Think ima post my journal here as to try to get more feedback
First Bubbleponics Grow v1.0
Okay so after a somewhat hectic week I can finally start this journal
First of all...the wife and I are using a Stealth Hydro Bubbleponics system for this first grow. I'm assuming later on we'll want to remove the big tote altogether and use individual ones, but for the bundle that came with everything else we're gonna try it. We purchased a Feminized Mix from seeds.nl They also came with 5 free ones. Pretty sure they're Hash Bomb/Royal Hash, but the only other choice they had was Lowryder 2. Pics...here we goez!
Ok so at first we only germinated 1 seed. We decided on doing one of the free seeds, which was supposedly Royal Hash. We put the seed in a shot glass of bottled water for 12 hrs. Seed dropped to the bottom so we took it out and transferred it to an empty egg carton with 6 moist paper towels of the same water. 3 underneath and 3 on top. Close the carton and placed in my PC case under my video card
Kept the warm air nice and circulated through the egg carton. Worked surprisingly well. I highly suggest. This pic was taken roughly a day later. I think you can see the root poppin.
Day 2- This is what we made for her. We didnt have the room to set up our tent or system yet so I made her a DIY bubbler. What can I say? The greenthumb fever took over lulz. Used the biggest plastic Folgers container I could find. Cleaned it out really good and cut a hole for a 3" net pot in the lid. The container only holds 3 500ml bottles of water before its flush with the bottom of the net pot. Small yea, but effective and cheap. Regular rockwool and hydrogroton. Straight water with a 4" airstone in the bottom.
This is the closet space we had to work with at first. It was only 2x2x3 so I lined it with emergency blankets( I hear they're somewhat mylarish) for $2.88 at Walmart. I also made a DIY light fixture. I only have 1 pic of it sadly, but it worked out really well. I went to Menards and got 4 42w CFL bulbs(2 daylight and 2 soft white), a 2' section of vent ducting($3 to use as the reflector), a dual lightsocket splitter and a 6' lamp cord. The pic will come later, but basically just drill a hole in the middle of the ducting(whichever size the top of the socket is) and screw in your light socket/fixture to the ducting. Wire the lamp cord to the fixture for power of course. I drilled a hole at each end of it for hanging about 3/4" away from the far end. Screw in your bulbs ( I used 1 6500k daylight and 1 2700k soft white for both spectrums) and hang it however you like. Plug her in. Cost me about $35. Mostly the cost of the bulbs, but hey....sacrifices sacrifices lulz. I try to get more pics of this and post later. On to better things
Day 4 - So she popped above the rockwool yesterday. She's only been in the system for a couple of days now and it seems to be doing the trick. Showing her first true set of leaves. The cotyledon or w/e they're called look nice and green. Temps in the "room" are about 80 degrees, which I understand is okay for smaller plants as they need a little more heat for optimal growing. Just for shitz and giggles we got curious to see if the root had broke through and low and behold it had! So definately pleased with that. Had our light about 2-3" from her at this point.
Day 7 - So this is day 7 from germ. Went directly from germ to rockwool in the mini-system. We have named her Kyla
Her first set of true leaves look absolutely gorgeous. We've been watering the rockwool by hand every other day for a few seconds as to not overwater her. Granted the title of this journal says Bubbleponics, but atm its DWC. Have no fear!! Now comes the part where I say "my week's been hectic" and I gotta say I'm so fuckin stoked to be sharing this. Gonna start a new entry in the journal for this. Be sure to let me know if Im doing nything wrong with the journal or if I'm not providing enough info. Im new to the forum thing, but I definately wanna share. Look forward to hearing your ideas and thoughts! Happy growing
The actual system setup! Finally!!
Okay, so my first journal entry is basically the sporadic starter-system that we made. Now for the real shiz. As I said before we didnt have the room to set up our entire system so we improvised and made a miniature one. So last week, as if it was meant to be, space made itself available and this is the journey we've had over the last week or so
Enjoy.
COMPLETE SYSTEM CHECKLIST
3x3x6 Mylar-lined Grow Tent
Sun System 2 400w Grow Light System (Have both 400w MH and HPS bulbs )
Bubbleponics System from Stealth Hydro
12" air stone with pump
Water Pump with 6-tube feeder assembly
Recipe for Success Starter Kit (Comes with Grow, Boost, Bloom, Sugar Daddy, Root 66, Clonex Cloning Gel, and Thrive Alive B-1 red and green)
3" net pots with Rockwool and Hydrogroton
Digital PH/PPM testers ( I also have paper for backup)
PH Up/Down (Have both solid and liquid)
Woods Digital Timer ( Had to buy this because the one they sent me was a POS mechanical one and didnt work properly)
Basic Surge Protectors 2x
Etc etc etc
Ok. These 3 are just pics of the mats I'll be using. The room the tent is in is 8x8x7. I believe in one of these pics you may see the tent almost touching the ceiling. At first I was a little worried....then I realized that that particular area of ceiling above the tent also happens to be a large cold-air duct
So I was like hooooray and shtuff. The bulb is a standard MH bulb from Lowes. They're only 20,000 lumens I think but it should do the trick in the Sun System 2. I bought the light system and I could have swore I bought the bulb with it, but it didnt have one and thats what I ended up getting. I also ordered a 400w HPS bulb off Amazon for like $12. Its a 50,000 lumen one compared to the 25,000 or so Lowes carries. They told me they didnt carry the HPS only the MH. I went in to get the MH bulb and next to it were the 400w HPS bulbs. I had already bought the one online so I was kinda relieved to see that I had made the better choice in waiting due to the lumen decrease from the type they carried. Sylvania I believe. Nutes cost me $38 on amazon. Came with a chart/schedule, but they shouldnt need nutes for a couple weeks at least and even then I plan to gradually increase dosages given. Too little is easier to deal with than too much I understand. I may be a newb to growing....but I've done my fair share of reading these forums to expand my noggin
Next.
In my first entry I mentioned a DIY light fixture that I made with stuff from Menards. The first pic is the only one I have of it thusfar. If nyone would like to know more about it just shout. Ill be more than happy to post pics or whatnot. The other 2 are just pics of the final setup. 2 days prior we germinated 3 more of the actual FEMINIZED seeds from the mystery pack we got
They all cracked really fast and with Kyla being only like 9 days old we figured that in the big system the other 3 would catch up no problem. Or so we hope. Got everything set up. Transfer of the seeds to rockwool went really smooth. Got them nice and settled. So in total we have 4 MYSTERY BUD growing as we speak. PH of the water was 5.5-5.8 to start with. It went up to 6.2ish a couple days ago, but other than that no issues. We also made sure to soak our hydrogroton and airstone in PH'd water so hopefully that'll help. We'll be doing our first flush and clean of the system this Friday and then every 2 weeks following. Light cycle is a basic 18 on and 6 off. Temps havent really stabled yet so I'll post that pic next
Day 2
Okay so basically to avoid confusion....we are restarting our actual start date of the grow. Start date will be March 31st, 2011. I took these a couple days ago. They've been in the system for 2 whole days now. The other 3 seeds we started are wiggling their way above the rockwool as well! No visible stem yet, but if you look right above the rockwool you can definately see some neon green root comin up so thats a good sign
Like before, we ARE NOT watering them everyday!! The system is set up yes...but the water pump is not on yet! We fired it up to make sure it all worked properly and I gotta admit I was impressed. Extremely quiet. The water-flow from the tube feeders kinda bugs me out. Its flowing....but not? Just a visual stimuli mix-up lulz. When you try to touch it to see if its flowing...the water stands still, but its OBVIOUS that its flowing if that makes sense lulz. We turn the pump on every other day for about a minute. So basically, when the rockwool feels a little crispy we dampen them up and thats about it. Temps at this point are holding at 80 degrees. We only have a small fan for circulation atm, but I have a 4" 200cfm inline fan with carbon filter on the way. It should be here early next week
WOOT! So I figure that'll work great with the cold-air above the tent. Make it a little easier on all of us to vent the tent out. The room its in now is actually being prepped for future grows. 8x8x7 and we're thinking of doing this grow and then making the whole room "growable". Thats a story for a different time tho
The plant in the back-right corner is Kyla of course. Only 2 days after we dropped the other 3 seeds, the one in front of Kyla made herself VERY known. Came out of nowhere so that was a surprise to see so quickly! The cotyledon leaves or w/e are visible, but they look kinda funky. Not sure if the seed has popped all the way off yet for her to get light, but tomorrow is my next visit with the camera so I'll be sure to update. I was kinda thinking over-watering, but not sure. Kyla on the other hand is showing her 2nd set of true leaves and oddly I swear she sparkles? Ill try to get pics of her up-close. I know its not mold....maybe good genetics? Who knows. We'll have to see, but her leaves have almost TRIPLED in size in just a few days. Her cotyledon leaves are yellowing and starting to die and I assume they're supposed to. I would really love some input as I post pics through their lifecycle. I can only read and experience so much ya know? As far as I can tell they're loving the new wide-open space and the beefed-up "sun". As I said before tho...if you guys would like more info just ask
Thanks and happy growing
DAY 4
So today was day 4 of the grow from seed. Have some pics to share with you all. Had some surprising results. Input and opinions would be much appreciated
These 2 are of Kyla at Day 4 in the big system. The one on the right is of her root structure thusfar. You should be able to see them. Look pretty good. Her 2nd set of leaves are starting to double in size it seems. Cotyledons are pretty much gone.
This is a pic of the 2nd one that popped above the rockwool. Its directly in front of Kyla in the setup. It was droopy this am. The light comes on at 6 am and then runs until midnight. I checked at 9 am and it seems to just kinda flatten against the rockwool. This pic is a few hours later. It looks healthy for the most part...dont really understand why it lowered so much tho. Kinda freaked us.
In my last entry I mentioned a DIY CFL lamp assembly that I made. Heres a couple pics of it. Pretty simple to make. I have 2 42w CFLs in this one. Until next post
Day 5 Bubbleponics Mystery Bud Grow
Day 5- Kyla got freakin huge! 2nd set of true leaves are doubling in size almost everyday it seems. The other taller one's(no pic) 1st set of leaves are growing pretty rapidly now. Kyla sits lower than the other and seems bushier. We planted 4 and of the 4 only 2 have popped. But today I checked on the 2 that hadnt popped and did some minor surgery. Apparently the seeds had pushed themselves up through the rockwool and little too much and the root hadnt "grabbed" onto anything to pull it down. This seemed to be the case with both so I took some tweezers and restraightened the root on both and pointed them straight down and buried the seed a little below the surface. On one of them the seed shell had actually cracked so much that it was just hanging there. The cotyledon leaves were smashed together kinda, but I assume its just from lack of light and the shell so once the MH does its thing it'll perk up. Temps are holding at 75F. Humidity was at 60% when i opened the tent. Then it dropped to 50% so thats good thusfar. Got the inline fan and carbon filter today as well as my 400w HPS bulb
I'll have that taken care of in the next week or so hopefully. Until next post.