BillFromBio
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Mar 23, 2008
- Messages
- 80
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It has been awhile since my last post and would like to share my progress and experience. If you refer back to my last project I custom made a cabinet and low pressure DIY aeroponics setup that ultimately ended in disaster. The last pics from the grow journal the plants look great about 2 weeks into flower and then the roots just became so entangled that it was impossible to transplant or even change the reservoir, so those were chopped.
After all this I finally decided to take a stop at a newly opened hydro shop in my town, it is the only one we have had or ever had and the owner is actually in a circle of friends of mine. Anyway he had my brain thinking completely differently about my whole setup and put me in the right path for nutrients.
Now, I still use the custom cabinet I made but I only use it to veg plus I have added a custom CFL fixture for another 9600 lumens from the original 12,000. Also I have made a custom DIY flood and drain setup which seems to be pretty popular from what I can see on the net. Parts to build include a 2'x3' cement mixing tub and 27 gal Heavy duty storage container both from homed depot for under $40 total. Plus the fill and drain kit and pump you can get from anywhere my hydro shop gives em to me for $5, pump for $15. Its hard to find floos table with 2'x3' dimensions which is the only reason I built my own system like this. Clay pellets depends on the size bag you buy but they last forever if you rinse and reuse. Basically I can fit 6 plants to veg at a time for approximately 4-5 weeks before they start to reach the top.
My flower setup is now in the room itself and consists of 2 separate 2'x4' Hydrofarm flood and drain tables each with their own 600w HPS light. Each table was $55 from my hydro shop which isn't bad when you don't have to pay for shipping. The lights I bought from HTGsupply as usual. I really like the black storage containers with the yellow lids for the reservoirs so I stuck with those, each table has its own reservoir. I keep all my reservoirs at 20 gal. of RO water that I am now filtering myself instead of buying at $.37 a gallon. Spent $120 on a 100GPD RO system and have never looked back. Brought my 350+ ppm water to about 7ppm. Not exactly perfect but I can't really complain.
As far as feeding I am still sticking with the Lucas formula as mentioned before which uses General Hydroponic flora series. It's basically a ration of 1:2 - floraMicro/floraBloom used through both stages of grow and cuts the grow part right out. As someone had mentioned in my previous journal when I had first started using this formula they seemed to notice a lack of nitrogen which is very true. So now I tweak the formula and also add floraGrow at a ratio of 1:2:4 - G/M/B. As you can see I don't use a ton of grow but enough to give it that extra. As for supplements I have been using Botanicare with great success. All from them I use Vitamino, Liquid Karma, Hydroplex, Cal-Mg+, and whichever sweetener I am feeling. For a few runs I used Big Up powder from Humbolt but was not impressed especially at the price. I would really like to try the 3 part dry bloom boosters from fox farm if anyone has any input on them. For the schedule I just went to the Botanicare website chose which nutrients I had and what size my reservoir was and printed a custom schedule. I use that combined with my lucas formula with ppms around 700 at the start of veg and working up to 1400+ by the start of flower. The only issues I have had is that I wasn't able to keep up with the water supply when I was buying water. There was a time in this last batch where the reservoir ran dry. Also I made a really ******* mistake and when I was doing work up there I turned one of my surge protectors off, well it was the one that was hooked to the water pumped feeding my plants. Well i forgot to turn it back on when I was done and didn't realize it for about 9 days when I was like *** the plants haven't grown and are starting to droop like they aren't getting water, oh wait lets turn the surge protector back on! Motherf****r! So between running the reservoir dry and not feeding them they lost about 2 weeks of crucial flower time this batch. Still looking mighty pretty though.
I will have pics coming very soon I just have to take lower quality ones so I don't have to go through converting and whatnot.
After all this I finally decided to take a stop at a newly opened hydro shop in my town, it is the only one we have had or ever had and the owner is actually in a circle of friends of mine. Anyway he had my brain thinking completely differently about my whole setup and put me in the right path for nutrients.
Now, I still use the custom cabinet I made but I only use it to veg plus I have added a custom CFL fixture for another 9600 lumens from the original 12,000. Also I have made a custom DIY flood and drain setup which seems to be pretty popular from what I can see on the net. Parts to build include a 2'x3' cement mixing tub and 27 gal Heavy duty storage container both from homed depot for under $40 total. Plus the fill and drain kit and pump you can get from anywhere my hydro shop gives em to me for $5, pump for $15. Its hard to find floos table with 2'x3' dimensions which is the only reason I built my own system like this. Clay pellets depends on the size bag you buy but they last forever if you rinse and reuse. Basically I can fit 6 plants to veg at a time for approximately 4-5 weeks before they start to reach the top.
My flower setup is now in the room itself and consists of 2 separate 2'x4' Hydrofarm flood and drain tables each with their own 600w HPS light. Each table was $55 from my hydro shop which isn't bad when you don't have to pay for shipping. The lights I bought from HTGsupply as usual. I really like the black storage containers with the yellow lids for the reservoirs so I stuck with those, each table has its own reservoir. I keep all my reservoirs at 20 gal. of RO water that I am now filtering myself instead of buying at $.37 a gallon. Spent $120 on a 100GPD RO system and have never looked back. Brought my 350+ ppm water to about 7ppm. Not exactly perfect but I can't really complain.
As far as feeding I am still sticking with the Lucas formula as mentioned before which uses General Hydroponic flora series. It's basically a ration of 1:2 - floraMicro/floraBloom used through both stages of grow and cuts the grow part right out. As someone had mentioned in my previous journal when I had first started using this formula they seemed to notice a lack of nitrogen which is very true. So now I tweak the formula and also add floraGrow at a ratio of 1:2:4 - G/M/B. As you can see I don't use a ton of grow but enough to give it that extra. As for supplements I have been using Botanicare with great success. All from them I use Vitamino, Liquid Karma, Hydroplex, Cal-Mg+, and whichever sweetener I am feeling. For a few runs I used Big Up powder from Humbolt but was not impressed especially at the price. I would really like to try the 3 part dry bloom boosters from fox farm if anyone has any input on them. For the schedule I just went to the Botanicare website chose which nutrients I had and what size my reservoir was and printed a custom schedule. I use that combined with my lucas formula with ppms around 700 at the start of veg and working up to 1400+ by the start of flower. The only issues I have had is that I wasn't able to keep up with the water supply when I was buying water. There was a time in this last batch where the reservoir ran dry. Also I made a really ******* mistake and when I was doing work up there I turned one of my surge protectors off, well it was the one that was hooked to the water pumped feeding my plants. Well i forgot to turn it back on when I was done and didn't realize it for about 9 days when I was like *** the plants haven't grown and are starting to droop like they aren't getting water, oh wait lets turn the surge protector back on! Motherf****r! So between running the reservoir dry and not feeding them they lost about 2 weeks of crucial flower time this batch. Still looking mighty pretty though.
I will have pics coming very soon I just have to take lower quality ones so I don't have to go through converting and whatnot.
