Grow #5 - C99 (coco); Chemdawg & Cheese Candy (hydro)

I built this recirc drip system using an existing DWC system I had laying around and some simple design around a 5-gallon bucket. It essentially feeds the drip rings in each plant site and is drawn back in to the bucket to be recirculated. I have used this DWC system before to great results, however changing the water sucked - now I can drain it into the 5-gal and deal with it easier.

I have a C99 (a clone from an 8-month old mother) in coco



Also have 3 Chemdawg clones which rooted nicely - feeding Aurora Soul Synthetics nutes



Have 3 Cheese Candy clones rooting currently which will fill the other three sites

Another perc to the recirulating system is the water temperature seems to be very steady compared to when I used this as a self-contained DWC with top-feed drippers. I had to have a constant supply of frozen water bottles to keep the water under 75 degrees. However, since the pump is in an external bucket, the water is cooling in the tote and then keeping the bucket at a nice 66-68 degrees or so which is where I am trying to keep it.

So far I am really happy with the way I designed this thing. Hoping for it to really produce. So far the little clones seem happy with it

1 week in the system and their roots are looking great:



The little clones are really starting to respond now that they have recovered from the initial transplant and their root systems are really established:



The C99 is at 2.5 weeks of flower and is looking very strong. She was kind of trained to fit into this space and she is filling it up beautifully:



So far, so good. The little Cheese Candy clones should be ready to go into the hydro system within a week. Hoping to harvest C99 (@ 8 weeks), then Chemdawg a couple weeks later (@9 weeks), then Cheese Candy a couple weeks after that (@ 9 weeks).

Day 12 of flower for the Chemdawg clones and they are really starting to take off. The stems are getting nice and thick and the growth has been significant. Both the left and right plants have really great internodal distance, the middle one is definitely leggier and very vigorous:



The roots continue to increase and grow daily:



The Cheese Candy clones are still rooting - hoping to see some white stuff happen this week. I moved them into the mother cabinet because the heat is much better in there for th little gals:



Also have these in my mother cabinet:



The little one is an Afghan Kush Special from World of Seeds (freebie in the last order). The others are a Blue Dream, a Cheese Candy, a Purple Wreck and a Chemdawg - all mothers. It is interesting trying to keep them under control. The Cheese Candy and Blue Dream both have tree trunk stems and grow as fast as I can prune them it seems.

Just stoked on this system so far. The roots just continue to explode. Super white and healthy, all three have roots hanging all the way to the bottom of the 18Gal tote now. The clones are looking awesome.

The C99 is beautiful. She definitely is sensitive to overwatering (thus the curling happening there) so having to adjust from the typical schedule. She seems to need to dry out even more than I usually let them go.

I have flowered and harvested a Chemdawg already and it is great smoke so really excited to see what kind of yield/quality I get out of this run.

The little Cheese Candy clones are still rooting. I was hoping to get them in today, but no dice. will check on them in a few days to see where we are at.

Still doing nicely - the Chemdawg clones are getting really bulky stems and nice branching with lots of flower activity here @ 3 weeks:



The C99 is just beautiful. Did some trimming to clear out some of the stuff down below that was not getting any light. Really excited about this plant. Great looking buds so far @ 4 weeks, 3 days:

Roots continue to look great. The three little Chemdawg clones are bulking nicely as well. One in particular is just a huge sticky mass of bud.



Put three Cheese Candy clones in a week ago as well:

Quick update.

Chemdawg plants are looking stellar! Just producing big, thick, dense, sticky buds.



The Cheese Candy clones have overtaken the Chemdawg in height, and the stems are super thick. One of them just never took so I pulled her and put in a Purple Wreck clone I had rooted and didn't know what to do with. But here is where the two strong Cheese Candy clones are now, just shy of 3 weeks in the 12/12 tent.



And here is a shot of the mother plants, seedlings and clones and such:



Inside is this Afghan Kush Special #1. It is looking amazing!



Peace and stay lifted!

Chopped them down this afternoon - the three Chemdawg clones anyway; right at the end of 9 weeks and trichs are about 50/50 amber/milky.

Here is the before photo:



An interesting note:
The three clones were very much alike - same size roughly, all three rooted very well prior to inserting into hydro system. However, the plants definitely differed in overall production. The plant on the left was by far the most productive. It turned out a fat, mass of ganja that was sticky and stinky. The plant in the middle produced very well, though not as much as the plant on the left. The plant on the right produced the least, not very much at all really. The plants also differed in final height with the left-hand plant staying very stocky and and densely flowered, the middle plant was taller, but also had some girth, the right-hand plant was not all that tall, but also had a very slender cola and not as densely flowered.

My theory on this:
The left-hand plant was exposed to both LEDs (one is definitely bluer (thought still flowering spectrum) while the other is very red-dominant) as well as both 2700k and 6500k CFLs. The plant in the middle got mostly red LED, with a little blue, plus the CFLs (though less than the left-hand plant). The plant on the right received the red LED light almost exclusively. All three were very sticky and covered in millions of trichomes, so I have no doubt that the quality seems to be there. However, production-wise, the left-hand plant was significantly better.

Left-hand Plant:


Middle Plant:


Right-hand Plant:


Here is all three hanging after a rough trim - will clean it up later tonight and then hang to dry. Pretty stoked on what these three little gals did.

Here is an update on the Cheese Candy clones. This is day 32 of 12/12 under the LED+CFL. I had to pull the one on the left as it just never really seemed to develop a good root system and lagged considerably. I replaced it with a little Purple Wreck clone just for the hell of it as more of a little experiment I am doing.

These two plants are extremely vigorous. They shot up and were double the height of the Chemdawg clones that were in front of them in a matter of 2 weeks. The center plant (left-hand Cheese Candy) has very nice internodal distance and looks like it will fill up that footlong cola nicely. The right-hand plant definitely stretched more and has a lot larger internodes, so not sure, but it does have good flower production so far with lots of trichomes being produced everyday. Super excited to see the results and the smoke on this Cheese x Caramelo (Lavender) cross. So far I am impressed with their growth.

You need a comment,
Nice work man, keep it up!

colocowboy said:

You need a comment,
Nice work man, keep it up!

Click to expand...

Thanks man!

Some pics from a couple days ago. The first two Cheese Candy will hit 9 weeks exactly 7 days from now and it looks like they will be ready. I have put three additional clones which are at different stages. I was out of town for a few days and my kid forgot to water the Blue Dream and Purple Wreck which resulted in.....dum dum dum....death. Bummer. But whatever, I will keep the kid. I was kind of glad because I really wasn't all that excited about those plants. However, the Afghan Kush Special that I have grown from seed is super killer looking and I am stoked I got to put that lady into flower. Super thick and lush, should produce some dank buds.

This is great man! I'm looking to build almost the same thing you have with your 6 site tote. I have to ask what you do to feed them in the 6 siter? and what sort of a yield do you get from all six sites each harvest?

jumpy0ne said:

This is great man! I'm looking to build almost the same thing you have with your 6 site tote. I have to ask what you do to feed them in the 6 siter? and what sort of a yield do you get from all six sites each harvest?

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Killer! It really works great. I have the 18 Gallon tote which I find fits 6 of the 6" netpots better than smaller ones, but you could really make this with a smaller tote to be honest. I have really like using Aurora Innovations Soul Synthetics line of nutrients. Really easy to use and the plants seem to respond really well to them. I can typically expect about .75-1 ounce per plant depending on the strain, the clone, etc. So if you put 6 nice clones that root well and really take off of a strain that produces well you could easily get 6oz off of a setup like this. My lights are kind of ghetto as well, so I am sure there is a lot you could do to crank it even higher (veg them longer - not too long as they will get crowded - but at least a week or 3. That sounds like a good experiment that I might have to do actually.

Some photos from today. Harvested a Cheese Candy the other day - seriously dank and sticky. Right now have (4) additional Cheese Candy clones in here (the large ripe cola I plan on harvesting in a couple days time); (1) Purple Wreck clone - not a very vigorous plant, but even the mother was never that sturdy; (1) Afghan Kush Special. The large potted plant is the Afghan Kush Special mother that has been vegging for a couple of months. She is dense and green and has some thick ass stems. Excited to see what the pure Indica feels like.

Anyone wondering about Delicious Seeds I have some input. So far I have grown two of their automatic strains (La Musa and La Diva) and this Cheese Candy strain (all three were feminized). Every one of them has grown well and produced some great bud. I highly recommend the Cheese Candy. Nice and strong and happy. And it just is so sticky it almost feel greasy. You can see the last picture below is of a leaf on a clone that is only 4 weeks into flower - if you zoom in you can actually make out the individual trichomes. The large, ripe cola is so sticky if you even bruch against is you get sticky shit all over your skin and clothes. I am not very good at detecting all the different organoleptic qualities, but it definitely smells different than anything I have grown before - but that isn't that much so, you know . You can check out the buds in the first picture just after they were trimmed.

Scoped the trichomes this afternoon and they were just under 50/50 amber/milky so I decided to cut her down. Such a great looking cola of dense, sticky icky. Everything about it has proven to be good so far.



It started as the middle-back one:

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to duudical again.

Looks fantastic man, good job.

Can someone help me out with this. Is this Mg deficiency. This is the second plant I have had do this in a row. They have both been under a single LED that is very red with little other spectrums. I have used this light for several grows, but always in a small tent that tended to cause plants to receive reflected light from the multiple sources I had in there (T5HO, CFL, LED (a bluer one and a redder one). I moved my plants into a much bigger tent that definitely doesn't allows less to reflect since the distance is so much greater. Both plants that have exhibited this were directly under this one light in the larger tent. Prior to this I have had zero problems withe nute deficiencies or overfeeding.

After reading a little and making my best guess I watered her with s pretty good dose (4tsp:1gal) of Cal-Mag. Hope that helps. She is an Afghan Kush Special who grew magnificently in veg. And up to about week 3.5-4 looked amazing in flower, thick legs that stretched and began to blossom. Definitely don't want to lose her.

Whoops. Here are pics.



For comparison, the plant in the back right of the hydro system is the same strain - so far looking amazing with none of the dying, crispy leaves. She is a clone taken from the plant that is struggling.