First grow Recirculating DWC

[Illusion]

this grow journal starts off at 37 days into veg.

finally got the three babies into the system after a 4 day struggle with leaks

they've been flushed with r/o water for 3 days.

before they were flushed, i had the ppm of the reservoir up to about 450, cal-mag and GH's MaxiGrow.
I noticed slight burning of the tips. Unsure if it's from high ppm, or heat stress.

Decided I will reintroduce nutrients *slowly* I should only use cal-mag when i notice signs of deficiency, right?

Today, (day 37 veg) added 35ppm Cal-Mag, and 35ppm of MaxiGrow bringing the nutrient ppm level to 100 (r/o water's ppm is 30) if the ppm drops tomorrow, I'm going to add 50ppm more of nutrients maxigrow

Here are some shots of Sativa, the best looking plant as it stands

[Illusion]

Here are shots of Indica.

Looks like it had (or has) some sort of nutrient deficiency, also won't stop drooping just a bit, although it could be the trait of its strain.

[Illusion]

here are some shots of the bit neglected "spracky"

Its kind of outside of the HPS light, so its been "supplemented" with 2 100w equivalent CFL lights.

[Illusion]

A little info:
250w HPS light, and two 48" T8 fluoro tubes as side lighting, and two 100w equivalent CFL bulbs. (lol)

light cycle is 18/6

I let the PH drift between 5.5-6.1, currently it around 5.7. water temp 68 degrees

temperature always around 72-75 degrees, RH 30-45%

[420plants]

nice looking roots, so far so good. Keep us updated.

[Illusion]

ok...

ppm is up to 175 (mostly maxigrow, and *titch* of liquid karma (40ml to 25 gallons, very miniscule amount)) they have been consuming about 30+ ppm from the reservoir every night

pH currently 5.6, it had drifted to 6.1

added 10 drops of superthrive to 25 gallons

tied the tops down to make an even canopy

I'm thinking that I should fim them on the very top, try to get the bottom shoots to catch up.

[Illusion]

few more shots

[the image reaper]

I'm just finishing up my first hydroponic grow, so I'm a 'newbie' too ... I would suggest the drooping you mentioned earlier, is quite possibly just too much humidity (just a guess, comparing it to soil) ... and, you need to bump your nutes up ... I pretty much just used the dilution directions on the bottles, my ppm was about 1125-1150ppm throughout the entire grow ... I should be harvesting in about 10 days, and I still have not seen one single yellow leaf, no dropped leaves, and no burning, so things must not be too far off ... I'm very lucky, unless I'm in Vegas :wtf: ... I'm having same results, whether using Fox Farm, or GH nutes :jointsmile:

[Illusion]

image reaper: it can't possible be high humidity, my RH is always 35-45% :(

update..

It's a bitch having a ro filter than only spits out a gallon an hour. Gotta save up the 25 gallons to give them a flush, and then bump the reservoir up to about 600-650ppm with only maxigrow.

currently the ppm is at 540, and they still have been eating it up

i take it that the leaf twisting is from pH fluctuations. I know i have been keeping my pH within the 5.5-6.1 range always, but maybe it swings from the high end to the low too quickly. the past couple of days i've been trying really hard to keep it about the same level it was the last time i checked it, then bring it down slowly, instead of shooting it straight down to 5.5 when it reaches 6.1.

I don't see any more leaves starting to get spots, so im hoping that it was just the ones i saw, or the problem went away


i would like to flower in the next 7 days or so

heres some pictures...
this is BEFORE i trained them just now, I'll upload some after shots in a seperate posts

[Illusion]

more before training shots

[Illusion]

And heres after training

[Illusion]

update

2nd day since I put them into 12/12.
I tried feeding them 600ppm into the reservoir and the nutrient level kept increasing. They seem to not like very much food, or maybe it's just one of them in the system that doesn't like it messing up the whole levels

right now it's at 525ppm and they seem to like it
yesterday i took my last clone off of Spracky, who doesn't really resemble it's name anymore at all.

pH seems to want to stay around 5.9-6.0
I'm worried that they might get too tall during the stretch for just a 250 watt light

heres some shots
Does the last shot even resemble a female preflower at all?

[Illusion]

pictures of the clones i took from the three plants

[Illusion]

Day 16 Flower...
Two plants left, had to kill the indica because it was a male :(

PROBLEM!
One of the plants is showing the "claw" from too much nitrogen? The other plant is just fine

I dumped out the reservoir 3 days ago, filled it with nothing but RO water, with a ppm of 50, the next day when i checked the ppm it went up to 150

I was worried about starving them from nutrients, so I added 45ml of cal-mag to 20 gallons bringing the ppm up to 350

Just now I checked the ppm and its up to 420, so I diluted it back down to 350.


What do I do to get rid of this claw?
I have been using just grow nutrients, haven't added the bloom nutrients yet because I read they need a lot of nitrogen in the first two weeks flower

Should I start using the bloom nutrients instead hoping it will get rid of the claw? Or should I flush them again?

I NEED EXPERT ADVICE! :greenthumb:

[Opie Yutts]

Hello Illusion. Nice N Bushy! I would try half grow and half bud nutes at this point. That should take care of any excess N problem. I don't understand how you can be getting burns at PPMs under 500 when you're in flowering. Usually I try to take mine to 1700 or 1800 in the middle of flowering.

Did you know the first 2 sets of photos in your grow won't expand?

[Illusion]

Crap! I meant to upload pictures to go along with that post!
They don't expand? hrm..

These plants have a history of being anorexic, they don't like nutrients.

Opie yutts, I think your tune will change slightly when you see these pictures. Badass nitrogen claw, and one less plant (the bushy one) so it's not so bushy anymore


Do you still think its managable?

[Illusion]

Still looks no better today, I don't know what to do
Added another airstone underneath the plant with the claw.

Does anyone know what I should do before it dies?
Flush?? Nutrients? Voodoo dance? Anyone?

[Opie Yutts]

What a bummer, sorry that's going on. It almost looks like it could be PH related too, but I don't know. The good news is I think it's completely reversible. The first thing I would do is drain as much as you can and fill the res with nothing but PH'd water. If you have some flushing agent (or if you can get some) it would probably be good to add per directions. Let it sit for 15 minutes or so then do it again. The second time let it sit for several hours (3-12?) before draining and feeding again. But this time when you feed make sure of everything: PH, PPM, and nutrients. If you believe it is N claw, then don't give her so much N. That far into flowering she needs to be concentrating on P and K, and the proper micro nutrients.

I can't tell for sure with the HPS on, but I don't see much yellowing. Usually there is at least a little yellowing this far into flowering, which is an indication that she could use less N. If you have too much it slows down budding, so I would look around and see what people think your NPK ratios are supposed to be at this point of the grow. Either that or don't worry and just switch to a quality bud nutrient. I switch semi-gradually over the first two weeks, then it's all bud nutes and enhancers. For enhancers, I'm trying Fox Farms Open Sesame, Beastie Blooms, Cha Ching in that order. First try, we'll see. Oh yeah, I'm also going to flush this time to see if I can tell any difference. Everyone keeps beating me over the head, telling me what a moron I am for not flushing, so I'm thinking like 50,000 people can't be wrong, right?
:beatdeadhorse:

[Opie Yutts]

After all you've been through and experienced, I'm pretty sure you need more than one dot of rep. I'll do what I can.

[Opie Yutts]

Yeah boooy, welcome to level 2.

[Illusion]

Why thank you for the rep!
If I can't find a place to buy RO water by the gallon, I guess I'll just use friggin tap water. (let it sit/aerate for 24 hours) ppm of the tap here is 180

I hate sativas anyway..they flower too long, I don't enjoy the high-- why couldn't i have been blessed with some indicas? That'll teach me to grow bagseed.

I'll post an update after they have been flushed
thank you for all the help :jointsmile:

[CultureCherryPopper]

Haha, yeah, I started some bagseed, and only found one female Indica, but she's a beauty. Depending how the smoke is, she could become a keeper. Love the indica.

[gainesvillegreen]

...ppm of the tap here is 180

If your PPM is only 180, why aren't you using just tap water? Unless there is something horrible in there, that water seems ideal.

[Illusion]

If your PPM is only 180, why aren't you using just tap water? Unless there is something horrible in there, that water seems ideal.

Yeah, but what would be *more* ideal, tap with 180ppm, or RO water and adding cal-mag to make it 180ppm?

[Opie Yutts]

I do just fine starting off with well tap water that's around 200 ppm. And there's nothing wrong with bag seed, as long as the seed in the bag is from a good plant.

[gainesvillegreen]

Yeah, but what would be *more* ideal, tap with 180ppm, or RO water and adding cal-mag to make it 180ppm?

I would honestly say the tap. I would only ever use RO water if my tap was horrendous or if I wanted to micro-control the micro nutrients.

[herbie the love bud]

I think you've developed nutrient or pH lock. Did you tell us the pH? What's happening is you're killing your plant by choking it out of nutes.

You need to flush it like OY said. Get some Flouro Kleen, or Final Flush, mix per directions and do that for about 3-4 days. Then lets mix up some light nutes with pH balanced water and you'll be back in business.

[Illusion]

Alright, well i found another male leaving me with just one plant left
Of course with my luck, it was the neglected plant "spracky" who i honestly didn't care for us much as the other two i had to kill

Just my luck, eh?

Its 20 days into flower, and spracky still hasn't shown any signs of preflowering. Im thinking its because of the fact it's had too much N, and is delaying the flowering process

I'm also pretty sure it's got to be a female-- because i found 2/3 males, and the males usually show their sex first, and perhaps males will produce their pollen sacs with a lot of nitrogen, and females won't produce their flower with too much. At least thats what i hope!


So spracky has been flushed for over 24 hours with just tap water, I set the pH to 5.5, and it drifted up to 6.0, and i had to set it back to 5.5 again, hoping to negate some of the over nitrogen effects,

I'm just about to dump the reservoir out again, refill it with tap, and then use 1/4 tsp per gallon of Maxibloom (NPK = 5-15-14)



Anyways, here are some picture of my last plant left.
Wish me luck with it being a female y'all, please!!!!

[Opie Yutts]

She don't look too bad. She might just load up with buds.

[Illusion]

Opie yutts, it that might have worked


ITS A !&$#ING FEMALE !!

[BigWeed]

I just got through reading all your post and congrates on your female. I would stop using the RO water and start using your tap water its fine at 180ppm. My tap water is at 200ppm and I dont even use cal-mag any more just start feeding the bloom ferts now and go with the directions on the bottle and if you can get some bloom enhancers or some molasses you will be fine peace and stay high.:rasta::rastasmoke::pimp:

[Illusion]

right on, i've actually been doing that the past week (using tap). good advice-- I wish i knew this in the beginning and i would have saved 150 dollars on the RO unit. :mad:

[Illusion]

She's not really eating.. I set the reservoir to 600 ppm 4 days ago, and its still 600 after all my top offs. Does this mean she IS eating because its stabalized, or that she's not eating at all?



Some pictures :)

[Illusion]

"bud" shot from 2 days ago

[hydrocannabis]

this is gunna be 1 bug monster. U do know that right.

So yah its gunna be a huge ass plant and is also gunna harvest a great amount of buds.:D

I would have maybe flowered her a little bit sooner than when U did.

well good luck on getting a bunch of buds.

[Illusion]

Yep, hit the ceiling, so i had to take the table out, and improvise and make a shorter one so the buckets are lower to the ground

Just got done building a screen for scroggin, im going to put it up and train her in it tomorrow

Anyways, shes flushing right now, just for a few days, the ppm kept raising and pH was out of control, so i'm making sure there aren't any built up salts in the medium.

when i add more bloom nutes, i'll set the ppm at 400. hard to believe a plant this far into flowering wants so little nutrients, but im afraid even 400 will burn her. I don't think i'll be able to add anything else but bloom nutrients throughout the grow, no liquid karma for her, i don't think she could take the extra ppm



Heres some bud shots and a side view :)

[Illusion]

put in the screen, still running 400ppm

heres some pics

[Illusion]

some more..

[Opie Yutts]

Another screen convert. I hope it works out for you. Thanks for the new photos, looking good.

[Illusion]

gave her a liquid karma only diet for a day, and foliar sprayed the buds with some at 200ppm, she seemed to really like it. The reservoir went from shit water brown to completely clear the next day after adding the LK, and the ppm dropped by 50 after top off :) Seemed to work so well i added some more after the top off.
Still just water and liquid karma only, no bloom nutes. I'm hoping she eats a lot tonight so I can add bloom nutes tomorrow, 540ppm currently after adding more liquid karma... i cant push the reservoir over 600 or she'll definitely get fried


Do these buds look okay for a pure sativa on day 36 flowering?

[Opie Yutts]

Do these buds look okay for a pure sativa on day 36 flowering?

That's kind of hard for me to say. I'm used to slightly bigger and more dense buds at that stage, but I've never grown a pure sativa before. In general sativas are less dense and more fluffy. Doesn't mean an inferior smoke by any means. Either way looks like you'll be getting some nice smoke. Just add another 3 or 4 1000W HPS lights and everything will be fine.

[Illusion]

I wish i had the dough to afford even a single 400w or 600w light alone. actually i wish i had the money thousand 1000w lights if im going to wish for something



The thing is, I dont understand where the bud is.
Literally, all i see its a ton of hairs in clusters and leaf. I dont see actual "bud"...

I dont get it?

[Opie Yutts]

I think that's more common in the all sativa variety. That's one reason they're recommended for outdoor grows - less chance of bud rot since the buds aren't tightly packed. I wouldn't worry much. She has a bit to go and could bulk up a bunch. Or not, don't know for sure. Either way, cannonball a comin.

PS. Perhaps... Tried any bud enhancers?

[The White Snoop]

Illusion, nice grow man, I love recirculating systems, there in my blood lol.

But yeah, bagseed is ok to use but as you can see they are almost always long lanky sativas. Next time order some seeds with a 80/20 indica/sativa ratio and you will have the compressed resin filled buds that put you on your ass. And they are much more forgiving when it come to mistakes. Bag seeds usually make you pay for any screw ups.

Later

[Opie Yutts]

Yep, it's always a gamble. Bagseed is commonly thought of as suckie seed, but it doesn't have to be so. If the seed in the bag is from good parents, it will make good offspring. (Usually)

[Illusion]

true, but how good could the parents be if it the seed was found in a flattened brick of weed? or can the parents be grown poorly, and still carry good genetics?

[Opie Yutts]

Healthy parents are more likely to produce a good healthy seed, but the genetics should be the same whether the parents were trashed or not. If a seed sprouts and grows well, it will usually be every bit as good as the parents. If I was conceived and then my dad got hit by a bus and my mom fell off a cliff, that wouldn't affect my life in a test tube.

[Illusion]

I don't know why it took this long, but I did some research on tropical sativas. From the help of wise people, I already suspected this was a tropical sativa, but after reading about them now I'm 100% positive.

Tropical sativas require a max of 500ppm, and not alot of N.
They need a 11/13 or 10/14 light regime to flower properly (or you will just get hairs, no calyx swelling-- exactly what i've been experiencing)
They flower for 15-20 weeks (105-140 days)
They require high humidity during flowering (60-70%), my humidity is exactly that.

Learning this, I purchased kool bloom liquid 0-10-10. Should get rid of my N problems.
drained the res, refilled it with tap and added only kool bloom (1 tsp per gal (50% strength)) making the ppm about 500ppm

Can JUST kool bloom alone be used for nutrients? for a long time?

I also adjusted my light schedule to 10/14.

Oh yeah the buds smell like bubble gum!!
Not the regular kind though, like the bubble gum from the dentist.


Heres some pics, I didn't really think they've been growing until I compared with my last posts...

Tell me what you think! can anyone else tell me anything about tropical sativas?

Oh the last shot is why you don't want to tie string around your stems too tightly. I guess it just grew over the string??

[Opie Yutts]

Wow, that's trippy. I will absorb all string into my body.

Thanks for sharing that info. I didn't know that stuff. That explains a lot for you. 140 days? Holy crap, I hope it's worth it. And do you mean 10 or 11 hours of lights on?

[Opie Yutts]

PS. I don't know about the kool bloom, sorry. Maybe you should go to their web site.

[Illusion]

Wow, that's trippy. I will absorb all string into my body.

Thanks for sharing that info. I didn't know that stuff. That explains a lot for you. 140 days? Holy crap, I hope it's worth it. And do you mean 10 or 11 hours of lights on?

It is trippy! Its kind of like a tree thats trunk has grown halfway through a fence

I hope its worth it the time too, heh. Yea, when i said 10/14 i meant 10 on, 14 off. Seems crazy, but I bet it'll do the trick.

[Illusion]

Okay well...

I have a some indica females that can't wait to be flowered, they are getting too big. I figure this plant wouldn't even be "finished" until the new set of girls would be done, since its supposed to flower for 120+ days.

So. I chopped it down, and started to harvest. Smells good, like bubblegum. Tiny trichrome production, slightly sticky I have no idea what it will amount to, these buds are about as small as you can get without being non-existent, but there is a ton of them

Today was day 57 flower, making this plant aprox 4 months old in total

I wish i had enough room to keep this plant flowering, I'm sure it would be worth it if it could flower for another two months


here some pics

[Illusion]

heres the plant matter before manicure. I've got a lot of work to do snipping at a million popcorn buds :(

[herbie the love bud]

heres the plant matter before manicure. I've got a lot of work to do snipping at a million popcorn buds :(

Illusion-

I know we all share the love here, but in the interest of improvement, that really doesn't look that good. There some stuff in your config that needs to be changed.

What light are you using for flower? How long and what size is your stuff getting to in veg? What nutes are you using?

Even if you get mad and don't want to answer me, on your next grow prune off all your popcorn shit as soon as it appears. Force your plant to concentrate it's energy on much larger buds.

[Illusion]

Its because its a tropical sativa. Low feed, max 500ppm, and very poor genetics. I learned this very late in the grow. Believe it or not, I did snip all the lower branches on the plant underneath the screen. Pictures cannot illustrate how massive this plant was. If you look at tropical sativa's about day 60 in flower (search on google) they aren't that much bigger (but mine still can't even compare!).

Its a 250 watt hps by the way, with a lot of flourescent lighting added. Nutrient shelf consists of GH maxigrow, GH maxibloom, liquid karma, superthrive, hydroguard, kool bloom, and cal-mag+


I overdosed her on N, during the beginning stages of flowering which decreased the yield as well, had to buy a 0-10-10 nutrient solution to be able to feed her max 500ppm with mostly P and K and no N

also, i was needing to change my lights to 10 hours on, 14 hours off as needed by the breed, I learned that too late as well

If i was ever going to grow a tropical sativa again, which i'm definitely not :P then i know a little bit more about them and would probably get a little better results, but i am NOT going to wait 120+ days! no way!

If you could think of any way to improve my setup (besides the obvious things like upgrading my 250w) PLEASE! I love to constantly tinker and improve :)

[Opie Yutts]

That's too bad all that suckie mojo was happening. It would have been nice to see what she could really do.

[Illusion]

Dried in just 72 hours because they are so small
total dried weight = 12 grams