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

shit man thats cheap! and i pay just above wholesale at my hydroshop because of all the people i send their way. im going to pick one up and figure out a spot to try it out. i already have a 600 but i think ill get another 400 and try your whole set up...although im going to stick with GH for now.
hey, theres no school like the old school and that guy is so young that anything would be old school to him.
i think ill do a scrog method when i try your setup. ill need to support them and wont be able to move them around anyway.

Well now, I read all you guys posts about the lights and such, and I agree with you in sheer numbers and amount of lumens produced but there is one thing that I think should be clarified. I actually read the label on one of my red spectrum bulbs and it says its a T5 HO (High Output) which puts it at a level above the regular T5's as well. Now, I'm kinda of retarded and couldn't figure out exactly how much lumens it actually produces but the best I can come up with was on a .pdf file for the brand of T5-HO's I have and it says "Initial Lumens" of 5000 and the light was 54Watt. So I'm wondering like if I have 380Watt Ballast does that still mean I get 5000 lumens or do you divide 380W by 54W and then mulitply times 5000 lumens? Anyways something to ponder on, here are the latest pics of my plants. Running tap water + Ionic Grow total ppm of [email protected] and PH of 6.0. Also, I think I'm going to see what can be accomplished by what I've got right just now and maybe this will be a good learning experience for all of us here too :D

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Keep in mind in my last post on the 23rd was only 3 days ago and look how much they have improved its insane. Damn those smelly tents! Wow, I would have never ever figured this out on my own and its kind of ironic because they are so smelly the problem was right under my nose the whole damn time! :wtf:

Yes, they look better now, you will get 5000 lumens out of each bulb, you would need 18 of those lamps to equal 1x 600watt sunmaster hps.

You can grow weed just about anywhere except a tent built specifically for that purpose, it is insane I know. Welcome to the world of chinese knock offs!
I googled polamer and I am pretty sure that it is the black nylon stuff on the outside, not the white reflective surface on the inside, so only by the recovery photos i would say its pvc.
On the upside, if you had a hid lamp in there the heat would have released more poison and your plants would be dead by now, so I guess you got lucky?????

Stick to the feeding schedule, and givem another couple of weeks of recovery and you should be good to go.

Subzero.

Hey guys, just wanted to drop an and mention some things that I've noticed. The serrated edges of my leaves are curling up...a sign of heat stress from my lights maybe? Also, some of the lower leaves are starting to turn whitish progressively...but they were leaves that were still present during the time of the offgass tent cover so I'm assuming they are probably going to die anyways and I should be more worried about negative signs in my new growth instead correct? So far I haven't noticed any issues with my new growth other than the serrated edges curling up, but their color is fine and they overall look quite healthy.

P.S. Yea I'm pretty screwed on my lights aren't I? I think I will at least go with something like you suggested for my bloom cycle when the fall rolls around but I definately couldn't deal with that kind of heat right now. I really have no way to discreetly get that amount of heat out of that particular room so I'm basically going to have to wait till the temp. outside drops again in the fall.

Heya bertox :)

first of all... just have to get this out of the way, thought about it a few days ago when i figured checked out this thread... but i love the name lol, you are clearly a EQ1 or 2 fan :)

as for your question about the balast watts vs. the bulb watts... go with the bulb watts - i am not 100% certain on what the rating is on the balast, but if i were going to hazard a guess, i'd say that is the balast's maximum power output (so basically you total up the wattage of all the bulbs in the balast, and if that total exceeds the rating on the balast - you have a problem).

the balast plays no role in the actual output of the bulb (assuming the balast provides the amount of power that the bulb requests.. if it can;t provide enough power, obviously that will impact the bulb output... but you are never going to get more than the bulb's specifications)

I'd like to comment about your discoloured parts... but i don;t really think i know enough to say what it could be... but i have read several people say things like "old growth = old problems"... of course like many of the rules, that is just a general guideline, and there are several deficencies that can appear first in old growth before moving onto the newer growth... i'd keep an eye on it and just make sure it doesn't seem to be getting worse... but hopefully somebody more well-versed in troubleshooting will chime in and give you some good advice

good luck! :rastasmoke:

I bert,
look here for your curling leaves
Marijuana Plants Problems - Yellow Leaves, brown spots, nutrient shortage etc.
Scroll down there is a good troubleshooter there.
Possible heat stress but photos as always would help

In my excecution chamber, the leaves that recovered eventually died after greening up, the damage was already done. New growth should be speeding up by now. Don't worry about the growth that was there in the tent but keep an eye on the new growth, I am certain that you won't have defficencies with ionic soft water at the strength of the solution you are using now. A tower fan blowing across your plants wouldn't hurt either.

Keep us in the loop

Subzero :smokin:

When the serated edge's of my leave's curl..It's time to recheck the PH.

Dive:stoned:

Well I took some pictures of the leaves that were turning white/yellow and they ended up getting deleted. The best way to describe what they look like on the lower leaves is Nitrogen deficiency. Now, to take this into consideration, all the leaves that are showing what looks like Nitrogen deficiency were still around with the original tent enclosure and I believe that is why they are looking bad/dying. I have still not seen any signs of this with the new growth and there are now some rather large fan leaves that are just looking better than I've ever seen so far in my tent. This has now been the best I've ever seen plants looking in my tent. I am almost totally positive that the major issue here was the tent with some additional underlying issues that have sense been resolved I believe (nutrient levels, flood depth, etc).

I think the other major problem I had was that I wasn't ever adding water and I changed the reservoir out every 2 weeks (this was before I purchased a PPM pen btw) so the PPM in the water was getting quite out of hand and I didn't know any better at the time. So to correct this problem what I am currently doing is this (began after a reservoir change this last weekend):
1) 20gallons of tap that set out overnight, 2 tsp./gal. of Ionic Grow (keep in mind I'm using a 40gallon reservoir...and my pump is still submerged when I flood with only 20gal. in the reservoir)
2) Every day I add 1 gallon of tap water with 1 tsp. of Ionic Grow

So far, my PPM's have stayed steadily at [email protected] and my PH has dropped lowest to 5.7 but adding the tap water nocks it back up into the 5.8-5.9 range. I think this is probably just going to be my standard rotation from now on. The only modification to this is maybe upping the PPM weekly between my 2 week reservoir changes.

I think the other major hurdle I'm going to have to cross is the lighting problem that you guys have very much defined for me, thanks everyone for describing that so that I could understand...and I fully understand now. I have a option that I wanted to run past you guys and see if you have any recommendations for placement on this....I have a 4 slot T5 ballast that I could throw 4 more T5 HO lights in which would be another 20,000 Lumens. Where do you think I should put it in the tent? My best solution, or what I think would be to mount it on either the left or right side of the tent and hang perpendicular to the floor. The only issue I find with this is that only one side of the plants would be getting the extra light, or the majority of it, and if that would cause any problems because the lighting displacement would not be even. What do you guys think?

P.S. @Divestoned - I bet Rusty would think the same of me (your sig). Its been like a dog and pony show over here.

Bert,

Get them in there (the additional lights) every bit will help. Can you get them beside or in front of the other lights sideways maybe? its kind of hard to see how much horizontal space you have left but flat above is the best option imo. Otherwise any which way you can, more light the better. I agree with your upping the nutes every tank change but if you see the leaf tips burn a bit, back off next change or add more water. ph is perfect, keep an eye on the new growth, you just didn't stand a chance with that tent.

Yes, Rusty would probabaly have said that to you (he reckons I dont know shit by the way). He is a knowledgeable person but he sounds off like a complete twat over and over again. A self acclaimed king with a chip on his shoulder in my opinion. Best to read most of what he says and ignore the unnessesary attitude and rudeness to others. If he ever spoke to me or anyone else in my presence as he does on these threads, I would take his head off in a heartbeat.

Hope you get some pic's up soon.

Subzero ;)

Hey guys, sorry I haven't checked in earlier but I have got some pretty, what I would consider amazing pics from how punked they were looking only a week ago. Due to the fact they are looking so much better I've just started them on a 12/12 bloom cycle that just started today at 8pm and will obviously end at 8am from now on. A week ago when I filled the reservoir I filled with half strength Ionic Grow (2 tsp/gal) which put me at [email protected] with 20 gallons in my 40 gallon reservoir. Every day since then I've added 1 gallon of tap water that sat out overnight with 1 tsp of Ionic Grow every day shortly after the lights kick on. Today, and for the rest of the week I will be adding 1 gallon of water with 3 tsp of Ionic Grow because I believe some of the new growth is starting to show some signs of under-nute as you will see with these pics in a couple of shots. I've maintained a PH of between 5.7-6.0 and between [email protected] all week by ONLY adding that 1 gallon of tap with 1 tsp of Ionic Grow so thats been working out very well. The plants are just now starting to give off some skunky aroma's but nothing really overpowering at all. Still debating what I want to do to solve the carbon filter problem. I think maybe tommorow I'm going to figure out how I want to rig that other Ballast in there but I do have one question...Do you think its ok if I just go with the T5 HO Metal Halides in that 4 light ballast or should I go all red spectrum ones? Right now in my 8 light ballast I'll be sitting at 4 MH and 4 of the red spectrum ones. I was thinking about going to the store this week and just getting 8 more of the red spectrum ones and putting it in both ballasts. That again would put me at an overall lumen count of 60,000 within an 800 cubic inch enclosure.

On another note about the Curling serrated parts of my leaves, I also have a picture of that as well. If that is a PH problem I've been sitting mostly between 5.9-6.0 all week....should I drop it to like 5.6-5.8 then???

Alrighty, Here are the pics, tell me what you think guys!!!

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