First Auto Hydro Grow Ak & Amphet

[Bashar Assad]

Finally after about three months of setting up my grow room, researching grow teks, cannabis growing info and everything else, I'm taking the plunge. I've also read the medicinal cannabis growing bible to help me gain some insight too.

So first things first let's go over my grow room and equipment……

Germination Area (Closet 2'x4'x8')

Humidifier (22"x18"x12" tupperware)
Analogue thermometer/hygrometer
240w 450nm blue/10k white LED on timer w/18/6 schedule, 2m above humidifier
12" oscillating fan
Heating mat

Growing Room

Tent

Heavy Duty Mylar lined (2'x4'x6') tent w/four 6" ports

Hydroponics

Two 5 gallon buckets w/6” net baskets, 6” drip rings connected to 70GPH pumps, w/2 x 2”x4” air stone
Hydrotron pebble grow media
Rock wool starter cubes

Oxygen Supply System

Two outlet 8LPH air pump
Two 7LPH air pump
Four 2”x4” air stones


Lighting

300w 6-band/ir/uv/12k white LED
240w 450nm blue/10k white LED
150w 670nm red LED

Venting

4” inline exhaust fan pulling air from grow tent thru 5' ducting
Exhaust air leads to carbon filter thru 2.5' ducting
6” clip on intake fan
12” oscillating fan

Cooling

Two 25L capacity water chillers connected to 88GPH water pumps
5000BTU air conditioner pumping cold air into growing room and hot exhaust out grow room window

Electrical

Two dual outlet hydrafarm analogue timers w/15 min increments
8 outlet surge protected power bar w/4 outlets timed on 30 min increment analogue timer
7 outlet surge protected power bar
heavy duty extension cord

Variable Monitoring

Analogue thermometer/hygrometer
Digital thermometer/hygrometer
IR thermometer
0.0-14.0 pH meter w/temperature correction & 3 point dip and click calibration
0.0-14.0 pH meter w/screw calibration
0-9999ppm TDS meter w/temperature correction
60ml nutrient syringe w/1ml increments
1ml hypodermic syringe w/.02ml increments

Chemicals/Nutrients

AN grow/bloom/micro nutrients
Hygrozine root formula
Insecticide
Fungicide
Two ona puks
4.01 pH/7.0 pH/10.01 pH buffering calibration solution
1000ppm TDS calibration solution
pH up/down


Okay now that that is out of the way onto the fun part…… the grow!!!!!

I'll be growing two auto plants. One Cream Of The Crop Amphetamine and one Critical AK.


Day One (Seeding Day)

I pH treated two 1.5" starter rock wool cubes at pH5.8 for 1.5 hours. After that I poked a 1/4" hole in each of them and placed each seed pointed side up in the hole. The cube was pinch closed and 4 tooth picks were put in the cube to first hold it closed, but second to make a cross to hold it above a mason jar (1/4 pint). This is so the tap root won't get soggy in the humidifier.

The cubes were put in humidifier and the walls and top and bottom of humidifier were sprayed with pH 5.9 water to bump up the humidity in the tupperware to 80%. The temperature is 78*F

Day Two

No growth yet. The humidity fell to 68% over night because I accidentally forgot to switch the timer on, on the lights (dammit). So anyways hopefully just a little hiccup, I poked the cubes and they were still damp so everything should be a okay. Humidifier was sprayed with pH water and within 1.5 hours humidity was at 82%. Temp moves between 78*F and 81*F daily.

More to come in the next week!

Here's some pics of my set up……

 

[Bashar Assad]

Oh and heres me in my g room costume!

 

[Bashar Assad]

So I decided to work on my I grow tent for a few ( see: 9) hours last night/this morning, specifically the electrical. So labelled all the ends of the devices I have running into the tent and jotted down on the label what the plug lead to.I then rerouted a bunch of device cords and bundled/zip tied them together so they weren't all over the place. Next I set up my power bar that has a 30 increment timer on it to my watering schedule for when the seedlings get transplanted. Plugged everything into that power bar accordingly, made sure everything ran properly and all was good. Next Made a little platform on top of my tent and placed my 7 out let power bar on it and ran the LED panels electrical cables thru a new port at the topside of the tent instead of where they had been lead thru, which is where I'm going to be putting the intake fan and ducting air from the ac towards on hot days.

So this is where the reason I ended up spending so much time on my electrical last night was because I had realized I had not gone over how much wattage I was drawing and I didn't want to start an electrical fire one day. So I went to the breaker panel and checked which breaker was for my bedroom (thats my g room), turns out my living room is on the same circuit. It's 15A @ 120v so 1800 watts is the total I can use and I want to stay under 80% of that so I had to play breaker roulette and figure out what breaker was connected with what area of my place seeing as they are labeled in a way that doesn't give any idea to what they are connected to. Long story short I found a circuit with no load being drawn on it so I get an extra 1800 watts of power, run a heavy duty extension cord along the moulding as stealthy as possible and now I have about 3200 watts of usable power. Then I spent a little bit of time figuring out what would connect to the bedrooms circuit and what to the other circuit (decided to connect the 183 watt 4" inline fan and 600 watt a/c to the other rooms circuit via 120-240v 30A heavy duty extension cord). Finally I finished early in the morning making sure I wouldn't burn the walls down when I had max load on during the bloom stage (max. 2000 watts drawn thru both circuits).

I can honestly say I'm glad I'm thinking of things like this now while I still have about 10 days before transplant. It'd be hell if I had noticed this like the day before and had to come up with all this figuring and planning out. I can honestly say I have a new respect for anyone who runs a room with any level of proficiency or a commercial grade operation. Just the planning and execution of how the set up is to be is a lot of mental work and planning. I have two years of physics in university and two years of engineering so I have a bit of knowledge to draw on (physics electrical circuits unit I thank god for last night) but I wonder how many noobs like try growing and just give up because of hitches like this that they have no background knowledge of.

Well anyways I'll cut a long post short (When Im baked I like to write heh) and just say that I ordered a fancy new power bar, and watt meter from amazon last night and they'll be here on thursday. Gonna finish and fine tune the electrical shit then, need a little break to read the Growers Bible till then. Then friday I'm working on venting and climate control in my room and tent with my a/c and some macgyver style ducting.

As for my Grow log this is what's up with my plants…..

July 28th/2015

-The Amphetamine has just sprouted and is barely peaking above the cube, nothing on the AK yet
-Humidity holds between 82-78% rh during the day
-Temperature holds at a constant 78*F all day/night
-240w LED is on a 18/6 schedule from 6am to 2am
-cubes are moist but not soggy

Seems like perfect germination conditions to me.

I spray the tank when the humidity dips below 80% or at least once a day with pH 5.9 water at 41ppm TDS.

Regards

 

[Quagmire]

Wowza bro... all I can say is you've done a shit load of work and I commend ya.. I don't have that kind of patience and why I grow organically in 3gal nursery pots, a simple 400w hps light, 265cfm fan w/filter, 6" passive intake from a room that stays around 68-75f keeping the room around 78.. I too grow Auto Flowering strains, never did until recently but this new generation of auto's are something special.. I get average of 2.5 oz and run 6 at a time. So more then enough for the wife and her pain needs.. this is something I'm for sure going to subscribe to because I want to see where all this hard work gets you ok.. wishing you all the luck in the world man..
Oh, here's a shot of one I am just finishing ok.. AK x Sour60

 

[Bashar Assad]

Yea I've been researching hydroponics and cannabis growing for about 3 months now and have just started my grow. I read up on it for at least 6-8 hours a day on different informational sites and forums or read the bible. My set up has gone thru about 10 iterations to get to where it's at and now it's finally fine tuned. My tent gets up to 90*F with the 300w and 150w led running so the ac is needed. I want to hit 76*F growing temp in the air and 66*F water temp. till then Im gonna plug away till I hit it. Tonight I went over how to make a make shift drip pan for the ac and how and what I'll need to duct ac air into the tent. Looks like I got it all figured out, tomorrow Im picking up 12' of ducting a 4" inline fan to draw in the cold air and a fume hood like adaptor to cover the entire vent on the ac that the ducting will lead from. Looks like Ill be going to the hardware store tomorrow! Pics of the baby amphetamine tomorrow!

 

[Quagmire]

I'm like you man.. some call it anal retentive, some call it a shit load of research.. but hey, knowledge is power. 1st thing I did starting 10yrs ago was join old Planet Skunk, read 4 different grow books back to back and learned all the jists about the plant itself. Once I got thoroughly confused I started.. I admit now my biggest error for years was chasing that next best idea until I settled down. Soma has a great grow book I think you should read.. he's got some great ideas on cropping techniques to add bulk.. I'm now disabled from auto accident and limited funds dictates much of how I grow.. probably why I'm enjoying watching your method of madness my friend, so rock on.. Q

 

[Bashar Assad]

Went to the hardware store today! Bought the last of my needed supplies. Got a kitchen fan fume hood intake that is 10" and narrows down into a 4" port, 16' of ducting to duct cold air from the ac to my tent which is, now that I re-measured only 5' away (guess I have extra ducting!), a bunch of o-ring clamps, duct tape, a tupperware container and metal grating to cover it which has a lip on either side so it'll stay on the tupperware. I also came up with this idea while I was at the hardware store, okay since I'm using a 5 gallon bucket w/6" net basket and it'll have 15 L of water in it to be pumped up to the ring every 6 hours; the plants roots may end up growing down into the water and perhaps clog the pump. So I bought two 8" diameter indoor plastic potters with holes in the bottom that are covered up so the roots can't go thru and some silicon glue. What I'm going to do is glue the potters on the net baskets with 2" clearance on either side so the roots are contained and the roots can't get into the water or clog the pump up. I think it's a great idea! So tonight before I go to bed I'm gonna do the ac ducting seeing as the LED's won't cut out till 2am.

Anyways onto the grow!

Well it's day four of the grow and the temp. has been a constant 78*F and the %RH has hovered between 78%-82%RH. On Tuesday the first signs of the amphetamine sprouting could be seen as the stalk could be seen cracking thru the cube. Wednesday it could it really started poking out of the cube and today (even tho it's 12:10am) its really coming out. The AK hasn't come out yet….. hopefully soon it'll pop out! Maybe when I wake up I'll get a surprise! One can only hope :D

Thursday July 30/2015

-Temperature 81*F
-RH% 78%

And here's my baby auto amphetamine!

 

[Bashar Assad]

Okay so I woke up late today :( Woke up at 3:00pm, must have been really tired! So I had some friends over tonight so I wasnty able to do a huge amount, but I did get some stuff done tonight and last night.

Last night I was able to get my air conditioner routed to my tent. I grafted on an 8" wide fume hood for a kitchen range to the vent of my a/c, which just happened to be 8" as well! Perfect fit! I used duct tape to fasten it on and made sure not to block and intake or exhaust ports for hot air. I then fastened a 4" diameter ducting line on with an o-ring. The ducting is approx. 8' long but it is only a 4.5' length to my tent where it enters via 4" port hole. That's all I got done on that. Before I goto bed Im going to figure out how Ill duct the cold air down to where was oscillating fan will be because I want the cold air to be pushed around the bottom of the tent.

Today so far I finally figured out all the electrical. Figured out which plugs are gonna plug in where to which power bar and which circuit is taking which load as my total used wattage is greater than the total watts I have available in my g room. So I have to pull in an extra 1600W from my unused dining room. Ill be connecting my tents electrical to my dining room circuit and my ac & exhaust fan to my bedroom circuit.

Looks like everything is gonna be awesome! With the a/c running into my tent it went from a high of 95-105*F to a low to 78*F, that's a pretty significant difference! Only problem is the humidity is only 20% now :( I have a spare humidifier so I guess ill run that in my tent or buy an impeller type humidifier and jerry rig it to pump humid air into my tent and connect it to my hygrometer so it'll turn it off when the humidity gets to around 50% ish.

On to the grow!

Well the AK finally can be seen about to pop outta the cube, I think by this morning it'll have broken out of the top. The amphetamine is doing great, she's started growing her set of second leafs and theres no sign of problems yet! The tap rot can be seen poking outta the bottom of the cube. Since the cube is suspended and the root isn't touching water it won't get wet and lower the chance of rot.

The humidity has been a stable 80% RH and the temp. has been fluctuating between 78*F - 83*F all day.

Hopefully we'll see the AK in the morning! Pics to come tomorrow evening!

 

[Bashar Assad]

Morning all! Well, I decided to wake up early today after waking up at 3:00pm yesterday :/

I'm going to work on the climate control in my tent today, Im taking temp. and %RH every hour starting with LED's off and exhaust fan off, and then turning both on, letting the tent get to its max temp and then turning on the a/c and tinkering with the a/c fan speed to get to the right speed and setting. I also finished the ducting on the a/c at 3:30am this morning, I ran a length of ducting along the back corner of the tent to right near the bottom of the tent where it will be right behind the oscillating 12" fan; blowing cold air into the plants. The a/c was venting right beside the exhaust port before this and now that I can get the cold air to vent right at the bottom of the tent I think I can hit 76*F with the LED's on and around 68*F while they're off.

Also gonna work on the electrical today, this morning at like 2:00am I was able to figure out where everything will be plugged into and into which circuits in the house. So in a bit I'll do that, gotta pick up a new misting bottle first as mine broke last night :( Also got my wattage meter in the mail today, now I can make sure I'm not over loading anything!

Pics to come tonight when everything is all set up!

 

[Bashar Assad]

As promised here are bunch of pics of my set up! I worked all day on the electrical and venting/climate control!

With the climate control, I managed to get the tents temperature to a stable 74*F-78*F and RH% around 50-55% which from what I know is preferable growing temperatures and RH. This is while running a 300 watt LED and 150 watt LED. I figured out how to raise the LED's by almost 12" in my tent which is really needed as the lights didn't give much clearance above the buckets. I did this with zip ties and making hanger out of them by looping a bunch together. The a/c is vented right on to the LED panels via 4" ducting which I think really helps bring down the tents temperature. With the chillers running in my tent the water temperature is at the optimal temperature of 66*F. Tomorrow I'm going to run the final climate control test and use the infrared thermometer to get the exact *F and *C of the tent in certain spots and the water.

With the electrical I bought a new heavy duty extension cord to connect my stuff in my germination closet to my bedrooms circuit as there's no outlet close to the closet. I got the electrical nailed down and everything will run with out anything tripping any circuit breakers as long as the germination room stuff isn't on at the same time as the exhaust fan and a/c that are on the same circuit. Checking everything with the watt meter all is good in both circuits both amp and watt usage wise. Plus no power bar cords are getting hot or extension cords either.

Looks like I'm all ready to grow! No more tinkering really left to do… awwwww that was half the fun for me heh. But oh my it was fun doing all this and getting to this place!

Now it's time to focus mostly on growing…. which is the kinda the point of this!

As for the grow log here's what the plants were at today….

July 31/2015

9:00am

Temp. 80*F RH% 80%

Aug 1/2015

12:10am

Temp 81*F RH% 80%

And here are the pics!!!!


First my collection of chemicals

Next the tent!

Venting/ac:

 

[keiksweat]

As promised here are bunch of pics of my set up! I worked all day on the electrical and venting/climate control!

With the climate control, I managed to get the tents temperature to a stable 74*F-78*F and RH% around 50-55% which from what I know is preferable growing temperatures and RH. This is while running a 300 watt LED and 150 watt LED. I figured out how to raise the LED's by almost 12" in my tent which is really needed as the lights didn't give much clearance above the buckets. I did this with zip ties and making hanger out of them by looping a bunch together. The a/c is vented right on to the LED panels via 4" ducting which I think really helps bring down the tents temperature. With the chillers running in my tent the water temperature is at the optimal temperature of 66*F. Tomorrow I'm going to run the final climate control test and use the infrared thermometer to get the exact *F and *C of the tent in certain spots and the water.

With the electrical I bought a new heavy duty extension cord to connect my stuff in my germination closet to my bedrooms circuit as there's no outlet close to the closet. I got the electrical nailed down and everything will run with out anything tripping any circuit breakers as long as the germination room stuff isn't on at the same time as the exhaust fan and a/c that are on the same circuit. Checking everything with the watt meter all is good in both circuits both amp and watt usage wise. Plus no power bar cords are getting hot or extension cords either.

Looks like I'm all ready to grow! No more tinkering really left to do… awwwww that was half the fun for me heh. But oh my it was fun doing all this and getting to this place!

Now it's time to focus mostly on growing…. which is the kinda the point of this!

As for the grow log here's what the plants were at today….

July 31/2015

9:00am

Temp. 80*F RH% 80%

Aug 1/2015

12:10am

Temp 81*F RH% 80%

And here are the pics!!!!


First my collection of chemicals

Next the tent!

Venting/ac:

nice little set ,keep it going lad.

 

[Bashar Assad]

Thanks! I got everything all nailed down finally! Just working on the growing part finally!

 

[keiksweat]

Thanks! I got everything all nailed down finally! Just working on the growing part finally!

what are those led s ya using.

 

[Bashar Assad]

Like what brand or statistics of them?

The brands I forget I can't quite recall as I've had them for a few months and have just set them up after not doing much with them. But they do work quite nicely when I got the 300w and 150w leds I wanted to see what they could do when used on some of the house plants. After a very short amount of time they exploded in growth, even the cactus I put in front of it, I was plesently surprised.

As for the stats
The 300w is 6 band wave length (I forget the specific nm's but one is 450nm and another is 670nm), infrared and uv. It's also 12k lumina (I think that's the measuring unit) white light. It's made up of 3w leds and has 100 of them.

The 150w led is made up of 50 3w leds. The produce 670nm red light.

The 240w led I actually can't remember the exact stats other than its 450nm blue light as well as 10k lumina white light.

 

[Bashar Assad]

So I worked on my set up once again tonight (starting to see this is becoming a build log rather than a grow log lol) started out with great ambition, only to hit a huge snag, feel defeated and want to give up but then push thru and get great results!

Oh btw I promise to have a shot of my little baby tonight as she's looking good!

So I started out wanting to create a nutrient tank to feed my two buckets that would be located outside of the tent and run both chillers to it to keep the water at 66-68*F. A water pump connected to a 30 minute incrimant timer would periodically pump water to the buckets. The pumped water would be lead into the tent where it would be split via t splitter and go to the drip ring on each bucket. The water pumped into the buckets would be pumped back to the main bucket via water pumps attached to the same timer as the main buckets pump.


Well I took the whole tent apart and got everything planned out. Went to make sure the pump I had would have enough power to pump water to the two buckets. It did..... and then..... well this happened.... the ports on the drip rings were a different size than the ports on the t connector. So by not having a piece that would go from 6mm to 8mm I was outta luck!

So there I was really annoyed about this and I was already having a really bad day and this just really made my day just so much better...... but.....

I thought... you know what maybe I can just use this as an opportunity to tidy my tent, stream line it and get the electrical cords not looking like a tumble weed. My ex had just told me before this that I should try to always look for a positive side on a situation and not focus on the bad so I decided to do as she said!

Anyways long story short I managed to get the tent all neat and nice looking, I'm a stickler for having things in place and not all over the place because I have a real ocd problem when it comes to stuff like that. And then I got the electrical cords to look aceptable!

I'll post pics in a bit my phone is bugging out so I'll do it later! As well as some better info about my grow!

 

[Bashar Assad]

Well I have some bad news :( after exactly one week I think I gotta close this grow log and I'll have to start again :(

Long story short I couldn't sleep last night so I stayed up all night tinkering with my germination closet. I lined it with mylar and put the led on a pulley, it looks great now tho but unfortunately I think I toasted my plants. Unfortunately after I put the humidity dome in the closet I forgot to put the lights up on the higher hanger and I left the humidity domes lid off :( I just checked the plants and we'll something great happened the AK is poking up out of its cube, but the amphetamine is a withered drooping shriveled up sad plant and it's tap root is just as bad. I misted the dome and raised the lights but I think it's too late :(

Well these seeds were kinda like my practice seeds to try to get my seed germ. Tek down before I use my better seeds. I have a few rydr varients coming in the mail that'll be here within a few days so I'll let this be a lesson to be careful. Altho one silver lining is that these plants would have got to tall for my tent and these 7 dwarf seeds and star rydrs and low rydr #2's coming all are midgets so my tents height suits them way better.