Hello, thought I'd finally join up and give thanks to everyone here for helping me with success in the undercurrent. I've learned a lot by spending countless hours reading the undercurrent threads and would like to share info with other growers on how to use these systems efficiently and successfully.
This is the rasta room I built from the foundation to the roof.
Green room is veg, red and yellow are both flower rooms. Yellow has 11-600's in it, and 4-4' t-5s with reptisun lizard UVB bulbs.
All rooms are connected to 55 gallon barrels that serve as an external epicenter.
Red room currently had a strain I made called cynergy. It's a female cinx crossed with a male white shark. A male seed of that was crossed with blackberry kush.
Cinx I've run botanicare with a live res, house and garden, CS nutes with Roots, GH three part, fox farm cha Ching, and probably some more. Right now I'm running jacks hydro at the three two one ratio with cal nitrate and Epsom. I've been running this with CS roots for veg and then switching to an og biowar tea for flower.
So far GH and CS seem to work the best, but jacks is looking great. Any input from you guys on using Jacks?
Yellow room has cinx in it. Cinderella 99 crossed with Hindu Kush, or OG kush. I've heard both. Does really well in the system. Stretches out with spears and fills the room.
Shot of the 55 gallon external epicenter. You can see the return line hooked up to a float valve from the undercurrent system. The other float valve is spring water that constantly keeps the system topped off. The stainless coil chills the system. I ordered it super cheap from New York brew supply thanks to woodsman I believe(thanks).
There is a mag drive pump in the bottom of the barrel that returns water to the hydro system. And a res heater for winter, plus each barrel had a blue lab ph and ec meter.
This is a small chiller res. The lid is off for the picture. Chiller is outside in cool air. Each pump runs water into a stainless steel coil for each separate room.
These are wet shots of a new og ghost train haze number 1 I got. They are in a small soil tester run, but I'm pumped on the strain and am planning a run in the hydro rooms. Anyone run this strain in the undercurrent? I'm thinking the structure will do well.
Redwhiteblue
I'm not sure if I could really say what the best was. I also like the ease of use of the cs roots. I like keeping the system sterile for as long as possible with the roots. This seems to help with rotting roots down the road. Then if the plants are going into flower and I feel like they could use a boost to their root mass I'll switch over to teas.
Or sometimes the sterile root mass just gets large and one day I'll go into the grow room and the ph has taken a sharp spike down. Then I'll know a root problem is coming so I'll start using tea. I've saved plants that were on their deathbed with the tea.
I've also been foliar feeding with the tea from clone up until early flowering with great results.
In my opinion GH three part is hard to beat though. I was running more of a Lucas style formula with fox farm cha Ching added in during bloom.
If anyone is interested in making teas I suggest reading "teaming with microbes".
I'm using a Heisenberg style tea, but instead of using Alaskan forest humus mixed with earthworm castings I'm using soil from a creek bed with lots of annual grasses near my house. I mix this soil with castings. For cannabis you want a bacterially dominated microbe tea and forest humus is more fungus dominated.
The microbes that dwell in annual stuff in meadows and stream beds jive better with cannabis because it's an annual too.
That's the theory anyway, I've used forest humus and it worked great also!
Is GH three part your favorite so far?
CS seems super ph stable..
Yellow room with cinx at day sixteen after flipping lights. I've been playing around with flipping them at 14 hours on and 10 hours off. Doesn't seem to lengthen flower time and allows and extra two hours of energy to hit the plants. Probably strain specific though.
I run six sites per room. I run all open hoods and cool each room with a 12" max fan... It's super simple and easy. I live in a coastal area so cooling isn't much of an issue as long as there is adequate circulation. I'm thinking the next setup will be a sealed room with co2 though....