My First Grow, super noob, could use some help!

Okay, I got a lot of my information off of this forum. Funny enough I had the tub idea before I even started looking. This grow is going to be just bagseed for my first try because I dont want to ruin some exspensive shit. I've got some good seeds on the way for my next batch, provided this one goes well. I'm at about day 5, from when I started germinating the seeds. I chose a method which I learned at the cannabis college in amsterdam to germinate. Just put the seeds into a cup of water and look everyday for the little root things. So I did that and put my seeds into some miracle grow dirt with perlite and peat moss in it as well as some kind of fertilizer. It says it will grow plants twice as big.. we'll see. For the first pot I used these thing called peat pots which are supposed to stimulate root growth and can be planted directly into the next pot. As for the light, I've got a GE 50 watt plant light, which I guess is supposed to have more blues. It's in one of those shop light holders from inside the tub. On day five, in one of my pots I've got sprouts that are about 3 to 4 inches high with their first leaves coming in. I was running a light schedule of 20/4 but I think I'm going to be switching it to 24/0 today based on some stuff I read last night. Anybody know when I should switch to the 18/6? I'm going to be doing LST to maximize my yield in my space. Right now I'm just using one tub so that I can have the lights closer, but once they get high I'm going to stack two tub on top of each other and add more lights. I built my scrubber a little while ago and it went well. Instead of using the activated carbon I used Premium Fresh Step Crystals Cat Litter, which supposedly locks in odor up to 5X longer. We'll see.. I still haven't gotten a fan, because I live in a major american city, have no car and home depot and lowes are a little far from me. So I've been getting all my supplies from a small Ace Hardware store. Right now I'm running into a problem with a lot of condensation in my box, I guess due to the lack of ventilation. I was thinking about using the computer fans like I've seen a lot of people doing. But I wasn't really sure where or which I should get, maybe someone has a suggestion? Also, I know there's a tutorial for hooking those fans up to a regular wall plug, but I can't find it so if someone could also shoot me a link to that, it'd be cool.

Well that's about all I've got for now, any suggestions or comments would be greatly appreciated, since I don't really want to tell anyone else I know about this, you guys are my only real source of advice!

Thanks, Jeff

And for some reason I can only attach two pics.. is this norm?

keep it on 24/0 for whole veg cycle. with 18/6... ok... during light, the plant makes sugars(glucose) when light is off, no sugar is made...=plant does not grow... let's say you veg for 1 month, ok?

lights on 24/0=744 hrs. of growth
lights on 18/6=558 hrs. of growth
you lose 186 hrs. of growth, or over a weeks worth of growth...

And you're going to have heat issues in that small sealed space...

have 1 comp. fan for intake cut into the side, one for out take. heat rises, so have the out take higher and intake lower

damn sound lik were i live to only hardware store around is ace even that far try hydro to
chek my system https://www.rollitup.org/hydroponics-aeroponics/60573-homed-drip-system.html

24 x 7 = 168 Hours
18 x 7 = 126 Hours

168 - 126 = 42 Hours of extra growth per week with 24/0
42 x 4 = 168 Hours

You'll have 168 extra hours of growth per month and that meens if your growing with CFL that's a big diffrince

Yeah, I figured 24/0 would work better after the first two days and I'm leaving it on all the time now.

I got an HPS but then realized you need a ballast for it. So I'm going to scrap that idea from now and get a few CFLs tomorrow.

I plan on making a ventilation system, (hence the scrubber) but the small hardware store by my house didn't have an inline fan. I'm going to a different one tomorrow to see if I can find one. I just let the lid open a bit right now because it was getting so humid in the box that there was a puddle of water sitting on the bottom, so I can see that I need a proper ventilation system sooner than I thought.

and heres a pics of my scrubber I made today.

*good job on that Avatar change!!

you can always rig a fan up and do custom venting ducks

Alright, well I took the advice I got on some other forums and separated the seedlings into their own pots today. I know bagseed isn't usually worth saving, but its not often that the weed I smoke has any seeds. I had 13 between the two pots and picked the six healthiest and very very carefully transplanted them. The wet peat pots made it easy to break up the soil and then I used a fork to pull away some of the dirt. In most cases the root ball was completely intact with dirt still around them, so hopefully they weren't too disturbed.

I also upgraded my lighting system with four more CFLs, 24 watts each 1750 lumens so thats 7000 lumens plus the plant light which is 50 watts, but didn't have a lumen rating on it.

I went to a used computer store and got the most powerful motherboard fan they had and hooked that bitch up to my box and made a passive intake so my plants can breathe. Which consequently solved my humidity problem. So now I'm just going to be hoping my seedlings make it for now.

I went to a different hardware store and almost bought this big 500 watt halogen thing, but I'm soooo glad I didn't. I was all excited about it cause it was only like 10 bucks. Thankfully I pulled up this message board on my iPhone and found out real quick. I never thought I would be learning so much about lights. lol, I'm a political science major not a lightchemist or something or the other.

I do have a question, about my peat pots. Has anyone else tried them? It says I can transplant them with the pot and all when I'm ready. True?

And here are some pics of the update!
1. new lighting system
2. demonstration of the passive intake, sucking
3. seedlings from above
4. a nice little view of the seedlings from inside the box
5. the whole shebang

Oh and I also discovered that these homemade scrubbers are perfect weed smoke smell eliminator! Fuck the dryer sheets in a tube! I think I might start making these bitches and selling em to smokers on campus. The little fan sucked the smoke right outta my mouth, pushed it out and my apartment still smelt fresh!

I heard that thoes cups that you are using almost killed a guy's plants, buy peat pucks you might be able to pick 1,000 up for about $100 at your grow store (CND funds)

Peat pellets: I'd take the outer nylon or whatever that is off them first... some say the roots can't break thru them, some say they can.. so be safe rather than sorry...

just trim them off... watch out 4 roots!

glad the computer fan worked 4 ya!!

oh SHIT!!! lol I thought you had peat pellets.. not pots... I've never used them...

DISREGUARD THE LAST POST!!

Roots Will Never Penetrate The Pots You Are Using (imo)

Use Peat Pucks/ Jiffy Pucks the roots will go through the netting

Alright, I'll reconsider the pots. They're made by Jiffy, but for some reason my hardware store doesn't have the little pellets, because thats what I looked for in the first place. They're meant to be able to be planted like completely, and they're supposed to decompose. When they're good and wet they're really flimsy and soft, so I could see it decomposing, but maybe not fast enough for the marijuana plant?

bijna said:

Alright, I'll reconsider the pots. They're made by Jiffy, but for some reason my hardware store doesn't have the little pellets, because thats what I looked for in the first place. They're meant to be able to be planted like completely, and they're supposed to decompose. When they're good and wet they're really flimsy and soft, so I could see it decomposing, but maybe not fast enough for the marijuana plant?

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I wouldn't use that and if you can fine a grow store in your area then go there if not then a plant place

Well I went to the store and got some 6500K daylight CFLs after someone on a nother forum told me that the 2700K CFLs I had were really only good for flowering, 26=100 watt. They only had two though! So I got the two and I also upgraded the center light to a 120 watt big mamajamma plant light. So only two 6500k.

I also went to Office Depot, Walgreens and a grocery store looking for emergency blankets since I couldn't find mylar anywhere. But no luck. While I was at Walgreens I came across some CFL Ionic Bulb Air Purifiers in the clearance bin. I picked up two, since for now, my other two CFLs are gonna be the wrong ones anyways, I just wanted to try these. I'm not sure if they'll be beneficial in anyway, but maybe later they'll help with the smell.

Here are some pics of the new light set up:
1. Before and after
2. the new bulbs
3. light set up with power on so you can see the difference of the light spectrums.

Man, I just ate some space brownies, and I am sooooo baked.

bijna said:

Man, I just ate some space brownies, and I am sooooo baked.

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lol I'm just building my half ass budding area just so that I can get a harvest out of it