The Upward Spyral

spyralout

spyralout

🌱🌿🌲🔥💨
Hi everyone! First off I'd like to say that this is a great forum. First one I've posted on actually. So many knowledgeable, helpful and friendly folks on here. Thank you to everyone who has provided ideas and insight. Your experiences and willingness to share is absolutely invaluable 🔥

So a little about me (us). My GF and I are a grow team. We've had a few successful coco DTW and soil grows in tents. This is our first run at hydro, using Heisen's Undercurrent RDWC Design (thank you Heisen for the tutorials and advice). I'd also like to thank Jesse for all of his suggestions, hints and general good conversation. He was always willing to help even for the most noob of questions. Good stuff mang 👊
All of our previous grows were in a super hot garage, so we had to set something up for the summer. So on to the setup.

Grow Space
- One 5x5 Tent
- An 11x6 trough made with 2x8 boards and pond liner. Contains the tent with all other equipment listed below. This in itself has been more than worth it and relatively inexpensive to make. Spill/splash containment and easy to wipe up.
- All of this sits on 3/4" thick interlocking puzzle piece mats, which is intended to protect the carpet.

Equipment
- 2x Viparspectra PAR600 (275 actual watts, more white than regular blurple)
- 1x 600w HPS w/ Hortilux bulb
- 4 site Heisen UC RDWC with 4 gal buckets. Epi bucket in tent (thinking of adding 2 more buckets and moving the epi outside of the tent for the next run)
- Active Aqua air pump with 8 port manifold
- 2 round flat air stones per site (thinking of using one big airstone each bucket next time)
- Active Aqua 400 GPH water pump
- Active Aqua 1/10 HP chiller
- 6 stage Liquagen RO filter
- 27 gal HDX-style tote from Costco for reservoir (filled about half way)
- 40 gal square rollaway trash can to collect RO water
- Bluelab Guardian combo pH/TDS/Temp meter (has been awesome so far)
- AC Infinity 6" fan with controller and temp/humidity gauge (has also been awesome so far)
- 6" Carbon Filter
- Various other small fans
- Small cool mist humidifier

Gear
- 2x Heisenbeans ECSD S1
- 2x Heisenbeans Bridezilla

Nutes
- GH 3-Part @ approx 50% recommended dose
- GH Koolbloom
- Cal Mag
- Heisen benny tea (Hydroguard, Great White, Molasses)

Next up - some pictures!
 
spyralout

spyralout

🌱🌿🌲🔥💨
10124
10125
5/14/19 - Started 2x ECSD S1 and 2x Bridezilla in water sitting on top of a wifi router. This is the readings of our RO water. After about 24 hours the beans cracked with some tails. Put them in some soaked rockwool tail down.
10130
10131
5/19/19 - seedlings popping up and reaching for the sky. They were under a cheap 200w blurple. First time using rockwool, there is a definite learning curve with these. They stay very wet and squeezing will crush them and potentially suffocate the seedlings. At one point thought we would need to start over in something else, but we toughed it out and good thing we did. For what it's worth, for the next beans and cuttings, we used Rapid Rooters and so far they have been much more forgiving.

10135
5/20/19 - might have been a bit too early, but we were itching to get the system up and running after making sure everything was leak free for the ~3 month journey. Used Grow!t brand expanded clay pebbles. They are irregular dog turd shape and float, which was annoying at first. Next time we're trying original brand Hydroton. These will work for now. We started counting this as the start of veg.
BTW the air pump is NOISY AF. Pretty much gotten used to it though. Don't know if a smaller pump would be worth it for the noise-to-performance ratio. It also gets pretty hot, so possible future plans on moving it outside of the tent as well. The tent does nothing to dampen the noise 😬
Left Front - ECSD S1 #1
Left Back - ECSD S1 #2
Right Front - Bridezilla #2
Right Back - Bridezilla #1

10137
5/25/19 - bumped up the nutes. This is set in the res. We use the same probes to measure the epi water in a cup after shaking them off and getting the TDS to read zero. It would be really nice to have one of these in the epi to have easy apples-to-apples comparisons using the same brand of meters. The readings at a glance make it really convenient especially while adding nutes.

10140
5/25/19 - ECSD 1

10141
5/25/19 - ECSD 2

10142
5/25/19 - Bridezilla 1

10143
5/25/19 - Bridezilla 2. A little gimpy, with only one "real" non-cotyledon leaf growing.
 
spyralout

spyralout

🌱🌿🌲🔥💨
After a few days with HPS running at 50% and LEDs running full power it was getting hot and a bit dry for veg (90F 30% RH). Passive intake wasn't working good enough. Put a little Honeywell fan in the bottom 8" vent, then eventually switched to a 5" fan. Also rigged this up to borrow some AC for the tent while still using the rest to keep the room cool:
10144

Got it down to 82F but still 30% RH. Tried hanging wet towels and t-shirts to make a swamp cooler effect but to no avail. Grabbed a small cool mist humidfier from CVS. Now a consistent 50% with the lights on, 60% with the lights off 👍

3 days later (sorry I only had pics for two):
10146
5/28/19 - ECSD 1

10147
5/28/19 - Bridezilla 2
 
spyralout

spyralout

🌱🌿🌲🔥💨
10149
6/1/19 - root check time! 12 days from seedling. A little slow at first, but speeding up fast. Nice and white. Really liked seeing the fishbone pattern. This one is the easiest to get to so most root pics will be from this plant.
 
spyralout

spyralout

🌱🌿🌲🔥💨
Got a bit caught up in the solo cup comp. It's been really fun so far rigging up designs. Even if they don't totally work out for the best it's all in good fun and learning.

10154
Original Design - Single DWCs

10153

New Design - top feed waterfall RDWC. Styrofoam cups and ice chest to keep it all insulated with ice packs inside

10156
My GF made this using a cheap telescoping garment rack, side lighting and all. She's one down chick 😉
 
spyralout

spyralout

🌱🌿🌲🔥💨
10161
6/11/19 - ECSD #1 & #2 bushing up fast. Thinking they're going to stretch hard in flower. Took some clones and trimmed some bottom leaves.

10162
6/11/19 - Bridezilla #1 & #2 also bushing up fast and catching up to the ECSD.

10163

6/11/19 - root check. Unbelievable growth, only 6 days from the last pic. The other plants are slightly less than this one. Beautiful white no slime.

We're concerned that the stretch will get out of hand, and we have limited head space. Since it's our first time in this type of system, we're gonna flip from 18/6 to 12/12.

Haven't tried a SCROG before but we'll give it a go in a few days.
 
spyralout

spyralout

🌱🌿🌲🔥💨
10165
6/13/19 - ECSD #1 & #2 first day after flip. HPS bumped up to 100%

10166
6/13/19 - Bridezilla #1 & #2

10167
6/13/19 - root check

Bumped up the nutes, now running at 700 PPM, 6.0 pH holding steady. The very first time we used RO we put back 20% tap for a buffer. Haven't done that since and the pH & PPM stay really steady, have only done 3 slight pH adjustments since starting.
Lights out, 70-72F 55%-60% RH. Lights on, 80-82F, 45%-50% RH. The plants' vegetation have been helping keep the humidity up, so the humidifier has been turned down to half. We use RO water with Hydroguard in the humidifer - so far so good. Eventually we will remove it because we don't want to run into the opposite problem.

That's it for now folks. Until next time 🤘
 
SoLowDoughLow

SoLowDoughLow

Mediocre grower
spyralout said:
View attachment 10124
View attachment 10125
5/14/19 - Started 2x ECSD S1 and 2x Bridezilla in water sitting on top of a wifi router. This is the readings of our RO water. After about 24 hours the beans cracked with some tails. Put them in some soaked rockwool tail down.
View attachment 10130
View attachment 10131
5/19/19 - seedlings popping up and reaching for the sky. They were under a cheap 200w blurple. First time using rockwool, there is a definite learning curve with these. They stay very wet and squeezing will crush them and potentially suffocate the seedlings. At one point thought we would need to start over in something else, but we toughed it out and good thing we did. For what it's worth, for the next beans and cuttings, we used Rapid Rooters and so far they have been much more forgiving.

View attachment 10135
5/20/19 - might have been a bit too early, but we were itching to get the system up and running after making sure everything was leak free for the ~3 month journey. Used Grow!t brand expanded clay pebbles. They are irregular dog turd shape and float, which was annoying at first. Next time we're trying original brand Hydroton. These will work for now. We started counting this as the start of veg.
BTW the air pump is NOISY AF. Pretty much gotten used to it though. Don't know if a smaller pump would be worth it for the noise-to-performance ratio. It also gets pretty hot, so possible future plans on moving it outside of the tent as well. The tent does nothing to dampen the noise 😬
Left Front - ECSD S1 #1
Left Back - ECSD S1 #2
Right Front - Bridezilla #2
Right Back - Bridezilla #1

View attachment 10137
5/25/19 - bumped up the nutes. This is set in the res. We use the same probes to measure the epi water in a cup after shaking them off and getting the TDS to read zero. It would be really nice to have one of these in the epi to have easy apples-to-apples comparisons using the same brand of meters. The readings at a glance make it really convenient especially while adding nutes.

View attachment 10140
5/25/19 - ECSD 1

View attachment 10141
5/25/19 - ECSD 2

View attachment 10142
5/25/19 - Bridezilla 1

View attachment 10143
5/25/19 - Bridezilla 2. A little gimpy, with only one "real" non-cotyledon leaf growing.
Click to expand...
Hey I think I got that same air pump. Mine is quiet as hell actually. Do you have all the air outlets plugged up? the only time mine gets loud is when one is open
 
SoLowDoughLow

SoLowDoughLow

Mediocre grower
spyralout said:
Yea I used all 8 outlets. The hum is loud you can kinda hear it through the wall in the next room. Do you have anything on the inlet?
Click to expand...
No, I don't. But I guess maybe I just don't realize how loud it might be if I was in an adjacent room. All my shit is in my basement so when I come upstairs I don't hear shit. But if I was in a room next to it, yea I'd probably hear it hum...

I guess I meant, for the grow room it's pretty quiet lol, compared to all my other fans, dehumidifier, and shit...
 
spyralout

spyralout

🌱🌿🌲🔥💨
SoLowDoughLow said:
No, I don't. But I guess maybe I just don't realize how loud it might be if I was in an adjacent room. All my shit is in my basement so when I come upstairs I don't hear shit. But if I was in a room next to it, yea I'd probably hear it hum...

I guess I meant, for the grow room it's pretty quiet lol, compared to all my other fans, dehumidifier, and shit...
Click to expand...
60w 70L. If I go with a smaller pump I won't get as much air but wondering if it would be significantly quieter. If it's just a minor difference I'll stick with this one. It's definitely not as loud as a regular 440 cfm exhaust fan, those things sound like an airplane when cranked up.
 
SoLowDoughLow

SoLowDoughLow

Mediocre grower
spyralout said:
60w 70L. If I go with a smaller pump I won't get as much air but wondering if it would be significantly quieter. If it's just a minor difference I'll stick with this one. It's definitely not as loud as a regular 440 cfm exhaust fan, those things sound like an airplane when cranked up.
Click to expand...
I honestly can't tell much difference between the two, I have the smaller one in my 3x3 tent
 
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