First Indoor Grow - Aeroponics/T5 Fluorescents

Howdy all,

My buddy is new to indoor gardening and this is his first attempt at hydroponics. The Brick around town is beginning to get on our nerves and we figured growing our own would remedy that. Budget is tight, so everything is non-prefabricated except for the lighting fixture.

Frame is all 1x4 pine $30
Tubs are both rubbermaid I believe. $20
Reservoir is "plastic tub" from Lowes 30 Gal $15
PVC and nozzles from Ace $10
6 tube 4' T5 fixture $248

Pumps hydroton filter and tubing and fittings $50

Eventually the T5 lights will be supplemented during flowering with 4 more tubes of warm white, 2 tubes draped along each side of plants.

Seeds are bagseed and have been soaking for almost 36 hours, starting to crack and show some legs.


Picture 1 is complete setup... Notice nozzles within tubs, (tubs will be blacked out) http://boards.cannabis.com/members/p...5-dsc01966.jpg
Picture 2 is Hydroton soaking in ph5.6 water trying to leach out the high PH.... Do I need to cover my res during my grow???
Picture 3 are the tubes of light...http://boards.cannabis.com/members/p...7-dsc01969.jpg

Picture 2.... sorry timelimit got me along with trying to post...

http://boards.cannabis.com/members/p...6-dsc01968.jpg

My design has two tubs that drain by waterfall back into a central reservoir...I'm wondering if the entire Res must be covered/lightproof??? I will be using Foxfarm Grow Big, Big Bloom, and Tiger Bloom.... My water is from the tap. PH7.8 and using a TDS my baseline PPM is 700... I'm not sure how bad that is.. After soaking my Hydroton in PH5.6 water for a couple days and it still seems to be raising the PH by 1 point per day...

Still waiting on germination.

yea cover your reservoir from light or else algae and mold will grow

Alright, thanks man...Do you think my tapwater is gonna give me problems?

your supposed to let it sit for 24 hours before you can use tap water, like put all your water in a large container and let it sit out before you actually put it in the reservoir

Quote:

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Originally Posted by InspectahEX

your supposed to let it sit for 24 hours before you can use tap water, like put all your water in a large container and let it sit out before you actually put it in the reservoir

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That's news to me, thanks...

So... Let me start off by saying "I've never grown without dirt"...LOL Starter plugs are not familiar to me and out of my 12 bag seeds, 2 :( yes 2 finally gave me something green to look at.... But 2 is better than nothing, and I can finally be grateful for all the seedy shit I've been buying for the last couple of years. I think I've grasped the plugs though, lots of attention.

The two babies are approx. 2 inches tall and I decided to throw them into the net cups with hydroton keeping them up. They are sprayed with tapwater that has been ph'd to approx. 6. every 3 hours for 30 minutes... no nutes yet. First true leaves are deployed and they are looking to give me a couple more... Green is throughout. Stems are a little purple. I currently have 2 tubes (1 warm, w cold) on a 18/6 schedule which I decided to go with just because it's cheaper than 24/7 and I haven't heard any definitive closure in that argument.

I will eventually have 10 4' tubes by the time flowering comes about. For now I have 2 tubes maybe 3-4 inches above tops of the siblings...It's a little warm, but i have a fan softly blowing through the "foliage" :O) My question is, should I go with all cool tubes right now? And if that's the case... Should I go with all cool tubes until flowering and then warm? Or, is a mixture with maybe a periodically changed ratio an ideal setup?

:stoned:

http://boards.cannabis.com/members/p...s-plumbing.jpg

http://boards.cannabis.com/members/p...hly-wetted.jpg