Quote Originally Posted by Stormcooker
Just when I thought i had the "immaculate conception" , the perfect grow, the flawless germination,veg, and flower, I discovered balls on two out of three plants. THESE ARE FEMALE SEEDS!!!! Skunk Special from femaleseeds.nl. All three have been going great until I found balls. THe thing is though, they are budding out really nice for three weeks at 12/12. What should I do? What should I expect? Tonite I am going to remove every ball I can find. They are very young balls and are probably not releasing pollen yet. I'm not sure what will happen to the plant after I remove the balls. Will they come back? Are the buds going to suffer? They still look and grow like the strongest heartiest females I've ever grown. Lots of bud sites.

I don't have light leaks, no over-fert, no under-fert, no stress, great lumens and air-flow.

Could it be the seeds? I've heard only good things about skunk special though.

one thing it could possibly be, but I don't know, please give me your opinion....... I have direct cold air from a A/C unit blowing on to the plants to protect from over-heating from a low hung 430W HPS. It runs only when the lights are on and provides great air exchange. Because it's an a/c, the temp in the cabinet fluctuates between 70 and 90 degrees when lights are on. THe plants show no sign of stress from this (other than the hermie thing). THe plant closest to the a/c has more balls.
Another possibility is that I had two power outages (that I know about) while lights were on. One power outage caused lights to remain off for an hour during the light-on cycle. THe other was just for a minute or so.

What do you think? Should I expect seedy bud and low yield even while things still look great (except for the balls)?? SHould I redirect the a/c to not blow directly on plants? Will it help to clip off balls and keep going? Will they come back?

If I have seedy bud in the end, will these seeds be good for future germination or will they most likely produce more hermies?

Thanks for your help!!!!!!!!
"the temp in the cabinet fluctuates between 70 and 90 degrees when lights are on." the Temperature swing was the guilty one in this. Not the power outage or any light leaks.

Sometimes its just life trying to survive too, you know nature will find a way.

You are better off cooling the whole area and using air-cooled hoods to get the lights close that will save big temperature swings.

As for having hermies just use a clean knife or raiser blade and remove them with caution. Really if you have a vacuum (yes I have a small one for computer work) that will help to make sure if they do pop the pollen will not reach any of the flowers and cause real problems. Take it slow and do a good job and everything will be fine. If you do get some your smoke will be fine just a few seeds in it. When the temperature goes over 90 for a period of time you run a risk of that happening.

It's not the end of the world and there is no need to rip it out and trash it unless you have many plants and missing one or two is no great loss.

The seeds are fine from that plant no guarantee it's female but it does have a better then 50/50 chance. It also has a chance of producing a hermie as well.