LED newbie cabinet grow w/ hydro

luckyskindaguy

Active Member
Hello Rollitup!

This is my first thread and the purpose is to just share my experience thus far, as well as update on my current projects. I would appreciate that this stay positive, so please withstand from any harsh statements. This is for education, not to debate about light comparisons. Thanks, now let's get star.ted!

I am relatively new to growing, and weed in general. I came about this because my girlfriend medicates with marijuana to help with headaches and trouble sleeping. My goal was to lessen the amount of money we were spending on bud.

The seeds that I started with seem to be sativa dominant. After seeding 4 of them, and losing one to a dog, I ended up with 2 from that bag. I nicknamed the strains Peachez and Jade. Jade tends to get very stretchy and Peachez can be trained to stay bushier.

I found a cabinet at a thrift store that measures 38"h X 40"w X 22"d. I lined it with mylar for a reflective surface. Since I had such a small space, I chose a 660nm and blue UFO type light. I flush mounted it to the ceiling after drilling 1 1/4" holes matched up to the fans on the light.

I flowered 2 plants my first go around and 4 my second grow. The first time, I yielded 3/4 oz. The second grow was 54g dry.

Since I am new to growing I don't mind admitting my mistakes and hopefully others can learn from what I have done, both good and bad. For the first few months I noticed less than ideal appearance of my plants while in flowering. It wasn't until the second grow that I realized what was the cause of this. I Introduced a 3rd strain from another bagseed nicknamed Cameo an Indica dominant strain. When Cameo went into flower, she was not as resilliant to nute burn as the other strains were and she all but died on me. When I saw this I re-traced my steps and reliazed I had made a HUGE error! Instead of 5ml= 1 tsp., I was feeding 1 TBS! Three times the amount I was supposed to! I didn't catch this until 6 weeks into Flowering. I replaced the nutes with fresh water at 8 weeks (hydro setup) and flushed for 2 weeks. Once I put it on proper nutes, the plants all flourished! Had I not had plants waiting in the wings, I would have given the second grow a week or two longer.
8wks-3-20-10.JPG

You can see in this pic from the second grow that these were spindly and tall even prior to going into the cabinet.

Another change I made during this process from the 2nd to 3rd grow was during the Veg cycle. I began to prune the young plants to keep the nodes tight. This caused the plants to stay bushy and tight with twice as many nodes as unpruned of the same strains. In this 3rd grow I added 2 (23w) CFL floodlight bulbs, one on each side of the LED light. This is to try to give a more complete light spectrum of light as well as fill the side lighting some.

Here are a couple pics with the new plants and new lighting setup:

DSCF3177.JPG

DSCF3174.JPG

3rd grow plants went into the box on 4/3/2010 and started 12/12 that night after vegging at 18/6. I'll take pics periodicly and stop by to chat fairly regularly. I look forward to hearing what you guys think!

Grow well!
 

luckyskindaguy

Active Member
Wasn't sure if anyone was even following this thread since there were no posts this week.

I have a few pics now that the pistels are really showing. These plants have been on 12/12 for 2 weeks now and are looking pretty healthy and starting to get hairs!

Peachez without, then with camera flash:


peachez4-17.JPG peach4-17.JPG


Cameo without, then with camera flash:

cameo4-17.JPG cam4-17.JPG


I also have a pic of the overview of the cabinet without flash:


cabinet4-17.JPG

You can see the two sativa strains are growing taller than the indica strains. Peachez is in the back left and Jade is the front right. I also placed bamboo stakes by Jade to help her stand straighter since I know from previous grows she tends to lean and block other plants. This is just part of why she is in her last bloom. Peachez has more desirable traits for a sativa. The only plant that I topped was Jade, but I did trim fan leaves last week on all plants. Cameo makes up the other 3 plants (back right, front left, and front middle)

Let me know what you guys think! Your feedback is encouraged and appreciated!

I'm still wondering what people think about the question I posed in a previous post about the more important characteristics of the bud they prefer.....
 

Tall Guy

Member
Hi

I am new to RIU and i also have some questions about ur grow. But first ur plants look amazing to me this time around. They are alot more bushy than my Kush and White Widow plants.

Oh...I couldnt see ur pics in the second posting.

Now for the question...Can u tell me more about ur grow op...I intend on using LED lights but have never spoke to someone that uses them. So any help would be greatly appreciated.

and Im locked in for this grow!
 

luckyskindaguy

Active Member
The pics for week 2 should be fixed now, not sure what else to say about my grow that I didn't post already. Feel free to ask any specific questions you may have!


For this group I had the two in the back started at 19", the one in the front right was 18", front middle was 12", and one in the front left was 15" when they came from veg.

The sativa strains have grown quite a bit, but the other strain has stayed pretty short.

I paid $140 for the light on ebay including shipping. I made sure to get a model that had the 660nm red. The seller I got mine from had extra LED's that came with the deal, so you should be able to find him on there. He also had all his listings included free shipping and he was a vendor in China. So far I am very happy with this light! Like I said, heat was an issue with this setup, even adding the CFL's this time around hasn't raised the heat more than a couple degrees.

I decided to add the CFL's for a couple reasons. So far it has helped see the true colors of the plants better in addition to any light it gives the plants. It only cost me about $20 for the fixture and bulbs plus about $5 in electric over the course of the grow.
 

jbarrg

Member
are you using DWC ? I have dwc starter(8 ga. with top feeder tubes and 8 3.75" netpot sites) I got it on sale for $75 at the local hydro store it didn't have air stones or an air pump which I added later.
I''m at week 2 started w8 purple kush clones and now they are between 6-7 in tall and I'm scrambling to make another 4 site in a roughneck tote so my girls have some room. my light is a
"Pro Series Full Spectrum 300 Watt 300W LED Quad Band Hydroponic Grow Light Replacement for 1000 Watt HPS, 2511RBOW" which I got from amazon about $745 w/ shipping, so far this light seems to be just fine.
I put it down low about 6" from the tops and wow! I'm using fox farms nutes running about 600 ppm the first week 900ppm for week 2 and so on till i get to about 1600ppm or less if i see nute burn
 

jbarrg

Member
any tips on taking photos w/LED lights on? all i get is a purple mess that makes it hard to show how nice and dark green my babies are
 

luckyskindaguy

Active Member
any tips on taking photos w/LED lights on? all i get is a purple mess that makes it hard to show how nice and dark green my babies are
No real tips for pics. I have a function on my camera that takes a picture without, then with the flash. The lighting issue is one of the main reasons I added CFL's. It was hard to see the true color of the plants under the LED's only, which was one of the reasons it took so long for me to diagnose the nute burn issue I was having :cry:

As far as waterin..... I have a seperate Vegging area that I keep the clones and mothers. I keep the mother VERY short! An adjustment I made before this grow. I cut about 75% of the mother's top off so that I could have a uniform level of lighting to keep my clones from stretching. That seemed to work perfectly as you can see how bushy the plants in this grow are to the ones in the previous one. The stretching happened mostly in Veg, not flowering, though I do have one strain (Jade) that stretches in both phases. I have a circulating watering system in vegging. Pump from 1/2" tubing to 1/4" tubing and then into dripping stakes. Each stake has an adjustable valve to control flow. In Flowering, I have a flood and drain system setup. Each plant starts in a rockwool plug then I transfer them into a 3" rockwool block. I bury the blocks in hydroton in the flowering.

I use General Hydroponics Flora series and add Koolbloom in the flowering stage. I know there are lots of other nutes out there, but this is what I started with and will use until I am about to run out.

Any other questions, feel free to ask!
 

luckyskindaguy

Active Member
Can u take a pic of ur led light for me to see?

I looked to see if the seller on ebay that I got it from still had them listed and they didn't. It is just a standard 90w LED that uses 660 nm red. search ebay for that. There is no special writing on my model.

For a pic, just look at the cabinet pic from earlier posts. I don't have any pics when it is not in use and the plants are already in dark mode for the night.
 

luckyskindaguy

Active Member
For the most part I will be updating once a week. I will be on to see if there are other questions though.

I just found that one of my plants is having an issue yesterday morning and have been trying to deal with that. Peachez is showing some signs of brown spots as well as the leaves are curling downward and rolling. I think it is lockout due to the ph being at 6. Since this is hydro, the ph is usually a whole point lower than soil would be. I pour some water on the root bulb and dropped the ph to 5.7 in the res. tank. I'll let you know when she starts to pull out of it.

On the plus side, the plants are getting nice little white tufts on them! Also, trichs are starting to be visible! Not bad for 2.5 weeks I would say
 

Tall Guy

Member
i have the same thing with the leave curling up and rolling....they say its usually over feeding with to high of a EC/PPM and i grow with hydro also...l but it also can be both....i will test to see if ur right thou i have lowered by nutes slightly and it has made a slight difference but still waiting to see if its only overfeeding
 

moobyghost

Active Member
+rep and I subscribed. I am wanting to switch to all LEDS over the next few months. So, I am going to follow your grow closely. :)
 

MJ Crescendo

Well-Known Member
I am also interested in buying a 90w UFO to supplement my 150w hps, but unsure of it's growing and flowering capabilities. Very curious to follow a grow journal with high success. Subscribed and best of luck with getting everything under control. Look forward to see'n the 3 weeks flowering photos!

By the way, I'm looking into this one specifically. It's the 3rd generation and looks like a it will be a decent model for at least a few grows before new led tech rolls in. I wanted a 250w hps, but this thing looks like it can outdo that!

http://htgsupply.com/viewproduct.asp?productID=52466

Another cool one that I could see being great side lighting. Not sure what it compares to, but I can dig a more affordable price with the same led mix.

http://htgsupply.com/viewproduct.asp?productID=53194
 

luckyskindaguy

Active Member
Hey thanks for following the thread guys! Glad to see I am getting some interest.

I got a couple pics to show. First is of Peachez that is showing illness:

Ph problems.JPG

She is on less nutes than she was last time I flowered this strain, the main difference was the ph is usually around 5.5 and it was 6.0
We'll see how she responds.

Here is a pic of the Indica strain (Cameo) as she is getting some nice hairs at day 19 of flowering!

DSCF3255.JPG


I'll give an update this weekend guys!
 

luckyskindaguy

Active Member
OK! Time for the weekend update!

Let's start with an overall pic of the cabinet late saturday morning. I later trimmed a few fan leaves off that were blocking the lower flowers.


cabinet4-24.JPG

Only a few spots that show the plant reaching. Cameo in the back is starting to crave some light because she is outside of the UFO's main cone of light, not bad though.

Here is a pic of the flowers on Cameo:

cameo4-24.JPG

Jade is the only plant that I "topped".

jade.JPG

And last is Peachez, who has shown what I think is a lockout due to ph creeping up a little too high. After flushing her with water a couple times, I think she is bouncing back! Some of the leaves were too effected to bounce back, but some of the larger ones did rebound! I made the changes needed and it should work from here.


curled.JPG
The error I made was I reduced the nutes that I was adding from the previous grow. This changed the ph AFTER the nutes were added to be higher than before. I had been adjusting my tap water to 6.5 per gallon in the previous grow, this time I have to get it to 6.0 before adding nutes. I'm still making meistakes as well folks! Hope you guys can learn from mine. I will always test my water before AND after nutes to make sure the levels are in the right range. I just got a digital ph meter not too long ago, so that will help. Before, I was usuing a liquid ph tester that used color chart to tell the ph. NOT GOOD! I highly reccomend getting a digital ph meter, you can get them for $40 or less on ebay for a decent one.

Let me know what you guys think!
 

MJ Crescendo

Well-Known Member
Looking good man. See'n a lot of bud sites and very curious to see how well they fill out. That's my biggest concern with led lighting, but they look pretty healthy man! My last plant went through the same pH lockout and all, it sucked and only the larger, stronger fan leaves made it. She will bounce back and yield some nug, but it won't as much as the rest. I like your idea of a digital pH meter, I have one of the crappy color card ones as well and it's a pain to do every watering. Best of luck with that and hopefully that can keep the girls happy.

I still really want a 90w ufo...
 
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