Dutch Passion Same Same But Different Or A How Not To Guide To DWC/LED w/ TD ;)

[big_buddha]

Hey guys hope this thread finds you all doing well. Around 3 months ago I stumbled across Seymours TD grow and like so many others was inspired enough that I decided to grow again for the first time in 8 years.

I set about planning how best to make use of a built in wardrobe that we have here. The main chamber gave me a floor space of about 52"x23" a slightly awkward size as I had planned to fill it with a tent. Eventually though after weighing up the headache of light proofing a very leaky box I decided it was easier to buy a tent and cut it to size. I found a real nice 120x60x150cm tent on ebay that had far more vent/ducting options than the small versions of DRs etc even better it only cost me £50. Finding a good 4'x2' tent proved to be a real headache which im sure has annoyed many other closet growers. If you are struggling, check ebay real close though and there are some good non brandname tents out there. We cut the tent down to 48"x22" so that it would fit snugly inside the space with some airflow around the sides able to reach the bottom vents.

Now i had already decided that I would be "doing a Seymour" and grabbing three oxypots and a 60l/min airpump (think its the same hailea as his actually). As for lighting however I was torn between grabbing an LED from CIDLY or trying to run with a 600w HPS in a cooltube. Whilst I could do it I would rather avoid cutting chunks out of the woodwork of this built in storage unit to give me the extra ventilation needed to run a 600. The price of the LED was offputting to me though as I had originally hoped to budget around £600 for this setup but it was clear I was going to go way over that. A 400 watt HPS would be manageable in the space I have but I really wanted a setup that could yield around 10 ounces and I wasnt confident my GPW would be so high with a 400 after a long time without growing and in a totally new medium to boot (all my previous grows were soil and pretty basic).

This is the point where I probably made my first of many mistakes during this grow hehe. With my buckets and tent setup I was keen to get things underway so decided I would pick up a 2 foot 96w flouro T5 fixture to get my babies off to a start whilst i weighed up the pros and cons of my various lighting options whilst also doing a lot of reading on LED grows. The 2 footer is a great little light and I got some fantastic growth from it but it really is little. I wish I had stumped up the extra change for a full 4 foot fixture as it would have saved me time and headaches later on hehe... Fitting 3 12" wide buckets under a 2' light was always going to give me some issues but the ebay price was such good value i couldnt resist d'oh The seedlings on the outside started to bend/angle a little towards the light so I added a couple of old warm CFL's I had lying around to keep them straight which worked a treat.

Here are some pics of my setup at this point with the babies starting to grow...

 

[big_buddha]

I opted to make use of the Canna Aqua range of nutes for this grow. So I had used about 40% strength Canna Start prepped my buckets, added a splash of rhizotonic at about 25% strength checked the ECs which were aroundd 0.6-0.8 and sat back to wait. I was concerned that I had planted the root riot cube too high in the hydroton. As it was not deep enough it was losing moisture fast and not really wicking up from the hydroton. I began a regime of topfeeding then, just 10-15 mls of solution applied with a syringe around the edges of the cubes. With hindsight I think I worried too much and simply slowed down the advance of the tap root to the reservoir below as it took a good 4 days longer than seymours plants to show roots through the mesh pot and hit the water properly. I also think it contributed to my first encounter with nute burn as you can see in these pics.

 

[big_buddha]

Having been too generous with my first application of Ph Down and then correcting with Ph Up my nute solution was far too strong so I dumped the contents of the buckets and started over with fresh mixes. A few days later and the plants were looking much better...

 

[agito]

i always add my cube on top on top of 1-2 layers of hydro clay and try and have the tap root already poked through the net pot before i start. for me your ec is also quite low. i would normally start at .8-1.0 then work up to 1.2-1.4 not including tap ec

 

[big_buddha]

By day 15 from sprouting the plants were growing fast but one was looking to be suffering from overfeeding again... it was around this point that I switched to formulex instead of canna aqua start and give them some soft loving for a few days.

 

[big_buddha]

Day 19 and growth was really starting to explode whilst the burnt plant seemed stunted Little did i know that within a few days after another res change that it would begin growing ridiculously fast to the point where it became my biggest plant by a good 25%

 

[big_buddha]

Up to this point my best plants had appeared to my eye to have kept pace with Seymours plants. I figured that although his lighting was way better it was supplying far more juice than such small plants could possibly use. His however had showed signs of sex by now and mine were still frustratingly pubeless. In the end they didnt show sex until around day 25-27 which put them around 1 week behind Seymours plants. Here are some pics at day 22. The last couple of pics are of the stunted runt and you can really see the difference in just 3 days of good uninhibited DWC growth!

 

[TaNg]

Hay Big I think below 71f is best for your res temps.

 

[big_buddha]

Around day 21 having decided to take the plunge and order an LED light at an excellent price from Cidly (sub £300 delivered for an Apollo 10 with custom spectrum, 450 watt LED actual draw 364w!!). Unfortunately the light had to be built to order so I was in for a few weeks wait... I replaced the CFLS with a 125w envirolite and repositioned the T5. The plants had shown sex around day 25 and by day 32 they were looking like this... stretch had started to kick in and because I hadnt culled a plant they began to compete for the light. The cool white of the CFLs was also not helping matters as the plants were craving more red spectrum lighting. Nor did the oxypots which promote truly extraordinary rates of growth. I had wayyyyyyy underestimated their effectiveness

 

[big_buddha]

Day 40 arrived but my LED still hadnt, stretch was getting out of hand, I wasn't satisfied with flower development as penetration from the flouros simply wasn't good enough. With only 150cm of vertical height available to me and a powerful LED on its way from china I was becoming concerned I would be overgrown. I really should have pulled the lamest of the plants and freed up space and light to keep two bigger girls. I just couldnt bring myself to do it though, so instead I headed out to the local hydro store and picked up a 400w HPS with a cool tube. Here are my plants after its installation on day 40.