Albannachs LED conversion

I may post a post.
:smiley:

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I quite like poles too btw some good ones in clubs these days :thumbsup:

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Is that the post poster lol…? " Uninspiring grow diary " , fk @Albannach you’re gony have to UP your game mate haha…:roll_eyes:
Naw seriously, nice build (again) how many lights you made now, YOU could be punting some lights yourself…!
Anyway I saw your hungry plants :seedling:,they’ll be back to normal soon as you’ve fed em.
I’m gonna try get a sleep - (busy day tomorrow) - now ,
Happy growing/smoking ,
Gaz

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There’ll be Poles on a Pitch before too long.

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Decent team but i prefer watching the pole dancers :thumbsup:

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They seem pale in these pictures. Purple badlands in the tent

Took that one out for another go at a pic, not so pale eh.

The strips are so bright i cant get a decent picture in there. Next time i’ll try turning them down to minimum output :thumbsup:

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Looking good bro. Those PB are looking well too. How old are they now? I did manage to get the red/blues off and boxed today for you and 2.5ml of oil for your Mrs to have a crack at. (Working for mine)

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Cheers pal nice one :thumbsup: That lot were 3 weeks old on Sunday so i’m into wk 4 now. They could have been bigger if i’d paid more attention to feeding plants and less to building lights :grin:

Cheers bro think that’s 4 now but there’s been a rework of my original (oversized) rig and it now makes up one whole new cob rig and part of my latest twin strip rig with a big heatsink bar left over that i’m eyeing as a future project for a pal. Not sure about selling any except maybe to friends. I also build high end audio amplification but they only go to close family and only those without cloth ears at that :grin:

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Not so pale at all. Nice and green and happy. It looked like the white balance was out of whack on those two pics.
Your hanging setup has convinced me I need to order a few more sets of ratchet hangers to act as a failsafe on the way I have mine.
How high above your plants are the lights? Do you hand water and when you feed what are you feeding? Where does the runoff go?

I quit using my 3 gal. airpots because they were a pain to water with my mix. How often do you water your coco?

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Cheers it’s an old tablet i’m using to take pictures but it struggles to deal with blinding light and it loses it’s colour accuracy. The lights are still too high above them, couple of feet or so just till they get used to the extra lumens. They can grow up to the rig but i’ll lower it if they stretch. Nominal is 12" from solstrips but they can go as close as 6" if the strips are not driven too hard and you have plenty of air movement. Ratchet hangers are great things, i got another 4 for £10 off ebay :thumbsup: The plants are still small/ish and get watered every 2 or 3 days every time with this https://www.advancednutrients.com/products/ph-perfect-sensi-coco-grow-ab/

Not even close to perfect ph just like with most of these claims but the plants seem to like it. I’m currently taking them out and placing them in buckets and a tray to feed them by hand but that’ll have to change soon lol. I upped the feed to the medium recommendation last week, now = 2ml of part A and part B per litre of water. EC comes out around 1 with our tap water but the ph is still too high at 6.7 or 6.8 so i add 18 to 20 drops of canna’s so called organic ph down to get it to around 5.7. I’ll bring it up to around 6 by early bloom. Straight runoff measurement is pointless in coco so i don’t bother, there is a lengthy procedure but…f*ck that! I try not to have a lot of runoff but there has to be some to help flush the medium (canna coco pro plus) the runoff gets tipped down the toilet for now but a womble could soon be using it on his outside garden :thumbsup:

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Now I know what a womble is.
:smiley:

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The Ph technology works really well for me but only if I use the full amount of nutrients (4ml/l with the GROW A+B) :slight_smile: I also have to use Ph down at start when I am using 50% nutrients.

I am also using Ph 5,7 - 5,8 and I am getting great results with it :slight_smile: Not even slight sign if any problems :slight_smile:

I would wait a bit longer. When I check my outake Ph, its always the same until week 4-5 flower. then the Ph starts to drop down (intake 5,8 and outake 5,4 etc) and some definiciences start to show up on the leaves. So then I raise the Ph to 6,0 and even 6,2 :slight_smile:

I always check the runoff to see if I flush enough :slight_smile: But my watering is completly different than yours :smiley: All of my smart pots sit in the big plastic tray where all the water runs to and straight to the reservoiar under the box. So when I water my plants I water each one of them with about 6-9 litres of nutrients. So the runoff is big and I circulate the water over and over again through the plants :smiley:
But I find it very important because roots always exlude wasted nutrients etc. and flushing root zone every watering is the best you could do for them. To get rid of the accumulated salts in medium.
Thats why my intake EC is 1800 pH 5,7 and my outake water is EC 1800 and Ph 5,7 through out the whole life cycle :slight_smile: Only the Ph is changing around week 4-5 flower. And absolutly no problems occur :slight_smile:

Keep growing! :slight_smile:

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Now now…nobody said the pH would be perfect as in range wise. It’s the chelation of the nutrients which allows absorption at levels usually unseen with chemical nutrients. I thought the same thing and fucked shit up pH ing then I actually did some digging

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Thanks for the detailed reply mate. I was going to mix up some nutes at full strength later today to test that theory cos i had a scan through posts about this on other forums :hushed: found a few folk saying the same, they only got the PH down to within range at full strength. Apparently if you use RO water it works much better and brings the PH into range even at lowish doses. Have you read through canna’s blurb about measuring coco runoff? i lost interest about halfway through :laughing:

I need to rig up a 1M sq garland jumbo tray on a slight incline to the front so the runoff can be more easily removed, probably pumped out into a drum for transporting to the wombles place :thumbsup:

I was putting it down to our tap water being a bit sh*t bro. It comes out at between 8.6 & 8.8 and i have seen 9 a few times. I let it sit for 2 days before using it and it usually drops to between 7.6 & 7.8. Think i’ll get an RO unit with a remin cartridge at some point, they are getting quite cheap these days. Our tap water has almost no calcium or magnesium but still has an ec of 0.2. Probably a load of unusable stuff in there to keep the ph high. They do that to reduce corrosion in the water system apparently.

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You would expect an alkali to calcify though and still require as much maintenance. Would it not make sense to try get it out neutral lol. RO might be the way. Then you can go full stick with the AN. Plants seek to take more under led anyway?

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lol the water authoritys move in mysterious and apparently unaccountable ways eh bro. They dump in Aluminium Sulphate (Alum) along with Chlorine, if your lucky. If your unlucky they will use Chloramine which takes 3 weeks or more to dissipate :poop:

I’m also finding increased uptake with led’s bro. Closest i have seen to full on sunlight for growth rate too. I remember a plant that went from 8 inches to over 3 feet in 18 days outside during a heatwave :grin:

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I use RO water only. It works better than tap water but not perfectly. But it.definetly holds the pH much better :slight_smile: I water every two days and pH raise is only 0.2 - 0,3. From 5,7 to 6,0.

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Thanks mate it’s nice to have your input. I’m not new to hydroponics but this is my first go with coco. As far as i can tell you can use it like peat compost letting it almost dry out between feeds or you can flood it daily when plants are big enough to use enough of it. Hydroponics in a fairly stable organic medium eh, think i’ll try a hempy bucket or 2 alongside the airpots for a comparison. Need to get some pearlite for the bottom of the buckets though, works better apparently :thumbsup: