Minty Grow Diary - GR420 LED Grow Off

[Minty]

Love that you made your own humidifier, stoners are some of the most inventive creative people on this planet

Thanks Dude, it worked better with filling it that way ;o) I'm Lazy...

[Cam420]

The whole system looks incredible tho bro, I didn't even consider the idea of automated growing, meanwhile you've pretty nearly mastered it
I wouldn't even know where to start with something like that, struggling enough trying to learn the basics

[Keeno]

Loving the videos and details in here Minty. This will be a cracking diary.

[Minty]

The whole system looks incredible tho bro, I didn't even consider the idea of automated growing, meanwhile you've pretty nearly mastered it
I wouldn't even know where to start with something like that, struggling enough trying to learn the basics

Thank you Cam420 mate, To be honest, I'm still learning the basics myself, but my main idea was to make it easy. e.g. recording all the stats so that when someone asks I have them to quote. Or, If someone suggests adding .5ml of CalMag, it will be automated and recorded. That shit has to make things easier (I think/hope). We shall certainly see mate.

Loving the videos and details in here Minty. This will be a cracking diary.

Thank you Keeno mate, trying to use all of the cool features the forum offers to my own advantage. This Grow Diary was originally mostly for myself, but the more I get into it the more help I already need! So glad to have everyone along to help while I do this first grow as it was originally for just testing the hardware/automation BUT It would be nice to keep the plants alive if possible.

[Minty]

UPDATE:

Ok, it's day 14 since dropping the seeds in water and the Easy Bud is looking OK but the Royal Dwarf is still look tiny.

Easy Bud


Royal Dwarf


I think I did originally feck up a little by relying on just some well soaked (in R.O. water) jiffy cubes for the first week, and the Easy Bud seems to have recovered but the Royal D is looking a little sad.

My current notes are manual and not very good but here they are:-



Any advice or feedback is as always more than welcome.

[Keeno]

I'm sure they will perk up once the roots hit water mate.

[Josh]

Seedlings are usually a bit slower to take off in dwc tgen rooted clones ime, nothing to worry about though. They look nice and green they'll take off soon

Btw, I've found it works pretty good to let the roots "seek out" the water when starting seedlings in dwc. Sometimes if aeration is really good, the bubbles popping will completely saturate the jiffy, not killing it but causing slow growth. This can be fixed by lowering water level a bit

Just a heads up

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[Minty]

While the 8x Dosing pumps are all functional I still need to complete a PWM controller to operate magnetic stirrers before any automatic dosing can be done and my plan is to incorporate a weigh scale to allow the pumps to be automatically calibrated prior to dosing.

Going to quote myself purely for the feedback in case anyone is following this at a later date etc. (Feel a little like Marty McFly but the forum should be about knowledge storage, sharing, etc so feck it).

The dosing pumps do not need a constant weigh scale calibration and the calibration seems to be as simple as:-

• prime the pump (to cancel out pipe length differences etc) - once the liquid is being dispensed from the outlet pipe the difference in pipe length makes no difference - the 'pipes' have been calibrated...
• dose the (Peri pumps) at constant speed for a constant time
• Measure the amount dosed using a scale
• Divide the total dosed amount by the time spent dosing to give a new time for dosing 1ml

Pump and pipe lengths have now been calibrated.

I have tried to encapsulate this process with the following Wizard type interface:-

Select a dosing pump to calibrate:-



Prime the Pumps to start:-



Dose the quantity stated (which is based on the Settings Section), and Calibrate by telling the software how much was dosed:-



Once these known constants are determines the system can consistently dose amount in .ml



I do still need the magnetic stirrers and will cover these in a later post.

[Minty]

Seedlings are usually a bit slower to take off in dwc tgen rooted clones ime, nothing to worry about though. They look nice and green they'll take off soon

Btw, I've found it works pretty good to let the roots "seek out" the water when starting seedlings in dwc. Sometimes if aeration is really good, the bubbles popping will completely saturate the jiffy, not killing it but causing slow growth. This can be fixed by lowering water level a bit

Just a heads up

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Thank you Josh, your feedback is very important to me.
Since your very first reply to me on a different subject:-

I would highly, highly recommend NOT growing different strains in an rdwc setup. Strains will want different nutrient levels than others, sometimes drastically different.
I'd also highly recommend not growing auto flowers until you get this setup dialed in. One mistake and you're screwed

If I were you, I'd pick out a photoperiod strain and take 2 weeks to grow out a tiny mother plant. Get clones off it and root them out, so 3-4 weeks total
This will make your grow much easier, more consistent and more enjoyable

Just my opinion though

I have seen your valid points already start to play out and plan to adjust my grow-space and grow-flow going forwards.

[Minty]

Day 18 Update and they have still not been moved to the tent yet as they still seem to be struggling, especially the Royal Dwarf:-

Both - Royal Dwarf on the left, Easy Bud on the right


Royal Dwarf


Easy Bud


Looks like something is going on with them but not really sure apart from maybe not feeding them enough. Basically just wetting the clay every couple of hours.

They are still green and alive so going to continue with what I am doing for now until I see some root's out of the net pots.

EC 542 pH 6.3 Run off from previous Nutrients E.C. 780ppm pH 6.33