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

@subzero - Yes that does help quite a bit. I have no idea about the limescale honestly. My tent poles are not PVC they are metal with white powder coating finishing on them. The tent is newer, purchased in fall of 08'. I don't think its a poisoning situation because I think all my prior plant problems could easily be explained as overnute. What is oxy plus and how much do you suggest I dilute it down, and now much should I use per gallon or liter? I treated the rockwool with PH5.6 water and 1/2 strength Ionic Bloom. About the lights, the T5 metal halides, I'll have to confirm with the store but its well over 1000w of lumins I believe and my ballast can hold 8 of them. I'm currently only using 4 and the ballast is slightly over 3 feet above the plants. I believe I had it to low to start and they started showing signs of either heat stress or over lighting so I raised the light up significantly and they are looking much better now. About the HPS T5, I don't believe the are actually called HPS but they do give off red spectrum of light, but at a higher lumin count and produce less heat. Again, I need to figure all that out but I've been lazy about that part to be honest. Normally I start my seedlings off with a 400w light but the spot I had it hanging from got some water dmg and i haven't replaced that overhead yet so I put them directly in the tent from seed which was my mistake. And lastly, I've been running the Ionic at [email protected] wich roughly equates to 1/2 tsp. per gallon which I'd say is roughly 3ml per gallon which would be less but I've also been going 50/50 calmag/ionic grow. I am going to pump about 15-20gal. (I'm just about 38gal. total right now) and I'll stop using the CalMag and put myself at about [email protected] with only tap and ionic grow. Also, what is your tap at sub? Mine is at [email protected] if you didn't catch that from my earlier posts. Lastly, could you please tell me your nute schedule and approx. ppm per week and when you swap, you seem to be the only person here other than me that uses Ionic and I'd personally like to hear what your nute schedule is considering you are using it successfully.

Lastly, does anyone have any suggestions on how to clean hydroton properly if you DON'T have a high pressure water sprayer? I don't know if I want to throw it in a sweater bag and put it in my dishwasher because my dishwasher blows ass.

Hi,

I will get back to you when I get back from work, about 11:00pm our time, but have a look at the inside of your kettle, if there is white build up in there your water is hard also you will usually find a white film on your house taps or on the shower curtain. Ionic (Hard) is made just down the road from me and it is designed for the very hard water whe get here caused by lime stone. Their soft water version is to suit r.o. water over here. When i lived in Canada our water was soft but it varies everywhere you go.

Back soon

Subzero. :smokin:

@subzero - Thanks for the quick response, I'm at work as well so I'll have to look into it when I get home at around 5pm EST. I will say though off the bat that I have had issues with shower heads getting clogged as well as faucets and even my dishwasher drain gets clogged with resedue as well. I don't know if its limestone that is the problem but my tap is definately hard. As of right now I'm using the Ionic Grow/Bloom that isn't for hard water. I was going to buy it the last time I went but they only had the non-hard water version so I'll have to give them a call and find out about that or have them order me some. Do you think its ok if I continue to use what I have right now though? I'd imagine I would have to use less than I could normally get away with from the hard water solution?

P.S. For the record, when you refer to kettle, do you mean my reservoir? If so there is some buildup that occurs on the top and along the water line on the inside of my reservoir. It also had a somewhat yellowish tinge in some places due to me using full strength (4tsp. gallon) until this grow where I have used significantly less nutes than I had the three previous times which is why I'm positive my issues in the past were nute burn. I also didn't have a ppm pen till this grow either. Opened my eyes it did. :eek:

Right, I'm back.
Your plants don't look bad at all but i know that you can get a bit paranoid when you get things wrong, everything seems to take sooo long when you are looking at them every 5 minutes doesnt it!

Let us begin.
I wash hydroton although i don't like it or use it anymore, in the bath and keep agitating it and draining it until there is no more sediment. Put a bit at a time in a strainer and blast it off with the shower nozzle. dishwasher surely must have still have soap residue wouldn't it? That could/would be fatal. a little sediment is ok as long as it doesnt block the pump.

Oxy plus is h202 only much more concentrated and pure than the drugstore stuff also made for the job at hand. it is also very good for sterilizing your equipment. I think Growth technology (makers of ionic) sell it as "liquid oxygen". Ask your hydroshop it maybe called something else over there. dont get it on your skin it will burn instantly, follow directions the bottle.
Dont use h202 with any zyme products as it will kill the benificials (except nitrozyme which isnt really a zyme product) The zyme products someone mentioned above would likley be cannazyme or equivelant. So nitrozyme is ok cannazyme no,no. Cannazyme is great stuff though.

When i start from seed, I always put them in soil, when they stretch which is normal you can just bury them deeper, I then take a couple of clones off each one, flower the seedlings in the soil (when they are about 8 inches tall and looking healthy) , find your females, bin the males (at least until you learn a little more). Now grow them out (at the beginning match mark the clones to the plants so you know which ones came from where very important) At harvest choose your favorites, not always the ones with the biggest buds. keep the matching clones as mothers, bin the rest or give em to your brother. keep your moms under a low wattage flourescent, just feed them enough to keep them alive unless you have lots of space for big moms. then about 2 weeks before you need more clones up the nutes and the light then clone from the top to keep them small. after a few crops the moms stems will become woody and clones wont root so quick, time to repeat the cycle. you can take a clone from a clone mother if you like the strain, but eventually they lose vigour ect.

The "supposed to be ak47" worries me a bit. Always get seeds from a reputable breeder. google your strain when choosing, any problems with seed companies should be found before you buy.If you cant find anyone on the net who has grown a strain dont buy it, lots of crooks out there. The only female seeds I would ever trust is femaleseeds.nl but even they are having production problems this season. they arent selling many of their strains right now as they arent passing their quality control. They are a very good seed company and wont sell you their mistakes. Greenhouse females are selfed seeds from mr nices mothers. another story but dont believe the ghs hype. IMO. TGA (Subcools) have some kick ass strains.

I had a quick look for your lites found some on an aquarium site i think, so i dont know if the spectrums are right for mj or not. Eventually I would get some lamps that you are sure of. (sunmaster, growlux ect) .watts and lumens are completely different measurements so that is a bit confusing to a beginner as well. 400 watts hps per m2 for small plants, 600 watts-1000 watts m2 flowering but watch the heat. i'll leave that one for now. I will let you do the research but it is important, look for dual spectrum sunmaster, they are great for a beginner.

Feeding,
dont add calmag, if you kettle (for making tea) has scale in it and get some hardwater ionic asap, it has less cal/mag in it because hard water is already loaded with it. when i switched to ro, i could only find cal mag or calmax on one uk site wound up with a canadian brand, used it once and never needed it again, didnt need it then either! shouldnt need it for nutes designed for hydro mj, when you change your resivoir once a week. nobody uses it over here. probably because our water is hard, hard, and our nutes are made to specificly grow mj where it is a less tolerated where you are (i think). Ionic is specificly for mj.

Ionic is pretty forgiving stuff ideal for a beginner, as you gain experience you will want more control of your grow and will probably go for a 2 or 3 part and some additives as i have done long ago. for now keep it simple. (Advanced Nutes don't believe the hype either) i would feed at 3 ml per liter ionic grow hw by hand when the rockwool dries out, maybe once a day?, water around the cube, dont saturate it, hydroton holds moisture pretty well, make those plants search for food . once you get some explosive growth, up the nutes to full strength 7ml/l and start using your pump. Add 1/2 strength nitrozyme if you like for 1 week only,its like organic steroids for plants also made by gt, but stop after 1 week or you will have too many leaves and side branching. after 3 days you wont believe the difference. When you flip the lights 12/12 use grow for the first week and then hw bloom for week 1 and 2, then add the boost at 1ml/l to your bloom at full strength until 2 weeks before harvest, then stop with the boost. 1 week to 10 days before harvest just run ph 6 tap only to flush out all the excess nutes. the leaves will yellow but that is normal at this stage as the plants are using up everything they got. (i know some canadians dont flush their plants but this one does and the lung expanding cough and the black ash doesnt exist here) up to you.

i havent given you any tds (ppm) levels because there are at least 2 different scales 500 and 700,that i know of. i havent got a clue what your meter is so it would be fatal if we got our wires crossed. shame you didnt get an ec meter instead, we could then speak the same language.

Make it a habit to change your tank solution once a week ph between 5.8-6.1for ionic 6 seems optimal here but let it drift from 5.8 up, this proves that the plants are happy and too much ph down is bad too. I would get a couple of airstones in the resivoir and ditch the h202 once the plants take off but make sure your air pump is outside the tent when the plants are small otherwise you water will get too hot and it wont hold any oxygen causing root rot and other nasties.

Any problems if you follow this i guess would be light, heat, ventilation or tent as i dont know specifics about these.

feeeeeeeeeeeew!

That my proceedure anyways with great results of around 500-600gm2

good luck, keep it all clean.

Subzero. :stoned:

@subzero - I guess it would take a canadian to figure that out about me, eh? Well, man you really put out alot of info there. I would like to say, that I use this Text
As my guide to figure out the difference of what people are putting as their ppm/ec. Per this chart here, I'm 0.5 or 500 Hanna. I'm actually using a milwaukee but its 0.5 like the Hanna.

The issue with my ventilation is not the tent, I have an inlet fan on the bottom and a exit fan on the top. Its the room, it has no ventilation going to it, totally closed off, on a slab so this room has no direct ventilation. I've been opening the door to get more ventilation into the room and the tent temperature so far, for this last week have been max of 75 and low of 68.

The light thing, I've lost my damned receipt so I have no clue specifically what I have and what amount of lumins it puts out so I'll have to get back to you with that one.

Thanks!!

P.S. I'd like to point out that this is my favorite post that I will ever make......you figure it out.

Awww.

Keep that door open, doesnt it say how many watts it is on the actual bulb? or on the ballast. We are 240volts out of our mains plug so there may be difference in bulbs sold there (there would be for sure). I was an outdoor guy in Canada, plenty of space! An example of ours would be
1 x 600 WATT sunmaster new, produces 90,000 (ninety thousand)lumens.

back to work :jointsmile:

Subzero.

@subzero - I threw the box away and I've been lazy and didn't check the lights yet to answer this question sorry, I will get to the bottom if it eventually:thumbsup:

So I pumped out the majority of the water in the reservoir and added 25 gallons back. before adding the nutes I was at [email protected]. So I nocked the ppm up to [email protected] with just Ionic Grow this Sunday (4/12/09) right before the lights shut off and nocked ph down to 6.0. at 5pm when lights turn on I checked ph/ppm and was at 5.8ph (after using some ph down) and ppm of [email protected]. Here are the pictures of the plants after one week in the system: Pic 1 top down, Pic 2 side profile, Pic 3/4 best looking plants, Pic 5 WTF?
[attachment=o215915] [attachment=o215916] [attachment=o215917] [attachment=o215918] [attachment=o215919]

hey bert,
i just read through your log tonight and i wanted to join in real quick. now i just need to remember what comments i wanted to throw out there...damn late night kush.
i dont know whats on the other sides of the walls of your room or above the ceiling so that you cant vent out but i am running into the same issue now. i think im going to change the door to the room for a cheap home depot door and either cut a hole in the door and cover it with a vent cover or use a dog door opening and on the other side attach the ducting from the hoods and the filter. but my door is exterior. if yours leads into the house youll have a hot hallway.
the only other advise would be to do exactly as subzero says, it sounds like you found a pro with 14 posts that is willing to help and knows your neuts like the back of his hand;
the lights, 400 for early veg and 600-1000 for the rest. if you cant vent,no way no how, then it might be tough.
the airstones. not sure what prices are like for you but i get a double pump and 2 stones for like $30-40. a must have.
the medium and neuts. i have done hydroton...a lot of it and after 2 runs i was over it. ive never used your neuts. i started with GH flora and have stayed with it and love the results. but whatever sub was using to get 500-600gm2....use that! coco? i would look into 2-3 part programs at some point. also if you go bigger with the lights youll want to go bigger with the pots. are those 2-3gl bags? folded in half 1-1 1/2... i use 12in mesh bottom with e&f and those things take 1 lg bag of roots organic for every 2 pots and the roots still use up every inch in there.
the genetics!!! i have had bubba kush clones from 5 people over the years and there is one guy (the stupidest and most flakey guy of them all) whose strain blows them all away. my fist clone guy was the worst. for a long time i thought i was raising my girls right and had all the factors figured out and still was getting bad yields. right before i gave up all together i went to a club, got some nice clones and did what sub said, took cuttings, made mothers and took more cuttings and the yields went through the roof, better quality, and less issues all together. i now have a better clone guys and tell everyone i know that starts growing "get good genetics!"
im sure theres some more things ive forgot but i gotta get back to my girls anyway.

oh and sub...great post! "Is there limescale in your kettle?" i almost pissed myself LMFAO!!!! of course i was totally high but i thought that was so funny! im like wtf...a kettle? spoken like a true englishman. anyways i do have some questions for you but i do have to go so i'll just ask this, whats your set up like now?
peace:jointsmile:

Icb, I'm glad you thought that was funny :thumbsup:, but i'm not sure why?
Don't you have kettles over there? Or maybe I should get some bubba kush on the grow and see thing from your perspective! :stoned:Thanks for the praise, but i'm no scientist really.

Bert,

I am no expert with f+d but if it were me I would get some spreader mat from the hydro shop and lay it on the bottom of the tray so the roots have something to grow into, it will be a bit more forgiving than them just sitting in plastic if your pump fails. You guys really do things different on that side of the pond. Most over here would put the clones in 3 or 4 inch rockwool cubes, with a layer of spreader mat and cover over the tray. and thats it, no fuss no muss. You are going to cover the roots when they grow out of those bags arent you.
Ak 27 is known to have mutant leaves, I am pretty sure that number 5 will grow out of it. Don't sweat it.

Subzero.

Oops. Ak-47 :jointsmile:

Subzero.