First time grower, 8 DWC buckets in a 8x8 tent

Zen0n · April 23, 2021, 9:32am

Hey guys first time grower here, have a couple of buddies who grow in soil, but decided to take the plunge into hydro off the start. Be forewarned, my experience is completely from being a youtube hero up to this point. So I may or may not make myself look like a complete ass here Also, this all came about rather quickly so everything is sort of in a state of flux. i do something one way, think about it then change it. ADHD ftw lol

Equipment
8x8x6.5 generic grow tent (growing in a 4x8 section)
2 x Mars Hydro TS3000 lights
2 x AC infinity 6" cloudline fans
Nutradip growboss ph/tds/temp meter
1 x ActiveAqua 8 port air pump AAPA25L
1 x ActiveAcua 2 port air pump
121L garbage can for water
1 x 240v light control box
1 x lumo X 6" exhaust filter (in transit)

Nutrients
Future Harvest hydro line Future harvest schedule

I’ve purchased the following nutes

Micro
Grow
Bloom
Calnesium
Super B
Propogater

Plants
2 x Bruce Banner
2 x Alaska Purple
4 x Cherry Pie

Long story short, the basement in my home has been waiting to get repaired after we got flooded a couple of years back and then had some foundation work. Zero mold and dry basement now. But the bedroom down there wasn’t being used, and a buddy had a spare 8x8 tent ( I didn’t ask lol),

So the grand project of wedging an 8x8x6.5 tent in a 8.5x8.5x7 room began. I’ll save you the guess work, it’s not fun! Luckily enough, I have a side window that just fits the 6" ducting to come up and over the tent between floor boards for an intake. For the exhaust, i ended up punching a hole through the wall into the adjacent laundry room. With the basement getting refinished later one or two hole’s ain’t the end of world. i’ve also added a couple runs of 5/8 garden hoses from the laundry room for water in/out to the tent. Here is the basic layout of my tent

As for power, i had my electrician buddy come and rip out the old existing 10/3 dryer cable and run a fresh cable back to the dryer, and adding a second 240v plug for the lights. Running the lights on the same 240v line as the dryer does limit dryer use, but shouldn’t be an issue with a little planning. At the same time had the electrician run a 14/3 line for a couple of 15A circuits for the tent. Should have lots of power. Each 15A circuit is run from the laundry room into the tent via 12ga extension cords. Power distribution in tent is ytbd.

I decided to relocate the drivers from inside the tent to the laundry room in anticipation of future heat issues, and the fact that the 240v access is in there. i wall mounted the 240v control box (one big 240v dryer power cable, split off to 4 smaller 240v outputs, controlled by a 120v coil, so regular timer controlling 240v cct). Had to extend the DC out cables from the drivers to get to the lights by about 5’ per using 14ga dc power wire. LED power wires and 2 extension cords go through wall into side of tent.

Inside the tent i have 8 5 gallon buckets, with some net pots that are pretty big (I guess? couple of the clones are looking pretty buried, but i need to stop light from coming in the side) They’re about 6" deep, filled with clay pellets as a medium.
It works out to pretty close of 3 gallons of water to hit the bottom of the net pot. 1/4" air line driving an air stone in the bucket.

The meter I’m using is a used nutradip growboss I picked up locally. ph probe did appear stored in some type of liquid, but dumb dumb me didn’t try to calibrate it before ph’ing my water initially. Picked up the calibration juice and it seems pretty bang on with the 4/7 juice now.

The first 24hrs i had the clones in water only that was probably a bit high on the ph scale at around 6.7. Top feeding with a small batch of 1/4 strength wk1 veg as per instructions twice per day. Dumped buckets back in the res to ph them all at once. Thought I had the ph locked in at 5.8 in the big res, but 24 hours after putting the 5.8 water back in the bucket they all stabalized at 6.0.

Lights are set at 50% and sitting 24" above clones.

Where I stand now. Each bucket has 3 gallons of recommended 1/4 stength wk1 veg, with super b and propogater. Water is ph’d to either 5.9/6.0 in each bucket. Top feeding twice a day from each plants bucket. Most of the clones had maybe 1" roots sticking out of the rockwool (except both banners had 2 6" roots!). Plants have been sitting in the nutrient water since 4/20 (hehe).

Temps in the tent when the lights are on is 70-74, when the lights go off it drops down to 60. Water in the buckets is around 62. I have not been running the fans at all yet, it’s still rather cool outside and it doesn’t sound like I have an abundance of heat in the tent at this point to get rid of. I’m in and out of it a bunch at this point so it’s getting plenty of air. Humidity in the tent hovers around 40%. I “reclaimed” the house humidifier which works quite well in there. To the point where when I was trying it out and left it cranking it got to 95% in there for about 30m. Well great time to test that exhaust fan haha.

Short term goals
-finish hanging fans/filters
-figure out some kind of intake filter
-hang air pump and clean up air line runs
-rig some kind of water manifold system for moving water around.

Medium term goals
-setup raspberry pi (picked up several sensors, relay board etc)
-prep northwest 4x4 section to be separate veg room, mini herb garden (yeah the wife worked that one into the requirements)

Here are the plants as they stand tonight

I’m sure I missed stuff, but it’s late already

Mark0427 · April 23, 2021, 10:20am

Welcome. Good start so far. If only using half the tent to grow in id see about panda film or mylar wrap and split it in the middle to try and hold in as much of the loght as u can in the 4x8 area more loght ewuals more work and more work equals bigger plants. Good start looking well.

NeoGroR · April 23, 2021, 10:41am

Nice set up! And good luck!

Allinherhead · April 23, 2021, 12:05pm

Great job, very well thought out.
I think I’m going to follow along and learn this type of grow

Low · April 23, 2021, 9:31pm

Looks like a nice setup!

Myfriendis410 · April 23, 2021, 9:41pm

I’m told this will not fit an A/C Infinity and have to buy the same brand filter to match this fan.

What is the distance between net pot and liquid? Needs to be 1 1/2 to 2" below and air bubbles will bring moisture up to the hydroton.

This would worry me: can you flip your day/night? Run lights at night and have ‘darkness’ in the daytime. That would certainly help.

Putting a dome over the plants can help as well and will increase RH (which they like right now).

Zen0n · May 4, 2021, 8:28pm

Sorry for the lack of updates, been quite busy with work these days.

The luma filter coller fit over the ac infinity quite snug and nice. I havent setup many (any lol) of these before, but if was in there good and cinched down with the clip nicely.

Currently the water is sitting 1" below the bottom if the net pot and root growth is taking off.

As for the temp situation, it’s still quite cool here in Manitoba so pulling in outside air to heat up the tent isn’t currently an option for another couple of weeks. I’ve been running a dome style heater in there during the day to keep the temps around 78-80, but yeah at night is still an issue dropping to 60.

To try and insulate the tent a bit, I went and picked up a couple of 1" subfloor insulation 4x8 sheets, trimmed them up to fit over the bars and that keeps the temps around 62 in the evening. Can’t recall if I mentioned it above but the tent is sitting on the concrete floor, and the slab is quite cold.

here is a couple of shots of the subfloor process

For anyone thinking of doing this in the future, definitly seal up the floor insulation all the way to the edge of the tent and seal with tuck tape. Getting a bunch of condensation along the floor poles from the cold/hot zone there. Will cut some strips of foam and seal the floor.

Zen0n · May 4, 2021, 9:18pm

Been meaning to follow up with some info, just was busy but here goes another wall of text.

Overall I think it’s going pretty well. 7/8 plants have really started to make some moves with one looking a little retarded.

Have been fighting some cooler temps in the tent sitting in a cold basement on the concrete running led lights. My rookie fear of getting to warm in the tent with the drivers inside was definitely not warranted in my case. So i ended up moving the drivers off the wall in the adjacent room and mounted them to the lights in the stock position. Chopped out the DC power wire extensions i had made from driver to the lights and just reconnected the stock dc power wires. Ran a couple of 12ga extension cables from the 240v control box to the drivers for power. Effective temp gain in the tent with drivers inside was maybe 1-2F, but the temp probe is right there so who knows. Anyhow, wasted effort but lessons learned on my part. Left power wires in place in the event I switch back.

Currently heating the tent with one of those electric dome oscillating heaters, which does the trick admirably during daytime, but it glows red when heating so i am hesitant to run it at night the the glow it sets off. Wrapping it in some tin foil light killing baffle seems possible if not super sketchy and prone to kicking the heat back at the unit…

I had kept the girls on the 1/4 nute schedule until all of them had roots hanging outside the pot. The 2 Bruce Banners and Alaskan Purples seem to be taking off more then the Cherry pies thus far. But even the clones were like that aswell.

Flipped them to week 1 nute schedule on April 28 with micro,grow,bloom,calmag and root propogater. Water was ph’d and ppm came out 700. Left out the super b for the first week to see how they would do at 700ppm but there doesn’t appear to be any burning other then the fan leaves I beat the hell out of top feeding and getting nute juice all over the leaves, lesson learned. Going to week 2 veg sched tomorrow. Will probably add the super b that run and see how she goes.

Here’s a couple of shots of the ladies.

Here is the red headed step child, double checked the bucket, still ph’d 5.9 and 680ppm.

One thing I did notice, towards the end of the 18h light cycle, the cherry pies definitely start to look tired and start drooping. But in the morning they look good and erect with some lady morning dink The banners and the AP not so much.

Currently running the TS 3000 at 50% about 24"

Zen0n · May 4, 2021, 10:16pm

One of my current concerns was the juice temp in the buckets. It definitely will stabilize with the tent temp with the lights on. duh right. The min/max temp on my reader showed 85 when left in all day. Black colored buckets probably not helping the heat situation (but good for light) as the room didn’t ever get to 85.

Well I decided to cut some holes in the styrofoam floor boards to get the buckets right on the concrete, and trim the plastic rims off the bottom of the bucket to get as much in contact with the cold floor as possible Slapped together some bucket condoms with panda wrap and we’ll see how that goes for now.

Called up a buddy who works for a foam company and have a bunch of 3/8" foam to try and wrap the buckets to insulate them on the way. We’ll see how effective that ends up being. The price was right for an experiment at least.

For now, i’ll probably just drop some frozen water bottles in and see how that goes. Was definitely looking into setting up a RDWC system at first but looked a bit daunting for a first timer.

After having a couple of bowls and thinking about it a bit, is there any reason why i couldn’t run some kind of gravity autofeed system, with a drain off the side of the bucket to control the water level? Something like this scaled x 8.

Talking out of my ass with zero experience i guess roots could eventually find their way into the drain? But slap a screen and sit that the drain vertically it shouldn’t have much pressure pulling in roots to jam er up should it?

Zen0n · May 4, 2021, 10:26pm

I picked up a giant roll of the stuff and it’s on the list to do! I had one buddy mention I should think of hanging the white wrap over the foil inside the tent aswell.

I have enought of the wrap to do that no problem, just concerned maybe with adding the additional weight on the tent poles.

Also, i would imagine there wouldn’t be much need to line the whole vertical walls with the white? Would there be any point in running the white below the level of the buckets? Should I cover my gray floors with the white wrap?

thx!

Myfriendis410 · May 4, 2021, 10:45pm

Plants adopt a night posture before lights out.