C_in_CT's basement hydro

This is my first foray into growing any plants as an adult, so I spent approximately the last year researching and planning, and I finally got seeds started on 7/25. I thought the system would come together faster than it did, but over a month later, I’m satisfied with it.

My system is a flood & drain setup: external reservoir → individually fed restaurant bus tubs → sump pump tub → external reservoir. One of my primary goals was to have it be as leakproof as possible, so only the bus tubs have holes in them, and only one each. The holes sit fully over the sump tub, so even if they leak, it’s straight into a container that will pump it back out. And being f&d, there’s minimal water that remains in the bus tubs in between fill cycles.

Another goal was to make it as low-maintenance as possible, so I opted to spring for AC Infinity tent kits with the fancy control system. I also got their smart plug so I could integrate the reservoir pump into the automation schedule and deal with all of it in one place. I’ve got a 2x4 tent (which can hold 3 bus tubs perfectly), and eventually I’ll have another one for flowering. I’m still getting the room situated, so figured I would wait to set it up.

The plants are in pots made from weed prevention cloth, filled with and sitting in hydroton. This has been super useful, because I’ve been able to shuffle them around and go from shared to separate tubs without stressing about damaging roots. I did trim off some lower leaves on Thursday, since they were touching the substrate.

I have bell siphons, water level indicators for the bus tubs, and various other aspects that I’ve 3d printed, one picture is below, and I’d be happy to share more if anyone is curious.

The seeds were bag seeds from a friend, figured I’d start there in case of catastrophe at any point through my first run. I had some delays shortly after they sprouted and thought they’d died or damped off because they hadn’t progressed at all in at least a week, but went ahead and got them into a temporary f&d setup as soon as I could. A day later, they had new leaves showing up, and were off and running from there.

My basement is quite warm, but also about 45-50% humidity, so I’m opting to prioritize temperature over running the lights as high as I possibly can. My average lights-on temp sits around 84F. I also don’t want to deal with adding humidity, so I just automated the exhaust fan based on VPD. I’m not shooting for high yield (especially on this first run), just actually achieving some amount of vape-able weed.

My plan is to top them and try to root those as clones, then once they’re rooted, to flip the larger ones to flower. My partner sewed the main pots, and he’ll be making smaller ones for me this weekend. Once those are ready, I’ll be attempting the topping/cloning. I genuinely don’t actually know if these are photos or autos, so we’ll see! I’m going to treat them like they’re photos until I know differently.

I’ve had a few signs of distress, and was able to tweak things and keep stuff happy as far as I can tell. I’m pretty excited that I’ve gotten this far on my first try, though I realize there’s a long road ahead! I welcome any tips and feedback.

Pictures!
Overview - You can see that the tent juuust fits


Inside - 2 bus tubs on a shelf covered in panda film

Sump tub under the shelf

Reservoir, water monitor, and hose manifold

Bell siphon and quarter inch drain assembly

Just a few min before posting

A few min before posting but a different angle

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Nice. You might be interested to check out “Tetra Base”.

Bell siphons; awesome.

You using LEDs? Full spectrum white based LEDs? That’s about ideal, in my experience. Without knowing all your other parameters, rh in the 40-50% range with air temps up to 88*F is fine. Pulse has a VPD calc that is adjustable for leaf surface temperature off set. If you have an IR thermometer you could reference that.

The plants look great so far.
What’s that analog print out looking device on the shelf?

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I checked out the tetrabase, that looks interesting! I think for my purposes, the slow-drying effect of the hydroton makes sense vs one that doesn’t retain any moisture. I happened to find a somewhat local hydro shop that has 50L bags for $34, so it’s worth a 45 min drive.

I have the Ionboard S24 that came with my tent kit, seems pretty good so far! I know I’ve seen my IR thermometer since my move, but can’t remember where. I’m going to check a few more places and then probably pick up a new one if I can’t find it.

So far I’m trying to keep humidity high enough for plants to be happy but low enough to not risk mold or anything else, so I have it set to a VPD of 1.1 and it kicks the exhaust fan on to keep it there. I moved from Very Dry CO to Very Humid CT, so I’m a bit paranoid about mold and humidity issues. Now that things are more stable, I’ll probably dig into what modifications I can make going forward. Definitely always more to read!

Any particularly good threads here on OG that I should reference about VPD and humidity vs mold balance? I’ll be searching, but sometimes there’s commonly suggested threads for specific topics so I figured I’d ask!

That’s a wireless thermal label printer I picked up several years ago. Been using it to label various things around the room. I like it because I can get continuous rolls of varying widths and print whatever I want. The HOCL bottle has my widest labels, the power strip and seed containers are the smallest.
Label printer, label rolls, and a repurposed HOCL bottle that I labeled with the printer


Power strip and seed storage with small labels

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Checked my plants today, noticed some crispiness and color difference. I recently upped my light intensity, and realized I hadn’t checked my pH in a couple days.

That turned into a reservoir top off, pH adjustment, HOCL addition, flood & drain schedule update, and raising the light. :sweat_smile:

While still getting everything situated, my res was in the tent, and it was getting quite warm. I used Southern Ag, and that was fine, but decided to try the HOCL once I got the proper reservoir set up. I’m preferring that so far.

Realized I don’t have enough hydroton to set up the clones how I want to, so I am making that trek tomorrow. Partner was able to make the pots for me though! I’m putting the clones in the mini ones to see if that helps with keeping them small. It’s all an experiment! The other size is what the current plants are in. The number markers were my approach to labeling, I keep a spreadsheet to know what numbers match with what plants.
Seedling pots, regular pots, plant labels

I realized in my initial post, I forgot to mention my nutrients. I’m running MasterBlend at the standard concentration, and HOCL at ~3.5ppm. I figured I would start as simple and low-maintenance as possible, and add/adjust if I don’t get satisfactory results. Considering I’ve been getting “as cheap as possible” dispensary weed for years, I think anything will be better!

Tomorrow or Wednesday will be a full reservoir change, because I’ve been opting to just top off with water as the level drops. General plan is: once I’ve added half again, (or the plants show deficiencies) I’ll change it fully.

I welcome any thoughts and feedback and insight about my plants. I’m still learning to read what they need. I’ve had a few things I’ve been able to figure out, but there’s always more to learn.
Kinda crispy


Kinda crispy from another angle

Closeup of some of the worst bits

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I see some tacoing, maybe heat-light stress? icon_e_confused|nullxnull Go back if needed, oh, I see you have already done it, wise move …

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I appreciate the confirmation! I have read a ton of stuff, and looked at lots of pictures, but I have a shitty memory and I’m very new to all of this.

Every time the plants seem to need something, I go over my various parameters and try to figure out what is off, based on what I remember or can find. I always tell myself I can ask if I can’t solve it, and so far I’ve managed to keep things moving. I appreciate that OG exists as a resource.

I’ve been focusing my reading in the sick plants category lately, because I’m in the “most likely issues to have are illness/environment” stage. Later it’ll be inhaling info about dry/cure! I’m kind of focusing on the step I’m in / about to reach as I go so I don’t get overwhelmed.

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Sick plants section is my favorite, you learn a lot from others and there are tons of pics to train you like an AI.

Tacoing means plant exposing less surface to preserve humidity, so easy to find the culprit.

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I think they liked the changes I made yesterday. I also played with my VPD a bit, to keep the RH % a little bit higher. The leaves feel less crispy, and they visually seem better.
Less crispy!


Plant 1

Plant 2

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They were quite energetic overnight!
Angle 1


Angle 2

I would like to consult the wise ones of OG: I have wanted to top this thing for weeks at this point, but didn’t have everything ready. I’m finally ready to top / make the top into a clone, but now I’m confused about where would be best to cut it.

Here are some side/opened up images, and the same with points labeled so it’s easier to be referencing the same nodes on the plant.
Plant 1


Plant 1 Labeled

Plant 2

Plant 2 Labeled

Where should I cut to clone and/or top? My plan is to let it continue to veg until the clones are rooted, just in case I need to take any more. Also very open to cutting in multiple places if that makes more sense, and I intend to do a bit of defoliating at the same time as cutting the clones.

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Are those two buckets inside something? I mean, can you separate them? icon_e_confused|nullxnull

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The bus tubs are sitting on a shelf, there’s enough room for 3, so they can get shifted apart as they grow (or I can have 3 smaller plants, etc). The clones are going to go into a separate area, not in the tent (for now).

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I was thinking about horizontal branching if you top them, looks that you can have enough room if you do… beer3|nullxnull

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I spent a LOT of time thinking about and researching what would be a good size for a f&d tray while maximizing usable space within a 2x4 tent. Most of the 2x4 f&d trays that exist won’t fit in a tent because of the tube frame. So I ended up with 3.

3 bus tubs fit perfectly, and I have them on a 12x42 “metro shelving” shelf that I got from a restaurant supply website. The 12" gives enough room for the drain to hang over the edge.

The other benefit of the bus tubs is that when I need to do any plant maintenance or examination, I can just pull out each individual one, work with it, and then stick it back in, or transfer to flowering tent (eventually).

I frontloaded a lot of my effort and attention on “get a working system”, with a fair amount of general growing information in there too, and now I’m trying to keep up with the plants. That’s why this is a learning run!

I wish I’d found OG earlier in my process, so much effort spent on trying to sort through “is this bro science or actual info that’s just specific to cannabis?” could have been reduced.

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Took me a few extra days to get it done, but I got it topped and got a separate area set up for the clones. I topped them and trimmed off some leaves. I put the tops into some dip n grow, and have them set up with just water for now. I’ll add weak nutrients once they perk up a bit.

Before:


After:

Tops as clones

Since the picture, I’ve covered the gaps around the humidity dome. I also plan on wrangling the larger plants a bit at some point, possibly adjusting where they are in the tubs, but we’ll see how they do.

Plan is to flip the larger plants to flower pretty much as soon as I confirm the clones are rooted properly.

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I’ve also picked up some silicone to pour new gaskets for my drains. I had printed the gaskets out of TPU, but they seem to be unappreciative of the constantly wet application, and I have a slow drip. I’ll be tackling that sometime this week I think, and at that point I’ll have to remove the hydroton from the tubs to replace the drains, so I’ll reposition the plants at that point.

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Did some reservoir maintenance, working to get in good habits of checking everything and topping stuff off.

Came up with / printed some holders so I could zip tie a magnetic bar to my shelves for small tools, worked pretty well!
Magnet bar

Also printed some Adjustable LST Clips and did my first attempt at shaping my plants. They were drooping against the wall last night and that worried me, so I wanted to take care of it asap
LST Clips


LST’d branch

I had another picture, but it won’t upload for some reason. Just another clip on the other plant.

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Checked my plants around 3:30am, they have rebounded well!
Recovered!

The clones are…upright? I forgot to take a picture and it’s currently lights out. I’ll try to get one later. I took the largest remaining leaves off the clones and changed their environment a bit. No idea if those were good changes or not, but we’ll see! Might poke at it some more later today.

I figure if I accidentally kill the ones I took already, I’ll just take a few more cuttings right before flipping and just send it and see what happens.

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You’re going to make custom silicone gaskets?

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Yep! Actually printing the mold right now, hoping to pour some this evening, pull things apart maybe tomorrow to change out the gaskets.

The current ones are printed out of TPU. I’m new to using TPU, so it’s possible I could change settings and get something that holds up better, but I want to work with silicone anyway, so I figured this was a good starting project.

The current gasket is the grey ring in the lower right.

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Hello fellow nutmeger

Your grow looks great. Pretty advanced for a so called noob! :face_with_monocle:

Going to follow along

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