Alaskan Thunder Fuck - RDWC

ATF was assigned the color green for this grow. ===== 8/9 Germination Day 0 ===== Put about 1.5cm down into a rapid rooter that had been soaked in distilled water with h202 in it. Placed on top of a vivosun heating pad. I am germinating 3 other varieties (all sativa dominant) and have a fifth rooter I've used just to put the vivosun probe into for checking temperature. ===== 8/10 Germination Day 1 ===== Not much to report. Just been tracking metrics and will be spraying the rapid rooters and lid 1-2 times a day to maintain moisture levels. ===== 8/11 Germination Day 2 ===== Put together my cloning machine. It is sold as a kit by PA Hydroponics. The plan is to move the plants here after they have sprouted and grown tall enough to clear the neoprene nicely. ATF has roots growing through the bottom of the rooter. Hopefully the rest will follow and we'll see them sprout soon. ===== 8/12 Germination Day 3 ===== ATF has sprouted! Haven’t seen signs of life yet from the other 3. I drained the hydro today. I had been running it to get a feel for what the environment will be like inside the grow tent. I will fill it back up nearer to when I am going to transplant. I have the drain kit installed on my fallponics system. You can see I have an extra inch or so clearance than I need. I might try to get smaller bricks or build support from lumber in the future. I expelled the water outside into a garden. One pic is when it is working at full capacity and the second shows when it starts to trickle: at this point I shut off the pump. You can see the reservoir and plant bucket levels at this point. Next step was to drain the remaining water with a wetvac. Evening: I have been spraying the humidity dome but after talking to an experienced grower I added a few drops of water treated with h2o2 to prevent the rapid rooters from drying out. I am hoping to move ATF to the cloning machine tomorrow. ===== 8/13 Germination Day 4 ===== ATF is about an inch and a half now. I decided to move all the rooters to the cloning machine since I didn’t want to have to figure out the proper environment for both. For the cloning machine, I added 2ml h2o2 / gal to distilled water. I put 1 ½ gallons of water (and 3ml h2o2) into it. I covered them with humidity domes spritzed with water. The net pots couldn’t fit both the rooters and neoprene nicely so I cut the bottoms out. I tried varying levels of prong length to ensure the rooters didn’t go too deep. Now they fit better. But holey moley, while transferring them to the clipped pots I made a mess with water spraying everywhere. I should have turned the pump off for this part. I talked to a more experienced grower about how wet the rooters were getting and learned this type of cloner is more for clones and not for seeds since you can’t really drown clones. I pivoted by removing the pump and putting in an airstone from the hydro system. I will adjust the dampness by water level and air pump speed. I gave the rooters a gentle squeeze to remove some of the excess water. I hope the plants forgive me for trying to drown them. 🤣 I also turned on the inline and rotating fans and the tent had its first period of darkness last night since I swapped the lights to 18/6 timing. Big day for the lil ones. ===== 8/14 Germination Day 5 ===== I ended up adding another ¼ gallon of h2o2 water and found a good level for the air bubbles to be at in order to keep the bottom damp but not drenched. ATF continues in the lead and is showing more roots out of the bottom. The tent seemed to regulate its temperature way better with the hydro system running. It is a good time to fill it back up and use a method described to me by @Lishrakk to make sure I set the water levels correctly inside the fallponics system: Use a wooden spoon (or in my case wooden dowel) marked with inches to fill the system to 2 inches below the net pots bottom. Let the system run for awhile Remove hydroton until you run into the wet clay. Measure this level and use it as a base for how high your water should be depending on whether you need your rooters higher or lower. And more tips from him to dial in the system easier: Take a gallon or two of tap water Measure its PH and PPM PH Down it to 5.85 -ish. Record how many ml it took Divide this by the number of gallons balanced Record this ratio and use it for balancing your water in the future And using a water meter on my hose to accurately track amounts of water added to the system. I bought a little air pump to power the cloning machine so the fallponics system could have its fourth back. At first I was worried it was too small so I put 4 gallons in there but it was drenching the rooters again so I removed some water. I’ll hone in on the right paramters soon enough. My meter said 40.6 gallons was added to the fallponics but I’m pretty sure I forgot to reset the 4 I had used in the cloning machine. I’ll make sure to zero it next time 😄 To the water in the cloning machine I added 1mg/gal each of micro, grow and bloom as well as 0.5mg/gal orca to give them a little taster of what’s to come. I remade my PH solutions and opened a second ph meter because my vivosun one was giving erratic results. I’m still not sure everything is OK as it only took 1ml/gal PH Down to achieve 5.86 PH. I’ll keep testing in the days to come. I will check the hydroton for how high it dampens tomorrow. ===== 8/15 Germination Day 6 ===== She be growing. ===== 8/16 Germination Day 7 ===== Following advice from HWG I will be only having the cloning machine on for a brief period of time every couple days. One of my cats entered the tent and did some parkour but everything was mostly unharmed–I had a small hole to patch in the tent. For now I am blocking the ventilation hole with my scrog net (it has a hard frame). She can probably still get in if she is determined but it should deter. I will probably make a chicken wire box around it so she cannot get in. I’ll also be more vigilant about clipping her nails in case she tries to scale the outside so there is less risk of holes. ===== 8/17 Germination Day 8 ===== I put an aquarium heater in the cloning machine. I kept it at 72 for now will maybe turn it up later. ===== 8/18 Germination Day 9 ===== Aquarium heater up to 77. The tent temp is rising just a bit and hopefully this will help the seedlings take off. I also swapped out the cloning water. I used tap treated with h2o2 and ph’d to 5.8. I’m not going to use the bubbler or sprayer and rather just drip fed 8-10 drops of h2o2 distilled water onto atf. ===== 8/19 Germination Day 10 ===== I think we are back on track. I will just be running a small amount of nutes in it for pre-veg. ===== 8/20 Germination Day 11 ===== ATF transported into the hydroponics system! I put 40 ml FloraMicro, DynaGro, and FloraBloom into the system as well as 20 ml Orca. ===== 8/21 Germination Day 12 ===== ATF looks just slightly droopy to me but otherwise hale. I turned on the humidifier to try and get the humidity up in the tent (it has been ~50%) and put the humidity domes on (I probably should have had them on since transferring, oops!). ===== 8/22 Germination Day 13 ===== ATF continues to droop and has some brown spotting. I’ll top feed water in a circle an inch out from the stem today and in a couple days ad nauseum until her roots grow out. Update: after a discussion with Lishrackk I took the plants out and replaced them into the hydroton. I dug again, this time past where it got damp and down to where the stones were wet. I then used that as my new basis for the bottom of the rooters. They are about an inch and a half lower now. On the bright side both plants roots showed continued growth so I think they will bounce back. 🤞 ===== 8/23 Germination Day 14 ===== ATF looks a bit more punchy today. ===== 8/24 Germination Day 15 ===== ATF is looking good! Still no roots poking out the bottom, but I’m happy with how she’s looking today. ===== 8/25 Germination Day 16 ===== I top fed ATF. I turned down the humidity and turned off the heat setting on the humidifier since it was approaching 75 degrees F and was at 74% humidity. It has been hot and humid here and I think our AC is struggling to keep up now. ===== 8/26 Germination Day 17 ===== Top fed. It appears to me that ATF has some new spotting (I really need to figure out how to take less exposed pictures). Maybe I will have to feed closer to the stem? I keep checking the roots but no dice yet. ===== 8/27 Germination Day 18 ===== I top fed twice today, roughly 12 hours apart and the last feeding with several hours before lights out. ATF is growing but has some pretty dark brown spots today. I am doing an alternate feed chart that I got from Lishrakk and has worked for him in this system which you only have to feed every 1-2 weeks (depending on where you’re at in the cycle). I might do week 1 veg nute reservoir swap (which will have some calmag in it) in the next few days. ===== 8/28 Germination Day 19 ===== Morning: Top fed. Evening: ATF’s roots were long enough they should be doing just fine now.