Krusty Bucket LED Grow

So while I wait for my LED modules to arrive, I'll continue detailing my other plans - this one involves the infamous "Krusty Bucket."

The Krusty Bucket idea is simple - two buckets stacked inside of each other, the top bucket has holes drilled into the bottom, and it is filled with your preferred medium (typically expanded clay pebbles.) An air line is run into the bottom bucket and hooked to an air compressor (I have an air stone in mine just to help maintain DO levels,) to provide constant oxygenation to the roots.

This clone is sitting under the same 20w 70:30 blue:red array as the rest of my clones, until my lights come in. Then I'm moving it to a couple of 15w spotlights, 60:40 blue:red vegetative spectrum. I intend on training this plant to make a scrog-style grow, but with slightly different methods which will be detailed as the grow proceeds.

Anyways, have a happy picture of a happy Hindu Skunk in its bucket!

There is more growth. :) The crown is now well over the edge of the bucket, about 2 inches.

I like the plan. Good luck :)

Changed nutrients today. Due to the design of the bucket, instead of 2.5 gallons, only about 1.25 gallons of nutrient solution is required.

I gave it 7.5mL each of FloraMicro, Gro, and Bloom, and then 3.75mL of Diamond Nectar. pH is approximately 5.5-5.8

Almost 4 inches over the bucket lip. :)

I forgot to add i will be topping and training this plant. gonna make it HUGE and bushy, then see what can pull off of LED power. Not sure how much LED I will use, yet.

I redid my support frame and made a small 'room' for the Krusty bucket. I will train the plant to fill this space, and then I will flower.

Lights need to hurry up, I'm sick of waiting due to shipping errors and customs.

Might as well update while I wait for the lights to come, they are on their way, finally.

I snipped off the axial tip, time to let the plant branch out some. It is almost 200mm tall.

good news...are they on the water...16 days from China to US on ship!:thumbsup:

your plant looks nice also...can't waut to see the rest of the set up:jointsmile:

Oh, I also forgot to mention, I lined the upper areas of the box (just below the level of the bottom bucket lip) for reflectivity. Only had aluminum foil, but I did a decent enough job.

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Originally Posted by stra8outtaWeed

good news...are they on the water...16 days from China to US on ship!:thumbsup:

your plant looks nice also...can't waut to see the rest of the set up:jointsmile:

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Air freight since it's a fairly light package :)

And just wait, once the lights get here, the setup will be made!

Please keep us posted on your grow. As you know I am way into LED's and what they can do. BTW you might want to check out these 14watt panels I have. They are 12x12 and only 1 1/4 inches thick. They make a sweet outer lining for your grow room.

Keep up the good work!

LIGHTS ARRIVED!!!!!!!

So, I slammed a 120w panel into the almost 2x4 cabinet. I've got 15-18 inches of headroom so plenty of space to trim and train!

Gotta make a second krusty bucket for the larger plant that did not go into the PC case (the runt and the other planned one were of same size so I figured I'll just use those in the PC case.)

You know I just realized if I want to boost the medical quality I need to find some UVB diodes to drop into my boxes somewhere.

Ah well, no biggie if I can't get any.

just go with this run and see how they turn out...nice to see the place lit up:smokin:

Krusty Bucket and new DWC bucket sitting happy under the 120w.

250mm for the Krusty bucket, 210mm for the DWC.

I topped the plants and made those into clones, and raised the buckets.

Now I should begin getting the growth I'm after. I was just waiting for the tops to be sizable enough to clone.

Sweet little grow. I love Micro Grows. During summer I want to build a 2 or 3 chamber micro room for breeding. Or at least get started on the plans.
Looking forward to seeing how this grow turns out :jointsmile:

Meh, late update, sorry.

They're bushing out! Almost time to drop these back down!

What if you used leds like chritmas lights on your plant?? Is it to hot? I remember playing w/leds young.Ez wiring and no heat ,and dimmable.

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Originally Posted by BurnhardLonger

What if you used leds like chritmas lights on your plant?? Is it to hot? I remember playing w/leds young.Ez wiring and no heat ,and dimmable.

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Not enough power, typically not right on the money wavelength-wise, either.

Unless they were some ultra-bright 1w diodes, then they might work.

Check out the explosion of growth in one day!

I have to drop at least the krusty bucket down, the DWC is still fine where it is.

Yep, lowered it, re-adjusted stuff.

Tied both down, training is beginning. Should be flowering out in a week or two.

I know I've been slacking on this, I've been spending more time on the PC case.

They're still vegging but I'm thinking I will probably drop to 12/12 at the end of this week.

It's the end of week three - I think I'm going to start flowering light cycle tomorrow, so I'll be setting it on the 12/12 schedule tonight.

I decided to make my tie-down job easier, since there's two lips on the side of the bucket, I cut slits in them so I could just hook knotted plant tape into them and be done, less hassle trying to find a place when I have bunches all over, now!

Oh, yea, at three weeks these plants are bigger than anything I had under T5HO and just as dense.

Still rolling, still bushy. I had to add another 50w panel to help keep up with penetration, so I'm rolling 170w. Let's hope I get as many grams, yea?

Caught some pH issues - for once the pH dropped hardcore down to 3 instead of the usual climb up as it absorbs nutes.

Little leaf burn but it's resolved :)

And it's starting to show pistils all over.

Will get a picture when they're a bit bigger and easier to see.

thanks for posting...

looking forward to your results :thumbsup:

The buckets are rolling hardcore! Tiny budsites, not worth picturing yet but maybe in a couple of days. Plants are nice and bushy and healthy (minus the burn which I found out was a combination of too much light + slightly low pH.)

Plants are doing... okay. The DWC on the right is kinda burned from the LED panel. Even with a fan on it, the burn just happens. I've done what I can to bring the branches down and allow some of the smaller non-sucker ones to come up to thicken the canopy and help distribute the heat from the plants. The Krusty on the left is happy, hardly any burned areas sitting under the added 50w panel. Just to be safe, I'm going to do a medium flush in an hour or so, but first pictures to show you. This is either the light doing this (it only seems to happen at areas closest to the light) or the medium is causing a burn/lockout.

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Originally Posted by khyberkitsune

Plants are doing... okay. The DWC on the right is kinda burned from the LED panel. Even with a fan on it, the burn just happens. I've done what I can to bring the branches down and allow some of the smaller non-sucker ones to come up to thicken the canopy and help distribute the heat from the plants. The Krusty on the left is happy, hardly any burned areas sitting under the added 50w panel. Just to be safe, I'm going to do a medium flush in an hour or so, but first pictures to show you. This is either the light doing this (it only seems to happen at areas closest to the light) or the medium is causing a burn/lockout.

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Nice log. Does the LEDs get that hot? Did you resolve the burn issue yet? Hope you get it under control before its bad...Youll be ok khyberkitsune I know it... I will be following this log faithfuly...

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Originally Posted by Coachgee

Nice log. Does the LEDs get that hot? Did you resolve the burn issue yet? Hope you get it under control before its bad...Youll be ok khyberkitsune I know it... I will be following this log faithfuly...

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Ah, I needed to update in this section. I knew I forgot something!

Okay, I had to drop from 170w of light to 100w of light. now the box is lit by 2 50w panels, and my PC case plants have joined the two big ones down there.

As far as I can tell, I have resolved the burning issue. Only time will tell, I trimmed off most of the dead material and left a few for 'markers' so I may track the progression of any further burn. The only other thought I had was this was possibly a potassium burn, but as I checked my formulas and mixtures, I realized this isn't likely to be the case.

But everything is still going!

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Originally Posted by khyberkitsune

Plants are doing... okay. The DWC on the right is kinda burned from the LED panel. Even with a fan on it, the burn just happens. I've done what I can to bring the branches down and allow some of the smaller non-sucker ones to come up to thicken the canopy and help distribute the heat from the plants. The Krusty on the left is happy, hardly any burned areas sitting under the added 50w panel. Just to be safe, I'm going to do a medium flush in an hour or so, but first pictures to show you. This is either the light doing this (it only seems to happen at areas closest to the light) or the medium is causing a burn/lockout.

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How close was your light? I'm just curious because since I've starting using LED's, I've had no problem with heat or burning on the leaves....and 2 of my plants are touching the light right now! I'm kind of thinking it has to be something else unless your LED's are getting that hot!

curious to see how this turns out.....good luck man! :jointsmile:

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Originally Posted by moody420

How close was your light? I'm just curious because since I've starting using LED's, I've had no problem with heat or burning on the leaves....and 2 of my plants are touching the light right now! I'm kind of thinking it has to be something else unless your LED's are getting that hot!

curious to see how this turns out.....good luck man! :jointsmile:

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For the 50w panel in the PC case, the burn didn't occur until about 1-1/2 or 2 inches. For the 120w, about 9 inches. On the other hand, at those same ranges, I can feel the light pounding against my skin (makes it tingle!) so to some degree I'm not entirely surprised. The top-bin diodes are certainly killers.

LEDS seem to be doing a good job ! i really want to get some going but i really dont want to buy cheap chinese ones that dont work ! are yours 3w bulbs ? 660nm?

Gunna keep tunes in :)

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Originally Posted by Charbud

LEDS seem to be doing a good job ! i really want to get some going but i really dont want to buy cheap chinese ones that dont work ! are yours 3w bulbs ? 660nm?

Gunna keep tunes in :)

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Most panels are made in China, pure and simple they've got a stranglehold on the rare-earth market and thus it's almost impossible to find diodes not made in China. Even KingBright, a semi-local LED company, has all diodes made in China and shipped over here.

The diodes themselves are fine, it's the drivers and the panel construction you have to worry about. Most Chinese Drivers just SUCK (bad capacitors usually,) so I had them use Japanese drivers in my panels and I gave them a panel internals design of my own. I've got 460, 630, and 660 in my current generation. The next generation will likely be quad-band, assuming the cost of 420nm diodes drops (they're currently about 2-3x more expensive than any other diode.)

I use 1w diodes, for now. 3w diodes, watt for watt are currently more inefficient than 1w diodes as far as output goes; sure they're brighter but you can get more photon density from three 1w diodes versus a single multi-chip 3w diode.

I know the light was one issue causing burn on the plants. What I now see is different, and very odd, I've never seen this in all my grows, of any plant. It's not pythium, there's too much oxygen in my system to allow for that and the roots are clean and not slimy to touch. This isn't a lockout judging by the looks of things, so I'm betting on this being a burn. I've typically done a light underfeeding for my plants, so I think the slightly heavier formula I've concocted might be causing the damage and might have exacerbated the light burning.

Per gallon of approximately 250ppm tapwater adjusted to ~5.8:
10mL GH FloraMicro
20mL GH FloraBloom
2.5mL Botanicare Cal-Mag
2.5mL Grotek Pro-Silicate

Otherwise, the plants from the PC case are blooming out nicely (and they're on a lighter solution given their small size, and they exhibit none of the symptoms on the other plants minus the light burn,) and the Krusty bucket is showing more. The DWC not so much, so I'm holding off on pictures of that for the moment.

This is day 3 of week 5 of flowering for the plants from the PC case, day 3 week 4 for the DWC/Krusty. Given the time of flowering, I'm really betting my nutrient solution is causing a problem.

hope you get those nutrient issues worked out... :thumbsup:

i was hoping it wasn't the lights alone...

That is most def strong. I started my grow using GH. I never went that strong. One good way to tell is to check the ppm before you feed and then check it an hour later and if it goes up you are feeding to much. You are actually using the same nutrients I used the first 4 or 5 weeks of flowering then I changed to botanicare bloom soil/hydro. (no reason other than I had a bottle laying around and wanted to finish my grow with something slightly more on the organic side). Check before you feed and then a bit after and post up what happens. It is for sure to strong. My water starts at 40ppm and I still always put almost half of what you do. (I also use Karma)

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Originally Posted by demoreal

That is most def strong. I started my grow using GH. I never went that strong. One good way to tell is to check the ppm before you feed and then check it an hour later and if it goes up you are feeding to much. You are actually using the same nutrients I used the first 4 or 5 weeks of flowering then I changed to botanicare bloom soil/hydro. (no reason other than I had a bottle laying around and wanted to finish my grow with something slightly more on the organic side). Check before you feed and then a bit after and post up what happens. It is for sure to strong. My water starts at 40ppm and I still always put almost half of what you do. (I also use Karma)

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This is what I had figured. I'm betting it might be too strong for the plants, as it was bumped up a bit.

I guess as soon as it comes down to the next res change I'll back off some. I don't have a meter (I get tap samples tested monthly for the ppm on that) and never really relied upon one.