Wedding Cake | Seed Junkies | Plat LED

Oof, so many lessons since the last check in, which was 12/20 12/21 In the aero cloner, I am noticing growth that is at least 50 - 60% faster than anything else. They rooted, and I left them in. Converted to DWC today to prevent roots in the pump. Given that speed, wondering if I should leave in DWC or devise an Aero plan for the bloom. After noticing root rot, emptied and disinfected my reservoir, refilled. Also had gotten feedback that my plants were waterlogged, so I turned off all irrigation and am waiting for them to try. I transplanted from 3gal to 7gal and only added 1/4 cup of RO to the bottoms, left the rest of the soil dry, to speed up the resolving of the overwatering. Was that the right call? In transplanted I put them in good soil, this one: https://www.roguesoil.com/rocket-fuel-components With these ingredients: Sphagnum Peat Moss, Perlite, Aged Forest Product, Coconut Coir, Green Waste Compost, Earthworm Castings, Glacial Rock Dust, Limestone (ph adjuster), Fertilizers, Mycorrhizal Fungi The hope was to devise an automated watering system. With this soil, is it impossible to automate watering? It is designed to be fast draining and light: "Rocket Fuel was designed for the grower who enjoys a fast draining and lighter medium. Based on growers grade Manitoban long fiber peat, Rocket Fuel is one of the best indoor and greenhouse blends on the market today. To make sure there is an instant punch of nitrogen available, we use a blast of powdered calcium nitrate. Rocket Fuel allows the farmer to transplant, water plants as needed, relax, and leave the Outlaw flying to us the first couple of weeks." I installed 1 quality recirc fan, need to install a 2nd one. And, I transplanted a couple of new clones, which TOOK OFF in the last 5 days and are already 1' tall! They were put into rocket fuel soil, in tiny tea bags like 10oz big, and put in an ebb and flow with 400ppm of nutes at 6.0PH, nutes had all the extras from fulvic to humic and a 1/2 gallon of super strong compost tea direct into the recirc reservoir. 12/22/2020 Brainstorming the possible causes to issues with the girls I checked the ph of the soil. 8.0 average!! What the f... I dug deep into google looking for causes and solutions: most likely cause I deduced, I had added molasses to the res in the last feeding... Was advised to ph balance to 6.0 for a while the res to fix it, I tried 5.5, perhaps foolishly, and my 1' tall clones revealed their very first signs of deficiency/toxicity for the first time. Damnit... hard lessons. Adjusted to 6.0. Cultiwool brand rockwool clones are literally a month behind the new clones and still looking sick as fu@#. Not sure what to do with that besides toss them. Theories: they seem waterlogged, and they are running a ph at 8.0... so maybe need either drippers with ph balanced ongoing watering, or to have been soaked prior to use instead of just had water run through them for a bit. pulled a clone out, it had been transplanted from oasis to the rockwool.. when the clones tried to make the transition from one media to the next, they turned yellow and stopped growing. Stumped. Tried flushing nutes with the hose through them to see if they would perk up. The grow tips perked a lil, but growth is at almost month behind everything else, so they went to the compost today. Still waiting for southern ags bacterial fungicide to treat the root rot, though by stopping watering, most of the plants recovered, only 2 showing still super stunted growth. They are plants that are 2 months old, so I dont want to toss them.. but need feedback on that. They still look stunted slowly recovering. Found directions on a brand of compost tea mix where the vendors suggest using it as a mix with actual molasses, a 1/4 cup, and 250ml of their powder, aerated, for 24 hrs... I used the recharge brand I had on hand and made 5 gallsons. Came out black, super thick. Connected up my drip emitters to all the girls and pumped it into them. 12 hrs later 97% had healthy growth tips. Theory: adding molasses to res caused ph of soil spike, overwatering and ph of soil at 8.0 and lights being too close caused nute lockout, nute lockout caused water uptake to slow, water uptake slowing and cheap unpure soil ( on 40% of them ) caused root rot, then super strong compost tea provided more ph range flexibility and helped the plants start to take in nutes, started to re-regulate them, having stopped all watering and transplanting into almost dry soil helped waterlogged status pass, and resulted in healthy grow tips on most, showing that the present state of the girls is actually doing ok. Thoughts? Critiques? Trying my best to make meaning of all this madness. General plan going forward: keep withholding water until I see signs of them needing water, then turn on the drip with RO that has no grow formula, ( the new soil has nutes in it ), but includes humic acids, fulvic, kelp, bacterial fungicide, silica, and cal mag, to support rebalancing, at 6.0, since my efforts to bring soil ph down by phing to 5.5 bit me in the ass already. Bought hydrated lime, but before using, further googling told me that was a mistake for acidifying soil, as is typically used for alkalizing acid soil. Whoops. any other solutions to soil that measures 8.0 ph?? should I just start measuring runoff and ignore the ph of the soil for now? planning to flip to bloom ASAP, just thinking I have to transplant the lil babies before I do. Is it ok to wait till after I flip to transplant? It would make life easier. Wanting to hook up another light and add some hydroton ebb and flow or dwc, but not sure if my breakers can hold it. I honestly think they cant... is it ok to try and use the breaker flipping as the indication that its too much? Or an affordable device I can buy to test how close it is to capacity? I don't want to introduce any fire risks, been super cautious about that. On that note, been looking for an affordable way to replace splitters connected to splitters, noticing a bit of a cluster f in that area and have not found a legit alternative yet that would not break the bank. 12/23 learned about lux, got a light meter, learned about daily integral, checked all the plants light levels, most were too high, those getting 80 DLI were frying, pulled all my lights back to give about 30 DLI. another super hard lesson. damn. 12/24 Put some small girls ( the clones that are kicking ass ) into hydroton. They are currently in the rockfuel soil in 10oz tea bags on ebb and flow, and since I added kelp and humic and fulvic the roots just freaking exploded out of the sides, they look crazy, pic attached... But in essence, after trying everything under the freaking sun, what I can see is working the best are those tea bags in ebb and flow every 3hrs getting flooded, and the aero, so I figure unless I want to go full out aeroponics, that transplanting the tea bag girls into hydroton is the closest thing to following my most successful pattern I can find. Ordered the parts needed. Googled how to prep hydroton, soaked in RO water, phed to 5.0, pumped out the cloudy water, refilled, phed to 5.0, checked 2h later, already at 6.3 again, phed to 5.0 again, will wait till tomorrow to check it, when it stabilizes at 6.0 I add 1/4 strength bloom nutes, soak for another hr or two and call it done. I desperately want to automate watering, and I don't know that I have set myself up to do that thanks to feedback from @BluntZilla ( thank you ), so I googled the F@# out of it and think I found a solution. Blumat sensors. Ordered one for each soil plant, will stop the drip when they are watered and thus prevent overwatering.