6 cabs in built in wardrobe, 500w LED, perpetual, coco DTW

Looking good in there. Keep it up. I love the Sonoff timers too. Very easy to change timings etc.

1 Like

Shocked the Hyperfan doesn’t keep it cooler. Is the air flow being restricted somewhere? I have two of those hyperfans and both are running at 30-40% and clearing 14+ sq. ft. of growing space. They are incredibly quiet fans when dimmed down.

hell yeah, get that algae building

Not a lot of restriction… I mean, there are a couple 90 degree turns as the exhaust goes up into the roof space, then it goes to the other side of the bedroom (3 meters or so), and back into the other built in wardrobe. I think the reason the two right flower cabs run hotter is due to the screen-to-light distance being the shortest in those cabs (all temperatures measured at screen level). Those two cabs also have the veg cab running above them, whereas the upper-left veg cab isn’t running right now. Once I have all 6 cabs running I’ll figure out which setup runs the coolest and switch all flower cabs to that style.

@DrDank, I was looking at your setup. Don’t you have a problem with the bottles being clear on the bottom and your roots and the fluid exposed to light?

1 Like

They’re filling out really nicely. That’s a really cool vertical design for your cabinet…good use of space!

Do you hand water the coco? Also, looks like you use passive intakes for your ventilation. If you’re having issues you’d be surprised how an extra hole or two can really help. It can be hard to figure out how much your fan is actually pulling relative to the sq footage of your intakes. Try holding a cigarette/doob/incense by the intakes to get an idea of how much air is moving and where.

Been playing around with “Pro Mode” on my phone camera and it seems to be able to take, what might be some decent looking pics!

I just uploaded these from my phone, but it only let me upload 4 pics, so I’m going to throw this up here now and try and add more later.

All plants are now on 24 days since flipping the lights. They were flipped on Oct 8th after lights out.

First two pics are the two Unkown GPS plants in the left middle cab (5700k lighting - but I used white balance to try and dial in the colors, dunno if it worked yet). This is my favourite scrog! The only thing that sucks is they didn’t stretch much at all and I still have a ton of room from the top of the canopy to the lights, I will know for next time and try and get a good 12" stack of buds… also the fact that I was tucking until about a week ago, I guess I kept them short.

I have realised I can run another couple of strips on the driver running the lights in this cab. There’s 4 strips running at around 116 right now, so 2 more strips should bump me up to 174w. I will turn it up to 130w and see how my temperatures look. Right now this is the coolest cab and sits around 24-25 (it also has the most distance between screen and lights - something I intend to implement in all cabs next time around). I’ll add more pics of these two in an edit.

Adding these two pics.


The next two pics are the two Doc Holiday in the left lower cab (1 x 3500k QB, again, I tried to use the white balance feature on the phone). These are the two that I took the screen off and they’re just awesome to look at, it’s got a nice 3D effect. Also of note, these plants are now about 7" from the light, and leaf temperatures are maximum 28 degrees. I have a feeling all these cabs may be cooler than my thermometers tell me, I don’t think even the hottest leaves are showing signs of heat stress.

The next few pics are the two Eagle Scouts in the two right cabs. The middle cab that was seeing upwards of 30 degrees C has actually cooled down a bit, sitting around 26-27 now, presumably from the extra leaf mass in the cab.

Not really impressed with the pics from the Pro Mode, colours are off, but I was impressed with the closeups. I’ll have a play with the settings and see if I can get them looking better.

7 Likes

Looking good so far. :+1::seedling:
LEDs lack IR like HIDs have which makes it easier to keep leaf surfaces cool. LEDs can run closer to 29°C (85°F) surface temperatures.

2 Likes

Thanks mate! :grin:

I think the thermometers themselves are heating up just sitting there on the screen, so not an accurate reading. Thanks for the tip on leaf temps, will keep an eye on them :sunglasses:

2 Likes

Just heading into week 6 since flip and these are the two unkown GPS. As you can see, I burnt them a bit when I bumped them up to 2.8EC. I’ve got them on 2.0EC now, which is the same as the plants in veg.

Here are the two Doc Holiday. These two didn’t seem to mind 2.8EC as much as the other two, although they did burn a little. I think these will be the first to be chopped :grin:

Here is the Eagle Scout in the right middle cab, she’s the best of the two.

And here’s the one in the lower cab.

The pics are showing leaves much lighter than they actually are, in reality most plants are quite dark. I’ve reduced the two Eagle Scout down to 2.2EC, which is down from 2.8EC.

9 Likes

Oh I love me a good scrog. Looking nice :thumbsup:

Thanks man, I’ve always been an admirer of scrogs since before I started growing 1 harvest ago… but this is my first my first attempt at a scrog. I gotta say, it came out pretty good! haha I have some ideas as to how I can hopefully improve next time around.

Here’s a couple pics I just took on Auto Mode (might be better than me using Pro Mode), I felt I missed a good pic of this cab yesterday.

6 Likes

Halfway through week five since flip.

Doc Holiday

Unknown GPS

9 Likes

@DrDank, I had asked this question and did not see a response (If you did I apologize) so I thought I would ask it again.

I was looking at your setup. Don’t you have a problem with the bottles being clear on the bottom and your roots and the fluid exposed to light?

I ask because I was going to use soda bottle but everyone kept telling me I needed to paint them, so I gave up on them. Do you have a problem? If not how?

1 Like

I was wondering the same thing but i suppose when the canopy fills out it blocks most of the light from the bottles.

@WMoon518 : The thing is, I’m a new grower with very little experience and my plants aren’t exactly perfect - so how can I say that the problems I have with my plants aren’t caused by me not painting the bottom of the 2ltr bottles.

All I know is that I grew 20 plants in these bottles on my previous grow (didn’t take any pics because I didn’t have my security set up) and I didn’t notice any problems with the plants that I could attribute to the roots being exposed to light, but again, it was far from a problem free grow.

And then I come on OG and all the experienced guys tell me to paint the bottles, I don’t want to tell them they’re wrong, but in my experience it hasn’t been a problem, from what I can tell.

:blush:

3 Likes

Sorry if I didn’t state that well. Everyone has always told me, “You have to make sure no light gets into your reservoir. You have to paint clear bottles.” I saw yours and thought, “Huh, he’s using clear bottles, is it causing him any problems?” I was going to use them outside, only using the top section.

Hey y’all,

Just wanna throw up some random thoughts on the grow so far. I always seem to end up taking photos of the plants right before bed and then never have time to write much because it gets quite late.

Pretty happy with how things are going so far. It’s a bummer that the two unknown GPS plants didn’t stretch much, so much wasted space in that cab, and I’m a bit concerned that the scrog is too tightly packed and I may suffer bud rot. I mean, some buds are kinda mashed up against others. That cab also runs the least light and has the most distance between the top of the canopy and the light… I decided to upgrade the light after harvest because the connectors on the EB strips can break quite easily when pulling the wires out.

The bottom left cab with the two Doc Holiday that I removed the screen is just awesome, it’s like a basket of bud in there, great use of space, and the plants are just 6 inches or so from the light. Just last week I cut a ton of popcorn buds off because the canopy was just too dense, with buds mashed up against each other and not getting much light/airflow. I think removing the screen is an interesting technique, it’s worked out really well for that cab and I’m even tempted to do it on the Unknown GPS scrog because I have so much room.

One thing I haven’t written about is what I’ve been feeding them, so I’ll go over that quickly. First, I use 4ltr bottles to mix in, RO water that doesn’t register on my Bluelab Truncheon, so close to 0ppm. I have been plagued by calcium/magnesium deficiency symptoms throughout all my grows, but finally seem to have knocked it on the head with 2ml Calimagic (100ppm in 4ltrs - 5x scale) and 1.5g Epsom Salt (another 100ppm), that has been my base for a while now. I then add Megacrop on top of that.

With the Megacrop, I mix 100g (trying to get a nice mix of powder and balls) into 1ltr RO water. I then weigh it out to measure, and it’s pretty much 10g stock solution = 100ppm in 4ltrs of RO. So I add 80g to take my 200ppm base up to 1000pm. I’ve been running 900ppm+ ever since @Mr.Sparkle recommended it and I’ve never had plants look so good (thanks for the tip, Sparkle!)

Around the start of week 4 of flower I started adding MKP. I bought a 1kg bag off ebay for around $20. Does anyone use this stuff? I started off adding 1g/4ltr RO, which gave me around 100ppm. Over the next week or so, I bumped that up to 200ppm and that’s what they’ve been getting for the last few weeks. I also bumped up the Megacrop slowly to a total feed of 1400ppm and that’s when the Unknown GPS plants got burnt pretty badly. So I wasn’t sure if it was the MKP or the total PPM that caused the plants to burn, but I lowered the Megacrop and stuck with the MKP at 200ppm. Right now, all plants are on the 100ppm Calimagic, 100ppm Epsom Salt as a base… the two veg plants are topped up to 900ppm with Megacrop. Flowering plants have the 200ppm MKP, and then topped up to 1100ppm with Megacrop for the Unknown GPS and Doc Holiday, whereas the two Eagle Scout are on 1300ppm and seem to like it.

Actually, it’s not really RO water I’m feeding my plants anymore, it’s dehumidifier water! The dehumidifier is pulling out 3.5ltrs a day right now. When I got home from work yesterday the dehumidifier was full! I mix up 4 x 4ltrs at a time now, that takes me about 30 minutes. I can get all 8 plants hand watered in 7 minutes. All plants are watered some time just after lights on, and on the days that I work (7 out of 14 days), I water again before I go to work, which is right before lights out. The great thing about the hempy bucket is the small reservoir that gives me that extra flexibility.

3 Likes

I’m not the first person to use 2ltr bottles with roots exposed to light, I’ve read just about every 2ltr hempy bucket journal on the internet and there are a few others that didn’t paint their bottles - that’s where I got the idea from. There was a guy running 100+ 2ltr hempy bucket SOG on 420 magazine with fantastic results and he didn’t paint his.

4 Likes

It’s 7 weeks tomorrow morning since I flipped the lights. I turned the lights off for the photos, auto mode on my phone with flash on, we’ll see how they come out.

The two unknown GPS…
This scrog is very dense… is that something to worry about? How dense can you go? Airflow is good, humidity is around 50-60%. I have buds squished up against other buds around the screen, that’s what I’m worried about. Shame they got burnt so badly, they’re on 1000ppm (5x) right now, maybe I should lower that, because it seems to be getting worse.

The two Doc Holiday…
These two are my favourite right now.

Eagle Scout, middle right cab.

Eagle Scout, lower right cab.

9 Likes