PC Grow - Mango Kush x Unknown Sativa

Hey guys, Got bored and decided to make a little PC grow box with some stuff I had laying around on this rainy day. I have seen some pretty cool PC grows so I figured I would give it a shot. Using 625nm/6500K LED strips for this. These are bag seeds, hoping for one female and LST and top to create more cola's and to grow wider rather than more tall. CHECK OUT WEEK 2 FOR FULL SETUP

Week 2 Vegetation Hey guys, got some changes and updates for you this week! PC GROW TURNS HYDRO Again, we have had lots of rain this week and once again found myself bored... I have never grown hydroponically before and decided to do a DIY hydro build along with the DIY PC case. LIGHTS I used some LED strips that I had sitting around that were 12" long. Each strip is driven on board already so I just had to solder them together and connect to a 24VDC power supply. I used 15 strips total, 8 on the top mounted to a metal plate to disperse heat and the rest on the back wall. I lost my glue when adding these, I will have to re-secure some of the strips better. Total Watts: 110W Colour: 6500K + 3000K + 625nm CRI: 85 Lumens: 810/ft Some of these are dual colour, white or red but only one colour can be on at once. In the future I may re-wire it so I can use a relay to switch from veg colours to flower (more reds). FANS I am using two 80mm fans on the front of the case to intake air, one 120mm fan above the light on the top of the case to exhaust light heat and one more exhaust fan on the back. The one on the back is a 120mm 120V fan, a lot stronger than the PC fans as these LED's warm this thing up pretty good. DWC I started with the DIY method and took two old coffee tins and cut a hole in the top to create a reservoir. I had already started two seedlings in coco so I decided to use solo cups with coco as a net pot and let the roots come out the bottom and grow. Each container has its own little 5gal aquarium pump with an air stone inside the res. I am monitoring the res temps in one bucket with a temperature sensor to ensure it doesn't get too hot. OTHER FEATURES I have decided to use an Arduino to control the PC grow case. I have relays wired up to control the fans and monitor the temperature and humidity. I am using an Arduino Mega with a DHT11 temp/humidity sensor. NUTRIENTS Water source is water from a dehumidifier reading 0 ppm. Calnesium - 100 ppm pH Perfect Micro - 150 ppm pH Perfect Grow - 50 ppm pH Perfect Bloom - 50 ppm Total: 350 ppm pH - 5.8 See you back next week!

Week 3 Veg Man root growth is just explosive with hydro... I have learned it is very delicate to it's environment as well, I started to get some rotting roots yesterday and I believe it was due to warmer temps for a couple days. I am now keeping a closer eye on the water temp and add ice when needed. I changed out the water and added a little hydrogen peroxide, roots are looking a lot better today. I think that is what has caused some of the droopiness and symptoms on the leaves. I added a switch for the lights on the walls, I will just turn these on for flower as it creates a lot more heat which will be nice for flower to bring RH down. Right now it seems to work a lot better running the top LED's to keep heat down and RH up for veg. NUTRIENTS Calnesium - 100 ppm pH Perfect Micro - 150 ppm pH Perfect Grow - 50 ppm pH Perfect Bloom - 50 ppm Total: 350 ppm pH - 5.8 Open to all comments and criticism! Never tried a hydro grow or grow in this small of a space... Won't be easy but I am always up for a challenge.

Week 4 Veg Decided to clean the PC box up a little by re securing the LED strips on the wall and adding ducting with the fan in between the duct and carbon filter to create less noise than when it was in the PC case. I won't have to worry about protecting buds now either near the spinning blades. I was also having issues with bacteria building up in the one res so I painted a new tuber-ware for a reservoir. I had to put one plant in soil as the res was blocking to much air flow from the intake fans...it is what it is. I had also lowered my res temps to 17-20 deg C. I am only planning to flower one anyways. I have been struggling to keep RH up lately, for now I have been using ziploc bags with holes over top and they seem much happier. NUTRIENTS Calnesium - 100 ppm pH Perfect Micro - 200 ppm pH Perfect Grow - 100 ppm pH Perfect Bloom - 100 ppm Total: 500 ppm pH - 5.8

Week 5 Veg Seems to be going okay so far, snapped out of the def once I stepped the feed up. I found out most of the light strips were 3000k so I wired all the reds except one strip to the 3000k colour. This should help with better veg growth compared to the 625nm and I think will be more beneficial in flower. Thinking of how I am going to train these....there is not much space with the lights on the side wall and don't want to risk burning. We have had some warmer nights lately, keeping temps up a little more throughout the week. Plant started getting a tad yellow so I checked to res to see she was thirsty, ppm was brought down to 400ppm/0.8EC NUTRIENTS Calnesium - 100 ppm pH Perfect Micro - 200 ppm pH Perfect Grow - 150 ppm pH Perfect Bloom - 150 ppm Total: 600 ppm pH - 5.8

Week 6 Veg Well as you can see I have no idea what I am doing when it comes to hydro. One plant looks pretttyy hungry and both are small given veg time. You can see in the second pic the orange spots on the leaves are from the LED's burning. Changed the reservoir water today, as I do weekly. Changed the lights to 12/12 and hoping for a female! NUTRIENTS Calnesium - 200 ppm pH Perfect Micro - 200 ppm pH Perfect Grow - 200 ppm pH Perfect Bloom - 200 ppm Total: 800 ppm pH - 5.8

Week 1 Flower We will mark today day 1 of flower! Both plants showing pistils now, I was not expecting two females. Seem to be at a good size and filling in the space nicely. Cut back on nitrogen nutes a tad and upped bloom nutes. These guys are getting thirsty, I am constantly having to check the res every day or two. Curious to see what’s to come in the future! Cheers !

Week 2 Flower Plants have grown a ton since upping the feed a little! Producing nice bud sites so far, just hope they don't stretch much more! I am thinking if they do I will have to come up with a more shallow res. Gals are getting thirsty having to fill up now every second day. Since these were bag seeds I have a feeling the original plant was pollinated as both my plants are super sativa-looking, where as Mango Kush should slightly be indica dominant. Excited to see what's to come of these little guys. Cheers and stay lyfted!

Week 3 Flower As you'll notice there is only one plant now...they started growing too tall and was space limited if I was to super crop. I ended up getting rid of the smaller one and keeping the larger plant. Not concerned, just a little test run for the PC grow. I re-tied the branches down to try and help with height and seemed to work, they haven't grown much since height-wise. Plant is thirsty, having to refill the res every two days. I would like to think of something a little better for a reservoir for next grow. An idea I had is maybe something I can sit the PC on and poke a hole in the bottom to be able to use the entire PC as grow space opposed to half of it. I ran out of pH Perfect Bloom nutes and the store only had GH Bloom so I picked that up and seems to be working okay with the other brand. Plant is starting to smell a little nice now! I ended up ditching the diy carbon filter I made, attached to an inline fan. I ended up attaching activated carbon sheets to the exhaust fans (switched AC exhaust fan back to PC fan due to noise) and is working really well to contain smell. I will be doing a full write up of the entire PC case overview during harvest week. For those that follow my other diaries, you will notice I deleted them. I ended up losing a lot of harvest to PM and just under went surgery a few days ago so just updating this was quite the struggle! We will keep this one going! See you next week for more updates! Cheers and stay lyfted

Week 4 Flower Looks like they are starting to bulk up now, looking nice so far. Still having to refill the res every two days, however been battling with a def/excess/lockout. Each time I have refilled I notice the PPM/EC rises to 1800, I think I am feeding too much. Filled the res at 1100ppm today to see how she reacts. Anyone else have some input on this? You can see the phos/calcium def looking leaves in pictures. So far this little run has taught me a lot and has also given me some idea's for improvements to the PC Case for next grow. Cheers and see you next week!

Week 5 Flower Gave the box a little makeover today to make it look a little cleaner. I broke the intake fan blades so I swapped out the fan as well today. Plant seems to be cruising along, drinking lots and thickening up. Took off some leaves as humidity was getting high during the night with lights off, seemed to help and dropped it roughly 5%. Other than that not much else to report. See you all next week. Cheers and stay lifted!

Week 6 Flower Not much has changed, buds have started changing colours a little. I started flushing today, filled the res at 150ppm using tap water pH'd to 5.9. Getting excited to chop this little fella. Cheers and stay lifted!

Week 7 Flower Looking strong so far! Going to chop soon. Some nice colours coming out. Cheers and stay lifted!

Yielded a lot more than I was initially expecting when starting this plant, I can only see yields go up from here. I added some pictures of my setup and will include details below: ENCLOSURE I used an old Antec 300 PC case for the grow. Something I picked up awhile ago on our local classifieds for $20. I gutted it all out and used duct tape to seal all the holes and wall. LIGHTS - 8x 6.5W LED strip - 3000k, 85CRI, 24VDC I used a bunch of 3000K 24vdc LED strips from some shop lights I had sitting around. They are mounted on a small metal plate with an exhaust fan above to disperse light heat. I initially had around 100W but was starting to get hot and the last plant was foxtailing. The space is 0.81sq/ft and I left 52W in, still plentiful for the small space. VENTILATION - 80x80mm pc fan for intake, 12VDC - 120x120mm pc fan for light exhaust, 12VDC - 120x120mm pc fan for exhaust with carbon filters, 12VDC - Activated carbon sheets I am using one fan to disperse heat from the lights, one for exhaust with activated carbon sheets taped to it to mask smell and one for an intake. The carbon sheets held up pretty good until the last couple weeks of flower when I was forced to move it in the garage...It is currently snowing here so it ain't warm! That's what the thermostat is for, I have it wired to one outlet to plug a heater in, infront of the intake fan. The plan is to veg in my room and flower in the garage. Thanks everyone for helping out and following along! Stay tuned for PC Grow #2.