First Timer Bubblin' Hydro: School this Newbie!

Greetings Community I am a new poster on these pages. I have ventured into this horticultural hobby and I’d like to benefit from, and eventually share my own, communal wisdom because although I feel my girls are off to a good start, I’m about to switch to flowering and there is still a long way to go and a lot I don’t know to anticipate.

My first question is the safety of this type of grow log. I am not worried about the authorities but complacency can be part of the problem. I’m in a flex state that is decriminalized but not quite legal yet, and once we are legal there will be a limitation on the number of plants and I do plan to try a SOG grow and exceed that limit at some point. Morally I have no problem with this because I am not convinced, within my system, that a SOG grow will yield more than a well trained single plant, and the end products are just for me, no commerce, so they shouldn’t care anyway. But I am requesting safety tips from the community, especially in being sure my exact location isn’t imbedded in what I post here. Thank you.

My system is an AeroGarden Farm XL24 that is in a 39" x 26" closet. The closet could go higher but the AeroGarden allows…on paper…for 3’ of grow space, but effectively, due to the hanging of the lights, I only have about 2’ 8", or 32 inches. AeroGarden does suggest that the lights can be as close to the plants as they can take, and in my experience, which doesn’t include flowering marijuana, a four inch gap is okay. Thus I plan to flip to flowering once they tallest girls are about 15", but more on this later, as there are four plants of differing heights.

AeroGarden (AG) is obviously a hydro grow. The medium is AG’s little cone planters, and I do see these as one of the issues with my choice of grow systems. The Farm XL24 AG has two separate water basins and I have supplemented the AG’s top feeding water pump with two Petco two-outlet air pumps, each pump has one outlet going into each of the two basins. If one of the pumps fails the other should keep things alive until I notice the issue. One thing I have learned already: when I first installed the pumps I was using PetCo’s clear tubing, which was not reliable, the tubing would separate from the pump often. I switched to black tubing and roughed up the connections with sandpaper and the result has been 100% reliable, and the black tubing also discourages algae.

Interesting side note, at one point one of my plant’s roots had grown around a piece of tubing and folded it over, thwarting the air flow and essentially choking itself out. So I might have a plant with an auto-asphyxiation fetish.

My seeds are form the Great White North, oh Canada, Viva La France, as the company is Quebec Cannabis Seeds (QCS) and they were a pleasure to order from, in all due respect to our current host. Two seeds of two different strains in two basins. On the left I have Northern Lights x Skunk, and on the right is QCS’s proprietary Blue strain.

As I mentioned before I hope to try a SOG grow in this set up, but I am concerned with the root space in the basin. My basins are 2 gallon capacity and I already wish I had just one plant per basin, not because the roots are struggling for space but the plants are starting too. We shall see. In terms of water I have a product called the AeroVoir, which is a kind of expensive gravity feed system that allows for another gallon of water to be fed to the basins which does allow me to be away longer, and it also allows more room for the roots. I have one I bought hooked up to my right basin, and while I want to make one for the left basin I might just buy it because I’m not that handy.

My nutrient system is General Hydroponic’s three part Flora series. I supplement with CalMag but for some reason I bought Blue Planet CalMag which was just an oversight, I didn’t mean to mix vendors. I use Botanicare Hydroguard generously. I’m also using General Hydroponic’s PH drops and Up/Down solutions. I have decided not to use a digital pH pen in favor of the drops because I don’t want to be questioning the calibration of the pen. I know myself and that would drive me nuts even though the drops are time consuming and I’m partially color blind. I check pH every day, or more, and most often it needs to be adjusted down, it seems my tap water is pretty alkaline. This is a part of the grow where I am winging it and learning as I go. I do know to hit the 5.5-6.5 range with 5.5-5.8 being even better. My pH often seems to be right around 6.0 and I debate whether trying to edge it down two or three tenths is worth it.

I do have a TDS meter ($50 Hanna) and I am monitoring EC/TDS in terms of ppm. I’m winging it here too, and a lot of what I"m reading about TDS isn’t crystal clear, there’s a lot of people that don’t know what they’re talking about in my opinion, partially for all the different mediums and conversion factors in this area. So I’m taking notes and eventually things will become more clear. One learning event: my left basin, the Northern LIghts Skunk girls, wasn’t growing well. I was getting clawing which said too much Nitrogen but the whole plant was very light green which said too little Nitrogen. Cleaner water didn’t help so eventually I doubled the feed (double was half the GH recommended dose) and the plants perked up. I don’t know why that worked, but I do have TDS numbers to use to figure it out.

My closet is lined with mylar emergency blankets for greater reflectivity. I think I’d rather have painted the walls matte white and not have to deal with the Mylar which gets more attention from my ventilation system than my plants do. My ventilation system leaves a lot to be desired. As it is my grow closet does not have a vent out. I did buy an exhaust fan, the Layond 4", which I think works great, it is a simple, sturdy and solid unit, and very versatile. But right now the best I can do is vent the air in the closet out of the closet into the room the closet is in. I keep good notes on room temperature, humidity and water temperature and everything is acceptable. I think I can manage any temperature and humidity issues but I don’t have complete control of the space and I don’t have control of the smell, which isn’t a problem yet.

What else to add? I’ve already over-shared for a first post, so I’ll leave a couple pics and see what’s up. These pics were taken last night, before and after a defoliation. I’m a big believer in taking leaves off plants and letting them regrow, and I am considering a full Schwazz for my flowering. My training strategy has been what I would call Newbie Mainlining; I have attempted to set up a manifold but very cautiously as I can be heavy handed. This is another issue with the AG, the base of the plant isn’t a solid point, it will wiggle and tying plants down is awkward. I had a practice plant and I broke it a lot so I tried to be careful here. I did break half of one of my plants off and then snipped another cola off (True FIM) so even though it has been topped three times it only has three main colas. My Northern Lights plants were topped improperly, resulting in congested growth. That was a good learning experience.

Here’s my girls. Thanks for your interest and I welcome any input. I know already the AG was not the strongest investment for this endeavor, but I have to look at it this way: it got me started. I doubt I would have pulled the trigger if I had to buy all those parts separately. So let’s prove this can work!


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Welcome to the community. :+1:

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Welcome to ilgm :wave::cowboy_hat_face:

You have a nice clean space for your girls. You’ll be very smelly in there pretty soon so if that’s xn issue you need to start thinking about it. I hope you enjoy growing as much as this community does lol :pray:

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Welcome, for security concerns on your phone or tablet you can turn off the location tags in your camera settings. I was told that the pic details can be looked at see the location the pic was taken. Not sure if trueornot but turned mine off now when posting pics. I legal here but don’t need uninvited guests coming to my farm.

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Nice tip. Mine was off luckily cause I didnt know it existed lol. Thanks!!

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Thanks. I decided not to post from my phone altogether; I email the photos to myself and turn off the location when doing so, then post from a desktop. Super Cyber experts can find anything anyway, are certainly better at looking than I am at hiding, I just don’t want it to be stupid easy.

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So I am concerned with my choice of grow systems, there are certainly shortcomings. I’m not sure if the lights are strong enough, and I have added some supplements. I am interested in adding more but I’m not going to keep throwing money at it uneducated. I’m wandering slowly through the lighting info in these pages, which is difficult enough, but I find deciphering the language from people that already know what they are talking about, the abbreviations, acronyms and nicknames far more difficult. I’m not that bright so I might spend an hour of confusion before realizing a thread is a joke. I’m still not sure about some of them.

Light can be added, and I’m looking, hint hint. What can’t be added is root space, and that is the second concern I have about my choice of system. The reservoirs I have are intended to hold two gallons of water. They can hold more than that, easily one more gallon and probably two, but that would come close to fully submerging everything that wasn’t above ‘ground’. I don’t know how bad that would be; my bubble system is fine, there is lots of oxygen and the roots as they are now look super healthy, I’m really happy about that, I use hydroguard generously.

But particularly in my right basin, where my healthiest plant is, I’m concerned about running out of root space. There is a second healthy plant in this same basin. While I know now that is a mistake and that my reservoirs should only have one plant if that plant is going to be trained to several colas, I am unsure what to do about it. I thought about killing the other plant to make room, but that would be speculative. I did see some good advice on what to do with the dead root matter should I have to kill the other plant later, so I decided to slightly jump the gun and switch to flower. Training the plants further to let the smaller ones catch up is only going to increase the root mass of all the plants.

They’re eight weeks old, which is longer than I wanted the veg state to go, and the tallest is just at 14", which is about right for my 32" grow space, it can double and leave 4" under the light.

So we had ourselves a Pot Mitzvah, girls entering womanhood, and celebrated with a Schwazzing. I was going nuts last night, being unable to check on them after I got home from work late. I did PH their new blooming feed before I poured it, but I had to run off to work before I could double check the new feed in the actual reservoir. Which was a bit nerve racking, but they looked pretty nice this morning.

Final picture is me flaunting my ignorance. My first bottle of pH drops was a one ounce bottle with a dropper top. This eight ounce bottle has a different type of top. Can anyone tell me the best way of using this bottle? Is there supposed to be a dropper top and I just don’t have it? Do I poke a hole in the recessed center and drip it out of that, or do I take the whole top off it and just pour an ounce at a time into my smaller bottle?

I sincerely thank any interest. Be well.



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I’m not familiar with this type of grow @HappyHydroGrower can probably be helpful.

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@EarlyBear hey welcome to the forum.

Let me just say sorry!
One: dang brother, that’s a lot of reading!
Two: dang it’s way past 5:00

Translation: I’ve had a drink or four…. and smoke some… :crazy_face:
Again sorry!

Can you tell me in short what you want and how you want to achieve it?

Your setup is very nice! Your plants look great. You want your own weed but are lacking a few of the basics.

IMO you can probably make it like your going, but wouldn’t you want more?

I’ve read about your setup and lack of PH meter and several things that in my experience are essential to growing in hydroponics.

If I can help any at all, can you ask questions in a simple form… ? Maybe one or two question at a time… little slow here, it’s past 5.

If I can’t help, we know plenty here that can.
In the mean time, keep’em growin green!
And Good Luck!!
:+1:t2::v::sunglasses:

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In order to use that bottle you need a way to measure your PH
Amazon: Apera PH 20 kit. Comes with calibration solution and easy to follow instructions.
Check your tap water and use that for a base.
After having used your meter for a minute, check your tap water again before your nutrients, if it’s off, you know you have to calibrate your meter, it’s really that simple.

Very few worry about their PH, but they are growers that’s been doing this for a long time.
I would highly recommend getting one, and a ppm meter if you don’t have one. Those are one of the main tools of the trade.

Lights are another subject. Actually, they’re one of the main subjects, but another day.
Again, good luck! :+1:t2::v::sunglasses:

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Hello! I have to fix my habit of long posts.

Yeah, my own weed, and I chose to try and create it with an AeroGarden So far I have proof of concept the AG can get a plant through veg but I hear the 120w LED doesn’t quite have what it takes to flower well.

That’s my #1 question as I have live girls so there’s time to add supplemental lighting, which I have done. But so far so good, thanks for saying so.

I actually do have a TDS meter and I"m starting to see patterns in my readings and feed accordingly.

For pH I use drops and I gauge my water by color not number. I’m fine with that, the question about the bottle is about physically removing drops from the bottle. The one ounce bottle has a dropper top and the 8 oz. bottle does not. I’ll picture it better when I can visit the grow room

Mostly wanted to share what was going in case someone saw something lacking and wanted to help. So thanks for looking.

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What size space are we working here with?
What kind of budget do we have?

A good light can run you anywhere from 175-250 min for one light. I bought me two Chilled Tech lights for this grow that were 550. Sf is a useable light. Most popular here are hlg.

@dbrn32 is our light expert and if you are serious about stepping up you game, give your flowering size space and a budget, and he can hook you up. There are a few folks that use an aero garden. Most I know are homemade and they work.

Good luck with everything. We’ll be around so just give us a shout if you have question.

P.S. Ask before you do something you’re unsure of. I can assure you, it’s probably already been experienced here some place or another by somebody.

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You have been lucky IMO. I use ph up and down all the time. You have to know what the PH is in order to know whether or not you need up or down. In flower is when your plant will go crazy. I’m sure you know your plant may double in size when you flip to 12/12??
I just use a measuring spoon to add either ph up or down. No drops here. :+1:t2::v::sunglasses:

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Welcome, I think your gonna find your reservoirs are going to fill fast when you start to bloom. As far as light goes I’m experimenting with some HD rope lights science says red light promotes bloom, blue roots and white for veg. I’m running 32’ each color, powered by a 24v 440a power supply. On top are (2) T8 4 bulb daylight LED bulbs, If you want to check out my system it in “old school, new grow”, scroll down and check out my Abbey, it shows the lights. I like the no heat and very little power usage. Even though these girls are in soil they’re sitting on a 6 bucket system with a 30gl igloo reservoir. My bubblier is a six line system. I had to drill out the valves to give me good air flow. I think it was just cheap China made. Works great now. We are about the same time line on our biggest plants. Abbey is going on 18".

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Yes to pH drops here. All drops, no calibration.

I contacted General Hydro hisself and the 8 oz bottle is intended to refill the 1oz drip top bottle. Very nice of them to reply to me so quickly and efficiently.

Drops indicate my pH by color and I don’t have to question the calibration of an instrument that can be pricey and need maintenance. I have pricey maintenance-needing eyes.

See also I use far more orange pH down than blue up. My tap seems alkaline. Experience shows using pH up is usually a mistake so next time I’m tempted I’ll triple check my pH.

I’m relying on a stretch, I hope they double, more so on the left.

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My two main concerns are light strength and root capacity. I can add light but not really capacity. I’m really interested to see how that plays out.

In the future if I’m training a plant she’ll be alone in her res. But I want to try a SOG and I wonder if 4-6 untrained plants could coexist in each res. I’m assuming trading adds root mass.

This system has two two gallon reservoirs. But two gallons of water leaves the res about half full to leave the top of the roots exposed. So there’s easily 3+ gallons of space for roots in each res and I have the ability to externally store a gallon of water to gravity feed each res.

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@EarlyBear
The taller the plant the longer the root, the bushier the girl the more feeder roots she needs to grow, if you restrict the area, the more root bound she becomes and you run the possibility of roots compacting and not getting air and nourishment. In a proper system with 5gl. buckets roots will fill almost solid and plants will drink gallons of water. Remember you can’t get to much air in your system.You see a lot of growers using 20-30gl. totes just to get the size. You can run multiple plants in a small space but a 3x3 is good for 1 plant. Remember you have to get around your girl. Luck to you. I’m experimenting with peppers with my blue and red light to see if it makes a difference so far my plants are short but producing peppers. Roots are getting full. Red seems to work better than the blue. Cat

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Here are my girls as of this morning:

DWC setup 120W LED
2 x Quebec Cannabis Blue (right basin) (QCB)
2 x Northern Lights x Skunk (left basin) (NLS)

3 days ago I switched to flower and did a ‘Schwazz’ defoliation. Everything looks pretty healthy but for a little hooking and a few weak growth on one of my NLS girls. They’ve been much more fickle than the QCBs.

2 subjects if any one can elaborate:

  1. My ppm readings have not changed since I fed the girls three days ago. QCB was 683 ppm when I fed three days ago and it is 687 this morning. NLS was 436 ppm Wednesday and is 411 this morning.

Are the girls eating? I want to feed them more aggressively but only if they’re capable. What should I be expecting from my TDS readings during the switch to flower and as flowering continues?

  1. During flowering should I snip off any ‘larfy’ bud sites as they appear? Is there a downside to this? On a main cola, how many nodes down is considered good bud sites before we get to larfy territory?

I appreciate any attention I get or have gotten. This is great.

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Yes. Very much so. It’s a balancing act between light, nutes, ph, and environmental conditions along with amount of water they have access to during the transition.

Larger containers are not necessarily for more roots. More water enables one to maintain stable conditions within your system.
In a balanced system, ph and nutrients remain the same as the water level drops.

The problem with small containers are they don’t quite hold enough water to sustain the plants needs during the transition.

I don’t feed my plants based on the nute ppm’s reeding but rather the ph reading. It sound weird but your plants uptake is based off of the ph of the water. If that ph gets off your plants will not feed. Several things affect the ph such as all of the above mentioned.

Each plant can drink up to 2 or more gal a day.
I personally have had plants drink 2 gal. a day. As well as others here on this site. Older plants tend to have more roots whether tall or small, simply because they’ve been growing longer.

Usually when the nutes go down it’s because your ph goes up.
PH will top out and eventually your plants won’t feed.

By having a small chamber, you will more than likely be adding water/nutes more frequently so you may not have that issue… until you do.

I would probably up the nutes maybe 200ish ppm’s and see how she responds.
She will slow down drinking and feeding in about another 3-5 weeks.

You, my friend are about to get busy… lol

I have 22 gal in my system for 2 plants. It stays pretty consistent throughout the whole grow.
I do use a ph meter but have learned the hard way to keep it calibrated. It literally only takes about 2 or 3 min to calibrate.

Normally folks will trim leaves around 21 and 42 days. Some folks more than others. Trimming buds and such is more of an experience kinda thing.

I could show you mine and explain how I did last grow but I use a scrog and I had 0 larf.

Good luck. :+1:t2::v::sunglasses:

Sorry if I’ve said anything that may be contradictory or something you already know! :v:

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Just cruising with a pH around 6-6.1

Glad it hasn’t been too hot. RH is usually 55-60% midday but drops to 50% with air. I foresee bringing the dehumidifier into the room before harvest.

They seem healthy so I’m not doing much. I pinched a few for supercropping today, I want to trim leaves but I’m waiting for one full defoliation in a week or so. maybe on Friday the 13th. I could wear a hockey mask

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