Grow Room Blue Amnesia/Red Poison COB microgrow

[dankle]

Hello! First real indoor grow here. Have only grown a few small plants outdoors before, yielded an ounce and a half or so of nice sticky smooth buds. Using Citizen CLU-048-1212 led chip. Running 50W power through this chip with a cheap 50W 35V driver. The driver gets pretty warm when air isn't moving over it, but stays cool next to a vent.

The COB is mounted to a cheap Arctic brand CPU heatsink. Either I burned the fan when trying to wire it or it was sent defective, either way I ripped it off and dissected an old power supply unit for a computer and took out it's fan to mount on the heatsink.

Tools I used to mount the COB:
-thermal paste
-electrical tape
-copper wire

I was planning on soldering the wires to the COB chip but somehow the order never went through and I'd rather go ahead and start than wait for a soldering iron. Looked for a soldering iron at an art store but they sure milk their prices.

S
For the actual grow, I'm using all organic nutrients and mixing them from scratch.

-coco coir
-azomite
-bat guano
-sea kelp
-humic acid
-worm poo
-mykorrhizal
-perlite

I've sorta just been winging it and throwing in how ever much nutrients I feel is balanced. I've been watering them a lot, probably once every hour mostly, maybe this is too often?

started the plants in the plastc tub under 60W CFL, the growth really kicked in once switching them to the COB.

Also I hung the cob originally with string so I could adjust the height by turning the dowel on top of the box, but it kept unwinding and the light drifting down so I rigged up a simple hook with some copper wire and it works great!

The light is hanging probably about 12-14" from the plants, is this a good distance? I had originally hung it a few inches higher but it doesn't seem to make the grow area very warm so I lowered it for extra light. Can't decide if it's too close or if they love it where it is. Will too much light slow their growth or mainly just cause them to bleach?

the girls look healthy

the plastic tub has plants from my previous grow, unknown strain, I call it green eggs and ham. finally forced them to crack open and have had a slow start, they are probably close to 3 weeks old. but theyre responding very well to the cob.

the 1 gallon smart pot is the blue amnesia from Dinafem. the seed is just starting to pop out and lift up it's first set of leaves.

building the cob was a lot of fun and definitely recomended as others have.

 

[wiltstone]

Nice DIY on the COB. That sounds like too much water to me but I grow in soil.

 

[dankle]

thanks man

two weeks later. blue amnesia is taking off! never seen anything like that before

on the last pics you can see a fan I mounted with a dowel so it could toggle between the plants

need to work on drainage better next time, blue's soil stays pretty moist when the others have dried up a bit

 

[dankle]

Big update here. It's only been 10-11 days since the last picture update and look at this growth.

Moved Blue amnesia and Red poison under two 058-1825 COBs less than a week ago. They have been loving the guano tea feeding every day or so. Blue has a bunch of colas forming all over.

I had a tube hanging over the blue amnesia from a yeast co2 generator and it looks like some of the liquid bubbled out onto the main cola. It has pretty much shrivled up, would any of you recommend removing the cola so it could form a new one or should I let it be?

The last pics shows the noname seeds doing well under the 50W 048-1212.

Even though blue amnesia has lots of flowers forming, red poison is the stinky one here.

Just beginning phosphorous bat guano feedings today.

 

[Exotic Flower]

Getting pretty cozy in there, huh?

 

[dankle]

oh yeah the little ones just insist on filling out the box. they just started 12/12 a few days ago, if they keep it up I might need a bigger box

 

[dankle]

Well the LED was off one morning when the timer kicked on, figured the cheap driver reached the end of it's life. After taking the COB out and realizing it was faintly glowing, it seemed that it was just a loose connection. I stripped the tape and stuff off and attempted soldering the wires on the cob but it seems like it no longer worked after that. Maybe I fried it somehow by touching the soldering iron to the chip? Dunno but the little mamas were infested with some sort of gnats anyways so I took them outside where they could finish their lives with nature.

The blue amnesia and red poison are gettin real hairy, like electricity is flowing their their veins.

 

[Tasty]

I can't say for sure, but electrical tape stretches and won't give you any mounting pressure so it's possible that's the reason the cob died. There are holders for those chips, but if you were looking for a reasonable tape on solution you could try some kapton tape. It's very strong and non-stretch and has been used successfully to mount cobs long term. It's not something I would necessarily suggest, but paying shipping for a $1 cob holder probably isn't very appealing.

 

[dankle]

I have gotten some katpon tape since the 048-1212 build. I like the consisteny of it, thought it looked nice on my diy carbon scrubber too.

here's the blue amnesia and red poison coming along

 

[dankle]

turns out the 048-1212 COB is not dead, just did a faulty soldering job when trying to connect it. resoldered it and BOOM big imprint on my vision. am looking forward to building more 048-1212 LEDs

had some gnats flying around, only took neem oil a few seconds to do the job, have only seen one or so since.

girls are fattening up nicely, will take pics soon.