Any help appreciated...learn from my mistakes

[growfox]

I hope you like reading...

My new job is basically medical marijana cultivation...legally. My friend and I basically rely on decent harvests to support ourselves right now. Unfortunatly, our grows have been going south with serious problems across the entire spectrum of the growing elements such as temperature, nutrients, etc. which I will explain after I give you a run down of what we are running.

Afgani bubba kush is our strain of choice and its a pretty strong strain as far as I can tell. We use Ebb and Grow systems for everything. If you do not know what this is, then I will explain and briefly as possible: There are 3 major parts- Resivior, Brain, and buckets. The Resivior obviously holds water and nutrients, The 'brain' controls when and how long the watering cycles go are, the buckets get flooded to the same level as the brain bucket. This wasnt our method of choice but circumstances pushed us into using ebb and grow, mostly beucase of its reliable track record. We have 3 rooms, all about 9-11' square.

Room 1 is our veg and clone room. The room has 1 24000 btu air conditioner, 1 1000w HPS light with unbrella hood which is about 3 feet from the plants. There are 80 buckets in this room connected to a 100 gallon resivior. We also have a 1000w MH light on standby just incase they need more light for whatever reason. The clones are now done 2 different ways: Rockwool cubes and ez-clone. Rockwool cubes have solid track record so far, however they seem to take longer than the ez-clone. The easy clone is faster but is a little more risky beucase everything has to be in perfect working order or else you risk dead plants in less than 24 hours. We use shultz root compound. No nutients are added to the clones water except for a little root compound mixed with the water beucase the sprinklers seem to wash the compound away too quickly and the ratio of water to plants is pretty high. We have 1 12" floresent light per 15-20 clones either extremely close or actually touching some of them(ambient temp permitting).

Room 2 and room 3 are nearly identical except for size and number. They are both flowering rooms. One room currently has 4x 1000w HPS lights(soon to be 6) with 6" Sun Systems hoods, the other has 9x 1000w HPS lights with silver star 6" hoods(only 6 are running right now though). Both rooms have about a 8:1 ratio of plants to hoods/lights. The two rooms share a 100 gallon resivior right now beucase we were struggling to find the space to put the two 50 gal resivior. This was probably a mistake as I will explain soon.

Here is our nutient list for each stage:

Clones: No Nutients(a little rooting compound)
Veg: 1 cup of miracle grow powder, 100 drops of superthrive, 2-3 cups of liquid vitamin B, 1/2 cup of maxigrow for veg, 1/2 a cap of miracle grow liquid for veg.
Flower: Humbolts Master A and B(highly recommended), after 2-3 weeks- kool Bloom, a sprinkle of northern lights, a little bit of advanced nutrients overdrive(maybe not this time, as I will explain soon.

Our normal ambient temerature outside during the day is 80-100 F, while night is about 50-60 F,
Temeratures in each room stay: 64-70F if everything is working correctly.




I think I covered just about everything. When I arrived here, his flower was fatally covered with spider mites. We ended up overhauling the first flower room(the second flower room didnt even exist). While we were trying to balance our jobs with getting the flower room finished, the veg room was overgrowing big time. By the time we finished, our veg was about 2 months old and in desperate need of flowering. 6 weeks later, we pulled and came out with 2 lbs from the 24 plants that survived(we pulled early due to a miscalculation on the dates, plus i was still learning so I didnt know any better). Unfortuantly, the 40 plants we had in veg were overgrown again by over 2 weeks so we put them into flower asap. We took clones and expanded our veg to 80 buckets in preparation for the 3rd flower room we were building, unfortuantly we only had about 20 clones ready to go into veg, plus the 8 left over from the previous veg. So 2 weeks later I took as many clones as possible and put them in rockwoll cubes and planted them in 3 different stages until all 80 pots were filled. r half of our plants were ready to go in and half were still vegging. There was a problem though, our electrican didnt show up until 2 weeks later and then didnt actually finish the job until 3 weeks later so we were stuck with over sized plants against, and as if this wasnt bad enough, our flower got tip burn from over feeding them humbolts hardener, which also left a nasty residue all over the resivior. Some didnt make it, plus there was still much to do in that room. After 3 days of nonstop construction, the room was ready and we were filling up our resivior, but our optimisim was short lived when we noticed the resivior was leaking(keep in mind its 100G) and this is a 2 story house. After some fierce drying, and scratching our heads trying to figure out how to stop the leak, we tried expanding foam, some kind of glue sealant, even tried a different resifoir but it had the same problem. Finally, after nagging to my friend, who knows more than I do about growing, he finally decided to try my origianal idea of lining the entire resiviour with a sheet of 6 mil plastic. It worked for about 1 day and decreased the leak to a drip, but it was still too much to just leave alone, so I put a smaller piece of 6 mil poly down, then a large piece that covered the entire resivior, then I put another smaller piece, then another larger piece. Finally the leak was completely gone. Im not trying to bore you to death about our trials and errors, I just thought it was important that you got the whole picture of what the problems were and how we fixed it. So now our room is finally set up and we begin transferring all 72 plants to the flower room. This went pretty smoothly, but then we had to plant new clones in veg and this was the first time we tried planing ezclones and half of them ended up dying, I am guessing beucase they didnt have the rockwool cubes to lean on for water and only a few of them had roots long enough to touch the bottom of the buckets to get the water it needed. So again, we were short on veg. And this is where we are now.

We ended up pulling our flower that got tip burn and so far we are at about 1/2 lb for 32 plants, we are still cutting up though so lets hope that the tip burn didnt hurt our plants too badly.

All the information at the begging of this post is what everything is at right now. I hope that some of you experts will take the time to read this and give some feed back as to what you would do to improve the set up such as different nutrients, temperatues, lighting, etc.

I will put some pictures up if I get approval from my friend...hes asleep right now though.

 

[NorCalHal]

Big Show.

Can you explain a little more about the rooms??

What kind of Exhaust and Intake air do you have going on? What size out, what size in? Passive or fan?

Are the lights aircooled? How are you cooling them? What size Blower? Are you usuing insulated ducting?

Why an A/C in the Veg room, better off in the flower rooms.

Your Res leaking needs fixed ASAP. Get a new res. You should never have to "fix" your res.

The mites HAVE TO BE CONTROLLED, or you are just pissing up a tree. Treat your Veg room EVERY 3-5 days forever, if you see bugs or not. Diligance is key.

As far as your nuits, Ditch the add a little this, add a little that. Use a SIMPLE 2 or 3 part ONLY, until you get your rooms dialed, then play with nuit additives if you wish. I perfer GH 3 part. I would never use "humbolt" as they are more geared for outdoor then indoor hydro.

EZcloners do clone faster, but I don't like the "stick with roots" clones that they make. Plain old rockwool cloning is your best bet. Just plan ahead, and give yourself plenty of time before you harvest to have new girls ready. Eaiser said then done.

Pics of the system would be cool also.

 

[Funkfarmer]

You really shoudnt have to fix your res but if you have to, i would use some fiberglass mesh and 2 part resin and hardener.

 

[growfox]

Spider mites are gone, which I should note that this is the reason we keep our rooms so cold is beucase its 10x harder for them to produce offspring that survive in cold climates. We might start pushing the temp up to 70 in the future if we think we can get bigger buds out of it but for now, we are playing it safe. We currently dip the leafs of our freshly cut clones in a very very watered down insecticidal soap. After they grow and are done with vegging, we spray them down with more insectisidal poision that is very easy on the plants, then we transfer them to flowering. I know its next to impossible to get rid of all your spidermites, but our cleanup process is pretty rigorous and if we have any spidermites left, it is probably only a few. I havent seen a single web in our crop since I started cutting up.

Cooling setup:

Most of the rooms have the same basic set up but there are some differences:

Room 1: Closet had all fixtures removed and a 12" hole put in the celing wall as close to the middle of the attic as we could get it so that the roof wouldnt block air passage. The surrounding fiberglass insulation was removed to allow more air flow. The closet is separated from the rest of the room by 2 layers of poly, 1x 6mil poly, 1x black and white 3 mil poly with the white facing into the veg room. A 12" 1020cfm centrifuge based fan is used to pull air. The air intake comes from the bathroom window which is always open. The problem with this is that the bathroom window is about 25 feet away from the 1020 cfm. blower so we have to run ducting from point A to point B. This was done to aviod suspicion. The room has windows but we also make a lot of noise, espeically with a 24k btu air conditioner running constantly. By the way, Dont ever get Haier AC's, at least not the 24k btu model, we have gone through 3 of those and 2 more might die anytime, we hear rattling inside both of them like its going to fall apart. Gorilla Tape(similar to duct tape, but stronger) is used to make the poly air tight. We also have a 6 mil door that is pegged up around the entry way except for a small flap to allow people to come in and out.

Room 2: The closet in this room is completely different from the other two rooms. The other two rooms have a wide closet that would have the roller doors. This room has a normal door entry to the closet which has about 2 feet that is like a little hallway which leads to a 5x4' closet. We had to get kinda creative about the air conditioner with this room beucase we needed to have access in and out of the room so built a "bridge" to hold the air conditioner up about 3-4 feet off the ground so that we could walk through. So far this hasnt caused any problems except when we had to replace the air conditioner in that room, it was a pain trying to slide a 150 pound ac unit into an area just bearly bigger than the unit and nothing was lubricated so we were fighting against gravity and friction the entire time. There are two large holes cut through the back of the closet to allow air to flow from the room behind it(the laundry room) which has a window. The air is pulled from a 12" 1020cfm centrifuge fan just like the other room. This room has 4/6 lights so we added a squirll fan to the end of the ducting on the lights which pulls most of the hot air pretty well. This room is pretty well in tune, the AC is big enough to keep it at 64F no problems.

Room 3: Has the same closet setup as room 1 but the closet shares the laundry room on the other side so we pull air from the same window and the air floting in the hallways. We ended up cutting 3 large holes to maximize cooling. There are two AC's in this room beucaes it will eventually be running 9 lights. 2 of the holes are cut behind the ACs to allow it to travel away from the ac and then get sucked back up into the closet by the 12" centrifuge fan. We ended up connecting a 6" centrifuge fan to the ducting that runs through the lights but we came to the conclusion that this wouldnt be enough to cool them down fast enough so we are acutally looking to invest in a larger one once we get paid again.

As far as the resivior- At the time we were broke and couldnt afford a new resivoir, plus our local hydro place doesnt sell anything that large, they only have the ebb n grow 55 gallon. Even if we separated the rooms into two smaller resiviors, the 72 bucket room is way too much for a 55 gallon resivior, so we are looking at running a second brain unit which would add up to about a $500 investment or we just keep the resivior which seems to be working okay. Plus we just ran out of room, we dont have any space big enough to another 55 gallon resivior except in room 2, but that wouldnt solve the problem with room 3 having 72 buckets and only having enough space for one resivior.

 

[growfox]

I posted a bunch of pictures in my user profile. I hope this link works:

http://www.marijuanapassion.com/Gallery/member.php?uid=12664&protype=1

 

[Tater]

Why not just use a large industrial garbage can as your reservoir? Cheap, and available everywhere. Also if I read the above correctly you are venting directly into your attic. This is a HUGE no no. Unless you plan on burning that house when you are done you need to change this now. Before the weather changes and it gets colder or you will have problems like you have never seen with condensation and mold. You should be venting DIRECTLY outside.

One other thing, in your first post you claim to be legal and legit and in the next you talk about stealth? Whats up with that, why hide if you don't need to. Just secure the house properly OR even better grow in a commercial space with industrial wiring and concrete floors and drains.

 

[andy52]

thought the same thing tater

 

[NorCalHal]

IMHO, even tho some of us say "legit" and it IS legal in our state, FEDLEO is ALLWAYS a concern. That is why, even in Cali, Legit "State Legal" ops are underground. Even in cites such as Oakland, 100 patient collective grows still have to be stealth.

Anyway, I'm going to play along.

First, it is not next to impossible to get rid of the mites. 1 mite is too many.
Dilligance is the KEY to solving pest problems. Bigger grows, this is MUCH harder to do. You HAVE to spray for bugs regardless if you see one or not. This HAS to be done from the time you get your clones/seedlings. And keep spraying 2 weeks into 12/12. Every 3-5 days. Like Nike said "Just do it"

With venting to the attic, it can be done, BUT get your butt up in the attic and pull that ducting to the House Gables. Or, you can get a Gable fan, which I have done, and that works as well.

As far as your intake in room 1, 25' is a long run. You should get a 6" fan to help push air in.
Get these to control your fan speeds and balance out the room.
http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=43060

Lets talk about your lights.

First off, they are too high imho. They need to be closer.

I see they are ducted, but you say they are cooled by a squirlcage? A squirlcage will only cool 1000w.
To save on your AC's, you need to properly cool those lights man. They look like 6" ducted hoods? If so, a 6" can fan for every 4 lights will work.
And, on the ends of your lights that connect to a new row of lights, use a 90degree elbow and use self tapping screws to attach them to the lights. This way, it will make straight runs of ductwork from light to light, no bending of the ducting. That saves a couple of dgrees right there alone.

If you get those lights cooled right, and exhaust all that hot air, your a/c's will not have to work near as hard to cool the room.

IMHO, DWC for bigger shows is a PITA. Flood tables rock.

 

[growfox]

California state law under proposistion 420 says that if you have a perscription or if you are considered a caregiver for others who have a perscription, then you can legally grow weed until you are a weed corporation.

Federal law states that under no circumstances are you to grow any weed what-so-ever.

Obviously local police won't do anything except maybe harass you and if your operation is too big, ocassionaly rip out all of your plants and dispose of them(meaning they dry them and smoke them when no one is looking). Normally this is only done if your operation is linked to other illegal activities such as illegal gun possesion, narcotics, etc.

Feds will raid your house and destroy it - short of setting it aflame - if they find out you are growing. This is why we try to stay low key. DEA and other organizations basically have an 'out of site out of mind' mentality. If you dont ever show up on their radar except occassionally for small stuff that is covered under prop. 420 anyways, then they normally wont bother you. Its too much paper work and resouces and is unrealistic for them to prosecute everyone they come accross.

Our operation is as sqeeky clean as we can make it. All of our state paperwork is in order to protect us from local authorities mistakenly raiding us, we even have an affit davit that has been notarized stateing exactly what we are doing. We have no assocations with thugs or people of questionable character. We have one gun that we have not touched in months and is only for protection because this house was actually broken into before we moved here. Our entire operation is as sterile and clean as possible. We run a non-profit organization which recievies donations. I know it sounds like a scam but we really only sell to people who have their cards and need it.

I realize this is a little longwinded but you have to understand that even if it was federally legal, would you really want to take the chance of all those stoners out there taking one too many puffs and deciding tonight is a good night to break into the local grow shop? There are many risks with what we do, espeically beucase of the size of what we do.

And let me ask you, do you tell every single person you meet where you live and that you grow?

Lastly, to comment on not venting into the attic, I will take it into consideration, but you are talking about a good 30 hours of work. Ive actually been trying to talk my friend, who is pretty much considered the boss, to buy 2 large centrifuges to shoot air from one side of the attic to the other so that there is a steady temerature and humidity, plus it will increase overall air flow.

 

[growfox]

Sorry hal, i walked over your post a litte bit, I was replying at the same time you were so I didnt see your post.

Lights were raised after the first few days beucase the plants were in shock and they were still recovering, but thanks for reminding me though, ill take a look at them tonight and see if any group of them is ready for the lights to be lowered.

We did end up putting a 6" centrifuge on the lights and bought a second one a few days later becuase the air flow wasnt what we wanted it to be. Right now that centrifuge is being used on our carbon filter becuase our old drying room was getting too hot and it made the buds taste like wood so we ended up moving our drying to our kitchen where its all tile and easy to clean up, but we were worried about smell so the carbon filter took the priority with the centrifuge. We are about to cut up so we will move the centrifuge at the front of the duct to suck in air, and the other end to blow it out.

Our attic is tiny. This house is built a little oddly, its not nearly as pointy as most homes and the roof lays almost on top of the celing. I can probably fit myself in by the central ac, and that is about it. We would need a child to manuver around the rest of the attic. We might be able to do it from outside, but that might look a little suspicous and the owner of this house is super paraniod and doesnt want us doing anything that looks suspicous. I will carfully consider our options, but I honestly dont think that running ducting will be realistic.

Also, we have 2 regulators, exactly the one you listed. When we get more money, I will look into getting more centrifuges, but we have to also be careful about power consumption, not so much that it costs over $2k/month now but we have a 200amp limit on our power draw or else we risk a power outage in this entire grid plus our operation would be exposed for the whole world to see. Adding too many centrifuges that run 4-9A each greatly increases the chances of something going wrong with the power draw.

 

[Tater]

If you maintain good steady airflow through your attic you might be ok but I would still be concerned about your insulation collecting the condensation that WILL (not might will form, I'm a roofer by trade, this is what I do) form and drain to the roof line forming maybe just mildew and white mold but most likely black mold which will make the house worthless when it starts coming through your walls. Tell the owner about that and see what he says. Ducting won't cost you more than 50 bucks. Go buy some flex duct, run it into the attic, chop a hole in the roof and install a roof jack. Hell pop a few of them in, most older homes could use the extra ventilation. Remove the original roofjack or whirly bird that up there and replace it to (they are cheap) so it looks like you were doing a reno and not installing vents for a grow op. Secondly if you are worried about your amperage draw you can rewire your grow room to use 220, this will halve the amp draw created by your ballasts.

And lastly, I'll bow out on the whole legit not legit thing, if you live in the states than I understand. No I do not tell everyone where I live and where I grow but thats because I am far from being legit and if the conservative government gets voted back in in my country I could be up poo creek for some time but thats besides the point.

Good luck man and take that venting into your attic bit seriously, it can lead to major problems, and astronomical repair costs in a very very short time. Not to mention it could also tragically result in your death, worst case scenario.

 

[NorCalHal]

By the way Tater, thanks for the info on the attic vent. Honestly, I just ran the duct to a gable or use a gable fan strickly because I didn't wwant hot air to just sit. I never thought about the damage and condensation. But, I do go up in the attic time to time to check on things, and I have never really seen condnsation. I wonder if it is where you live you might see it more.
You tottaly make sense, so I will be more aware of that. Thanks.

I understand your take on the whole "legit or not legit" thing man. What can I say. Our own Attorney General just relesed a directive to all California Law enforment on how to handle MMJ and what is/is not allowed. If u got time, fun reading. This is the actual directive from the State.

http://ag.ca.gov/cms_attachments/press/pdfs/n1601_medicalmarijuanaguidelines.pdf

It allows for individuals to grow for a "collective" of patients. Page 8 is where it gets fun.
I think you are going to see alot more threads like this one.


So when u moving?

 

[lyfr]

ag.ca.gov/cms_attachments/pre...guidelines.pdf

great info NCH, they really need to define "mature plant". I have heard it's over 12" tall or budding but not "officially".

 

[Tater]

NorCalHal your welcome, least I can do with how much I've taken from the site. The biggest problem is when you have a difference in ambient temps and the air you pump into the attic. Plus you need to remember the increased humidity that will be in the air you vent from your grow room and when this air meets the cooler air outside it will condensate. Simply circulating air in your attic may be enough depending on the temperature difference's being encountered but it just isn't optimal. Keep an eye on it though and solve any problems the moment they arise or they will quickly get away from you.

As far as me moving that may or may not happen. Depends on what life throws my way but if I'm ever out in your neck of the woods I'll let you know.

Peace man, keep er green.

 

[growfox]

Any thoughts on the nutes I am using? This has been our biggest concern. We want to push the ppms right now beucase they are looking much healthier. They have fan leafs that almost look like plastic.

What about temperature? If we can control the spidermites, should we bump it up to 66-70F? What is the general rule for fans? I know that air circulation is critical but is there a point where its too much?

Any other helpful tips for secondary nutrients such as Kool Bloom?

Ive heard that you shoudl lower the light as far as you can to the point where if you put your hand level with the plant, your hand should be able to take the heat without any problems. Is this a good rule?

This crop is very important to us beucase if it is large enough, it should give us enough profit to invest in an ecosystem. We wanted to try this out from the beginning beucase of its effeciency and potential yeild but we are renting this house from another grower and he wanted us to use ebb and grow.

 

[growfox]

Its been about 2 months since my last post, I thought I would give all you guys who helped me out an update.

Our first grow in our 9 light room was sucessful. After we lowered the lights as you suggessted, the plants began making mega buds and THC. Infact, one of our colas was bigger than any other cola we have had in any other grow. After about 24 hours of drying, and trimming the fan leaves, it weighed in at 35.6 grams. Im sure for some strians, this isnt a big deal but for our particular strain, that single cola has a street value of about $900. :holysheep: Unfortunatly we do not sell on the street, but that is still freakn amazing considering 2 months ago we thought we were going to lose all of our plants.

BTW, another haier air conditioner broke, we had to buy another new one. STAY AWAY from haier.

Also, on a side note...I am also pretty sure that the cola weighed more than any of my friends colas from all of his previous grows who has been growing practically his whole life(his father grew as well).

I will post pictures soon. Thanks agian everyone. :aok:

 

[andy52]

this is an exciting thread here.i wish i could grow tha big.not for my self but for others.as michigan just passed th mmj act.i have several people that have asked me about growing for them.i just do not know how i would charge them.i know the elec,nutes and all the extra equipment would cost plenty.i would love to be able to help others that are not able to grow physically themselves.i also would not wish to make a profit,just pay my expenses.how would one figure this out?alot of these people i know are not financially able to pay large bills for their mj.and i would not want to make it hard on them.them again i could not afford not to charge something.any ideas on this would be appreciated.

 

[growfox]

Pictures, i tried uploadng for my first time so hopefully it will work...

http://www.marijuanapassion.com/Gallery/showgallery.php/cat/500/ppuser/12664

 

[growfox]

Need your guys/gals help again.

My leaves have gone from green to dark green/purpleish to dark green/purple almost to black. It is only the top leaves or the ones directly hitting the light. I cut most of them off partially beucase I didnt know what was going on, but mostly beucase I wanted the lower leaves to get light so the hairs would start to brown out.

We are in our 9th week of flower but quite a few buds still have white hairs so we are leaving them in there until they are done.

PPMs have been checked, Light intensity is not too bright. Our nutes are Advanced Sensi Boom A and B with Kool Bloom. PPMs are at 1500 right now, they were lower before I just added. Water has been emptied almost once per week.

Anyone know what it might be?

 

[smokingjoe]

temp, strain or potassium