Ether's CC Blackwater Test Run HG Nutes Sunshine #4

[ether000]

What's up everyone!

Just thought i'd share my experiences with others and possibly get some pointers and tips from the more knowledegeable around The Farm. I have been around for awhile but just recently got my CA card and decided to undertake my first solo, personal, legal, medical grow.

After many years of seeing others grab cuts from the clubs, only to be disappointed... I decided to put in some effort, and hope for a lucky find in a pack of Cali Connection Blackwater seeds. The strain is said to be Mendocino Purps x SFV #3 Male. I have seen a few cycles of the Mendo from friends and i'm hoping to find some of its colors and dankness in a higher-yielding plant.

I started all seeds in Sunshine Advanced #4 with water PH at 6.1

Tap water comes out at 9.3 PH 45 PPM

I have read that SA#4 includes dolomite lime and is guaranteed at a PH range of 6.0-6.4... One question this leaves for me is WTF I should be settng nutes to... currently I have set the first light feed to 6.1, but i'm worried I should be at 5.8, as you will see in later pics.

All seeds broke thru in less than 72 hrs. with the first smashing thru at 44 hrs.

Seedlings were only left in the tray for 6 days at which point they were transplanted into 1 gallon pots. Lesson #1 in my first grow... FUCK TRAYS FOR SEEDLINGS. Moving forward I will start seeds in red-cups to avoid molesting the poor lil fuckers at transplant. It wasn't too bad, but I did have one whose roots separated from the soil and was a bit exposed compared to the minimal trauma the rest received.

All seedlings seemed to love being moved into new pots an really began to start taking off... Unfortunately, it appears that one of the seedlings suffered the consequences of its mother's hard partying and came out with a bit of the ol' retard. It was the one who broke thru first, and after waiting about 10 days I was forced to euthanize the poor fucker, as it was ruining the vibe for the others.

After the memorial service I focused my attention on the others... who appeared to be doing decent...

At 11 days I noticed a bit of leaf wilt, and my only thoughts was that I was perhaps misting too much, as i'm a wee bit excited. I backed the lights off a couple inches and stopped misting foliage and it appeared to help most of them.

Also on day 11 I decided to give them a small amount of nutrients as my tap is very low (45 PPM) and Sunshine #4 has a minimal amount of nutrients.

For this grow I will be running House and Garden Coco base with all additives.

For the first watering I simply added A then B at a low PPM of 100 with a couple drops of Superthrive. The plants didn't seem to react negatively, but I have begun to see some differences that i will show/discuss in a bit.

After noting some slight leaf damage and small spotting, I decided to mix the first batch of nutrients, as I was concerned the was a lack of calcium in my tap water considering the low PPMs, please speak up if i'm mistaken...

The mix was as follows:

10 L water
10 ML Coco A+B PH'd 6.1
3 ML Roots Excelurator
1 ML Drip Clean
10 ML Algen

After finishing the mix and retesting it came out to 6.4 PH 395 PPM... I dosed it down to 6.1, but the question I have is: Should I be PH'ing my base to 5.8, then adding additives and leaving PH alone of should I continue to adjust at base mix, then adjust after final mix?

I'm a bit perplexed right now because 6 appear to be thriving after the nutrients, but 3 of them have slight issues...

Here is the plant with leaf damage:

And here are the others, who appear to be fine...

All in all, things are going ok, and I do have 6 that are thriving and are looking to show some potential, but I'd apreciate any comments as to how I can improve the lacking ones... i'd like to have as many options as possible when it comes time to decide which one I am keeping for the long-haul.

If you read this far, thanks for your time and hope to see you again...

I will be updating, so please feel free to offers comments, support, questions, and constructive criticism.

 

[CelticEBE]

Are you in soil? If so I wouldn't drop the ph below 6.2. As far as what you fed them last time this is what I would do differently and why.

10 L water
10 ML Coco A+B PH'd 6.1
3 ML Roots Excelurator
1 ML Drip Clean
10 ML Algen

Ph too high for soil

Bring up Roots Excel to 10ml, it will make your Roots explode with growth, and your plants will love you for it.

My Algen extract recommends using 1-2ml per GALLON, sounds like you are way too high on this amount. Pretty sure it has a high PK to it and right now your lil ones need more N than PK.


I like H&G's recommendation of mixing bases, setting ph, and then mixing additives. It's worked really well for me. When I didn't do it that way the algen extract foamed the hell out of my rez.


Overall though it sounds like you are doing well. I hope you find a keeper in that bunch. I popped 5 beans and culled out 2 males, one that was just weak, and then one that auto flowered and hermied on me. My one keeper so far is a Queen to say the least. Not sure if I'm gonna get her to go purple on me, but the buds on her at 6 1/2 weeks are HUGE and frosty as fuck.

From what I heard from Swerve and others is that the keepers tend to have a bit more Indica dominance. Big fans that wind up with really DARK leaves.

I'm along for the ride and really hope you get some dank out of that pack o beans.

 

[ether000]

Thx for the reply bro, I'll be sure to keep up with your journal to see what to look for. I think you may be right about the high feed because I just went and checked and a few of the smaller plants seem to be getting a little curl and the beginnings of some discoloration. I have found this SA #4 drains and drys pretty quick so I went ahead an flushed the 3 questionable ones with some 6.0 PH water.

The others seem to be taking the mix ok, but next feed i'm gonna go ahead and lower the Algen a bit as that additive took me from 250 PPM with base to 395 at 1ML-1L mix.

I think i got a bit anxious on the feed and prob should have waited until the 2 week mark and rode out the low PPM tap-water til then. Lesson learned.

Now if i can just keep these greasy hands to myself I may just allow them to live lol!

 

[ether000]

I'm definitely gonna take your advice on the mix, as I think you may be spot-on as my deficiency being a PH issue. I read up a bit and Cal/Mag appears to have probs above 6.2 and I am probably on the cusp, if not over that. Next feed i'm going to 5.8 and dropping the algen considerably. I'm gonna take your word for it on the Excel and nuke these fuckers throughout, as i have seen Mendo done before, and it is a slow vegging bitch, and can use all the extra root mass it can get.

The Sunshine #4 is where my questions arise because I have been told it is not soil and is a mix of perilite and coco-fiber. I prob should have been treating it as such and giving it 5.8 as I would with coco fiber alone, but i was a bit confused as the manufacturer sets the medium PH to 6.1 so i just assumed it was to be treated as such and given a slightly higher PH when feeding. The effects speak for themselves and considering i was having a deficiency before giving them nutes, i'm going to go ahead and drop it for now and see what happens. Should be a couple days, but i'll post pics to show the effects of the changes.

Thanks for the tips, Celtic.

Edit: i just reread and it looks like you're saying to go higher. i tried looking online and on Advanced's site, but they don't offer any suggestions for nutes...

I ended up testing runoff and it comes out 6.7 PH 800 PPM so i went ahead and flushed with 5.7 PH and now i know to mix at 5.8 as well.. It seems the lime brings the PH up in this medium so I will have to monitor it and adjust my nutes accordingly.

 

[CelticEBE]

@ether

If it's a coco coir set your ph to 5.8. I mix up a weeks worth of nutes and set my ph to 5.5 and then when it climbs up to 6 I bring it back down to 5.5, that way all the peaks get caught.

I'm not familiar with the Sunshine #4 as I have only used Roots Organic but it acts the same way with runoff. It comes precharged so I usually don't feed them for a couple of weeks, just phed water with Roots Excel and a bit of superthrive.

 

[ether000]

Ya dude, my intent was to go coco on this run to avoid this exact issue, but I changed my mind at the store =\. I figured i'd start the beans in SA#4 because it had a low level of nutes and I wanted to avoid having to feed them as they were coming thru. I now wish i would have just got the coco, but at this point i'm gonna ride it out. I liked the roots i saw at transplant, so it seems to be fine in that regard, i just don't like dealing with some lime shit that's gonna leech and affect my PH. Hopefully once the shits rinsed enough it stops affecting my mix.

I'm definitely gonna start mixing at 5.8 at this point, but i'm a little irritated I nuked em already. Lesson learned i guess: don't get ahead of myself.

I think i'm just gonna follow your lead an hit em with Excel, Superthrive, and water for a week until this medium gets a little rinsed and i have a better sense as to how much I should be feeding em. Thanks for the tips for sure it really helped me get direction where I was going.

On a positive note, the 6 good ones don't appear to be too affected and have handled the 800 PPM pretty well, and are thriving. I'm still gonna back down on nutrients, but I have an idea that these are leaning towards being the frontrunners, and I like the fact they took the high dose in stride.

 

[mastacheeser]

i have a 24/7 cali connection hard on
il be watching for sure

 

[CelticEBE]

You crack me up mastacheeser! Yeah despite all the CC haters out there.....Swerve hit's some homeruns from time to time.

Yeah ether the Blackwater pheno seemed to eat really healthy like til I got her in Flower. I brought her up to 1400 but I think she may be able to eat a little more. Gonna ramp it up to 1500 on my next run.

 

[mastacheeser]

its all about finding the right mommie
with swerves gear, if your picky, you will be rewarded

 

[ether000]

So i'd thought i'd post a quick update after the intitial incident...

It looks like 3 of the 9 got burnt pretty significantly, but 6 seemed to be unaffected, and after flushing all with some plain 5.8 water they even look a little greener. The 3 burnt ones suffered some leaf damage, but i'm going to continue to just go ahead and flush this shit for the next week to try and get this PH back where it should be. At that point i'll start a light feeding again with a cut on the Algen and Coco AB and a bump on the Excel, as Celtic suggested.

Here's 5 of the 6 that seem fine...

And here's the worst of the 3 nuked ones...

This is day 14


I'll prob update in a week to show if they came back strong or not, or if I got any other issues. But just thought I show the bad in hopes i'll be owed some good.

As far as the whole hating on CC thing, i don't really give a F TBH. I'm prepared for retards and problems because in my amateur opinion, it just seems to be a neccessary consequence of the stressful breeding cannabis endures today. Like Cetic says, if i get one beauty i'm stoked and will baby that fucker forever. I'm waiting to grab some OGR seeds when they drop, just like everybody else, but for now I am hoping to get a nice offshoot of this Mendo, which i have seen with my own eyes and felt with my own receptors, to be a flavorful, stoney, strain.

 

[Tman42]

Curious to see how your Blackwaters are doing.....any updates?

 

[ether000]

I actually had to move, and ended up giving them to a buddy. He has 4 of the 9 so far and is just getting ready to throw in some clones of the indica domninant pheno. My original plan was to flower out the seeds, but he has his own strains, so this turned into a side project for him. I may be able to post some flowering shots in a month, but we'll see how it goes.

I will say these packs put out dramatically different phenos. We have one clearly indica dominant, on that has that SFV stretch and one with a combination of the two. The fourth is just a rapidly growing bitch, which was why it was kept, but I'm curious if it can make it a whole cycle withut retarding. I'll post later if you're still interested.