Growing with Mr.Sparkle : Trials & Progression 2020

I love watching your experiments… mostly because then I don’t have to and can still learn! :joy:

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New here, for a new year. I get to watch from the beginning.

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looks like an awesome start … found my opposite … a good name for me would be messy marvin :slight_smile:

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Watching and learning, thanks for the show!

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Thinned out the right side plants tonight just were too far in with the troubles i gave them, also pulled one of the DS fuzzs from the lower left white cup in the center tonight, lady said give the other two i should pull two more days, really just had decision fatigue asked her and she bounced it back to me with that response.

Also repotted some of the C9D’s i had multi-planted their tap roots were already at the bottom plus some but they got the cups that the other plants were in, saying that you can see i lined them with some aluminum foil as well tonight, not that those colors were giving me issues with light transmission and algae growth which were more the white and yellow cups, but if i’m gonna do some of them i might as well do all of them.

Also a couple multi planted DDxSBR’s from @ReikoX at the bottom in the two right square pots, but will spread out a couple once they break surface.

Also over watered the pink cups, and am playing with feed levels at the moment still. My low side is too low and high side to high so just gonna bring them down and up respectfully.

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Most of my seed now is either ones i’ve made myself, or acquired from other members here on OG, but some good auto seed makers to look at are Sweet Seeds, and Mephisto, there are others but those two are a good start.

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More new seedlings, and either plucked or spread out the multiplanted ones.

Just gonna be playing with feed levels and fan temp settings for a bit.

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New fan settings seem to be working. Even the bigger ones in the pink(?) cups look better.

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well bumped the fan temp up again tonight as ambient in the shade is 27c or so with leaves actually in the 22-24c range, and the pink cups those are some of your GT#2xSBR’s as well as the bottom row square pots and far right bottom blue cup being DDxSBR’s which well i guess are both ours lol

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That is just so sanitary man, very impressive knowing the thought that went into all this.
Just blows me away.

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meh just looks that way, still runoff and coco particles all over the lids, and some things that would be more ideal or would help things. Thanks though.

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Some days later, when playing with temps i tried going lower which cause the fan to cycle on more often causing the humidity to plummet, took a day or two days to recover.

Did a watering tonight just to give everything one, running 1.4ec maxi and 1.1 megacrop, seedlings got some left over 1.0 maxi.

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Well trials, definitely hindered a lot of these plants and the small pots definitely show you quick when things are off.

So feed strength tests, everything has been enjoying the higher feed rates since the last watering, change though has been gradual so im gonna slowly work at upping the feed level.

Gonna go up to 1.5ec vs the 1.4ec of the maxibloom i had watered with over the last couple of days, the megacrop fed plants will be bumped to around that level as well just to see how they behave.

Temp trials so far the plants actually have been enjoying the higher temps of 27-30c “shade/light” but more so from the side humidity aspect of it as one my fan is turning on less allowing the plants and evaporation from the coco to drive up the humidity to levels they are more comfortable with.

Really the plants are just trying to create an environment that they like too, and ive been ignoring them im realizing…
The younger the plant is the better it seems to be doing so i think im at least improving things, or they are with my ham handed assistance.

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Update time…

Well changed out my timers today which im pretty stoked about, opposite to most but i actaully swapped out my Sonoff 4ch Pro to two basic Sinotimer TM618’s which are cheap and easy and loving it, also i located them within the grow chambers for ease not stashed away in my filter box.

My issue with the sonoff’s and something to think about is inorder to use them your actually adding more complexity than needed, cause say i want to turn off or on my lights, i have to have my phone handy then run the ewelink add then do the controls i need, and saying that the other factor is you have to setup an app account from a foreign company that then has access to your home network and some base personal information which it today’s day and age with everyone personal data for sale or freely given and or vulnerabilities there is just no real advantage especially when in regards to basic light timing.

simpler = better in my mind.

As for the plants they are doing alright, culled a few and am narrowing down more specifics, honestly i think i just had a combination of things that led to shit plants.

Current hypothesis that im still working on is first the Newer versions of megacrop when made up into appropriate solution caused the pH of that solution to be too low, that for me caused deficiencies which i tried and countered by increasing the feed further driving the pH askew and coupled to the plants trying to correct that. Also i was running at lower temperatures and higher air exchange with the way my closet is setup which caused lower average humidity and bad VPD numbers and struggling plants, also realized today that my coco compaction is worse than it was leading me to think about how im down to the bottom and last of my bag of coco which when coupled to overwatering has led to possible oxygen starved roots and bad growth.

Throw in small containers, and playing with feed rates of late, and realizing i was ignoring the plants all together and just looking at more mechanical aspects, they didn’t have a hope.

But we will get this worked out im sure of it.

So got some new plants going just cause and running a pot volume trial where i want to see at one point “days” wise that smaller potted plants start to be stunted vs bigger potted ones.

Enough with the words…

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But they are chleated, pH doesn’t matter. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Seriously though, any time I’ve had issues, pH was running amuck.

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Culled some more but also started up some seeds of the those i culled, others im getting it going again and feeling positive.

Details wise back left squares are some DarkSparks from a green pheno mother along with the dual planted front Yogurt Containers, back right three squares and single blue cup in the center of them are DDxSBR’s cause i want to see what the the SBR contributed but im just doing a plant growth vs root volume test to see when the squares start to outpass the cup., that’s also what the bigger dual planted YC’s are for. Right front five and the single green cup behind them on the left are those recent C9D’s seeds that are now an F2, really just want to see the auto trait come forward and other traits that express, and the left front four are Darksparks from a fuzz pheno mother, was doing feed strength tests with they will be thinned eventually.

no plan on what ones to keep but just playing so any cool/strong ones will probably make it to harvest… or not :shrug:

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And some more culling, a crinkle, weaklings and plants that served their purpose.

Getting things more dialed in i think, been pulling apart the roots of the culled plants they are just running too wet, plus raking the top of the coco so its airy and loose and can dry out quickly has knocked out my green algae issues completely.

Feels so empty now, but also have some other seeds going but they will be for the other side.

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Any GTxSBR left in there?

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No unfortunately, not that i wanted to waste them :frowning:

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Well… i think ive narrowed down my problems, with my latest change causing all the plant to perk up…

What was it, too much light, yeah really…

So think this is how my troubles started and manifested and its gonna be long winded you have been forewarned… lol

My cabs i designed around my old lights and the heat they generated, i picked up a t6 fan just so i could run it at its lower settings for more noise considerations. now a couple things all happens around the same time, first my change to the bridgeluxs which ran way cooler, i didn’t necessarily change my fans settings by much and in turn was driving my grow chambers into lower humidity values than i should have plus probably colder temps, my recent changes and setting up my fan with more generous temp and humidity setpoint limits have actually helped a bunch, and i realize i was probably running my plants colder than i should have or to what i deemed appropriate, like 20-22c vs 26-29c, higher temps allow for more perspiration but its a balance game as well.

Next Megacrop v2 came out amidst me playing with different medias and light changes and subsequent v2.1 / v3 or whatever after that, i failed to do one thing with it… I never checked how the pH of it had changed when made into solution. Old v1 when mixed typically put me in the 5.8-6.1 range with no adjustments and plants loved it, the newer stuff though drops into the high 4’s low 5s when mixed and i treated it like the old stuff, “but its chelated” comments aside i failed to check or clue in on that as i had had to pH adjust for quite some time due to the v1 megacrop. Well the plants abit into the change started showing deficiencies or burn in a lot narrower feed range compared to the v1, i jsut thought new formulation so the EC levels just needed to be fine tuned for what i need to run within, but me and others @TrevorLahey kept getting deficiencies i tried correcting mine by upping the feed but then i was playing a fine game of not burning as the range of the new stuff seemed to be a lot narrower, i failed to see that my pH levels were most likely the cause of the issue.

Also i stopped treating plants as plants and more like mechanical objects… but thats another thing, and we won’t go there.

Coupled to the pH issue i was failing to see apart from the runoff i was getting in reservoirs later on, i was also trying to stabilize things assuming my starting pH was fine by doing more water cycles to try and level out the media, thinkign my algae was the main culprit at the pH swing, not necessarily the plants just trying to improve their own environment causing Drastic swings due to them trying to equalize, also not saying the the algae wasn’t part of that too cause im sure it was trying to do the same thing, anyways the increased water cycles led to overwatering issues that i just really noticed as of late last year when trying to fix things, the green algae growth i tried added pot level fans initially to alleviate that but failed to see the most likely underlying problems, sayign that as of late raking the surface of the media a bit to allow it to dry out quicker has pretty much knocked back the algae completely. So starting a new habit there.

Now onto the lights, Who would’ve thought i was providing too much light, and i’m still gonna be doing trials here to see what’s needed or gotten away with. What made me aware that my lights might be too much is plants i was taking out of my cabs to cull, those that happened to sit on my kitchen counter for a couple days till i dealt with composting them would perk up in relative terms just sitting there, some i threw back into the cabs to have them just go all droopy again and culled shortly after, but these last two plants made me start turning down my light noticing that and how squat the plants wanted to be, and got me thinking about it till i actually took some measurements… Well comparing to other members here like Reiko whom grabbed a reading for me, turns out i may have been giving these plants 7-9+ times the amount of light he was giving his mother plants at the moment… and after rereading on stuff i knew previously but forgotten and taking new measurements with how i had things setup light power and distances i was well into the upper range where supplemental co2 would be needed, or in some cases even over those points…

Well needless to say me having my light running at up to 120% or even 100% actually is over kill by the response ive seen in my plants in the last couple of days, Currently my lights have been moved to the roof and they are only running at 50 and 70% for some trials, and the plants have perked up significantly because of it.

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