First Grow Ever - GGAuto

This week was the worst!!! Like i mentioned the previous week - RH had been getting out of control. Luckily because I had so much circulation within the tent white powdery mold (WPM) did not settle any where on the plants. I did however notice that my tent no longer had negative pressure when the AC kicked on and the smell was being pushed out of the tent (positive pressure from AC blower). I took a look at my carbon filter and the edges where covered in WPM. took the outer cover filter off and gave it a little slap and a white cloud poofed every where!!! like a cloud of baby powder. lol. So i removed the plants and sanitized the tent and carbon filter and washed the outer filter sleeve. Now there is a constant negative pressure in the tent regardless of AC or not. and RH has been somewhat under control. The problem is the plants were too leafy and i cant keep RH below 60% unless I keep the tent door flap open - this is not acceptable during lights off because of light leak - but then RH creeps up to high 70s. Sooooooo.... I super duper defoliated the plants - I know this is a kind of a big no no with Autos but it was either this or let the plants rot. Luckily this is the end of week 3 for flowering and the stretch is over and the plants have been very healthy other wise so they should take it like a champ. I took out the rest of the wispy colas, giant leaf fans sweating everywhere and blocking bud sites, and strategically removed other leaves. I definitely over did it and I will see lower yields because of it but this is better than no yields because of bud rot. This grow is about learning and I am definitely doing a lot of that. RH is now under control and hovering in the high 40's low 50's after defoliating. gonna keep up with week 8 diary better than the last two.