Sosl0w Glog.

Hey all, frequent this site a lot for info but never posted. First year growing and figured I would start a log.

Right now I have 2 reg hab plants and a Bhut that I was growing in soil over the winter. I've decided to step up my game and go full hydroponics.

Seeds were started about 3 weeks ago with about half of them germinated. Here are some pics of the setup.

Old Lighting:: California Light Works Solarstorm LED lighting. Not enough coverage with this light so I switched it up in favor of the new lighting.
New Lighting: 4 Solar Flare Full Cycle LED systems from California Light Works.

Hydroponics setup: This is my first attempt at hydroponics and i'm still learning the ins and outs. After doing a bunch of initial research this is the first design i came up with that could maintain the 4x4 requirements of the light.

Building it up. Blurring out my messy garage haha.

Done and wrapped with air setup installed.

Tent arrives and is setup!

Lets go inside and have a look!

The setup will support 12 plants however I botched the design a bit so I can't use the one closest to the water entry. So I will only have 11 plants this time. I may or may not redesign it. Who knows.

Will be posting more updates as soon as everything is in the system and growing.

 

[cory_huck]

damn.....going all in I see!

 

[SocalChilehead]

That is an amazing setup good luck through the season.

 

[Guillo1]

very nice set up kind of a mixture of DWC and NFT. Nice light but a bit pricey if you ask me $2000, you can make something similar for 1/4 of the price. Why did you wrap the PVC?

 

[kiddc]

that thing is HUGE!! Cant wait to see more progress

 

[sosl0w]

very nice set up kind of a mixture of DWC and NFT. Nice light but a bit pricey if you ask me $2000, you can make something similar for 1/4 of the price. Why did you wrap the PVC?

Yea, the light is very pricey, I didn't pay $2000 for it though. I got in their grow program so it was much cheaper. I wrapped the PVC because I wanted any wasted light to be reflected and used. It probably didn't make a huge difference but it only cost like $10 for a roll of the tape so I said what the hell haha.

 

[sosl0w]

Lighting setup is getting changed. Sending the Big light back in favor of 4 of there smaller ones. There bigger light just doesn't have the coverage that i need. With the 4 small lights i should be able to light my entire tent. Should have the new lights in early next week.

 

[PaulG]

Pretty deluxe set-up there! I'm not into hydro, but I sure like seeing the way cool inventions you folk come up with. I'll be very interested to see how this develops over the next month or two!

 

[sosl0w]

I spoke with the owner from California Light Works and he agreed to swap out my light for a different setup under his grow program. I am now running 4 smaller solarflare lights. They give me a much better coverage area. The customer service from CLW was absolutely outstanding, probably the best I have had from a company anywhere. And that is saying something.

Anyways. I have had some issues getting seeds started and germinated. I started trying to germinate them in the sure to grow hydroponics medium and that was a huge fail. Maybe 6 out of 24 worked. So I have some plants that are bigger than others as you will see from the pictures. So far the LED grow lights seem to be working great.

 

[sosl0w]

So I figured its time for an update. I had started a couple plants in my system to test it out and work all the kinks out. I ended up with a lot of alge and some pests and had to trash about 4 of the plants. I have two plants left, and they are doing great! I have switched my growing medium from Sure to Grow to Hydroton and now have plants in almost every slot. Everything seems to be going great in my hydro system.

In the hydro system i have the following so far with 4 slots open, just waiting on a couple more seeds to come up:

Mustard Habanero
Jalapeno
Scotch Bonnet
Tiny Tim Tomato x2
Chilitepin
Fatalii Yellow


On another note. The pepper bug hit me pretty hard after finishing my hydro system and I just couldn't decide on what i wanted to grow in the hydro system as i wanted to grow far more different variaties than the system would allow me. So i started some soil plants.

My plan is to grow the plants in my hydro system until end of summer and then clean them out. Take all of my potted plants and move them into my grow tent to over winter them for next year.

Here is my grow list. I have about 15 of these already started(shown below) and another 15 that i just seeded last night.


Tepin
Chile Blanco
Fatalii Yellow
Fatalii Red
Black Pearl
Rocotillo
Datil
Chinese Ornamental
Devil's Tongue
Tongan Xiao Mi Jiao
Red Savina Habanero
Chilitepin
Congo Black
Goronong
Kaleidoscope
Bishop's Crown
Inca Lost
Chile De Arbol
Cheiro Recife
Aji Pineapple
Bulgaria
Guajillo
Cajamarca
Earbob
Puta Madre
Quintisho
Congo Brown
Aji Habanero
Purira
Sweet Wrinkled Old Man
Purple Tiger
Mustard Habanero
Antillais Habanero
Amish Bush
Scotch Bonnet Yellow
Red Habanero
Jalapeno
Cayenne
Bahamian
Most Prolific
Bhut Jolokia
Trinidad Moruga Scorpian
7 Pod Brain Red
7 Pod Large Red

Peppermania Mystery Seeds x4

 

[frosty]

First off. WOW! You went nuts in on Hydro. I like sure to grow but it doesn't wick so it might be the worst choice for your system. You might have done better if you had done a drip/dwc hybrid system until the roots got into the nutes.

are the nutes recirculating constantly or on and off?

I don't see any venting. How hot is it getting in there?

Where does one get piping that large?

 

[sosl0w]

First off. WOW! You went nuts in on Hydro. I like sure to grow but it doesn't wick so it might be the worst choice for your system. You might have done better if you had done a drip/dwc hybrid system until the roots got into the nutes.

are the nutes recirculating constantly or on and off?

I don't see any venting. How hot is it getting in there?

Where does one get piping that large?

Yea, STG sucked for me. I wasn't a fan at all. Its a constant recirculating system. The pictures above were taken during winter months so i didn't have any venting to keep it heated. I now have it vented. Temps stay between 75-80. I have also sense added a water chiller for the res to keep it at 68ish. They Hydroton is working way better than the STG already. The pots sit down in the water about an inch to inch n half.

You can get 6" piping from Lowes or Homedepot. My suggestion would be to only use straight peices though. If i were to do it over again i would eliminate the turns and just do 3 or 4 straight peices. Would of been way cheaper, more mobile, and easier to drain/clean.

 

[frosty]

I'm tempted to get a water chiller but part of me wants to see how hot it can get before failure. What water chiller are you using? Do you know how many watts it pulls?

Thanks for the answers and good luck

 

[sosl0w]

I'm tempted to get a water chiller but part of me wants to see how hot it can get before failure. What water chiller are you using? Do you know how many watts it pulls?

Thanks for the answers and good luck

Here is the chiller i'm using.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0048IVBT4/ref=oh_details_o01_s00_i00

So far its working great. I only have a 27gal resivour with my entire system holding about 30-35 gallons when full so it seems to be working great.

Before i got the chiller my res temps were close to 78. So it was most def needed. If you can do a setup where your res is outside of your grow tent in a cool area you could probably get away without one. I may have to move mine outside of my tent come June and July even with the chiller.

 

[sosl0w]

Update:
Soil plants are growing nicely.
Hydro plants are doing ok haha.

I've had a couple run ins with Aphids as you can see by the leaf curl.

Hydro plants, i just can't seem to get the nutes/ph right to keep them happy. Which I really don't understand because I keep nutes between 500 & 600 ppm and PH between 6 & 6.5. Owell, I will find the sweet spot eventually. This year is just my trial year for hydro anyways. My entire hydro setup is getting torn down and taken out of the tent come winter so i can over winter all of my soil plants.

Some pics.

Black Pearl #1

Most Prolific

Chinese Ornamental

Bahamian

Mustard Hab - Hydro

 

[frosty]

Are the flowers setting? Your roots are in the nutes now and I bet the sucker starts taking off. Are you going to foliar spray?

 

[sosl0w]

Update on grow list, entire list is planted, about 20 still haven't popped. These are all at various stages as you can see from the previous posted pictures. The previous posted pictures where the seeds i originally started in Feb.



7 POD x 1
7 Pod Brain x 1
7 Pod Large Red x 1
Aji Habanero x 1
Aji Pineapple x 1
Amish Bush x 1
Antillais Habanero x 1
Bahamian x 2
Bhut Jolokia x 1
Bishop's Crown x 1
Black Pearl x 2
Bulgaria x 1
Cajamarca x 1
Cayenne x 1
Cheiro Recife x 1
Chile De Arbol x 1
Chinese Ornamental x 1
Congo Black x 1
Congo Brown x 1
Datil x 1
Earbob x 1
Fatalii Yellow x 1
Guajillo x 1
Inca Lost x 1
Jalapeno x 1
Kaleidoscope x 1
Most Prolific x 2
Mustard Habanero x 1
Orange Habanero x 2
Purira x 1
Purple Tiger x 1
Red Habanero x 2
Red Savina Habanero x 1
Rocotillo x 1
Scotch Bonnet Yellow x 1
Sweet Wrinkled Old Man x 1
Tongan Xiao Mi Jiao x 1
7 Pod Douglah
Aribibi Gusano
Bhut Jolokia Chocolate
Bhut Jolokia x Pimenta Neyde
Bido Ticana
Chile Blanco
Chilitepin
Chocolate Habanero
Devil's Tongue
Fatalii Red
Goronong
Mata Frade
Pimenta de Neyde
Puta Madre
Quintisho
Tepin
Trinidad Moruga Scorpian
Trinidad Scorpion Chocolate



Peppermania Mystery seeds:
7 total planted with 4 up so far.

[background=rgb(245, 234, 219)]
frosty, on 22 May 2012 - 07:04 PM, said:[/background][background=rgb(255, 250, 242)]

Are the flowers setting? Your roots are in the nutes now and I bet the sucker starts taking off. Are you going to foliar spray?[/background]

[background=rgb(255, 244, 228)]It just started flowering, haven't tried to get them to set yet. I would like it to get a little bigger first. Roots are def in the nutes but it seems to have stalled for some reason. Not sure what's going on with it. I probably just suck at hydro to be honest lol. I'll get the hang of it eventually. Probably won't foliar spray. Not until i get everything else in order first at least. [/background]

 

[sosl0w]

Couple updated pictures.

Black Pearl

For my Hydro grow, I've come to the conclusion that i just suck at hydroponics. I can't figure out what the problem is. I've tried a billion different things and can't seem to get things to grow right.


This is the root mass of my biggest plant. It pretty much stops at the top of the water and I'm not sure why. And almost all of the plants are like this.