Newbie Schedule review

Hello Friends,

I am still very new to hydroponics and wanted to run my schedule by you and see what your thoughts are.

I currently built a grow cabinet and put a single bucket hydro drip system from my Sea of Green hydro shop.

I purchased the woodwool starter pods and put a seed in there and put my light on 24/7, the airrock under the water in the bucket is on a 30 min on 30 min off rotation. The air pump to circulate the solution is also on a 30 min on 30 min off rotation.

At this time I am using just water and my plant is about 5 in tall now and has about 7 leaves and looks VERY healthy.

I am planning on starting a nutrient cycle later this week once the plant is a little stronger.

The temp in my cabinet gets to about 90 deg with my vent fans on full I am assuming this will drop in the flowering stages when I take the light cycle to 12 on 12 off.

I also currently am using tap water and its VERY hard and I have a lot of buildup already. I was thinking about switching to brita filtered water or some kind of bottled water.

Any comments on any of the things above is more than welcome. My last plant was killed by leaf miners! so I didnt get to see my plant grow or learn anything from the process. I am hoping this round provides me a little more information and results.

thanks

HV

hey if you're having problems with hard water check out a zero water ($35-$40). Its a handheld filter like a britta except it gets the water down to like 1-2ppm when the filter is new (britta is like 150). i used a britta at first and found that it only filters out hard metals such as iron, copper and zinc. all of those are the ones you WANT in your water. The 150ppm that get through the britta are things like chlorine and chloramine, which although some are micro nutrients, in the amounts found in tap are in too strong of form to be accept by the plant. They say to change the filter on a zero water when it is at 006ppm ( i wait till mine says 15-20ppm cause the replacements are expensive for filters). i also use my old britta to filter water i put through my zero water so it lasts longer. IMO its a lot more economical for a small operation like yours sounds, as R/O systems when said and done are $300+ and a britta won't do enough.

Bongrips is right, the zero water system works awesomely.
Anyway, Ive had leaf miners before too they are a huge pain in the ass. I had em in an ebb and flow. they would always multiply in my reservoir. I never got around to using it but Ive heard great things about a cedar based product called Gonats thats supposed to work very well at killing off the larvae. As for the adults it wasn't until it was too late that I was told I could effectively kill off the adults by introducing beneficial insects such as preying mantises (they arent picky eaters) or other predators that specialize in certain pests. I know you were interested in nutrients/schedules so I thought I should suggest you try Advanced Nutrients' organic Iguana juice Grow and Bloom and use Their bloom catalyst "Nirvana" alongside the IJ in bloom as an optional but highly beneficial extra. If you got a liter of each you would be spending just over 100 bucks for the trio. Definitely not cheap but by far the best nutrient ive used thus far. It mixes very clean and doesnt settle, it is quite ph stable, its fairly concentrated (2-4ml per liter), produces clean tasty bud, is highly recognizable and absorbable by the plants, it is an excellent nutrient for beginners as it is harder to overfeed, and lastly it is the only nutrient ive used that didnt attract larvae.
Hope this helped.
A.N.A.