LSD-25 Auto #1 - Fastbuds Grow, 1st DWC!

I asked /r/Autoflowers which girl should be my first try at DWC. The votes that I got said to do up the Fastbuds LSD-25 Auto. So that is what we're doing! Here's my nutrient plan - Bioroots in the plug. Hydrogen Peroxide at 1 capful/gallon until mid flower. Maxigrow until flower begins Maxibloom, Mammoth P, and no more H202 during flower. And nothing else. (I'll have CaMg+ on hand just in case) Trying to keep it as simple as possible. The most important thing I've learned from my first grow was a lesson I've learned with many other hobbies. Too many variables is non-optimal. I'm going to use the minimal necessary tools for the job, and then expand and get more sophisticated in *later* grows. It saved me from trouble in my first grow and I expect will do the same here. EDIT: Day 7 - Lowered her water level as her leaves are clawing due to too much water.

Day 8 - DWC takes a little getting used to. Was finally able to get water to her taproot properly. It had come out of the side of her Rapid Rooter and as a result, getting water to her was difficult without getting the Rooter too wet until the taproot was hanging past the bottom of the rooter. Yesterday I pulled her out of the medium, and reset it, lowering her down so that her tiny, dangling taproot could get wet. She seems to have bulked up a bit as a result. I also decided to go sterile with my reservoir and got some pool shock treatment. This seems to have helped quite a bit as well.

Day 15 - Slowly but surely she's picking up steam. I've underwatered and over fed her a bit, and it shows. I think I put her a little too high in her basket and I've been hand feeding her. I think that in future, I'll use a smaller basket and do all hand feeding until I can see roots under their basket. I don't know if she's stunted in her current state or just small, but I'm going with her to the bitter/awesome end. Day 16 - Had to clean her bucket out again. Air stone was covered in goop. Emptied everything out, soaked it all in bleach water for a while. Soaked the hydroton (Carefully took the plant out) in hydrogen peroxide. Basically redid everything from scratch. Will be adding H202 daily from now on. Roots looked fine. The issue has to be the temperature in the room, because everything is light-tight. The temp, however, went from 70f to close to 80f two days ago, which pretty much has to be the source of the issue. Attempting to get the temps down now. Day 20 - Okay, so I pulled out a super secret weapon to battle my algae problem. Got a small UV fish tank sterilizer pump. Kinda large for a 5 Gallon bucket, but it sucks water in, blasts it with UV, and spits it out again. It also flings water all over the inside of the bucket, keeping O2 in the mix.

Day 22 - Week 3 begins! - A have a lot of anxiety about this whole DWC thing. She's smaller than she should be, and I'm certain that considering her nutrients and PH, I've been doing everything right, apart from maybe underfeeding her until a week or so ago. I've got the sneaking suspicion that she may be permanently stunted. She's showing phosphorous deficiency on her lowest two fan leaves, so I'm going to be switching from Maxigrow to Maxibloom. Autoflowers aren't super hungry for N anyhow so hopefully it's a big shift for the better. She's still growing like crazy, but just WAY behind the other girls. Day 23 - Man. MAN. I have been struggling with cyanobacteria since day one. I have used H202 and pool shock the whole time. I've got her water temp as low as I reasonably can without harming the soil girls (60-70f), and I changed her bucket water again today, after three days. I've reset everything again, and if she's full of brownish goop again in a few days, I'm going to go the other way from sterile and fill her up with Hydroguard to see if that does the trick. She's already relegated to "Experimental Plant" because she's probably stunted, so no harm, no foul at this point. Day 24 - Drinking more. Reduced the odds of light getting into bucket with a printed two piece cutout. She's growing every day but she looks pale and not so happy. The damage to her lowest leaves hasn't spread. Her roots look great but she's just plain not rocking and rolling. Day 25 - HOW ABOUT NO. So while I will try doing DWC again at a later date, I choose to surrender to my own ignorance and failures and put this girl into some soil, where I know what I'm doing. She's stunted, so she's not going to be a monster, but she will at least get a chance to live a more comfortable life out, free of nasty brown glop eating her from below. Put her into a 2.5 gallon pot, because my assumption is that she will be yielding in the grams, rather than ounces, and it isn't worth using a lot of the Great Lakes Water Only soil, which isn't super cheap. Anyway we'll see how she recovers in a proven environment rather than surrounded by suck and fail. Day 26 - Well, moving her to soil had an immediate and drastic result! She grew an inch overnight! She's never going to be a big girl now, but she's doing her best to make up for lost time.

Day 29 - A rough ride for this girl. She has adjusted to the soil, from the horrors of the failed DWC. I know, for the record, what caused the DWC issues. Was trying to run a sterile DWC, but I had started the seed in a Rapid Rooter, which is all organic, AND was using an organic Calcium/Magnesium supplement. The organic was winning every time I refilled the bucket and she'd fill up with cyanobacteria/brown algae in two to three days. PH would swing wildly as well, and I was resetting the PH almost daily. Finally, her root mass got coated in that wad of brown slime and she started choking for nutrients. Sticking her into some soil after dipping her in an H202 solution seems to have saved her life. Her growth is stunted and she's pretty much doomed to a tiny yield, but I wanted to get her to the finish line anyway. Her new growth is half an inch to one inch a day, and looks fairly healthy. Her old growth looks terrible but is upright and rigid in a healthy way. Day 33 - Day 32 didn't happen. Apologies. Had Dungeons and Dragons to play. :-D - She she grew three inches over two days. She may actually manage to have some sort of future beyond relaxation? We'll see. Day 35 - Well shucks! I'm kinda starting to have a tiny bit of hope for this girl. She's actually recovering far more than I had hoped. I mean she's obviously not going to be throwing ounces at me, but she's really trying her damnedest to make good.

Day 36 - Well I feel great about this girl. Her DWC was an utter failure, but I thought that she was pretty much just being given a comfortable retirement home when I put her into soil. Just me being sentimental. Well, she's grown a foot in the last week! So while she won't be doing it up like a thug, she may, in fact, throw some genuine bud at us, which is a really pleasant surprise. Day 41 - She she's getting huge now, compared to where she was. About a foot in the last five days. So there's still hope for some sort of yield from this girl after all! Day 42 - As week six ends, she's gone from piss poor to not to shabby!

Day 43 - As week seven begins, I have high hopes for this girl, who has managed to make a significant comeback from her travesty of a DWC attempt. She's beginning to flower, and they're a super dark purple! Looking forward to seeing how she develops and finishes. Day 49 - Rounding out week seven, she's doing well, smelling amazing, like artificial grape flavor and roses.

Day 50 - Into week eight! She STINKS like grape jelly and flowers. She's also so sticky you can lightly tap her buds and the whole stem comes with your finger for a second as you pull away. I'll chalk her off as "A good save". will probably grow another one, directly from soil to begin with, just to see how big this strain *should* have grown if she hadn't had a rough start. Day 53 - This girl smells so good that I'm constantly tempted to run my fingers along her sugar leaves and smell the grapey rosey stank. Day 56 - She absolutely STINKS. Roses and artificial grape flavor filling the room.

Day 57 - Entering week nine! So she's got symptoms of calcium deficiency but is putting out buds like a monster. Her smell is still an extremely potent rosey grape reek and I'm constantly tempted to touch her buds and sniff my fingers. In the next grow I'll be doing up two more of this strain to see how well they grow in soil, minus the stunting this girl suffered due to the DWC failure. Day 63 - She she just suddenly decided to rocket up another few inches? Okay! Her colas are purple, packed, and overpoweringly smelly. She's got another week and she's almost rage-growing lol. IMMA BE EEEEEWGE IF'N I CAN. Kinda regret the 2.5 gallon pot.

Day 64 - Week ten! Throwing some Koolbloom into the mix, along with Mammoth P now. Giving her another seven days or so to fill out but she's looking pretty done. The smell is pretty much drowning out the smells of every other plant in the room.

So I gave this girl and the Grapefruit Auto the chop today. They were both done as done but could have gone for another day or two with no problem. However, the Mephisto Ghost Toof DWC is starting to get pompoms and was looking a little bit crowded in, so I wanted to give her a bit more space, so the chop these girls got. If you've followed this grow, this girl was my first, failed attempt at a DWC grow. I made the mistake of using an organic Cal/Mag supplement while trying to run a sterile DWC, which lead to repeated outbreaks of brown algae. In the end, I pulled her out of the DWC, looking pretty bad, on day 25, and stuck her into a 2.5 gallon pot, not hoping for more than a harvest measured in grams. I'd still have been able to sample the strain, and know how soon I'd want to take another crack at it. I should have put her into a six gallon pot like the other girls, because she recovered like gangbusters and would have yielded a lot more had she had the room. But that's okay, as I have a couple more seeds and I'll be trying her again in the next grow. I didn't from this girl, learn to take the chance with a girl that I think is stunted. Give 'em a shot, because they may surprise you.