newbie hydrocfl experiment

this is something i started back in Feb. and i'm not exactly what you'd call 'organizized' so note taking has been sporadic at best.

in doing this (posting) i hope to get help with problems i encounter, and believe me, i've not only encountered several problems, i've gotten a LOT of useful advice. i also hope to help or inspire others of us still slogging up the learning curve. mostly though, i do this because i find that i enjoy growing immensely, i find it truely relaxing and there is no bud as sweet as the one you grew yourself!
i find also that i need someplace safe to talk about it, to confer, to opine, to ...

sorry, people tell me i'm long winded. here are some pics of the beginning

1) my cfl's with a view of my old MV security lights (man they sucked)
2) my bin (proto-type #1) with black duct tape, dowels, hot glued for support, and bag-seedlings in DIY net pots, aka dixie cups
3) note oscillating fan in back, air line in front and thermometer hung too high in the upper right
4) puttin' down roots
5) ahhh, my canopy to be

more pics please

1) the back of my closet
2) work begins on proto-type #2
3) pretty self-explanitory
4) ubiquitous duct tape
5) getting ready for movong day

what style hydro??
lol looks like you could use some zip ties for the mile of wires
looks cool man ......always wondered what to do under the stairs..

I guess some background would help so, first, Iâ??m 52 now and I started â??blazingâ?? my own trail in 1968, â??the good old daysâ??. Iâ??m also a disabled vet and a single parent with 3 teenagers convinced they know all the answers before theyâ??ve heard the questions, sadly, just like theyâ??re old man back in â??68, I vacillate between wanting to hug them and wanting to choke them, lol.

Anyway, thatâ??s another story, maybe â??The Trials and Tribulations of Trying To Teach Teenagers To Thinkâ?? would work.

Enough intro, as I said, Iâ??m new to growing, in fact, Iâ??m actually only recording hypothetical scenarios that exist within the nooks and crannies of my half-baked mind, Iâ??ve NEVER actually grown any illegal substances, nor would I. I'm actually just lost in thought.

Anyway, it was last year i decided to try growing my own bud and, although it didn't yield me what i'd hoped for, i got enough to be hooked. lol.
Anywho, that first attempt was in dirt, in DIY pots made from 2 liter Coke bottles and they worked great, not big enough for momma's but nice for clones, and 15 of them fit into one of those bins (before the hot glued dowels were installed of course).
This time i decided to go hydro and i know now, except for outdoors, i will never go back, my results have been MUCH better with the hydro and the cfl's too

Quote:

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Originally Posted by moneyshotpb

what style hydro??
lol looks like you could use some zip ties for the mile of wires
looks cool man ......always wondered what to do under the stairs..

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DWC my man, very few moving parts. also, i don't think i'd know how to act if i wasn't tripping over my own shit, lol, still a teenager myself inside here (my head), and thanks, still very much a work in progress.

some more pics of the transition to stage 2

1) half done moving
2) move complete (note different colored cups for different bag-seed strains
3) complications (i battle root-rot)
4) more roots, sick from oxy deprivation
5) a little healthier here

not the yellow tint to the water, i tried some stuff i got at the pet store sold to treat fish with fungal problems, i don't know if it helped or not but it didn't hurt them and most survived. the survival rate of my seedlings has been MUCH better with hydro.
anyway, here are some pics of vegetative growth during my battle with root-rot. note the short internodes brought about i'm sure because i used 4x30wtt 6500K CFL's and 1x40wtt 2700K CFL for lighting, the growth i've gotten off these CFL's has been amazing.
and i'm using cfl's rather than hid's because i can add 40wtts at a time for under ten bucks as opposed to having to buy an hid for 300.00. also, lol, before you suggest it, i plan on reversing my light spectrum for flowering

Root rot = Reservoir temp????

not res temp but oxy dep, i got lazy making the move and left the plantlets in the new proto-types without an oxygen line for a few days, not very smart i know, fortunately, most survived my neglect.
shit man, they grow like WEEDS lol

pics 1 and 2 are of the ones that i neglected, pics 3 and 4 are the ones that had uninterrupted oxygen and the last pic is another shot of the expanding canopy, note the empty cups left by the valiant dead.