New Bubbler Grow Coming Soon - Input Welcome!

Hi Weed!

Yep, I may very well switch to some more intense lighting when I go on to the good seeds, but for my trial run it wasn't worth the investment (to me).

This round I get to make a bunch of mistakes and questionable decisions, and learn from them. *grin*

I have done soil grows in the past, but this is my first hydro grow... And yeah, I did a lot of research first, especially on lighting. I love the clamp lamps, and was hoping my half-assed lighting scheme would work out ok so I don't have to buy new fixtures. *chuckle* We'll see, I guess!

I'm not in flower yet... Thought about skipping the LST and going 12/12 yesterday since Champ was about 14 inches. I opted to try the LST, and I'm gonna give it a week before flowering.

I've not done as much LST research, but many I read started much earlier than I did. I'd love to know what advantages you've found from waiting until flowering to do LST - I have no idea what impact the timing has, other than not wanting to start with a plant that is too small/young.



I'm pretty sure it was my rez nutes that burned the tips - Foliar seems to have had no negative impact on the leaves. I do mist (w/o additives other than pH down) regularly, because humidity is on the low side in my closet.


Champ is of unknown sex & strain... Bag seed. I don't even know of what batch he came - I had seeds from over the years all in a pill bottle, and Champ was the only one that made it past one inch. I'm figuring he'll probably be male since he's had a pretty stressful veg. Of course I hope she's female, but I won't be too bummed if he's male - I really wanted to try everything out on a plant I don't care about all too much (i.e. not my purchase Sweet Tooth #1 seeds) so I didn't have to cry like a baby if I killed it. *smirk*


PPMs - Not a clue. Haven't yet purchased a meter.

Water - "Rested" tap w/H2O2. Have good tap water here - Read the city's Water Report and the only concern was chlorine, hence the resting. pH is 7.0 before nutes, and I've had no trouble with pH flux. I do have to change rez water more often because it seems to cause curl down after about 5 days... Probably due to build-up of misc. stuff in the tap water, or the unknown ppms. I've developed a system of swapping out about a gallon or two after 3 days, then the whole rez after 6-9 days. This seems to do the trick, but I'll likely use a combo of tap & distilled when I do my next grow.

Thanks for stopping by!

Hmmmm, afraid it's pretty hard to say if you can't count ppms but to each his own as my old man always said. My only real advantage of waiting to lst is that I only want to do it to the females given space, lighting, and most of all my lack of work ethic. The males can pretty well blow off in my book. Right now I'm growing from seed not clones so until i go to 12/12 and determine sex I'm not working on anything. Period. During the veg stage they either grow like they are supposed to or I drop a light on them (j/k)

Champ has been on 12/12 for 5 nights now. Tomorrow I will peek at his/her privates in hopes of glimpsing sex traits. Camera batteries need charging, but I'll get a new photo up ASAP. Champ has probably doubled in size & fullness since LSTing!

And yes... the light is now 2 incandescent grow bulbs and 1 CFL. A couple of burns on the top leaves whilst I found the right height & configuration for the clumsy bulb set-up, but overall, looking good.

Cigars all around if it's a girl!

Congrats, I wish I'd started to flower mine about a month sooner too,lol. They're starting second week of flower now and taking up almost half of my 5x7 foot room. 2 plants.
I think if I'd gotten some clones this go around, I'd put them directly into 12/12 after rooting honestly.

Champ is beginning to preflower, but it is still too soon for me to be able to tell sex. I know some of y'all can differentiate just that little green nub that appears, but I'm not that tricky. *chuckle*

I'm fine it the plant grows into a monster, since it is the only one I'm growing this round, and I have enough lamps to provide side lighting and such. It has stretched some in this past week under 12/12, but a little stretch during flower is okay by me.

Hope to announce sex in a couple of days! Pix then.

Flowering has stalled - I believe due to low RH. Working on correcting this problem now. Growth continues, but no definite sex traits that I can ID have appeared yet.

Out of boredom, I have water cured some of the smaller leaves from pruning. My tolerance is currently ZERO, and I do get a mild effect after a full joint of this crapola, but I suspect it is the other misc. cannabinoids that are responsible.

Yummier than a cigarette though - Full of the taste of hope. *grin*

lol, my tolerance is zero too and I smoke some leaf now and then and definitely get some effect.

I dont know about low RH being something that stalls flowering? My humidity gauge goes down to 15% and below that it just shows --, and there's many times it's pegged on the low side. It's so damn dry here you can't make spit or tears!! I have to run a humidifier just to make it tolerable for myself to live, lol! Would like to hear more about that though.

Hope you have a female!

Cigars (stuffing of your choice) for everyone!

Here are some photos of Champ's preflowers and new flowers. I did some image tweaking with the preflower shots (taken thru a magnifying glass) to enhance the edges and increase brightness & contrast to make the preflowers more visible in the photos. (To the naked eye, they are clear as day.)

She seems to have 4 or 5 tops from the LSTing. Sweet...

I am truly shocked that Champ is female - She had such a rough life! Tough girl, this one.

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Mister E - Thanks for your good wishes! I shall have you bless all my future grows. *grin*

On humidity: Since you want to maintain RH of 40-50% during flower, I figured it is only logical that having RH significantly lower than that will stunt flowering.

Must be something to my theory, because in the 2 days since I posted & raised the humidity, Champ burst forth with both preflowers and baby flowers!

I went low-tech to raise the humidity: I hang a damp towel behind the fan, and have a shallow tray with a bunch of Hydroton rocks in it that I water daily.

Cool, congrats.

I've got a humidifier slaving away here and raised my RH up to a bone dry 21%, lmao. Thank god this weed just wants to live no matter what abuse we subject it to, lol.

I changed my rez this morning, and while I usually let the pH settle for a bit before replacing Champ, I had to rush her back in today - She was wilting drastically after only about 15 minutes out of the rez. I've never had this problem with her before, and I did everything the same as I always do, including misting the roots with a pH adjusted H2O/H2O2 mist a couple of times while she waited. After replacing her, I sat with her for a good 10 minutes, holding her stems upright so they didn't get any severe bends. Eventually I just kinda propped her. She seems to be slowly perking back up.

Any idea what her problem is? Or is she just being tempermental, as pubescent girls are wont to be?

That exact same thing happened to me on one res change. Crazy and scary and after I'd seen preflowers too. Since then I do as quick a change as I can and no problems since.

I pump the res dry, let the tub outflow empty the grow tub via gravity, and pump dry again ("dry" meaning all that the pump can get, the bottom of res is still wet). Then I quickly dump in a few gallons ASAP. Then nute it and top it off and adjust PH a bit later.

I think it'll be fine as long as you go quick. Some people told me they keep a second container of water handy and set the roots hanging in it while they change the res. I cant lift mine off anymore, so I just sprint.

Perhaps our girls are just super-sensitive about being rez-less, even briefly, once they begin to flower.

Champ is still pouting. She really doesn't look any better, but also not any worse.

How long did it take yours to recover?

I'd been planning to change her out tomorrow, but went early because he showed just the tiniest touch of tip burn this morning that wasn't there during our photo session yesterday. I hadn't added nutes in a few days, so I figured she must've been drinking more than she was eating and the nute concentration had gotten too high.

Now I almost wish I hadn't changed the rez at all! A little tip burn is better than a pitiful, wilting Champ!

I think after about a day and a half or so they were ok again. Mine were maybe 2 1/2 feet tall at the time, so the droop looked pretty severe, but I just gently trained the branches as well as I could as they straightened back up and now you'd never tell there was an issue.

As of last night she's been holding herself upright - just not proudly. *chuckle*

Thanks for the encouragement!

Hey what up everyone, just signed up today. Me and a friend have invested some money in a grow project. The bubbleponics system from stealth hydro is in route and i just had a question about germinating. Can we just stick the seed in the rock wool and plug in the system and it will just germinate on its own or should we germinated first before putting it in the rockwool. Any help would be appreciated or if theres somewhere else on the forum i can go to read about it more let me know. Thanks

Champ is flowering along beautifully. I've got a clear/cloudy mix of trichs, percentage depends upon the bud in question. Keeping an eye out for amber to start flush. Harvest will probably be modest, but it smells divine, and I'm very happy with my first hydro effort! Pix to come in a few days.

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Question: I did some pruning about 2 weeks ago of some scraggly stems, to keep them from diverting resources from the more abundant ones. I stuck them in some water, and true to Champ genes, they rooted like crazy. They've been under the same lights, so they are producing teeny little flowers. Is it possible to revert these to veg as clones at this late point?

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Manwithbike: If you've not already discovered, you're more likely to get prompt answers to this type of question by starting a new thread or posting in a newbie question thread, but I'm happy to throw in my 2 cents here!

I prefer to germinate before placing in rockwool, and here's why: You can then place only growing sprouts in rockwool, thereby avoiding wasting space on seeds that weren't viable.

Here's how I germinate:

• 1 pint of tap water
• 3 oz of 3% Hydrogen Peroxide
• 2 mL of bleach
• seeds
• paper towel, folded in quarters
• source of heat (I use an electric heating pad like you'd use for sore muscles)

Put 'em all together, soak seeds for 24 hours. Keep an eye on them - if you see cracked ones, take them out and place them inside the dampened (wet it, wring it out) paper towel. Place paper towel near heat source, put whole schmear in a dark place (I keep mine in a foil-covered Jiffy Propagator). After the 24 hour soak, put all seeds in the paper towel. Check regularly for sprouting. Once you have some white poking out, you either open your propagator a bit and remove the foil, or jump ahead and place the sprout in your rockwool, pointy-seed-end up. Give them gentle (or distant) light while they toughen up.

Good luck!

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Hi all!

Went to 12/12 on JAN 7th.
First flowers showed on Jan. 25th.
Off nutes on 3/9.

Now she's from bag seed, and I suspected early on that she had some sativa genetics due to her fan leaves' more narrow fronds, but Holy Hannah, I never expected to be flowering for 60 days!

Champ's trichs are still cloudy with some clear, no amber yet! It is tough to be patient, but I know she's close.

For all you naysayers, Champ has been on CFL since her sprout days, and CFL and incandescent (for red & far red) since 1/15. She may be slow, but she's filled out nicely.

LSTing gave her 5 heads, and a few minor ones. As you can see from the last photo, she's spitting buds out of every possible spot.

Photo Guide:
a) Whole plant - Yep, that's just one. Coke can for size reference.
c) One of 5 colas - not the main cola.
d) Top view of main cola
e) Buds, buds, everywhere...
f) Even buds here, and there...

Here's Champ's best portrait - Brighter & tighter.

I've found that if I keep my girls in the mist chamber and move the whole set off the res they seem to be fine for a while but if the roots are hanging in air they tend to droop and look wilted very quickly...about 15 minutes and I can start to see negative signs but in the mist chamber they're good for an hour or 2 before anything seems to happen

Champ looks nice yer gonna get some nice green off that baby

How much longer you have with her? I've been in flower for 2 weeks and just saw my first pistil so I'm expecting I'm gonna go way over the 60 day mark

Since I'm doing DWC, I've just taken to having a bucket or such nearby, and I pour some of the old rez in it, set the plant & lid on that, and then change out the main rez. It was just such a shock when she suddenly started getting tempermental about it!


How much longer.... That is the question. *chuckle*

She's GOT to be close... Calyx are nicely swelled, trichs 95-100% cloudy, she seemed to be at peak bouquet about 6 days ago...

I could harvest now, but since I appreciate the pain-relieving effects most, I like a later harvest.

But I don't think she'll need more than another week. Or maybe that's just as long as I can stand to wait. *grin*

It's been a long time since I had a plant with such strong sativa flowering traits (again, I usually go indica because I want that narcotic effect), so I'm worried about harvesting too late, or in between peak windows. But I've been very disciplined thus far. *wink*

3 days ago I harvested one of Champ's colas. Still no amber, but I wanted to sample her at her just-cloudy stage. I dried it for a couple of days, and put it in a latched canning jar.

Last night I had to try. :) It wasn't easy to get it burning since it was still a little damp for smoking, but with a few tricks, I got it going...

...And it was delightful! Not harsh at all - Long flush helped that I think, since clearly it didn't cure much. Plenty of body effect - in fact it knocked out my constant back pain completely for about an hour and a half (without putting me to sleep), which is something usually only morphine or oxy can do at doses so high that I turn into a puddle. *chuckle* And no paranoia whatsoever.

It's amazing what a little bag seed can become with hydro & TLC!

So I harvested the top 2-3" of the other 4 colas, and snipped some buds down about another inch. The rest I'll let go until they reach the same stage - no more holding out for amber, 'cause I'm very pleased with the high I got without it.

Thanks to all who supported this first hydro grow!

Starting those Sweet Tooth #1 seeds soon!