Dual 600w flood table grow.

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BillFromBio

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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.
 
The shorter batch was just brought into flower yesterday that is why I am able to show a pic of the roots. That is how big they get inside my veg cab which has clones in it now. The pic of the custom flood and drain table imagine inside the cab with the plywood holding the cement tub so I can access the reservoir easily by sliding it out.

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Looking good there Bill, nice roots on that plant.
 
Looks good. Love flood and drain. Paint those walls white, mate.
 
Approaching week 2 into flower for that second table. 6 plants topped 3-4 times each, I should have lollipopped this batch but was worried about stress. This strain is all a clone from what I'm told is bubblegum kush not sure on the breeder or anything. Once I have a more established mother area in the near future I would like to purchase some quality strains.

Anyway I think things are lookin good this time around. Keeping close eye on the Ph as well as water level and ppm. Changed the rez after week 1 probably wont change again until the end of week 3. My RO rez has a small crack in the bottom so I'll have to replace that soon.

Any suggestions on a couple easy-med difficulty strains would be appreciated. Looking for something short potent shorter flowering time could be a plus. These days there are so many strains and breeders to choose from its hard to really decide if your going in blind I guess.

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Today in the end of week 6 for this run of ladies and they have pumped up nice. Now at day 42 into flower these ladies did get taller than I wanted due to not having the second flood table in time.

Had some nute burn a lil while back still trying to tweak my feeding just right, still nothing detrimental though. Pics aren't the best can't seem to get good ones while the lights are on. Just brought the next batch out to the other table. All of these pics are from last week sometime so actually the flowering in the pics is around day 35-37.

Any hints for taking pics would be great I'm just using a smartphone, been to lazy to charge my actual digital camera. Maybe if i mess with light exposure and balance and sh*t I can get better ones, idk I'm not a photographer lol.

Also received my genetics the other day from attitude. Ultimate purple, white widow x big bud, grapefruit diesel, and critical kush all fem. Germed critical kush and ww x bb the other day they already cracked and started to show a baby root. Will plant those mothers probably tomorrow.

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If you have an Android phone, Open Camera is a nice camera app that gives you way more settings than the stock app, stuff like color balance, ISO, lots more. If it's an iPhone then I can't help you!
 

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