OCCG Hydro's 1000w Closet Drip System - Blueberry Kush & White Russian

[occg.hydro]

pt 2

 

[occg.hydro]

and then...

 

[El Hefe]

yo oc your room setup looks awesome as for your plants they are young and dont need much try going with just r/o water pH set to 5.8 for a few days till all your leaves perk up and look nice and healthy then you can start using 1/2 nutes maybe around 600ppm and set your timers at maybe 10 mins 5 times a day other than that looks all good bro

 

[occg.hydro]

right on bro, thanks for the advice! I'll give that a shot. I was planning on doing a res change tonight & flushing w/ clearex. I started them out way to high and had some pH issues at first so they got off to a slow start. I flushed them w/ clearex for about 1/2 hour and then dropped them down to 300ppm @.7 conv. I raised them slowly up to 400 over 10 days and then upped it to 500 last week when I chenged the res. I've been keeping it at right about 560 for the last 4 days and I was going to up it to 700 tonight. I'll go ahead and do a flush w/ clearex tonight and then just run water for a few days. What would you recommend for ppm when I add nutes again? 600 or should I go a little bit higher? Thanks a lot for the advice man, I was wondering why they were kind of droopy.

 

[El Hefe]

If they are in veg growth you should just keep it at 600ppm to be safe it wont effet the final out come of your yeild or anything like that just that way they dont get stressed and stay nice and healthy. As for your nutes your on the right path with the Advanced nutes products make sure that all your additives ( meaning extras only account for 10% of your solution IE: 60ppms) also i would reccomend ditching the sensi for the advanced nute 3 part grow bloom and micro this will help you alot once you flower giving you more control over what your putting in your res

 

[KGB30]

Looking good bro can't wait to see more..

 

[occg.hydro]

I've just been using cal-mag with the nutes and then adding fulvic acid to pH down the mix. So should I mix it up nutes first to 540 and then add cal-mag until I get to 600 and skip the fulvic acid until I add more water and the ppm's go down? I use pH down as well because the fulvic raises the ppm more. The fulvic doesn't seem to do much of anything so I was going to go with just nutes and cal-mag this time. So 60ppm of cal mag isn't to little? the instructions on the jug suggest a massive amount of it but I've been mixing my water with about 100ppm of cal-mag and then adding my nutes from there. Thanks so much for the advice man! I'm gonna go ahead and start flushing them with plain water tonight.

 

[El Hefe]

Yup you got it sounds good nutes mixed to 540 then cal-mag to 600ppm if your pH is still too high instead of mixing in the fulvic acid to buffer it out trying General hydroponics pH down is a better way to go its fairly low on the TDS scale as well as really easy to use. It was origanally engineered by NASA when they started expirmenting with hydroponics so you know there was defianatly some good ideas thrown into the development Fulvic acid might not hurt just in my expirence i have never been impressed

 

[occg.hydro]

great advice on the flush bro! 24 hours later they're lookin way perkier again! Another question though, what's the best way to use clearex? Should I put it in the res and let it run for a day or two or will that hurt my plants? I didn't use any this time. Just went with straight pH adjusted RO water. I poured it through each of the plants and then let it go back watering 5 times a day. The leaves are almost all lookin like they've perked back up so I'll wait another day and see if the rest of them do the same and then go back to nutes @ 600ppm like u suggested. Last time I flushed I just put water and clearex in the res, ran it for 45 min straight and then switched back to nutes. Didn't seem to do much except waste expensive clearex. What's the best way to use that stuff? I was going to save it until I flush right before switching them over to flowering and then I was going to flush with it again the week before harvest. Any suggestions? Sorry to ask so many questions bro but you got good answers!

 

[Megatron]

I'd flush for 3 hours straight. Then, drain and fill with your nuitrents.

 

[Smoker]

Can I ask how the roots look?

 

[Megatron]

me too.

 

[occg.hydro]

the roots seem like they're doing pretty good. They're just starting to poke out of the bottom and sides of the 10in mesh pots and they look nice and white. I took El hefe's advice, flushed with plain r/o water pH'd to 5.8 for 3 days until the leaves perked up a bit and then went to watering 5 times a day with 600 ppm nutes. They look like they're getting nute burn so I'm going to pour pH'd r/o water through the pots tonight until the res lowers down to about 450ppm and see how things look after that. I'll post some new pics tomorrow. It seems like I'm runnung in to problems with low humidity in my room as well. I have to run an air conditioner to keep it between 80 and 85 and the humidity in the room has been between 20 and 37%. I've tried a bunch of different configs and I have my light vented like a mo'fo but it seems like the big 1000w in such a small room with high ambient temps as it is is kind of an issue. Not much I can do about it though. I've tried a humidifier but the A/C sucks all the water out of the air almost immediately. It seems like it's also drying the hydroton up really quickly. I think next grow I'm going to get rid of the mesh pots and make these more like a dutch bucket drip system using a hydroton layer on the bottom for drainage, hydroton/coco mix in the middle & a hydroton layer on top to help with algae. I'm thinking this will help keep the medium from drying so quickly and will help even out the water distribution. Any feedback?

 

[occg.hydro]

...

 

[occg.hydro]

450 ppm, 18 hour light cycle, watering 4 times/day --- day 39 veg

The kush is really starting to stand out from the russian's. The middle row (horizontal) is kush and the middle plant in the front row as well. The back row and the two sides in the front are Russian. 450 ppm seems to be working well for both strains although the kush plants seem to feed more heavily than the russians. I repositioned my fans and the humidity rose to about 38% and the temperature of my room dropped to between 69 degrees during the night and a high of 87 during the day. Weather has been a little bit mellower lately too, which helps a lot with the heat. I was running a continuous light cycle for a while but I ended up with a $686 electric bill so I'm back to 18. The plants actually have improve a lot since switching back to having a night cycle. I think that it was getting to warm for the stomas to open for most of the day cycle even with the added co2. The A/C pulls as much power as the light does so my life is going to get a lot easier when winter returns and it's not 90+ degrees outside!

 

[someguy]

:fly: :fly: :fly: :fly:

 

[KGB30]

Ladies looking bigger. Great job

 

[occg.hydro]

wow, it's finally starting to look like a decent garden in here! I spent most of the day working with the power company to get our bill down. For all of you that don't know there are several options available to customers (at least in my area). If you qualify as low income you may be eligible for the CARE or FERA programs, which respectively offer a 20% discount on all tiers or a 30% discount on all usage over tier 3. If you have a really high bill for one month and don't know how you're going to pay it you may be eligible for a one time assistance rebate of up to $100 (once per year). There is also the LPP (level pay plan) which averages your usage over the last 12 months so that higher bills during one part of the year are evened out with lower bills during another part of the year. Be careful of the LPP though, you can end up with an ENORMOUS bill at the end of the year without even knowing it. Every month you pay your average monthly rate and the excess amount of your bill is added up. At the end of the year you either get a credit (unlikely in all of our cases) or a bill for the excess amount (this can be problematic if you don't keep track of things and is VERY likely to happen if you run high wattage equipment). There are also different domestic service rate plans available in my area. My power company offers 2 different TOU (time of use) plans depending on how much power you use. With a TOU plan instead of being billed for usage on a tiered structure you are billed by on or off peak usage. In my case peak hours are from 10AM to 6PM and the cost is $.30/kWh (kilowatt hour). Off peak usage costs $.15/kWh. You can see how this could come in useful if you don't use much energy during the day and your lights are on at night. In my area tier 3 power costs $.25/kWh and tier 4 costs $.28/kWh (OUCH!!!) Basically, the more power you use the higher up into the tiers you climb. I was able to get us enrolled in the CARE program for a 20% discount, am getting an assistance voucher (just for this month) for $100 and am considering the TOU rate plan as opposed to the tiered structure I'm paying on right now. I'm sure lots of us on this site are paying way more than we need to just by having not looked in to all of the options available to us. Check your power company's web site to see what kind of programs are available in your area. DON'T STEAL POWER and ALWAYS PAY YOUR BILL!!!!!!! As long as they get their money it doesn't seem to be a problem how big your bill is. They just want to get paid. They'd rather all of us 1000w owning gardeners continue to pay our bills on time as opposed to putting us in jail and not getting a dime. Also remember that whenever discussing your amazingly high energy usage with the power company you run several web/data/storage server racks and high BTU air conditioners to keep them cool and have your fridge turned down all the way and your roommate sleeps with his TV on ALL THE TIME! Plenty of people have very large power bills that have nothing to do with growing. Just be safe!

 

[KGB30]

Good luck bro

 

[Megatron]

wow, it's finally starting to look like a decent garden in here! I spent most of the day working with the power company to get our bill down. For all of you that don't know there are several options available to customers (at least in my area). If you qualify as low income you may be eligible for the CARE or FERA programs, which respectively offer a 20% discount on all tiers or a 30% discount on all usage over tier 3. If you have a really high bill for one month and don't know how you're going to pay it you may be eligible for a one time assistance rebate of up to $100 (once per year). There is also the LPP (level pay plan) which averages your usage over the last 12 months so that higher bills during one part of the year are evened out with lower bills during another part of the year. Be careful of the LPP though, you can end up with an ENORMOUS bill at the end of the year without even knowing it. Every month you pay your average monthly rate and the excess amount of your bill is added up. At the end of the year you either get a credit (unlikely in all of our cases) or a bill for the excess amount (this can be problematic if you don't keep track of things and is VERY likely to happen if you run high wattage equipment). There are also different domestic service rate plans available in my area. My power company offers 2 different TOU (time of use) plans depending on how much power you use. With a TOU plan instead of being billed for usage on a tiered structure you are billed by on or off peak usage. In my case peak hours are from 10AM to 6PM and the cost is $.30/kWh (kilowatt hour). Off peak usage costs $.15/kWh. You can see how this could come in useful if you don't use much energy during the day and your lights are on at night. In my area tier 3 power costs $.25/kWh and tier 4 costs $.28/kWh (OUCH!!!) Basically, the more power you use the higher up into the tiers you climb. I was able to get us enrolled in the CARE program for a 20% discount, am getting an assistance voucher (just for this month) for $100 and am considering the TOU rate plan as opposed to the tiered structure I'm paying on right now. I'm sure lots of us on this site are paying way more than we need to just by having not looked in to all of the options available to us. Check your power company's web site to see what kind of programs are available in your area. DON'T STEAL POWER and ALWAYS PAY YOUR BILL!!!!!!! As long as they get their money it doesn't seem to be a problem how big your bill is. They just want to get paid. They'd rather all of us 1000w owning gardeners continue to pay our bills on time as opposed to putting us in jail and not getting a dime. Also remember that whenever discussing your amazingly high energy usage with the power company you run several web/data/storage server racks and high BTU air conditioners to keep them cool and have your fridge turned down all the way and your roommate sleeps with his TV on ALL THE TIME! Plenty of people have very large power bills that have nothing to do with growing. Just be safe!

Heres another power saving idea!!
Ceiling fans! I have 8 of them in my house. I usually have 3-4 running all day alternating from room to room. I hooked an ampmeter up to one to test the draw. I get .68 amps draw when it is up to speed. when I flick the switch to turn one on, the motor pulls 10.1 amps at startup!!
If I help the fan get up to operating speed, it only pulls 3.8 amps for 3 seconds or so. (by helping I mean flick the switch then run to the fan and give it a good swing)
I have thought of this idea since I started growing, but havn't thought of sharing it till now.. I don't know any money saving statistics, but I do know that I am saving 6+ amps for 30 seconds or so every time I turn a fan on.. I think it helps!