First grow in ten years.

On 11/18 I started 2 of each: Lemon Drop, Girl Scout Cookies, and Ghost Train Haze. I started seeds with moist paper towels in zip lock bags. Transplanted sprouts to peat pellets, and left them in a seed starting tray with the top on for the remainder of the week. Watering peat pellets can be tricky so leaving them under the dome endured they would stay moist. I just had to make sure the pellets didn't oversaturate and temps stayed around 80f.

Tricky to keep the peat pellets moist but not soaked during this week. I submerged the peat pellets in some slightly pHed down tap water. Tap is almost 8.5pH. I didn't have replacement probes for my decades old Hanna meters, but I do now. The pen from Hanna was accurate enough that it didn't need replaced after nearly a decade in storage. Props to Hanna. The grow room and RDWC hydro setup are compete enough to add the girls! The room is nearly 4'x4'x8'. The air pump is a 70lpm going to 7 air stones that are 4"x2" cylinders. Air pump is enclosed in a bin filled with rock wool and fiberglass insulation with tubes protruding the enclosure. Once this was completed the pump was moved outside the grow room. The 600w metal halide bulb is about 25” from the nearest plant. It's actually a conversion bulb putting out 50k lumens when new. I haven't used this much since it's the MH bulb and I don't spend much time in veg. At more than a decade old with slight use, it needs replaced. Lights were on 24/7 until I could replace a broken grounded timer. Plants tolerated the transition to their new home well.

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Girls are growing great. PPM stayed around 800 until this morning. Girls are feeding! PH has stabilized at 5.8. Added a tbls of micro and bloom a couple days ago. I'll try to keep the ppm around 800 for now. I'm using a float valve in my control bucket that's connected to my pHed reservoir. Added a passive cooling coil made from poly tubing to the control bucket. Tubes go outside to a reservoir. Warm water goes up the coil and out to the reservoir. Cold water comes in from the bottom tube. I've measured over twenty degree difference between the two tubes at the control bucket. Found a corn cob 100w 10000 lumens LED for cheap. It generated more heat than I anticipated. Tried turning off the oil filled electric heater but temps kept climbing so I had to take it out. I tried putting a fan directly under the corn, but while it dissipated the heat better it heated up the room too much. On the evening of the 13th I topped both Lemon Drops. Gave 2tbls Flora Bloom and 1tbls Flora Micro. Next morning they seem to have grown a little already.

Topped the Lemon Drops end of last week. Thought I might be suffering from magnesium or nitrogen deficiency. Added some nutes since it was time anyway but didn't see the improvement I expected. Double checked my water pH with another meter and found it around 5.5. Calibrated the pH meters and that helped. pH is around 6 after a tad of pH up in tap water. One meter says 6.2 and another says 5.9. looking at a chemical test I find the pH around 6. Hopefully the corrected pH will allow better magnesium uptake and resolve the problem. I'll report back. Input is appreciated.