AK-47 in E&F - rockwool/clay medium (First Grow Log)

Ok, so this is my first grow log and I'm honestly doing it more for the possibility of getting help when things start turning bad (which they most likely will, because its me). Here's the story, through a vast amount of help from LOC NAR, WeedHound, and Tinytoon I've started some supposed AK-47 seeds I recieved from a friend. I am going to follow these guys advice and see how things turn out this time. This is my fourth grow attempt and the last 3 were utter failures with the plants dying before I could get a harvest.

Ok, on to the specifics...My system is Ebb and Flow (Flood/Drain) made by Botanicare. I will be using Ionic Grow, Ionic Bloom, CalMag, and Ionic Boost. I will also be adding 2ml/gal. H202 every other day during the Grow cycle and I may or maynot purchase a ZYME product prior to bloom. I'm not trying to add too many variables into this grow right now. I just want to get a full grow from seed to harvest and once I do that my next grows will get more fancy. I'm using a x8 T5 ballast. I'll be using x8 T5 MH during Grow and then swapping over to x4 T5 MH and x4 T5 HPS during the first week of the bloom cycle.

My tap water is [email protected]. I do not have a RO filter and do not plan on using RO or distilled water for this particular grow. I'm trying to push this out before it gets too warm outside and I can't afford a RO filter right now. Once the fall rolls around I will be using a RO filter from that point forward.

My lighting schedule is as follows:
Grow Cycle: 18on/6off - 5PM-11AM
Bloom Cycle: 12on/12off - 8PM-8AM

I have started out with using [email protected] Ionic Grow and [email protected] CalMag with an overall ppm of [email protected]. I also added 2ml/gal. H202. I have a 40gallon resv. but have only filled it to 30gallons so that I have some wiggle room when topping off throughout every two weeks when I change the water.

Last but not least, are the first pictures after I transplanted them on 4/04/2009: :hippy:
[attachment=o215505] [attachment=o215506] [attachment=o215507] [attachment=o215508]

Something else I forgot to mention. Watering right now x4 per day for 10 minutes at a time. The bottom of the rockwool cubes should be JUST touching the water level when the flood table is fully flooded. The other thing is that, they have been on a 8:00AM to 12:00AM light rotation and lights went off at 12:00AM 4/05/2009 and will be on at 5:00PM 4/05/2009 for the first start to their 18/6 rotation during the night. I have done it this way due to the summer looming ahead.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by bertoxxulous

The other thing is that, they have been on a 8:00AM to 12:00AM light rotation and lights went off at 12:00AM 4/05/2009 and will be on at 5:00PM 4/05/2009 for the first start to their 18/6 rotation during the night. I have done it this way due to the summer looming ahead.

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I'm kinda baked right now, but does that mean 17 hours darkness on 4/05?

BTW the setup looks very nice from a dirt farmer's perspective :thumbsup:

Good luck :jointsmile:

Good start. Search for just LOC NAR and I think one of my first is still here. It's funny. My others were removed because of what happened 3 years ago. I still have pic's of what they took from me.

Let the party begin, Oh that's at harvest and you will make it !!!!
I have to find a camera and we can compare. I got a grow started at one of my bro's houses. He doesn't have a clue so I'm preety much doing it all, maybe he will catch on. LOL. I got some hawaiian x skunk x bigbud ( a strain I mixed ) and some papaya in veg with northernlights and red bud skunk in the mother box also some S.A.G.E. to be prooffed for a mother. That should do the year out.

I don't believe in luck so, your hard work and persistence will get you there. Don't give up!!!!!

Remember do not tell anyone and most of all do not show anyone. I showed one person and will regret it for life. It's hard not to brag when your doing good. So we do it here.

Thanks for the support guys I really appreciate it!

@bigtopsfinn - yes it is 17 hours of darkness. They have been on a day lighting rotation from 8am-12am and since its starting to get warm outside I decided to move it to a night rotation and I figured the best time to do that would be when they were transplanted. So, what I did was transplanted them on Sat. at about 5pm, watered them once for 10 minutes and then let the lights switch off at midnight. After that I went in and reprogrammed everything for a 5pm-11am rotation so that the majority of the light cycle would be in the evening and throughout the night because I have no way of airconditioning that room directly.

@LOC NAR - that would be interesting to compare the grows! I can't wait to get this down because I really wanna start growing some of those coneissure strains you know. I can honestly say I've never actually smoked good pot ever in my life and thats one thing I've really been dying to try, and what better for me to grow it you know? I hate dealing with the black market when it comes to trying to get some bud to smoke and I hate not knowing what I'm smoking or how it was grown. But, I have like no traffic at my place, I have no friends that are close or ever visit, and family comes maybe once or twice a year and nobody knows anything because I keep a tight wrap on smell/etc. It is hard sometimes though not wanting to tell someone and show them all the hard work and effort that has been involved and what you've accomplished. Its become a big part of my life now and I can't really tell anyone about it lol.

It suck not being able to brag when you do good but that is the way it is. I like when you put up all the toys for a few to take a break and try some of your own on others you hardly see and let them guess as to where it's from. It maybe my favorite game now. Like you I had only seen the good stuff like 2 times. My younger bro had the connect but wouldn't help me for shit. Now he knows I turned him to the power of the hydro side.

If you want to see some of the trichomes they took just let me know. Waiting for the next set of pic's.

@LOC NAR - Yea that would be great to see the pics.

Just to give an update, after the seedlings had no light for 17 hours when the lights came on today they were looking ok albeit what I think might be signs of too much lighting so I raised my ballast up to 3 feet from plants and turned off x4 of the MH. Now they are getting only x4 MH. My water looks kinda murky and I'm not sure why. Almost like a white murky. I've never used CalMag before though and i'm assuming thats probably a bi-product but I'm not sure. I also added 60ml of H202 into the 30gallons. PPM was sitting at [email protected], I added 1 gallon of DI water which brought it down to [email protected]. I'm going to try to keep it roughly there for the rest of the week. If the plants start looking rough I'm going to pump halfway and drop the nute/calmag down so my overall ppm is between [email protected].

On a side note, does anyone know if H202 adds any EC or changes the PH significantly?

My PH dropped from 5.7 to 5.5. I'm leaving at 5.5 till tommorow morning.

Your PH is fine at 5.5. It maybe the h202 that's making your water murky. A little dose to my bro's did the murky thing but we were fighting rot before a complete change and wash down of the systems. Just used it to be sure. If it changed the ppm's it would not be enough to notice. We are doing a test run for a fog log with fog misters.

The calmag would only give it a tinge of color like some nutes do.

Musta been the H202 then. After taking a look at a post in a message board catergorizing plant problems, I think what I may be having is heat stress on the seedlings. At least it looks like it from the picture that was posted, and it would make sense. I had 4x T5 HPS at 2 feet from the seedlings so that was probably too close and then tent temperature has been in the 78-82 range during its normal light cycle. Now, after changing the light cycle to night time max temp today was 78 so its alittle better, if not by much. The room temperature has dropped by about 5-6 degrees though so it has made a decent difference. Now, about my water...PPM was like [email protected] when I first filled the resv. Today it was at like [email protected] at 5pm and the PH had dropped from 5.6 to 5.4. I added a bottle of DI water which nocked the PH down to 5.0 and was at [email protected] at 11pm after 2 waterings. I just added three gallons of straight tap water which brought my PH up to 5.6 and my EC to [email protected]. I find this really strange and I'm honestly not sure whats going on. I'm going to check it one more time before I go to bed in an hour or so but the next watering isn't till 3:30am.

Well I checked the PPM before I went to bed at about 3am and it had climed to about [email protected] and the PH as still sitting at 5.6. This morning (8am4/06/2009) the PH had dropped to 5.4 and the ppm was up to [email protected]. I'm really not sure whats going on here. So far now I've added 3 gallons of tap, and 1 gallon of DI water I purchased from the store, and my ppm just keeps going up while my PH keeps dropping. My lights come back on at 5pm today and the first watering will be at 5:30pm so I will most likely add more tap water to try and nock the ppm down again. Also, I've already got some of that brown sandy like sediment buildup already happening in the bottom of my resv. Also, I added 50ml of H202 this morning at 8am as well.

My main concern is that there is some element in my tap water that is making my ppm go up but I don't know enouph about that kind of thing to formulate an educated opinion on the matter. I'm also affraid with adding so much water that I'm deluting the amount of nutrients in the resv. and the ppm buildup is from some unkown element in my tap. Anybody got some ideas? :wtf: