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My First Grow Journal...EVER! 600W MH/HPS Bubbleponics Cabinet Grow
- Thread starter ellz
- Start date
ellz
New member
Water Cooling Note: Was able to drop the reservoir temps down to 75.5ºF using the cooling fan I built and a single frozen 20oz bottle of water. I have a higher speed fan coming on Tuesday but I imagine I would need a half gallon or a full gallon of frozen water to reduce my reservoir temps down to the upper 60s. The single 20oz bottle was thawed out within 1 hour of putting it in the reservoir. I placed a fresh bottle in after removing the thawed one and will check on the temps in the morning. I doubt the temps will stay in the 60s long (if I get them there at all), but if I need to freeze some gallon jugs, then I will freeze some gallon jugs! One note for when this crop is done...install the cooling fans on the outside of the case so that they only draw in cool air from outside the cabinet! More than likely, I will build an external water cooler similar to one found in a PC. Either that or I will install an Ice Probe and insulate the reservoir. Either option will likely require the installation of either a second 20A line in my garage or I may buy a small solar system (100W or so) and run the coolers off of a deep cycle marine battery that charges via the sun with a bonus extra plug or two! All I know is it's going to be a bit costly, but it will be worth it to save myself over $400 per month growing my own versus buying it!
ellz
New member
No Title
07/16/2017:
01:30PM: I finally moved my charcoal can up to the top of the cabinet now that I have my fans blowing down with the duct. just used a pair of 36 inch zip ties rated at 175lbs each run through two eye bolts I just installed and voila! I have attached a picture of my cabinet now, with the change in place. I think this will allow the reservoirs to cool off a bit better since there is air space around all sides of both. I have two clip fans blowing the intake air down and one vortex fan blowing the warmer air up, over the surface of the light to help cool the grow area temps and eventually out through the canister fan. We will see how this changes my interior temps since I have kept track of it with this journal. As for the babies...they are looking great! It may be time to top them for the first time soon...so excited! My reservoir temps had dropped to the mid 70s with just my cooling fans. The ice bottles don't last long enough to do much of anything but they did help some so I may keep trying with that but I have the other fans coming Tuesday so I may not need to do anything besides change them! We shall see.
06:30PM: I checked on my reservoir temps after the lights were running about 30 minutes and they were still in the mid 70s so I may be able to cool them enough using the stronger fans. Moving my carbon can up top helped the air flow down below a lot, so my interior temps are down to about 89ºF to 92ºF. Previously, it was up in the upper 90s with the light going. The new temps are even after I moved the light a couple of clicks down closer to the plants! All-in-all, things are running pretty smooth. I have attached a picture of both pairs of plants on day 13 below. Thanks for reading!
07/16/2017:
01:30PM: I finally moved my charcoal can up to the top of the cabinet now that I have my fans blowing down with the duct. just used a pair of 36 inch zip ties rated at 175lbs each run through two eye bolts I just installed and voila! I have attached a picture of my cabinet now, with the change in place. I think this will allow the reservoirs to cool off a bit better since there is air space around all sides of both. I have two clip fans blowing the intake air down and one vortex fan blowing the warmer air up, over the surface of the light to help cool the grow area temps and eventually out through the canister fan. We will see how this changes my interior temps since I have kept track of it with this journal. As for the babies...they are looking great! It may be time to top them for the first time soon...so excited! My reservoir temps had dropped to the mid 70s with just my cooling fans. The ice bottles don't last long enough to do much of anything but they did help some so I may keep trying with that but I have the other fans coming Tuesday so I may not need to do anything besides change them! We shall see.
06:30PM: I checked on my reservoir temps after the lights were running about 30 minutes and they were still in the mid 70s so I may be able to cool them enough using the stronger fans. Moving my carbon can up top helped the air flow down below a lot, so my interior temps are down to about 89ºF to 92ºF. Previously, it was up in the upper 90s with the light going. The new temps are even after I moved the light a couple of clicks down closer to the plants! All-in-all, things are running pretty smooth. I have attached a picture of both pairs of plants on day 13 below. Thanks for reading!
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Much better having the filter can up on top. That's the way I designed my cabinet. I have intake air coming in at the bottom. This cool, dry air blows across my plant and is then drawn to the top of the cabinet and out through my filter and fan. Any heat generated by my lights is drawn upwards and out of the cabinet and not blowing down on the plants.
I like your cabinet, Eliz. Can you tell more about it?
I like your cabinet, Eliz. Can you tell more about it?
ellz
New member
Thanks JohnC! I wanted it up top all along but I have my intake fans blowing in from the top and I just added the duct pieces to force the air down, into the clip fans and then down to the plants. As for my cabinet setup, it is a custom built unit I made. Full details about it can be found on this post: http://forum.growweedeasy.com/forum/growing-community/95066-new-grow-set-up-advice
It's basically a 4 foot wide x 2 foot deep x 6-1/2 foot tall locking steel cabinet that I modified to be a grow cabinet. Originally, I was looking into buying a pre-made grow cabinet from SuperCloset (this one specifically: https://supercloset.com/product/grow-cabinets/superstar-hps-stealth-grow-box/ ) but it was very expensive, smaller than what I have now and comes with just a 150W light. The one I built cost less, has a 600W light and is almost 2x bigger!
It's basically a 4 foot wide x 2 foot deep x 6-1/2 foot tall locking steel cabinet that I modified to be a grow cabinet. Originally, I was looking into buying a pre-made grow cabinet from SuperCloset (this one specifically: https://supercloset.com/product/grow-cabinets/superstar-hps-stealth-grow-box/ ) but it was very expensive, smaller than what I have now and comes with just a 150W light. The one I built cost less, has a 600W light and is almost 2x bigger!
oldjarhead100
New member
wow ellz looks amazing I need to get started on my room thanks for the motivation
ellz
New member
No Title
07/17/2017:
03:00PM: Emptied both reservoirs and filled them back up with some fresh nutrients. I used the week 2 feeding schedule off of the General Hydroponics feed chart I posted. The pH tester says my nutrient solution is right at 6.00 which is perfect! The water out of the tap has a pH of about 7.1 but when the nutrients are added, the pH drops down to where it needs to be without the need of the pH Up or pH Down. I checked both reservoirs and this was the case so that is great news! I will still check the pH each time I refresh my reservoirs just to make sure. I also wanted to test to see if there was any light entering the cabinet while the light was off during the day so I set my phone camera's timer, turned off the flash and placed the camera on top of the light facing upwards (where all but one hole is) in the cabinet and closed the doors. 10 seconds later, I opened the doors and then moved the phone down to the reservoirs still facing up and repeated the process. The top photo came back with one very tiny light spot but the photo taken from down by the reservoir was completely black so there is no light getting past the light itself and reaching the plants. That will be crucial during the flowering phase! I plan on checking this again each time I move the light up just to make sure this stays the case, and adjust whatever I need to if it changes.
06:00PM: Once the light came back on I took a couple of pics of the babies as they sit after two weeks from seed and I posted them below. It looks like there are 3 nodes on each plant and the faster of each plant is starting on their 4th nodes now. I should be able to start topping them and LST soon so that's cool. Been checking the roots and they look good. Once this grow is done, I plan on redoing my drip tubes to get rid of any excess slack and give the roots more free space in the reservoir. I will note that the roots are a bit brown, but only because that is the color of the nutrient solution. I got a bit nervous at first but after reading about root rot versus root stain, this is just root stain.
07/17/2017:
03:00PM: Emptied both reservoirs and filled them back up with some fresh nutrients. I used the week 2 feeding schedule off of the General Hydroponics feed chart I posted. The pH tester says my nutrient solution is right at 6.00 which is perfect! The water out of the tap has a pH of about 7.1 but when the nutrients are added, the pH drops down to where it needs to be without the need of the pH Up or pH Down. I checked both reservoirs and this was the case so that is great news! I will still check the pH each time I refresh my reservoirs just to make sure. I also wanted to test to see if there was any light entering the cabinet while the light was off during the day so I set my phone camera's timer, turned off the flash and placed the camera on top of the light facing upwards (where all but one hole is) in the cabinet and closed the doors. 10 seconds later, I opened the doors and then moved the phone down to the reservoirs still facing up and repeated the process. The top photo came back with one very tiny light spot but the photo taken from down by the reservoir was completely black so there is no light getting past the light itself and reaching the plants. That will be crucial during the flowering phase! I plan on checking this again each time I move the light up just to make sure this stays the case, and adjust whatever I need to if it changes.
06:00PM: Once the light came back on I took a couple of pics of the babies as they sit after two weeks from seed and I posted them below. It looks like there are 3 nodes on each plant and the faster of each plant is starting on their 4th nodes now. I should be able to start topping them and LST soon so that's cool. Been checking the roots and they look good. Once this grow is done, I plan on redoing my drip tubes to get rid of any excess slack and give the roots more free space in the reservoir. I will note that the roots are a bit brown, but only because that is the color of the nutrient solution. I got a bit nervous at first but after reading about root rot versus root stain, this is just root stain.
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oldjarhead100
New member
nice picture ellz how did you get pictures of the roots inside the res?
ellz
New member
No Title
07/18/2017:
08:30PM: Everything is still running smoothly. I spent most of the day kayaking but I checked on the babies when I got home this evening and they are looking good! My new fans have come in so I will install those tomorrow and see if they reduce the reservoir temps at all. They have been pretty much in the mid 70s with the low speed fans so hopefully that will go down more with fans that are 2x more powerful. Below are pictures of each group of plants on day 15 from seed. Thanks for reading!
07/18/2017:
08:30PM: Everything is still running smoothly. I spent most of the day kayaking but I checked on the babies when I got home this evening and they are looking good! My new fans have come in so I will install those tomorrow and see if they reduce the reservoir temps at all. They have been pretty much in the mid 70s with the low speed fans so hopefully that will go down more with fans that are 2x more powerful. Below are pictures of each group of plants on day 15 from seed. Thanks for reading!
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sootandsweep
New member
can someone please tell me how to get oil from my plants
ellz
New member
Here is a whole section about it. I hope it helps.
http://www.growweedeasy.com/cannabis-extract-hash-oil
http://www.growweedeasy.com/cannabis-extract-hash-oil
ellz
New member
No Title
07/19/2017:
04:00PM: Wanted to test the ice bottle cooling ability again so I put two frozen 20oz bottles in each reservoir. The starting temps were 76.3ºF in each reservoir. Will check the temps in one hour.
05:00PM: Went to check on the ice bottles and both were about 95% thawed in each reservoir. However, the reservoir temps had dropped down to 64.6ºF in each one after the ice bottles had been in there an hour.
06:15PM: When the light came back on, I checked the reservoir temperatures again about 15 minutes after they had a chance to warm up. The reservoir temps were back up to about 71ºF so basically I would have to swap the ice every hour or every other hour to maintain lower reservoir temperatures. Honestly, this is not a viable option so it's scratched. I may look into other options but at this point, the grow is too far in to do any modifications on the reservoirs to install a cooler so I guess I will just have to hope for the best.
06:30PM: Topped all four plants. Each one had 4 nodes so I cut them back to having only 2 nodes each. They are all showing signs of stress from the topping (leaves are all curled a bit) but I will check on them later to see if they have recovered. I have posted photos of before and after the topping today below. Thanks for reading!
07/19/2017:
04:00PM: Wanted to test the ice bottle cooling ability again so I put two frozen 20oz bottles in each reservoir. The starting temps were 76.3ºF in each reservoir. Will check the temps in one hour.
05:00PM: Went to check on the ice bottles and both were about 95% thawed in each reservoir. However, the reservoir temps had dropped down to 64.6ºF in each one after the ice bottles had been in there an hour.
06:15PM: When the light came back on, I checked the reservoir temperatures again about 15 minutes after they had a chance to warm up. The reservoir temps were back up to about 71ºF so basically I would have to swap the ice every hour or every other hour to maintain lower reservoir temperatures. Honestly, this is not a viable option so it's scratched. I may look into other options but at this point, the grow is too far in to do any modifications on the reservoirs to install a cooler so I guess I will just have to hope for the best.
06:30PM: Topped all four plants. Each one had 4 nodes so I cut them back to having only 2 nodes each. They are all showing signs of stress from the topping (leaves are all curled a bit) but I will check on them later to see if they have recovered. I have posted photos of before and after the topping today below. Thanks for reading!
Attachments
sootandsweep
New member
thankyou for that
ellz
New member
No Title
07/20/2017:
07:00PM: Wanted to check on things after topping all the babies yesterday and I am happy to say they are recovering nicely. My reservoir temperatures are down to around 74ºF with the cooling fans blowing on them so I am pleased with that for this grow. I will make changes before my next grow but low 70s is okay for my first one. I also plan on insulating the reservoirs this weekend with some bubble wrap insulation so that may help a lot too. The roots are going crazy down below. I will need to redo my tubing in the reservoirs after this grow to keep them out of the way of the roots but I think things will be okay for now. I have posted a photo of each group on day 17 from seed. Thanks for reading!
07/20/2017:
07:00PM: Wanted to check on things after topping all the babies yesterday and I am happy to say they are recovering nicely. My reservoir temperatures are down to around 74ºF with the cooling fans blowing on them so I am pleased with that for this grow. I will make changes before my next grow but low 70s is okay for my first one. I also plan on insulating the reservoirs this weekend with some bubble wrap insulation so that may help a lot too. The roots are going crazy down below. I will need to redo my tubing in the reservoirs after this grow to keep them out of the way of the roots but I think things will be okay for now. I have posted a photo of each group on day 17 from seed. Thanks for reading!
