First time Grower! Tips and Support appreciated (:

Hello everyone!

I’m a long time lurker, have been thinking about growing for a while and finally have decided to get started, like a lot of new growers I’ve purchased an all in one Mars Hydro tent, with a ts1000 light.

I’m growing in a 80/20 coco perlite mix, i have purchased the basic grow and bloom nutes which i will post a picture down below. I have germinated two seeds which i have in the tent at the moment. The left seed has popped and the right is looking to pop any moment.

Now i understand that overwatering is a big noob mistake so I have made sure to keep them pretty dry apart from the initial coco soak before planting the seeds and a semi heavy spray after planting the seeds. Now a few questions :nerd_face:

Should the first feed come 7 days after they sprout? or 7 days after they grow a few leaves.

i’ve just set up my first fan, but i noticed it reduces the humidity quite a lot with it on, should i leave it off for the initial seedling stage to get the RH up to 70%?

And is the nutes i have enough? do i need anything extra? like cal mag?

Any advice/recommendations will be highly appreciated, see photos below.




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I’m not a coco guy so I’ll just welcome you to the community

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Coco is a different animal than soil. It’s much harder to overwater in coco and fairly detrimental to let them dry out too too much.

I water my coco seedlings once every two days, or more frequently if needed. I suggest watering your seedling with a couple ounces of water - enough to fully hydrate your coco and get a little bit of runoff out of the cup. Then pick up the cup, feel its weight. Then feel the weight of the other cup that you haven’t watered yet. It will be notably lighter. Try to keep track of what “dry” coco feels like and what “wet” coco feels like. The idea is you want to keep it damp - somewhere between bone dry and fully saturated.

I’m going to grab @Low @Growingforothers @ReelOfishalTrees for an assist here - I tend to let my stuff get too dry still, so they may have some better input about whether it needs daily watering even at the seedling stage or if you can skate with once every 2-3 days.

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Thanks for the advice, I have been lightly spraying them about twice a day, the coco was watered fully before i put the seeds in i dont know if this makes a difference, but i dropped the seeds on the 01/05 (05/01 for americans) and haven’t properly watered since then apart from the spray bottle.

Hopefully the people you tagged can share some wisdom on the matter.

Thanks again!

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Oh yeah, please throw the spray bottle out a window.

Kidding - keep it around, you will need it for foliar feeds or pest treatments. But honestly I feel like spray bottles do more harm than good in the beginning. They can create “overwatering” by keeping the root zone too damp without actually hydrating your medium. I’ve seen it in soil and coco alike.

My recommendation is to water them fully - just enough to get a bit of runoff - at a pH of 5.8 after nutrients. Here’s a decision point - whether you want to add nutrients this watering or wait til the next one. Your seedlings will have nutrients to get them up and running in their little round leaves (cotyledons) but they use that up pretty quickly. Once it’s gone, they need to be able to pull nutrients from your medium.
Since it’s coco/perlite, there’s nothing in it inherently. So you’ll need to add nutrients pretty quickly once you see the cotyledons start to change color from green to yellow/brown if you haven’t already done so beforehand.




Here’s my littles in coco and coco/perlite - planted who-knows-when (two Sundays ago I think). They’ve been watered about 5 times with a double-shot shot glass.

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I see the Dots in there

So you think water fully today?

The coco is still moist if i stick a finger down it.

I think i might wait till the second watering till i chuck the nutes in, feels weird feeding then when it hasn’t even fully popped out of the shell pod.

Thanks for the response!

If you lift the cup, is it “heavy” or fairly light and airy? It may be good to dry out another day or so.

Yep! I’m a fan for sure.

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Welcome to the neighborhood :grinning: I am a soil girl, so the others will be here soon, I’m sure

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Ima soil baby myself. But Graysin hit all the right notes.

Coco is a whole different animal. Alot of growers supercharge their coco with calmag (as coco naturally leeches calcium HARD) and a light nutrient solution just to kick start plants, as it comes out the bag pretty inert.

Welcome to the Family! And happy growing

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Never give coco straight water. Always feed nutrient solution w/ cal mag. .6ec is a good place to start as of strength of nutrient solution. If your feeding Jacks, you can go full strength. 5.8ph. When they are small in those big pots you can skip a couple days fertigating. Once the roots get established then you can increase to every other day then eventually every day

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For seedlings I only use a pipette to water them once a day. Once they get a bit bigger I swap to using a measuring cup using about 1-2oz per day.

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I’m going to be using coco in my next grow. (currently in soil) If you don’t mind, I’ll be tagging along.

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@ThreeStax , May littles are right in line with yours. And my first coco grow, so I’m hoping to tag along as well. Here’s a pic from a few days ago. They are up and some are putting out there second node of real leaves now.

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Hey
OFF TOPIC: or close…
Can i mix Gnatrol and water/molasses ?

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@ThreeStax Do you have a plastic dome you put over them to keep the humidity higher? Seedlings like it humid, put a clear plastic cup over them after spraying the inside of it with water.
Welcome to the community! Happy growing!

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Umm is there a reason you are using molasses? Id be hunting the reason for gnats in the first place. Most notably overwatering is a common cause. Its also possible the molasses is attracting them.

But to answer your question, I dont see why not. I see not to use with salt/chemical based ferts, as it is a Bacillus T. Bacteria, and they dont like chemicals from my quick googlefu. But molasses (unsulphured, blackstrap molasses to be exact) should be organic and microbe friendly.

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I do!

I’m going to put a dome on the left one now and update you guys in a few days with some pics.

Thanks for the advice everybody!!

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Thanks for the info,

one question, my nutes already have calcium and magnesium in it, do i need to add more?

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No, they shouldn’t need to be added if you already have it built into your nutes

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