Gorilla Cookies: First Auto, First RDWC and Hydro.

Still some issues. Can't really seem to figure out what's wrong with these ladies, besides my cubes might have been too wet, and then killed em off somehow. I did transfer to the tanks a bit late, because i was waiting for a RO system to arrive. My water is incredibly hard, and in testing the hydro-system with tap-water, i had to use around 8ml/L of PH down of TA PH- to neutralize the alkalinity and keep the solution stable.. That in return caused slimy water because of the citric acids mingling with the magnesium and calcium. In the system now, I'm running 4 parts RO water, and 1 part tap water, and got PH- use down to 1.5 - 2 ml/L. I'm plan to switch to a full RO water when i change water in a week or two. This will hopefully have me using even less PH-down than i am now. Roots are down all right in the tanks, though only a single long-john going from every one of them. I've got new seeds on the way in the mail - hopefully the ladies can recover their stress. EDIT: I think the usual suspects were to blame, as someone would confirm for me in the question-section. Substrait too wet - i don't think lights are to blame, since I have them measured out at around 215 PPFD. The cubes were placed too close to the bottom of the net pot. This has caused too much water to hit the cubes from below, caused by air-bubbles bursting - i run around 15L/min air into every bucket. Two plants to the right didn't have any bottom-cover of pebbles to protect from direct water splashing. I've gently been blowing air into the Rockwool cubes with an air-compressor trying to remove excess water in the cubes. I also moved the cubes up higher in the net-pots, making sure clay-pebbles covers adequately at the bottom parts of all the net pots. Seems to have done some sort of trick. Now, giving it a few days, not throwing anything out just yet.

Not much this week. I upped the nutes a bit, and increased light intensity ever so slightly. Roots were growing healthy, but I noticed some dark and blackish spots on the roots. This was a bit odd to me, since temperatures in the water is pretty steady 19-20C at all times. The growth of the plants had in hindsight, started to stunt as well. It was quite interesting to see which leaf symptoms would manifest from the black and dark root spots. I did find out, and the you wouldn’t believe the answer!! Coming up next week! I really like hydro so far. Problems can pop up really fast, but they can also be taken care of fairly quickly if you identify the source of the problem quick. I can feel how rewarding this learning experience is already. Next run is gonna be so much smooth sailing.

Lights up to 500 ppfd, Had quite a few calmag issues - I found out this was due to my ph meter had fallen out .2 on the scale. What I thought was 5.9, was more like 5.7, which had completely locked out calmag, fixed it, and it seems plants are doing quite a bit better. Also added some myco into the cycle, and roots seems to love it - loads of nice new white roots developing.

Plants are looking pretty good despite some troubles. Had a bit of lock-out issues again, so i reset my res, and lowered the nutes considerably, since I started having a lot of soft retarded growth, and also some thin leaves forming. Lights at around 600 ppdf. I’ve ordered a reservoir cooler which will come next week. I’m having some issues with water temps creeping up just above 22C once in a while, which I can see have an effect on the root system. I already can’t wait for the next grow. These plants just take a beating, even though I’m learning, and haven’t had the right equipment all from start. By the end of the week 3 plants had flowering started, and I think I saw some sites development on the 4th little plant. I forgot to take pictures of the little flower sites.

Well well, flowering and stretching has started for most of these beauties. I don’t know whether I have 3 different phenotypes or, if the growing conditions has just been widely different from one plant to the other. But none the less, I have plants with characteristics quite different from one another. This week I haven’t done much besides topping of the reservoir, change it all Saturday, and add the water cooler, and Sunday I did a big defoil, since they all got dense with leaves. Did a bit of LST as well. The tall one I had to do some daring HST to the top stem because it’s just shooting away from the others. Besides a few root issues, which I hope to fix now with with the res-cooler, I think these fine ladies are just cruising a long now. I do need to lower the humidity soon enough though, since plants aspirate a lot, and humidity is in the 90% ish in the mornings

This week they’ve just been cruising on. Been messing a bit more with LST, but only to manage the light the budsides gets. I did I little defoil on Friday, but not over exaggerated. Still trying to keep as much as possible for the buds. Rootball takes up all of the buckets now in all 4. The runt is still going fairly slow about itself and coming into flower, but she has less light too. There’s the queen Goliath in the corner, in which I have huge expectations for.

Did a reservoir change 20/04. Also did a bigger defoliation Friday 19/04. It’s hard to see how much I removed- but I threw out m nearly 3 kilos of leafs and branches. It seems like the plants are chugging a lot of nutes now, and I could barely follow on the topping ups. It sorta also shows a bit on the big queen. Her leaves shows some magnesium or calcium deficiency, which weren’t due to PH issues. I therefore upped the nutrients a significant portion, to the recommended TA flower schedule. So far, so good. I also changed away from the biobizz calmg, since it acts weird. It looks kinda like it all falls out of solution after a few days, and is all over my system. I changed it to TA CaMg instead, which does an amazing job so far. The tent is really starting to smell sweet and hazy now. 3 ladies are progressing well in flower, and the little runt is still fighting to properly start hers. Only around 5 - 6 weeks till harvest time now. So excited.

Been sick myself this week, so I didn’t get to defoliate, which sucks because the canopy got huge and dense, again. These ladies produce so much foliage that I can barely keep up. The runt started her stretch now too, so now all plants are finally in bloom. It looks like in the end though, that I need to cut down the plants at different times, since 2 of them has only a little month left in bloom Been topping up on both nutes, and water every feed since they’ve been drinking so much. What I thought was a calcium deficiency last week, turned out to be manganese. I’ve barely had my solution drop below 6 ever. So it was a bit of an “aha” moment, realising how important it might be to “roll” my ph a bit more within the range of 5.5-6.5 and not a set 6, to get all of the micro/macro mites needed.

I only got a few bud pictures this week. What I’ve thought to be deficiencies ended up being light burns due to the lights being too low. So that’s that. Besides everything they seem to just cruise along fine. PH fluctuates a lot, going from 6.4 - 5.5 every 2 days. I assume it's due to the use of RO water. EC levels are very stable.

I’ve redeemed myself for the lack of photos last week!! These girls are caking up absolutely incredible. I hope harvest is only a few weeks out now, but I don’t see a lot of milky tricimes yet, and no ambers in sight at all. I took off a few low side branches to dry, and see how they go. Smell is amazing. Very sweet of sorts. Very hard to describe. Definitely got a lot of gas too.