1st Grow DIY Hydro 0.9m3 - 5 Strains

Finally got to start a grow, something ive wanted to do for years. After a lot of research I decided to try hydroponics since I didn't have room for a big tent I wanted to try and maximise yield and quality. I ordered seeds from zamnesia, Bruce banner, lemon haze, gsc and gorilla glue being personal favourites of mine, I got the blue dream and critical for free so decided to try sprout one of each, the power lemon haze was a dud (will try it again on next run as its my preferred daytime smoke). Tent is budbox pro 75x75x160cm, chosen purely because it was the biggest tent that I could fit between beams in my attic. I had a few spare 50 litre storage boxes that were a good fit for the tent without being too tall. I cut holes in the lid of the box for the square netpots, ring shaped air stone and small aquarium air pump. Had some aluminium tape leftover so thought it would be good to reflect some light and maybe heat from the tank. I used jiffy pellets and a propagotor to germinate the seeds, used filtered tap water to soak the jiffys, and went straight in with the seeds, didn't pre soak them. They popped over the course of about 5 days, pretty much one each day. They were very stretchy as I wasn't using a grow light and just used natural light in my kitchen. Once I had my tent setup I put a handful of clay pebbles in each netpot, then the jiffy and covered with more pebbles.

I had bought a cheap ph meter from amazon that broke on day one of the grow, and I couldn't find my old tds meter so decided to invest in a decent meter that would do ph/ppm/temp and display a constant reading (since I was going to monitor it with a webcam). I got a good deal on a bluelabs guardian from amazon and it was well worth the investment for hydro setup. It was really hot in my tent (attic in summer) and the solution in the tank was as high as 33 degrees Celsius so I needed a chiller and ordered the cheapest one I could find on ebay, 35L aquarium chiller 100watts. Didn't expect much when it arrived as it was a lot smaller than I expected but I was very pleasantly surprised at its performance, was easily dropping the solution to a constant between 19-21 degrees

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Plants were all looking great for the first half of the week and then started to droop and show damage on the lower leaves. The roots were showing signs of some rot and were dark but not slimy, strong earthy smell from the solution tank. I dropped the chiller temp by another degree and ordered some silver bullet roots and another air pump

Was still trying to fix root rot problem from the previous week, starting using some hydrogen peroxide in the form of silver bullet roots. Couldn't figure out if I had a nutrient deficiency, too much nutrients or if the yellowing was related to the root problem or even heat or light stress. The ph was fluctuating and the ppm was steadily increasing and I think that was due to the root rot. Silver bullet roots fixed my root issues and then I removed some of the yellow leaves while I was defoliating and attempting to train the plants to fill out my tent

I had defoliate the previous week and used some LST and HST to train the plants to fill out the tent space after the defoliation. There was very quick growth and the plants responded really well

Increased the bloom nutrients and did some more training and defoliation ahead of going into flower. Root issues are sorted and plants are looking nice and healthy

Plants all started showing more pistols and bud sites at the start of the week and began to stretch towards the end of the week. All looking healthy

Plant growth seemed to explode and they all grew and stretched quite quickly. Bud sites continued to develop well. There was so much growth by the end of the week that I decided to defoliate and removed the large fan leaves earlier than I had planned (was going to do this a week later). This opened up the canopy and allowed for better air flow as the humidity was quite high (up to 80% before defoliation). I also ordered the smallest dehumidifier that I could find. After more research online I ordered some calmag, pk booster and silica

New nutrients added this week, calming, silica and pk booster. Plants continued to stretch and fill out the tent where they had been defoliate. The bruce banner in the back left had a serious stretch and I had to remove my carbon filter and position it outside the top of the tent. Also had to remove the hangers from my light and cable tie it to the roof bars of the tent to try and keep some distance between the bruce banner and the led light. The gorilla glue also stretched quite a bit

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I bought a spider farmer spf2000 to go in another tent that I was planning on setting up, I replaced the spf2000 that I was using in my tent with the spf2000 and ran that for a few days, definitely increased the amount of frost and resin on the upper buds. Towards the end of the week I added the spf2000 back into the tent and used it as a side light since the middle/bottom of the canopy wasn't getting much light and I didn't want to stress the plants out again by defoliating

Started to dial down the nutrients, can already see a slight colour change in the leaves as they start to turn autumn colours with the reduced nitrogen Did a flush/refresh of the roots using florakleen 0.5ml/Litre and left it in the reservoir for 2 days before dumping and adding fresh nutrients. The roots look bright white afterwards where they were nutrient stained a reddish brown before. I swapped the side light from the left side to the right side to promote some more bud development on that side lower down Happy with how the plants are looking but I had hoped that the buds would be a little fatter by this stage. Clear winner so far is the bruce banner which has by far the biggest and most dense buds, then the gorilla glue next, then the blue dream although her buds are tall and skinny, then the gsc comes next with the critical last, most of the buds on the critical are still very small (it's the shortest plant and furthest away from the light)

The PH kept dropping towards the end of the week, I have a feeling the plants could use more pk booster and less of everything else so will be only using pk, bloom and micro for next weeks nutrient swap. I'm thinking of dropping the bloom and micro the following week and then flush the week after. Was hoping for the buds to have fattened up a little more but still very happy with the results so far, especially for my first attempt. Had a look at the trichomes with a little 45x scope and they're mostly cloudy, some clear and very few amber (a few amber on the tops of the tallest buds). The blue dream (front left) has very airy/loose buds but hopefully they'll still smoke well when finished. The critical has improved with the extra light that I put down low as a side light. Bruce banner still out in front followed by gorilla glue. The GSC is probably going to yield the least but it has one big bud that is looking super dense and heavy, it took the biggest hit from the root rot and damage early on so was stunted the worst out of the 5 plants

Really happy with how these girls are looking, got some amber trichomes on the top of the tallest buds but everything else is either milky or clear. Set the nutrients at the start of the week and then have just been topping up with ro water every day. Everything is leaning over with the extra weight now and turning some beautiful autumn colours. I added a UV light from migro and have been increasing the duration from 30mins each day by an extra 10mins until I reach 2 hours of uv light per day in the middle of the light cycle. I read quite a bit of research about uv light and thc increase so decided to give it a try

Ive been topping up with ro water since last weeks nutrient swap, which had gradually brought down the ppms from about 800 to 500. I pumped out the tank at the start of this week and replaced with ro water and final solution. Had to adjust the ph twice during the week and topped up with some more water. Planning on leaving the lights on for a couple more days then into darkness for 2-3 days and chop these ladies down. Flush seems to have gone well and can see the plants canabilising their leaves for the remaining nutrients

Partially drained the tank at the start of the week and topped up with ro water and 1ml of final solution per Litre. Last 2.5 days were in darkness. I trimmed the majority of fan leaves before hanging up to dry in the tent today. Started out trimming with the plants in the tent and soon realised it would be much easier to just cut them down whole, hang them upside down outside the tent and trim them up a bit. I have a small dehumidifier and a small fan heater setup in the tent and they have been keeping a humidity level of about 60% and a temp of 16 Celsius for the last few days while the lights have been off. I figure that's a good starting point for drying and I can increase the temperature if needed, that will drop the humidity also. Intake fan at the bottom and extract fan at the top are running constantly as they have been since the grow started (low power 4" fans). I might add back in a fan for circulation depending on how the drying goes, or maybe even trim or hang the plants better to get more airflow around the buds