.

I've been growing for quite some time but had a 5 year gap not growing at all.
It's my 5th grow and first time trying DWC/Hydroponics.
A 20 Liter container, with a bubbler injecting external air, plant on a netpot with rockwool and hydroton grow rocks.
Test is working good so far, water on 22 degrees, pH 5.5 with General Hydroponics base nutrients.
No top dripping.

Still waiting for my GreenHouse Seed Co's seeds to arrive, so I'm testing the setup with a unknown strain seed that I had. Probably a sativa landrace.

I'm excited with this now setup and I think it's going to work well.

Any advices on my grow fridge setup?

Wow pretty cool. Seen something similar on t.v. keep us updated

IlFroiGrow said:

Using a 500w LED Panel, but I think I'll add some CFLs as well.

Click to expand...

Is that actual watts at the wall or "equivalent to"? Because 500 true watts of LED in the footprint of a small fridge is tons and tons of light, in theory.

Very cool setup!

shimbob said:

Is that actual watts at the wall or "equivalent to"? Because 500 true watts of LED in the footprint of a small fridge is tons and tons of light, in theory.

Very cool setup!

Click to expand...

Thanks!
It's "equivalent to". This panel actually consumes something like 150w

Tubby nuggs said:

Wow pretty cool. Seen something similar on t.v. keep us updated

Click to expand...

Thanks, man! I'll be posting updates

Gonna put a SCROG net during flowering

IlFroiGrow said:

Hello growers. First time posting here.

So this time I'm trying to grow in a Fully Working Fridge to keep the temperature down.
I brew beer as well so this fridge has a temperature controller and it keeps on 20-23 degrees celcius.

Any advices on my grow fridge setup?

Click to expand...

Dear IlFroiGrow,
This is absolutely briliant!
I see that you have a humidifier in your setup. How do you control it?

DIY-ingly yours,
M

Mazer said:

Dear IlFroiGrow,
This is absolutely briliant!
I see that you have a humidifier in your setup. How do you control it?

Click to expand...

Hey, Mazer! Thanks, nice to read that!

The humidifier has a manual control in it, I've discovered a position that's just right for my setup and it works fine. I cannot get high humidity levels because it starts to condense water inside the fridge.
But I can get as high as 70% humidity level without any problem. That's fine for me during the seedling time.

Everything is going great, nice water temp, nice air temp, growing fast and happy.

I've faced a Acid Rain Effect yesterday in my reservoir. The pH reading went crazy!
Turned out my air pump was pumping too much air and as I live nearby a busy road, the CO2 levels must be high around here, it was pumping some CO2 into the water and maybe causing this effect.
Lowering the pump power and changing the reservoir water has turned out fine with ph stable at 5.5 now.

In a few days I'll post new photos.

Update with pictures.

Unknown strain, probably a brazilian landrace sativa.
Ambient Temperature: 25-27 Celsius with the lights on / 20-21 Celsius with the lights off
Reservoir Water Temperature: 19-21 Celsius (using tap filtered water, EC with no nutes at 0.1)
Humidity Level: 50-75%
pH: 5.8-6.0
EC: 1.0
Lights: 18h/6h

Seed has sprouted on May 5th, on soil and then transferred to rockwool after 5 or 6 days.
It's been 14 days since the transfer to hydro.
It took some time to recover growth after the transfer stress.
Now it's a fast growth rate and good root system development but with the leaves are showing some problems.

I'm using 1/3 of the nutes' strength, hitting 0.6 EC.
On May 15th, the first pair of real leaves shown some brown spots. Looked like Cal-Mag deficiency, added some CalMag rich nutrient to correct. EC hit 0.8.
Had some issues with pH fluctuations, trying to keep it on a 5.8-6.0 range on a daily basis left the res with high EC level for a young plant, aprox 1.0 EC.
The second pair of leaves also shown some problems, with brown spots and then it dried out real quick.
The root system is looking good, the newest leaves are looking better than the old ones but also showing some deficiency.
It has nute burn on the tips and a light-green color all over. Don't know what deficiency is, maybe still the CalMag def. or could be iron, sulfur or nitrogen def too.

I'm considering a second water change (the first one happened after the Acid Rain issue) to keep things nice and clear. With new nutes, adding CalMag, root stimulator and the General Hydroponics base (gro, micro, bloom), keeping EC at 0.8 maximum and pH at 5.8.

Any tips on what this deficiency could be?

Some landrace sativas have a really light green color, could this be the case?

Photos from May 14th until May 25th.

Fascinating and impressive set up.

On a separate note regards your cats - have you ever noticed per chance how cats seem to really react to cannabis in general (perhaps the loosely related taxonomy with cat-mint?)

When I have smoked rather a lot of it, my cat spreads out all over me like a scarf and acts like he is also stoned... it's like he knows I am at one with nature and is pleased I am finally on his level of understanding...

Cats and weed. Both a mystery.

Hello growers.
The plant on the DWC project turned out to be a male.
And I've given up Hydroponics.
I think its hard to deal with, always getting issues with algae and root rot, even though I was using a sanitized and sterilized container and water temperature set between 19-21 celsius, still got problems.
The fear of losing my crop in the middle of bloom made me give up.

So I got back to soiless medium, Sphagnum and Perlite mix.

Still growing in a Working Fridge to control temperatures and things are running smooth.

Growing now Green House Seed's Super Lemon Haze strain. (SLH)
Germinated 2 seeds, got two different phenotypes.
SLH#1 is more Sativa like, thinner leaves, bigger internodal space, smaller buds and looks like its going to take a little longer to finish flowering.
SLH#2 is more Indica like, large leaves, more bushy, compact, bigger buds.

They've been vegged for 3 months from seed, then clones were taken, 2 clones selected to become mother-plants (kept outside the fridge, in another cabinet), and 4 clones were sent to flower.
They are in 7L containers, except for one plant (#2) that's in a 3L container.
Vegged for 2 weeks after the transplant and then set lights to 12/12

After 58 days of flowering, things are looking good so far!
SLH#2 has already many red pistils while SHL#1 still got many more white pistils.
Temperature near 27 C, injecting CO2 from a tank, no air exchange.

Attached pictures from the 30th, 49th and 58th days of flowering.
Expecting to harvest between 65 and 77 days, we'll see.

30th day flower:


49th day flower:

58th day flower:

Finally! The great day has come. My setup "Fully Working Fridge Grow" works really nice! It has kept the temperature within the limits, as is almost year-round summer where I live and temperature control has always been an issue.
The chinese Super Chip LED Panel 500w (equivalent, consumes near 200w) worked really well, giving me big fat dense buds full of crystals. It was way better than I expected!
Got a total of 248g of fresh buds, might end up with 60g dried for curing.

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