PC Case Hydro AUTO Northern Light - First Grow

Hi Grow friends,

I've been hanging around these forums for the last couple of weeks as I prepared for my first grow. You guys have been a great source of knowledge and wisdom as I prepared so I thought I'd journal my grow here so I can get further advice as my grow progresses as well as hope your answers will be useful for any other newbies like me who may face issues and need help.

First off - some background - I come from a place where the weed is highly criminalised so my choice of grow environment had to be small and stealth. Also I travel a lot and will have to be away from my grow for 3-4 days each week preventing me from watering daily. These combination of factors led me to choose the following setup.

Grow Setup
PC Grow case - Self-made mini tower PC case (18.6 x 7.5 x 17) with tips from this forum. Its not the most stealth but good enough for my situation.
Hydroponic DWC - I got myself a small hydro starter kit from a local store and hooked it up to a small single outlet air pump. No drip feed.
Lights - Starting with a large CFL at 6500k 65W.
Seeds - 1 x AUTO Northern Light Blue - decided to get Autos cos I was thought they would grow short but have since learnt from this forum that that may not have been the best choice but lets see how it goes. Decided to stick with just 1 plant for now as I'm not sure there will be enough space in there for more.

I have include pics of my ready to go PC Case with this post.

The Plan
I intend to germinate my seeds in a piece of sponge which came with the starter kit and then move then into the DWC netpots supported with Leca balls.
Once they sprout I will move the seedlings into the hydro setup and take it from there.
Due to the small space I will be using LST as mewk69 so nicely demo-ed in his grow - although that is a soil grow so I hope his techniques will work for my DWC setup as well.
Along the way I intend to top my plant with the intent of getting more out of it - not sure if this is the best idea but thats the plan for now.

I hope to keep this journal going thru the grow would like to invite all you folks to come along for the ride and drop in with your comments, suggestions and advice.
Here's to a great first grow...

Here are the pics of the PC Case before the grow.


With the lights off


Seed Germinating

Be away for 3 days while my seeds were left to sprout in a lil container with some water at the bottom.
I came back last night to discover that my seed had sprouted and started to grow - damn these babies sure do grow fast.

Unfortunately since the seed was left in the dark the seedling has really stretched out - See pics below.

Advice Needed
Looks like the stem which is about 2 inches tall now may be too stretched out. I have now turned on the lights (18/6) and put the seedling just 3 inches under the 65W CFL.
I have gone thru a number of posts here on stretched stems and most of you recommend replanting the seedling into a pot and burying the stem up to the first set of leaves. Goten has a great tutorial on this.
However, I need to stick to my hydro setup and netpots which means there is no way I can bury them. Does anyone have any suggestions for what I should do?

Is this plant a goner? I really hope not.

Is the stem too long now for healthy growth?

Does anyone have any suggestions on what I should do? Any help or advice is much appreciated.

Tried digging deeper into the forums and found a great tutorial for fixing my stretched stems issue. Thanks to Fuzzbutter for his technique on lowering plants in net pots. Gonna give it a try and see if this works out for me. Will keep you posted.

Ok I did it.

I cut open the sponge in which the seedling had sprouted and while trying to be as delicate as possible extricated the root system from it.
I have to admit this did not go down too well as unlike other medium like rockwool - the roots really go grow into the sponge and make it next to impossible to pull out the main root without losing most of the your root hairs growing out of the seedling.

Finally wrapped it into another piece of new sponge at a lower position and removed the bottom layer of leca balls I had placed under the sponge. Now the sponge is at the very bottom of the netpot and I've filled it up with leca to provide support to the buried part of the stem.

Ultimately this exercise only reduce the height of my seedling by about 1 inch. I've attached pics below of the before and after height along with the original sponge with all the root hairs still left in them. I reckon the seedling took a lot of stress due to this as I am now only left with the main root. Its looking a lil down and tilted but I'll give it a couple of days and hope it recovers its vigour.

Fingers crossed.


Before the lowering of the roots.


After the lowering back in the bucket.

The roots I lost to the original sponge.

So its been exactly a week since my last post where I cut open the sponge in which my seedling was growing and transplanted it lower in a new sponge to reduce the stretched stem. I literally lost all expect the main root and the end result was a slanted and stooping seedling.

After a slow first few days, I'm proud to announce that my baby has started to recover and hopefully thrive.

Here's what she looks like on Day 14 since germination. She's smaller than she should be I think but she's needed the whole week to recover and has 2 new sets of leaves.



The main root has extended out towards the water line and new root hairs have sprouted along it.


I have just cleaned out the DWC bucket and topped up with fresh ground water. I've added a quarter strength of quitrents and adjusted Ph to 6.0.
My PPM reading is about 400 which i reckon is just low enough at this stage of growth. Should I be adding more nutes?
Temps are running quite high here as well.

I wanted cautious cos I saw a lil leave burn on the first set of leaves. These are just about 1 inch in diameter across and fresh new leaves are bursting out.
Can someone check out the image below and let me know if this is the first sign of nutrient burn? Cant afford to stress her out anymore.


I look forward to any feedback or suggestions.

Another week - another update.

This is day 21 since germination and I'm proud to say my baby is thriving.

I was careful last weekend with my nutrient levels and have not seen any further signs of nutrient burn. At the moment I'm on a generic A/B Solution type nute but have got General Hydroponics Flora nutes arriving within the week. I'm hoping my babies will grow faster with those nutes as she's still looking a lil small for her age I reckon.

I've also upped my lights to a 85W CFL at 6500K. Overall I've seen good leaf growth and barely any height gained since the netpot transplant 2 weeks ago.

I can see my first set of fan leaves with 5 points and the roots have really grown out. So far so good - on to the pics.



My package from Amazon arrives this week so I'm looking forward to upping my game with the Flora nutes and AquaShield to protect against root rot in my bucket. My water temps are fairly stable at 77-78F - which I've read is quite high so I'm going tread on the safe side by using Aquashield.

More next week as we get ever closer to my first harvest... Yippie!

Nice little setup

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