hey MC,

i know the golden rule of hydro was "when in doubt, flush it out". it might not be a bad idea to give them a good flush with RO/distilled water and hold off on the nutes for a bit. maybe even add something like Clearex to the RO just to get them all back to a good starting point.
Maybe SME will see this and agree? I don't think it would hurt anything.

What kind of humidifiers are you using? I'd think you could get it way higher than that in the tent.

Right now, there's a pretty noticeable size differential between some of the plants. In this shot of the entire garden, you can easily see how much larger some are than others. Money Maker #1, and The Incredible Bulk are the two largest right now.


As I mentioned to SME earlier, I just lowered the SS880 to 30" above the canopy last night. I wonder if it needs to closer still...


I'm excited to see what happens to growth once I make the pH changes I mentioned in posts above. As of now, they've only been watered with 6.0 water and nutrients. I'll be raising that to 6.5 for future feedings, and possibly flushing between now and then. Here are photos of all them individually:

The two Pineapple Chunks are starting to look better. The new growth is looking better than old growth, but overall they are far slower than anyone else. They are easily 1/8 the size of the largest plants.





The Incredible Bulk still looks beautiful, and is still growing very strong. She will soon be the biggest if growth continues at this rate.





And the two Money Makers look about the same as before, just larger and a little greener. I'm noticing a small spot of brown on one of the tips of #1, but other than that I believe all looks good. Overall, #1 looks like she is tolerating the pH issues better than #2. I hope they both do better at 6.5. Money Maker #2 is about 1/2 the size of #1 now that I'm looking at the garden shot again. She's quite a bit smaller than The Incredible Bulk at this point as well.

rkymtnman wrote:hey MC,

i know the golden rule of hydro was "when in doubt, flush it out". it might not be a bad idea to give them a good flush with RO/distilled water and hold off on the nutes for a bit. maybe even add something like Clearex to the RO just to get them all back to a good starting point.
Maybe SME will see this and agree? I don't think it would hurt anything.

There's a very good chance I'll be doing this at my next watering. I haven't measured the pH of the runoff yet, so maybe I'll do that before hand when watering with 6.5. I'm wondering if you--or anyone else for that matter--believes Canna's claim that when using this nutrient and substrate combo, "the pH doesn't generally need to be corrected. Hard water (pH > 7.5) is an exception to this. It is recommended that the pH should then be corrected to 6.0-6.5 using Organic Acid (or pH min grow)" ??

rkymtnman wrote:What kind of humidifiers are you using? I'd think you could get it way higher than that in the tent.

I'm using a vicks cold vapor and an off brand cold vapor of the same kind. They're both the cheap $30 variety. I'd think that I could get the humidity way higher in the tent too... if I could close the tent flaps. Right now I have them open to exchange CO2 and keep the temperature down. As soon as the girls are ready for 1500 ppm CO2, I'll close the tent which will raise the heat and should raise the humidity as well.

Seeing as how they're not quite in the vegetative stage yet, I'm thinking a week or two longer before I can supplement CO2 and close the tent. I'd love to believe that they would be able to use the CO2 and withstand the heat sooner, but I'm on the fence.

Thanks everyone for watching, and for your comments.
MC

Yeah, if the runoff is lower or higher than what goes in then the soil pH is off and it might need to be amended or buffered by what goes in.

I prefer a little high RH than that in veg but it's not horribly low. Is you tent closed up/sealed?

I'd drop that light to 24 inches now and then drop it 3 inches every few days day until you see light stress then raise it back up a little. Somewhere between 12-18" will probably be fine, maybe even below 12" depending on strains. YMMV...

I'd let them get past the seedling stage and actively vegging before supplementing the CO2. You can and should close the tent now (that will help with RH) but you will have to do air exchanges to keep the CO2 levels raised but not very often with seedlings since they can't use much CO2 or transpire much O while they're small like that.


RKY:
I'd flush with RO+ a little calmag (or epsom salts) to help stabilize pH readings, if the soil is already hot then I'd hold off on the nutrients. I'd skip the clearex at this stage. A good flush every few weeks to get rid of salt buildups is a good idea. He shouldn't feed every time either...

IIRC his tap is pretty clean so just pH adjusted tap would do...

SisterMaryElephant wrote: You can and should close the tent now (that will help with RH) but you will have to do air exchanges to keep the CO2 levels raised but not very often with seedlings since they can't use much CO2 or transpire much O while they're small like that.

I'd love to! They can deal with the heat (it'll be like 90) without additional CO2? The heat from the light builds up when I close the tent. Especially since I'll be lowering the light per your suggestion.

I go check on these girls *at least* 5x per day right now. I'm pretty sure air exchange won't be a problem just yet.

You'll have to deal with the heat too.

Going in the tent 5x/day might be why the RH isn't building up too...

MC
I just checked out the distance I had my seedlings at: 24"

If you check out my coco journal, I converted a dorm fridge to a germ/veg chamber with the SS400 sitting on top. I had a problem with low humidity in it. The only thing that worked a bit (I couldn't get my normal humidifier to fit...yet) was a cotton hand towel hung from the top with the bottom in a vase of water. It gave me about a 10 % gain (from only 20 up to 29-30%) You could maybe try the same: hang a beach towel in the tent and have it wick up from a 5 gal bucket. If you could get it to about 60% would be great and definitely help them at this point of their life

Are you a CSU/CU fan? I might check some of the game out tonite.

SisterMaryElephant wrote:You'll have to deal with the heat too.

Going in the tent 5x/day might be why the RH isn't building up too...

Yup. This is why I had the tent open. Temp is the only factor keeping this tent open at this point. I'd limit the times I go check on them... If the tent was closed. But since it's not I can just peek anytime.

I think I'll just tough it out with the tent open until I can supplement CO2. I'd rather have low humidity than high temps.

Also I just lowered the light to 24" above canopy. Heat at canopy level has risen to 81 degrees.

rkymtnman wrote:MC
I just checked out the distance I had my seedlings at: 24"

If you check out my coco journal, I converted a dorm fridge to a germ/veg chamber with the SS400 sitting on top. I had a problem with low humidity in it. The only thing that worked a bit (I couldn't get my normal humidifier to fit...yet) was a cotton hand towel hung from the top with the bottom in a vase of water. It gave me about a 10 % gain (from only 20 up to 29-30%) You could maybe try the same: hang a beach towel in the tent and have it wick up from a 5 gal bucket. If you could get it to about 60% would be great and definitely help them at this point of their life

Are you a CSU/CU fan? I might check some of the game out tonite.

I'm going to try the bucket thing out. I've been thinking I could repurpose my reserve bubbler bucket to simply bubble away all the time in the tent. I'd bet $5 this helps raise humidity too. And since it's always got water plumbed to it, I'll never have to fill it up.

I'm just SO freaked out about powdery mildew, so I'm skittish about throwing excess humidity and open water buckets in there...

You bet I'm a CSU fan/alum. I'll be checking the game occasionally too. Go Rams!

as long as the airflow is good and humidity is not way above norms, powdery mildew is not that big an issue. neem oil is not a bad thing to keep around the house: good for PM and spider mites. and all natural too.

glad to hear about CSU. we love ft collins and HATE boulder. do you go to games? we thought about heading up for a home game sometime before it gets too cold.

Well, I've attempted everything I reasonably can to raise the humidity in the tent, but I've come to the conclusion that there's absolutely nothing else I can do without closing the tent. Last night I had the 2 humidifiers going, and my "brilliant" bucket that fills automatically with a float valve and bubbles away happily sitting in the corner with a towel dipped in it. This morning I came down, looked at the humidity, it's reading 44%. So no gain. Worst of all, when I went down to look at the actual garden, I find water all over the floor from the still faulty bucket I designed. I won't go into all the ways it failed, that would take another 5 paragraphs. But I finally chucked it, and I will truly now be toughing it out until vegetative growth so I can close the tent, supplement CO2, raise the temp, and the humidity at the same time. I'm sorry girls, but you'll have to deal with being misted every time I go down there until then.



The girls are all looking fine today. The Incredible Bulk has exploded with growth, day after day, and is now the largest girl I have. She is beautiful, and I love watching how fast she is growing now. At least she seems to appreciate my efforts.




Money Makers #1 and #2 are also doing very well, growing rapidly but have been outpaced by the Incredible Bulk. #2 is showing some brown spots on one leaf. These are the ones I pointed out in a previous post, they were just light yellow spots then. I'm going to keep an eye on them, and possibly water tonight with pH 6.5 water only. I believe they're dry enough.
#1



#2




And the Pineapple Chunks are looking pretty good actually. They're maybe just recovering from transplant shock .... ??? That would be a long transplant shock.
#1


#2

rkymtnman wrote:as long as the airflow is good and humidity is not way above norms, powdery mildew is not that big an issue. neem oil is not a bad thing to keep around the house: good for PM and spider mites. and all natural too.

glad to hear about CSU. we love ft collins and HATE boulder. do you go to games? we thought about heading up for a home game sometime before it gets too cold.

I'm trying to calm down about the powdery mildew. It's just ruined my month(s) before so I'd rather not deal with it again! (breathe... breathe...) I'll get some Neem.

I haven't made it to a game the last couple years, we moved out of Foco a few years back. After bouncing around the state a bunch, we ended up back in northern CO, just not close enough to go regularly. You're right, Fort Collins is infinitely better than Boulder, but it's getting more and more Boulderish every day.

Don't get me wrong, it's not a bad place. There's just so many ... Boulderites there. It's The People's Republic, not a city. You know that right?

MC

Yep, the P.R.B.

I have a theory that they are such douchebags because they feel like they deserve to live in Aspen but can't afford it.

We went on the Coors tour 2 yrs ago. I thought Golden was kinda cool. Didn't hang out much in the town but wonder what kind of nightlife there is.

Plants look like they are coming along nicely.

I just put my 2 seedlings in the grow room under 12/12.