sounds familiar 
…
success on Your following run !
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Been awhile since I’ve done an update so here’s some random pics.
I started my new grow a bit ago those 4 packs in the previous pic. Not all of them germed which is weird for me I usually get 100% and one was crushed in a mail sorter so I was low to start with. Ended up getting 4 twins with the oaxacan x chewie but one was an insanely small runt so I tossed it. Some of em are way smaller than others. I don’t want a repeat of my super tiny g13 hp so If some of them stay really small compared to the rest I’ll have to put them in a tent to veg longer separately from these ones when they are flipped. I wonder if being in an unprotected aluminum sheet pan full of water/nutes is doing anything bad to them. A few are growing weird but I’ve always wondered if the lime in these tiny ass pots is enough to buffer the pH.
Changed a few things with the room setup. Finally mounted some fans on the wall (did anyone think I’d ever take my fans off the floor? 
) I got an ac infinity t6 which I planned on using for an intake for that hole I put in the wall last grow. For some reason my can fan didn’t fit on my carbon filter properly and I could smell dank in the backyard so I switched them around. The ac infinity is my exhaust now and the can is my intake. I put a ghetto merv 12 air filter box in between hopefully I can filter out dust and things before they get in the room. I really want one of those innovative solutions pro guard things or a 3 in 1 pco air cleaner but that will have to be down the road since these things are expensive. I put a second trellis “perimeter” around the trays about 2 feet lower than the other one so I will have 2 trellises at different heights. Hopefully will help open up my plants to more light/airflow. With the placement of my fans I’m going for a racetrack airflow because I heard it’s good to minimize microclimates.
http://clicom.ca/electro-air-3-1-true-hepa-uvc-pco-air-cleaner/
https://growershouse.com/proguard-defender-dxm-100-with-mci
I also want to buy this thing so I can find out where possible issues might be with my airflow/humidity as I’ve been dealing with annoying botrytis every grow. It’s usually not too bad but last grow I lost pretty much every best bud of all strains to it so there’s definitely some issues.
And finally I found a DIY was to clean my irrigation lines of biofilm instead of using sanidate 5.0 and green clean from biosafe systems which I couldn’t find in Canada. Only problem is its like 93-96% sulfuric acid drain cleaner so I don’t want to use it until I have proper PPE because that shit is no joke. I have the mask in my cart on amazon but haven’t pulled the trigger because money is tight and It’s not cheap. I don’t want to skimp on safety knowing my luck I’d get it in my eye if I tried to do it without protection. The room clean is gonna have to wait for now.
I got my 32 gal hash bags too and did 2 runs already and still have tons of trim but already posted some pics elsewhere here earlier so I’ll spare the hash pics for now. Hopefully in a week or 2 it will be done drying and I can try smoking it has a nice berry smell to it.
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Small update. Still boring. I was hoping for that respirator I wanted to go on sale on boxing day but it didn’t so I stubbornly decided that I’m not gonna bother with it until next grow. Too expensive for PPE. I might regret it later but no way I’m working with like 93% sulfuric acid without serious protection.
Some plants are much smaller than others. Got a bit worried I won’t have enough plants to fill up the entire room so I popped a 6 pack of purple kush x mikado bx that I got from @Oldtimerunderground I forgot the info already but I’m hoping it’s the pk I know and love (and used to be sick of but miss now)
Bought some poly trellis this time since the fabric one I was using kept getting tiny cotton fibers in my buds when I cut them. I only need 4x 4x8 ones but all they had was an over 300 ft roll so had to go with that 
least I’ll be good for like 9-10 grows without having to buy more.
Cleaned my lines with bleach but I didn’t use the acid first so there’s likely still biofilm buildup and that shit is resistant to a shit load of chemicals/cleaning agents. I filled up my res tied my lines together so they wouldn’t spray and dumped in like 1/4 a gallon of bleach and ran the whole thing through the lines. After that I filled it up with straight water and ran that whole thing through the lines. Hopefully won’t come to bite my ass later. Famous last words.
Mounted my ac infinity controller to the outside of the grow. I still think I should get a door sweep or jamb whatever they’re called. Lot of light still escapes through the crack under the door. More worried about daytime light seeping through when it should be dark.
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Good call on not using the acid without proper protection. Health and safety is always number 1.
I have a good feeling those pk x mikado bx are gonna give you some really flavourful and resin packed buds. Looking forward to seeing the plants and flowers 
Hopefully it helps with any drafts too.
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Little bit of an update. Plants are still slowly chugging along. I stubbornly upped the feed and lighting awhile ago and they def didn’t like that so I switched back to reg strength and dimmed the lights back down and cut off the shitty looking leaves and they seem to be recovering. Still looking a bit rough but hopefully I can keep them healthier from now on. Hoping to see some pre flowers soon so I can thin the herd. I also cut off the bottom branches from the plants after taking off a bunch of the horrible leaves to make it easier for me to hand water. I’ll connect the irrigation lines to the plants when they’re all female as I only have 12 per tray and usually put 2 per plant. All the strains are mixed together atm but once I get rid of the males I’ll probably put them all in their own tray together.
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Realized a little bit ago that my pH probe was way past it’s due date. Wonder if this is partially why my plants have been looking horrible during veg? I got it at the end of 2018 and you’re supposed to replace them every year or every year and a half max to be accurate.
Also one of my drivers seems to be acting up not sure what to do with it or how to fix it. Of course it’s the last of my lights to set up and turn on while there’s already plants there. When I turn it on it flickers and raises then lowers the brightness multiple times. I thought it was the light itself but after checking everything with a multimeter 2x and getting a beep for every single wire I’m guessing it’s either something with the driver or the cord leading up to the input on the driver. I also switched the light that I thought wasn’t working right to the driver (Same model) beside it and turned it on and zero issues.
Plants are looking crappy lol. Especially the ones that I was the most excited about (choc kush x chewie). It’s getting to the point where I’m gonna have no choice but to flip them because of the height. I switched most of the 4 strains to their own trays (I think ) I seem to have gotten a lot of females don’t see any more male pre flowers yet. I’ve only taken out 4 males so far.
Here are the tk/choc d x chewie that look like crap @Papalag sorry I never got a pic sooner and don’t let this scare you away from growing this strain, totally my fault for making em look like this. No idea wtf I am doing without a pH meter I might have to put these in a veg tent and nurse them back somehow before flipping em to flower with the rest of em. I had high hopes for this one 
These are the sanfune x berry nice plants, looking the least fucked up outta all of the plants but only half their tray lit up because of the light / driver acting up
these are the choc trip x lemon thai. Few of em are probably gonna stretch to the ceiling. I Kinda wanna cut the head off both of the tall ones to make em shorter but not sure. The shorter ones are looking pretty sad too.
These are the oaxacan bx x chewie. Too many plants on this tray, hoping for a few males so there’s some more room for em.
We’ll see if they can all hold on until I get a meter.
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You might consider purchasing some pH drops as well. They are cheap and never go bad. They are a good way to double check the accuracy if your probes too. 
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Awesome thanks for the tip. I’ll order some drops when I order the meter to make sure it’s not off by too much or at all. I can’t believe I’ve been going this long without an accurate pH probe and I also wonder if some of my previous grow issues could be attributed to that or just my shitty growing
I think I’m gonna try an apera PH60 for the time being since it’s cheap and then eventually get the pc8500 that I have my eye on. I have a bluelab combo meter with an old leap probe but my trust in it has pretty much run out. I’ve had to have many probes replaced in the past before their time was up and I never really trusted the soil pH reading from that even when it was new. Their customer service was good though.
Hopefully the temporary new cheapo one + some drops will hold me over until I can good quality one (with cheaper replacement probes than bluelab too)
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Thanks neo for posting:+1:
choc trip x lemon -I definitely need some of chocolate Weed
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Little update.
Grow still not going well. Did a massive leaf strip a few days ago because they were getting too bushy. Cut off a bunch of the bottom branches. Still no pH meter not sure if the issues are pH related or if I’m feeding too often or not enough but stressful for sure. Usually my issues start during flowering now during veg.
Just my luck one of my meanwell drivers for a light started acting up too and is probably broken (dimming and brightening on it’s on and flickering) so I have to buy a new one of those too but money is tight so I haven’t been able to yet. I have one of my trays only half lit so I only have plants on one side. I took out the really shitty looking plants and put them in a tent under some other lights for now because I’m not wasting those seeds by putting them into flower looking like that. If I can somehow recover em maybe I’ll take some clones and flower em later on.
I’m getting a cheap pH meter maybe in a week. I’m gonna be really pissed when the pH reading is the same as my broken one though and it turns out to be an another issue not related to pH though
Gotta flip to flower asap but I can’t really until I replace that driver lol ffs growing is expensive.
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Damn, sorry to hear that man. Hoping this turns around for you. How’s the temp and rh in the room now after that work you put in?
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77f temp 75% RH. Pretty much every time I go in there to feed them lately I swear like a sailor lmao (not that I don’t all the time as it is )
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Little update on my sad grow. So I finally ordered a cheapo pH meter. The surprising thing is that my old one is relatively close to it’s reading but it takes much longer so I’m glad I got it since it was pretty cheap. I just checked the pH of my runoff and it’s at 6.7 (not sure if measuring runoff pH vs EC is even accurate) so I lowered my nute pH down to 5.8- 6. I’m also going to up the nutrients again next time I fill the res tomorrow or the next day.
One thing I figured out that I wouldn’t have even done since I got the new meter is that the way I was feeding the plants was probably causing some of the issues. I am hand watering with a hose attached to my irrigation system and since the water comes out so fast a ton of it was just going out the sides of the fabric pots and not even soaking into the medium.
I didn’t even realize this until I took one of my really rough looking plants put it on a screen on top of a bucket and watered it until runoff so I could measure it. I watered it with a cup because I was lazy and when I was watching it I noticed a lot coming out the sides so I slowed it down and the pot took much more water than I was used to seeing without getting runoff so I have changed the way I feed now.
I give it a small shot move onto the next plant give that a small shot etc… and then restart and do that about 3x until the media is fully saturated. The plants that looked REALLY shit are slowly starting to recover so I’m happy about that although I still think I have pH issues in the media. Probably by feeding at too high of a pH when I didn’t have a meter I could trust for a few weeks. At least the severely twisted/canoed leaves have seemed to disappear.
A few of the plants still have splotching and leaves pointed down which I guess is due to pH fluctuations because I’ve seen it quite a bit in my grows. Hopefully I can get them to recover even more in the next week or so because if I don’t flip em soon I’m gonna have a disaster on my hands with the stretch (not that I don’t already )
I kinda wanna cut some of the tall plants shorter like I already had done but might just leave it. I am also still thinking about leaving the really short plants that were in rough shape out of the grow room since they are so small compared to the rest and I have no room for even the ones I have since they got bigger than I wanted and I seem to have gotten a much bigger female to male ratio than I am used to. I have a tent but the tray in it has some other plants that I popped because I thought I wouldn’t fill the room, stubborn lol.
I also decided not to bother buying the new driver to replace the missing light for now (mostly because I’m broke af haha) so I took some of my older cookie sheet lights and installed the driver in the ceiling and am using those for now. Although it is pretty cramped in the one tray atm. Oh well.
Last thing I need to do before I start flowering is put a trellis up which is probably one of my least favourite things to do in the entire grow so I’ve been putting it off. I’ll probably have to take all the plants out and do it so I don’t lose my mind and get everything tangled up. Still hoping for a few males on my most packed tray but it’s not looking that way unfortunately.
I want to use my 4x8 tent but I only have one tray in it and am using the spare lights for the other side in this grow for now until I fix the other one. Kinda a shame the driver already doesn’t work after only 2 years of owning it and even less than that of actual use. It’s 140 bucks to replace but I just left it for now. Once I can eventually get a second tray for the tent and figure out a way to drain the shit without having to use a vacuum (which majorly sucks ass) I’d love to have a second grow area to mess around with either for veg or for 2 flowering area. The drainage is the biggest issue for me though as I’m not a diy-er and have no idea how to make a proper drainage system for it so I can just feed and not worry about having to suck nutrient solution out every time which is annoying af to say the least.
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Flipped the light schedule about 3 days ago. Let the super stretch begin Hoping they don’t go all the way to the ceiling but I did veg em for way longer than I wanted to.
Holy do these light ever produce a lot of heat when they are on overdrive. Hitting about 700-720w on a 600 driver. Probably not the most efficient at those levels but I want to see what max ppfd can do. This is the first time I’ve turned them all the way up due to the heat. I don’t know how far away the lights were from canopy when I measured but I was getting 1100-1400 ppfd when I measured. Have to wear sunglasses in there now.
I don’t know what I’m gonna do about the heat though especially in summer. Last night I had to leave a window open on and off during most of the night in order to get some super cold air in there to cool the room down otherwise the temp gets too high. Once it gets to the 82-84f range is when I open a window to cool things down. I have an ac infinity 6 inch fan on level 10 constantly and a can max pro 6 inch as the intake also on max but they still can’t quite keep up with it. Not sure if more fans could help or not, my room layout is pretty weird, there’s a lower ceiling on one side of the room. 3 of my fans don’t work so might have to get a few more. I have 6 I think currently in there.
With the fan at max I can’t really keep the relative humidity in the range that I want anymore which kinda sucks but oh well. We’ll see how they do. I also set up my auto irrigation lines finally and put up a trellis on both sides so no more hand watering which is nice.
Noticed some black mold starting to form on the walls so turned my RH from 75 down to 65 although it’s usually even lower than that now. I sprayed the walls with a bleach solution and wiped it all down. Hopefully doesn’t cause any issues. I really wanna buy one of those innovative solutions dxb 100 but it’s damn expensive so it’s gonna have to stay on my wish list for a long time.
My cords are also everywhere I really need to clean that up somehow at get them out of the canopy. I really hate these ratchet hangers and those strings that come down from them too.
Only 3 strains in this room atm unfortunately instead of the 4 I started. Partly because the other 4 were in bad shape but also because I ran outta room due to having a much higher female ratio than expected and having a driver stop working on me mid grow. I have the tk hybrid in a tent in another room not sure what to do with em. Even in veg they are pretty stinky and I was excited about em. Still thinking about cloning em all at some point and maybe flowering them after this run is done but I already have some other stuff I want to start. Pretty sure I got 100% female from one of them, the oaxacan possibly.
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Well…. They’re looking good so far haha. What kind of lights are you using that get so hot? You could probably just run them at 80 percent and be fine.
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I’m using solstrips racks (plus 2 sheets because one of the drivers on a rack crapped out on me). I usually run them at 80 ish percent but with the dimmers in the driver it’s hard to get them all the same wattage (plus my “smart plugs” that measure that are slow af to react to change ). So far with the window open the heat hasn’t been an issue yet but I’ll probably end up turning them down soon. I’ll have to go in there with a measuring tape tonight and actually measure from 12 inches to see how much ppfd I’m getting and if it’s still well over 1000 I’ll def turn em down since I’m not using any co2. I was getting some pretty high numbers but might have been measuring from even further than 12 inches.
The leaf surface temp seems good though it’s never been over 82 and usually a bit lower even with the room temp going up to 84-85f sometimes.
I’m experimenting between leaving the exhaust fan at 10 and trying it at 5 to keep the humidity higher and be closer to desired vpd (but still not quite). Not sure if the air is exhausting too fast and not leaving the intake enough time to circulate/ possibly cool the room down or if it needs to be maxed out to get as much heat out as possible. The issue I have with the exhaust on max is it gets rid of a lot of the humidity too. Doesn’t seem to do much to the heat though. Last night I couldn’t notice much of a difference between having it at 5 or 10 setting aside from the humidity being able to climb higher. I might also need more fans since the intake is at the bottom of the floor and most of the heat is on the ceiling. I had more but 3 of em broke on me.
The lights are overdriven to like 720w on a 600w driver so not the most efficient electricity wise but I was thinking max ppfd and see how they react. I’ve had the lights for around 2 years and I’ve never turned em quite all the way up. They would always switch off my breaker but I plugged them in to different outlets this time so it actually works now. They do seem to like temps in the low 80s but I’m still worried about it getting higher when I close the window/ go to sleep. Probably won’t be possible to run em that high during the summer. I’d like to run them at the full 600 though and they still probably get pretty hot although not as hot as they are now.
Wonder why the exhaust gets rid of humidity so well but not heat? My carbon filter/ exhaust fan is on the floor so maybe that’s an issue too. I don’t really have a way currently to hang em on the ceiling since they’re so damn heavy but maybe I should figure out how at some point.
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Yeah, my carbon filter’s hung; it really will pull a lot of dry air through the tent. If I run the exhaust during lights on, I have to run five humidifiers, three of which are rated for 100 square feet, one rated for 600 square feet and one rated for 700 square feet. This is all in a 100 square foot room haha. It still gets tough to keep humidity levels even at 50 percent, just because it gets so dry where we live in the wintertime. I also crack a window.
Something I did different this grow is I just turned the exhaust off during lights-on. Only had to run two humidifiers most nights, sometimes only one, it worked really well. And then during lights off, I’d run the exhaust. That might not be doable in your situation, but maybe you could look into putting your exhaust on a recycling timer, have it run for only ten or fifteen minutes an hour or something? That might help with humidity levels. I dunno how much it’d help with heat, although it doesn’t sound like it’s helping too much with heat right now anyway haha.
I’m of the mind that I’d rather have the tent be a little warmer but with proper humidity levels, as opposed to cool but insanely dry. I dunno exactly how dry it gets where you live, but the humidity where I live frequently gets down in the low teens, sometimes even single digits, so keeping the grow room properly humidified is typically impossible unless I do something like turn the exhaust off haha.
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Also, remember the reading is relative humidity. So at a certain temperature the humidity % is relative to that temperature. Warmer air can hold more water, so the same amount of water at 60° is a lower % at 70°.
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Damn, very good point I hadn’t even considered that. The humidity at 86f 50% relative humidity is higher than 80% relative humidity at 68f. Pretty crazy. I wonder how that translates to vpd. That will definitely change the way I think of my lower RH during lights on and high heat.
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There’s a few charts circulating around. Here’s the one I use, you could probably scare up a dozen others with a good Google search. They’re all basically the same, with minor variations on what the recommended range is for what stage of plant growth.
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