I’ve been lurking this forum for a while and decided to venture into the wonderful world of indoor growing. I chose to go with the Glookies Strain from Barney’s Farm as it’s a mix of 2 strain that I really love and is reputed to yield big plant. Upon reading a bit I went in favor of a DWC setup in a 3x3 tent. I also pulled the trigger on a 250w HPS from a local hydro store.
I had lots of fun installing my tent and the electrical component. I use these temperature controller on my anodizing line so I knew they were cheap and reliable. I found out they now have the RH controller so i bought 2; 1 to turn on/off the humidifier, and 1 to turn on the exhaust fan at full speed if the RH gets over my setpoint. The temperature controller will also turn the exhaust fan at full speed if it exceed 26c/80f in the tent. At any other time, the exhaust fan is running at about 50% of it’s capacity. I wanted to have some kind of peace of mind when I’m away.
Germinating the seeds was done in rockwool cube and I had sprout coming out 48hr after. 72hr after I bought and germinated the seeds they were already in their net pot. I used a top feed for the first week and a half, until some member here pointed out that I was overwatering these poor girl.
I used a 20x30 tote box and cut 3x 5" hole on top. In my effort to maximize my light and heat transfer to the tank I first covered the tote with a white sheet but the humidity had it warp a lot, so I am now using isofoil material.
After 5 days I had 3 evenly sized seedling and I was proud of me so far lol. On the 6th day I did my first rez change and went higher in nutes. 2 days later, I was here asking for advice about what I did wrong with my baby!
I had just burned them by stupidly following the feeding chart that cames with my lines of nutes (Canna Aqua). With some precious advice here, I installed a chiller to keep my water temp between 65-68* (I was getting 79* before) and I cut the nutes strength in half to an EC of 0.5. I also stopped the top feed and lowered PH to 5.7. They are since growing really well with noticeable change everyday.
Reading a bit more I also realized I went quite small in my light, and the reflector on my model of light is not really effective. So I ordered a KingBrite 480w 3500K Led pannel that should be here this week.
I’ll post picture tomorrow of how they grew in the last few days! I am now at 13 days into veg and I already have the 4th and 5th nodes out on the 2 healthy one. I will be topping them really soon and also have a scrog net on the way. I really want to get the maximum out of my little 3x3 setup.
Looking great! Love how you started a bit and then fired up the journal, I’m hooked and set to watching.
I have no experience in DWC but it does Intrest me.
What are these controllers? Ide like to look into them a bit more, I will say I love my inkbird temp/RH 2 socket/ 2 setting controller and it was pretty cheap but doesn’t look as cool as yours.
Not sure of EC as I’m used to ppm/TDS and to my understanding the later is a bit more accurate.
You and me are the only ones I know on here using kingbrights I just gambled on them, as I have a HLG already. I went for a 2 board setup rather than 1 just so I could have better light canopy control but you want to scrog photos so yours should work great I grow autos so a bit different setup.
I have yet to compare the lights in a side by side test but they are definitely giving me good results.
Did you go for the UV/IR version, the guy there sold me in it but I’m not sure if it really was worth it might have been better to just stick to 660nm/Rspec and not the UV but we will see.
These autos are in the early stages of week 3 flower, although they look further along then that they are bulking up nice so maybe the lights doing its job I do think they run a fair bit hotter then my HLG, but HLG has better heatsinks
The kingbrite are not really popular here but on other forum I’ve seen people use them a lot. I could not justify the price of the hlg lights and I have dealt with several china company, you just have to find a good supplier. I will check the construction when it get here but maybe they could use a better transfer media between the led panel and heatsinks.
Yes I went with the 3500k+660 nm and Jerry included the UV strips and driver for free.
Yes! Well I just borrowed one from one of my C02 laser but it’s not really designed for this task. I have an active aqua 1/10hp on the way and at least until I get it my temps are under control.
The chiller and 480w led panel have literally doubled my investment in this setup. I hope they yield enough buds for me to be self sufficient!
I’m interested to know what your final price is because Jerry was a hard ass to deal with really didn’t cut me much of a deal lol woudnt even throw the glasses in for free. But then again he made me order from his sales lady he only adviced on the tech info.
There is no transfer media it just zip ties to the heatsink. I like the way HLG screws their drivers to the heatsink but I like the way kingbright attaches the light hanging wires with screws rather than HLG and their poorly drilled holes/cheap carabiners (mine are all broke and worped their junk poor design).
Although the idea of running the drivers outside of the tent has had me thinking and I’m considering mounting my drivers inside a hard piece of exhaust vent so the air is constantly rushing over them (but trickier to wire but not a huge deal)
383 us, I don’t think I had any deal though.
It was 280 for the light, 13$ for the glasses and 90 shipping (went with DHL instead of UPS)
Comes out to 515$ CAD for me + much likely another 50-60$ of import fee.
I’m also Canadian.
Went UPS got 2 boards glasses and shipping for 4 45 canadian, then ups sent import fees of 83$ to collections… Omfg so stupid didn’t even notify me and I paid it with the collections company asap and they haven’t given me a notice of release or whatever and I don’t have their contact info anymore ughhh.
So sounds like I got a bit better deal then you but still we both got decent deals although like I said haven’t compared to my HLG in a grow test yet since they are growing different types
Chiller already showed up 2 days earlier than estimated delivery date, thanks Amazon! I have it all set up using 3/4" hose and the return line makes for some more bubbles in the rez which is good! It is only drawing up 2 amps so it’s a really small compressor in there.
I set a 65w CFL on top of the weakest one to give it an extra boost and the other two seemed to really enjoy the added light. Can’t wait to get my led panel in!
They are still showing sign of the nutes burn I induced last week but are really growing fast. Should I be topping then soon? 5th nodes is out on the healthiest one. Those picture are 2 minutes after lights out.
Wow those leafs are huge for the size of the plant, looks sorta Wierd but good.
These are photos right? I didn’t see where you said if they are autos or photos in your first post sorry if I missed that.
There is 2 schools of thought when it comes to HST new school of thought is top a healthy plant at 4 or 5 nodes early, old school of thought is wait until the plant has grown up considerably and then do it so it has a larger root mass and can better handle the stress.
You will see most people here go for the new school of thought but before pulling the plug do some research from some sources and decide what you think sounds best (or do both and compare!) let us know.
I would FIM once rather than top multiple times but I grow autos
They are photos! You are right it’s not specified in my first post. And the picture doesn’t do justice to the leaf size, I never saw that before lol.
I did read a lot about Topping vs fiming but did not see anywhere talk about the old method. I may be mistaken but I think it would be harder to scrog and LST if I don’t top in the beginning of the growth ? I’d like to fill that 3x3 tent as much as I could.
To low I think you topped it look at the diagrams again.
Don’t do anything to stress it for a week now, that is a high stress training method so let it recover.
Try to FIM the other ones, examine the diagrams a bit better that I posted.
All good though you will grow 2 shoots rather than 1 and you can just top it again down the road once its recovered. It will recover and then explode in growth.
We have a DWC/hydro section your best bet would be to post a separate question over there and see what those people say I’m not a dwc guy unfortunately (because I wish I was it’s a great system just not for my current house/setup)
You can scrog a plant by bending too, you dont need to prune. Its whatever style you want to try. There are risks to bending also, you could snap a stem? So the best thing to do is experiment you may be surprised by the results.
The tubs I have is the same model as the 100L but it’s the 70l version. It’s 12" high vs 15" for the 100l.