Serotonins First Grow: Snow White

So, I'm in the midst of doing everything newbs typically do so it kind of sucks. I ordered the stealth hydro DWC kit before I even knew about this site or similar sites. Basically, I wish I would have done all this stuff DIY to save money and have better products but, live and learn.

I have a fabricated clone/mother box that stands 42 inches tall by 19" deep and 4' long. This only has CFL's in it as I'm trying to save electricity and heat is an issue for me. The plants that will be going into veg/flower are put in a closet under a 250 watt MH/HPS bulb (each for its respective stage). Again another newb mistake... I would have easily got a 400watt for a few bucks more had I known the impact it would have.

I germed some snow whites (feminized) and this them 3 days into their DWC and 1.5 days under MH lighting.

For the future, I have General Hydroponics 3 stage hydro nutes and hydroguard to help against root rot. I'm using pH test strips since I can't afford a digital one yet (kept the pH around 5.6-5.. On Monday/Tues I should get my TDS meter in the mail which I'll be using to strictly monitor the nutrient uptake of the plants to hopefully get it just right for the ladies.

So far the only problems I have are 2 plants with really long stems. Perhaps I waited too long to get them out of the germination dome? I went to bed with the seedling barely out then I wake up to a 3 inch stem, so I have them propped against straws. Its ironic how the plant that was the smallest already has a 2 inch root out of the bottom of its net pot!

Here is a pic from day 3. Pardon the shitty waviness... the MH bulb does it to my cell camera.

Have you got a fan?

Some genetic variances in plants will cause them to stretch while still in the propogator....

Ah, germination dome... same thing, I imagine. The most likely cause of your stretching is not enough light. Bring your lights closer to the plants.

Yea there is a fan on them. Temp is staying around 75 F. Its just weird because they all popped at the same time, and some just had really long stems. =/

Day 4.5! The stems of all plants are strong enough to support the leaves now so I was able to remove the supports. Also, on the two bushiest plants the roots are already a good 1.5-2 inches below the net pots!

Growth has been pretty insane since they went under the MH. I'm looking forward to the coming week or two when roots get more dense and let these girls soak up their H2O! I check my pH daily and it goes up pretty drastically imo... almost a full integer. Tomorrow I better get my TDS meter so I can start adding weak nutes and find out where my tap water stands.

Changed the res water today and cleaned everything out, as I just added the seedling strength nutrients. PPM is at 630 and pH at 5.6! Using General Hydroponics Flora/Micro/Bloom.

This is day 6! They're starting to explode... its weird going away during the day and coming back 8 hours later to see how their leaves are growing. Just one slow plant but it had a reallllly long stem going into it and its roots are lagging, I think she'll pickup in a few days once her roots get more established. Oh, also added hydroguard!

Below are some pics!

Been a couple days and I made some nice changes. Basically, after seeing KillerBud and a few others' DWC at the height or end of flowering, the root masses were INSANE and I was using stealth(thanks for giving us money for our shitty product) hydro. The res on their 4 pot DWC was like a tad over 4 gallons... lol. So, I purchased an 18 gallon reservoir and covered it in reflective mylar to hopefully eliminate the algae I was getting in the stealth res. This bigger reservoir has been about 4 degrees cooler too so that is excellent!

I purchased a 60 gallon tetra air pump and have 2 6" airstones now on each end of the res. So for now and for the rest of the grow I think I'm set!

Here are a couple pics 8 days in. Let me know what you guys think? Also, I'm going by the GH feed chart and put the PPM at 750-800... no nute burn after 24 hours and the ladies seem to be doing great.

Great work... great to see that you figured out what worthless junk the stealth hydro gear is, and shared it with everyone else considering buying one.

One guy I know of after placing an order over the phone heard the guy on the other end call him a sucker. The guy at stealth obviously mistimed the hanging up of the phone and remarking on the customers stupidity.

Yes dude, check this shit out... I ordered that SH DWC back in August and around 6 days go by and I don't have my stuff that I ordered, which seemed weird since I paid for priority shipping and they're in the USA.

I call them up to find out whats taking so long and they didn't even ship it yet! The guy says "Oh, uh... it will be shipped out this afternoon." I live in an apartment and get an email confirmation and the dipshits didn't put my apartment number on the package, and sometimes UPS is so lazy they'll return it to sender. So I had to call them and have them contact UPS to add the apartment to the shipping.

Overall, it wasn't a terrible experience but unless you're growing some 6" basal or mint herbs, I wouldn't bother purchasing the SH DWC. PLUS, I spent around $22 for the stuff I'm using now, which is much better. For anyone reading this just DIY!

Very intense planning. Had to look cause of your name.
Good luck with your grow and thanks for sharing.

Lacy said:

Very intense planning. Had to look cause of your name.
Good luck with your grow and thanks for sharing.

Click to expand...

when i first glanced at his sn i thought for a second someone had taken my regular sn. it's remarkably close.

anyway. sorry for the off topic comments. I never understood why people insist on ordering the stealth hydro dwc kit. i don't mean any disrespect but if you just look at it, it's just a rubbermaid container with holes cut out of the lid and an air pump. again sorry for the off topic comments but good luck with the grow.

Things seem to be going well. How does the growth look? 2 are taking off and 2 are smaller.

Well, a LOT of shit has changed since this journal even started which isn't something I'm too happy with. My DWC failed and my plants started getting root rot. I have a lot of things I'm going to do differently for DWC, namely not starting seedlings in one, but just using rooted clones. All that is another story...

The plants were pulled from the netpots and hydroton and I chopped off all the gooey brown roots, which took most of the root mass from each plant. This was all Sunday night! I transplanted into these 4" RW cubes and have been keeping them in a dome and spraying the foliage a few times a day while the roots regrow. This helps a lot because at first they were really droopy and this solved the problem.

To nurse these roots back and get them strong I'm using 5mL of 35% H2O2 per gallon of water and a nutrient ppm of 850. I also am using hygrozyme now to assist with root cleansing. The plants are still doing VERY well! I'm pretty shocked. Still have foliage growing and the stems are thickening a considerable amount.

Here is a pic of the ladies in their current condition. I'll be finishing them in rockwool, I bought 2 dutch trays and 2 slabs of 6" rockwool. Just gonna use drain to waste and handwater because I like keeping the nutes fresh and I can monitor them much easier this way... plus I'm always home and don't care to set up a drip just yet.

Well, the plants are loving the rockwool. After just a few days they rooted rather well considering their trauma and I had to put a second block below them.

Having the curse of a perfectionist I couldn't resist the urge of attempting DWC with one of them. So I scrounged up an empty whey protein bucket I had that was solid black and 4 gallons... sanitized it with some bleach water and slapped a hole in the top for the net pot. I put hygrozyme and h2o2 in the res with nutes and so far the water is still perfect 2 days later. I'm swapping out frozen 16 oz plastic water bottles too, to keep the temp down.

Here are some pics!

Make sure that no light can get into your roots... thing is in dwc, plants can actually overcome root rot, particularly in veg'. I had one plant lose over half it's root system and not a single sign could be told from the plant above, and this was in flower. Didn't even slow it down, at least not perceptibly...

I had the distinct feeling they would have died. Literally in the period of 24 hours the roots b/w the net pot and the water line were almost black and the entire room smelled like shit. The DWC for the single plant is now on day 3 and the water still smells good and is crystal. Perhaps the H2O2 solved my problems!! Lets hope because I want to do some Arjan's Haze in the 4 pot DWC.

Plants are doing well... the rockwool is drying up rather fast and everything is going well! Here is a pic from 10 min ago of the 3 rockwool plants.

Plants are doing well, except for the DWC trial plant. I think maybe she had a bit too much transplant and root shock because her roots just aren't growing much at all. =/ Still hanging in there though so we'll see.

The rockwool plants are kicking assholes in though. I have to water them sometimes twice a day they're using everything up. Later I'm going to mix up some new water/nutes for them and I'm bumping it up to 1100ppm. I added a couple big ass CFL's too since I had them laying around. I think they're helping too as some lower leaves are already in the shade of the uppers so I put the CFL's on the sides of the plants.

Here are 2 of them. The 3rd was camera shy since she was a bit thirsty.

Well, I woke up and checked on the plants and low and behold they had like 6+ roots each coming out of the bottoms of their cubes so I xplanted them into their dutch trays + rockwool slab. bringing the Nutes to 1100ppm started to give a slight nute burn so I diluted the solution down to 900ppm and they're doing just fine.

Check out the pics and let me know what you guys think. Also, the DWC plant after a long and hard shock period is rooting like mad now so she should pick up soon!

Starting to flower today... plants are around a foot tall! The mother is doing well in her DWC. Later tonight I'm going to give her 2 more lights and change the reservoir.

PICS!

Hey. Glad to see everything is going well. I used to keep moms in a bubbler too, although I stopped because they just grow too fast. Once she gets big enough to top, the next branches grow within a couple of days. I remember growth of up two inches PER DAY in VEG. It's fine if you have an outlet for your clones, but if you don't you're going to end up with more clones than you can deal with. Be prepared also for the massive amount she will start drinking. I believe I went up to 5litres per DAY at one point.

Although once placed into flower the drinking goes down somewhat.

yea my goal after the first harvest is to switch over to a sog type setup using the dutch trays and doing about 6-9 plants. I can't believe how damn easy growing in rockwool is... it was something I read about but passed up however in the end with the plants getting root rot in DWC, I made the transition to rockwool effortlessly. The plants have rooted all the way down into the slab a considerable amount and growth is insane now. Its like they shoot out multiple fanleaves a day.

When I get paid I'm ordering another 250 watt light because I REALLY want to fucking soak these plants in light. 2 x 250 watt HPS will do well too in my tiny closet for a 3 tray grow.

Skunkush - I have the mother in DWC but with 4 CFL's to kind of slow her growth. She isn't getting a whole lot of light... just enough to keep her from losing density and to prevent stretch. Hopefully the cloning will go well when I attempt it in a month. I think it will be fine though. I may only take a few clones as it is since I'm very very space limited and want to do Arjan's Haze next.

Any feedback/comments are appreciated!