And off we go after a 16 year hiatus

make sure to wear gloves when trimming or handling flowering plants, otherwise the essential oils will end up on your hair and skin. I read an article recently detailing a german academic study to improve drug testing. The study found that found cannabis users commonly transfer thc to their hair and clothing, and that even without consumption this can be detected by some of the more sophisticated forms of hair testing.
Good luck with your grow!

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Thank you both for the advice.

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Reactorpwrā€¦ first, I must commend you on growing for others and also getting your dad off opiates. Both are a step in the right direction IMHO!

Going on 9 years of opiate recovery myself. Grew a nice Casey Jones and used it to take myself off morphine. I was on morphine for 12 years due to low back injury and now only use cannabis for curbing pain and inflammation. Iā€™ve made a few crosses that cater to those with neuropathy, either caused by diabetes or nerve damage from other sources. I have quite a bit of nerve damage left over from my accident and find that cannabis helps a lot. I also have friends with diabetes that have severe neuropathy and they have worked well for them.

So, with that being said, Iā€™d like to offer you some of the crosses I have made for pain/neuropathy relief and tested on my friends, in hope that they will work for your loved ones too!

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The only thing that immediately jumps out at me is the placement of your flood and drain fittings in relation to where the access opening is on the reservoir down belowā€¦ Since they arenā€™t aligned, I have to assume that you are attaching a hose to the drain fitting so that you can direct the water back into the res. If I have this correct, then my advice is to make sure that this hose doesnā€™t go under the water line in your res, because you want there to be splashing when that water returns. This is how it stays oxygenated without the use of any air stones and pumps.

Otherwise, looks like youā€™re off to a great start. :thumbsup:

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You are correct. I will be utilizing hoses for fill and flood lines. Yet another reason i am hoping to soon get a real flood table; the placement of fittings would line up correctly. Not to mention the edges wouldnā€™t be curved and also the table is considerably larger for a SOG.

What isnā€™t shown (or that i failed to mention) is that i already had a quality air-pump and new hoses, check valves, and large air stones.

Thank you for joining in and your input!

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Standing water

Hoses (without cover over opening yet, wound up hose is going to be used for 2nd pump to drain reservoir)

So I made and tested hose connections between table and pump and table and reservoir. No leaks; however, I still want a real flood table as i have some standing water in the table when the pump turns off and has had time to backfill to the reservoir.

I am still waiting on my mandala seeds to germinate. I got impatient and thought my mandala seeds were dead as i have had 0 activity out of any of them, so i soaked and then paper towel methodā€™ some goji og x sugar punch seeds courtesy of @Papalag. I think I found my issue though, my heat mat took a nose dive after 16 years. New one ordered, will be here monday. They and the mandala seeds are now sitting on my receiver stack getting heat for the time being. Still no activity out of mandala but the gojiā€™s have begun to crack their shell. Depending on how they look tomorrow, they may go into phā€™d down grodan blocks (unless someone says do it now.)

I made a heavily reduced strength technaflora nutes mix in 15 gallons of water in my reservoir: 21mL bc grow, 45mL bc boost, 20mL sugar daddy, 5mL thrive alive b-1 red, and 7.5mL magiCal. PH is 5.9 according to my shitty meter and looks about right from water sample test drops.

I need to also purchase an EC meter. As other threads have mentioned, buy quality: bluelab guardian.

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Unfortunate that the Mandela seeds didnā€™t germ for you Iā€™ve heard good things about that group

Sometimes a heat mat can dry out the medium for the seeds
You may need to keep an eye on them
Keep wet but not too soaked

Your set up looks great and very capable of producing some nice bud
What fertilizer will you be using ?

The gogi OG x sugar punch Iā€™ve got in seedling now waiting for a female ( I myself never ran them )
I know @Jetdro ran these he seemed to like them
Any thing gogi or sugar punch canā€™t be nothing but :fire:

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Technaflora for this attempted grow. I had a nute kit come with my reservoir.

In the past i used foxfarms nutes. It made life a lot easier with less nutes. Things have changed in 15-16 years.

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If you are running any type of hydro, I recommend you avoid any nutes with organic components.

When I was running nutes that had organics in them - Fox Farm, Advanced Nutes, Mega Crop - I had major issues controlling PH and I was constantly fighting bacteria/algae in the rez. Those problems all went away when I switched to Jacks 321 hydro formula. Its dirt cheap too.

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Thanks @anon32470837, question below:

I see it offered in sizes from 4LB bags to 25LB bags. Is a 25LB bag necessary as a 25LB bag of the 3 & 2 is 132$ shipped (not horrible for 50LBs of nutes + shipping). Are they concentrated? One video I watched showed them as being concentrated nutes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUr9Nm2Rdms). Also, will any brand of magnesium sulfate work for the 1? Not everything made is the same.

Furthermore, do you ever use mono-potassium phosphate (0-52-34), humic acid sp-90, or tribus original in addition to your jacks 3-2-1? A different video I saw showed using those nutes as well.

I honestly want to do my grows in the KISS method as there will be times my Mrs. may have to do a reservoir water change whilst I am gone and I donā€™t want her to have to fight it. I want it to be: ā€œdrain reservoir of old water and solution, fill reservoir with water to 15gal mark, add ā€œxā€ amount of A solution, ā€œyā€ amount of B solution, ā€œzā€ amount of C solution to reservoir, power back up air pump and table flooding pump, close up tent, and LITFA.ā€

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I dont add anything to the Jacks kit. Im all in favor of KISS too :slight_smile: I am also of the opinion that many if not most of the add-ons people use are a waste of $$.

I get my Jacks ā€œkitsā€ from this guy.

https://www.etsy.com/shop/GreenmansPharm?ref=l2-about-shopname

He sells it in 4, 6, 10 pound sizes. The 4 lb kit will last me a few grows.

Yes, its highly concentrated. You can mix up concentrated solutions ahead of time to add to your rez when needed. Its easy to do, but you absolutely must follow the mixing order or you might get precipitation of some of the nutes.

@Howard.Crane gave me a PDF of instructions. He grows some of the best looking plants I have ever seen using Jacks.

.I mix up quart jugs of solution at slightly lower concentrations than Howard uses. The A and B parts didnt wan to dissolve all the way when I made it too strong, so I use about 3/4 of what Howards lists in the pdf. I add roughly 10ML/ gallon when I mix up a new rez or top off. I use an EC meter to be sure Im at the concentration I want. You cold easily just use exact measurements without the meter if you want, but the meter is more precise. I have a 10 ml syringe I use to suck up the concentrate from the jugs, then put about 1 syringe worth per gallon to get the EC I want.

Jacks Hydro (Updated) - Mixing, Dosing, and Stock Solution(1).pdf (74.1 KB)

Oh - depending on your water and environment, you may not want to mix up too much at one time as it can start growing nasty crap in it after a few weeks. I only mix up enough for maybe 3 to 4 weeks of rez changes - one quart in my case the way I mix it. Its cheap enough to not worry too much about throwing some away if that happens though.

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That said, how often do you perform reservoir changes? I am trying to make mine last 2 weeks at a time. If I need to swap to a larger reservoir (30 gallons vs 15 gallons) in order for this to be able to happen, I will.

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Thank you @Howard.Crane for creating the PDF file on Jackā€™s nutes! Spreadinā€™ the love.

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My situation is different - I run drain to waste, so I only refill when it gets low. That could be in as little as 5 days to as much as 9 days depending on the flow rate Im running at the time. My rez is 9 gallons - an old ice chest.

When recirculating, your going to have a hard time going 2 weeks without causing issues with imbalances in the rez. The plants wont up-take all the nutes evenly, so some run out sooner than others as you re-circulate. It will help if you do frequent top-offs with fresh nutes when it gets a little low.

Plus, there is a build up of the root exudates that just gets worse the longer you go between changes.

My limit was 10 days and oftentimes that was pushing things.

It will also depend on how large your system is and how many plants. More plant/root mass and/or a small rez, will mean you need to change it more often.

All of that is on top of what ever water the plants drink and what evaporates.

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Well, some news from the home front. Since 4 this morning, 2 of the mandalaā€™s have popped their head out of the hydroton, 2 others appear to be ready to pop out soon. I give the goji og x sugar punch a few more days before some of those decide to poke their head out. Slowly but surely, I will get this going.

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As suspected, 3 more mandala have poked their heads out of the hydroton, nothing else as of yet (litfa in full effect besides watering)

On a different note, my first flush of moby dick shrooms has come to a complete. Time for 2nd run.

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Ran out of likes but liking your style so far. Nice methodical build. And some shrooms to boot

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Thanks @anon58740919. Right now, my only ā€œmust buyā€ is something else for a flood table or a real table. This is not going to work like last time.

The shrooms are the only thing besides LSD (which i cannot find but wish i could) that Is not tested for on my hair test and client piss tests per employee handbook. I preferred using psychedelics over MJ anyways when i was able to use MJ 18 years ago. It is a treat to myself if you will.

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Ahh gave me an extra like now. I still need a couple of bits to get my flood and drain in order too. Mainly 2 net pots and some nutrients :joy: sounds like you work for the 3rd reich Cept if it was Hitler he would already have LSD and Crystal meth at the ready. I used to enjoy a few ā€œparty drugsā€ back in my raving hey days before Parenthood but just bud for me now reallyā€¦and much more beer than I used to drink too :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Gonna have to go and grab some PTFE tape today I think.

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Iā€™ve got the ac infinity combo. A6 with the 6ā€ carbon filter. Iā€™d stay away from ordering those through Amazon. I was delivered a RETURNED fan. Damaged display, tarnished hardware, torn bags of mounting hardware. Quick email to AC infinity and I had a reply in a couple days, new fan sent out immediately free of charge and return shipping was provided, as well! Great customer service if/when issues arise. They actually warned me about ordering their products through amazon. Anyways. How the setup works? Well, itā€™s great! Has 10 speeds and the lower 1-3 are almost whisper quiet. The filter does its job short-term. Iā€™m still vegging my plants and although I have the filter on, it smells quite a bit in the room my tent is located in. If smell is of great concern Iā€™d look into a black ops filter. Itā€™s pricey but will save your tail. Especially with hotter HID lighting. Another warning; in my personal experience, carbon filters donā€™t like high humidity so Iā€™d hold off from installing until needed. As for nutrients, Iā€™m using floraflex 2 part veg. Adding Aptus supplements, as well. Fasilitor, start boost, and ecozen. Every other watering I add Xtreme Gardening Azoz (Iā€™d recommend for reservoir setups). As far as simplicity, it takes me no more than a couple minutes to mix up all of the above using R/O water. The fill station at my grocery store for some reason always has water at 6-6.3 but less work for me to do so I donā€™t question it haha.

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