If you do go soil, get a big bag of “diamotaceous earth,” it’s a white powder with the consistency of flour. It works wonders on spider mites and other pests. I had a spider mite infestation on my last grow, and it got rid of them completely. I used a sifter to sprinkle it generously over every inch of my grow tent, bending the plants over to make sure and get in into all the nooks and crannies of the plants. Leave it for a couple of days, rinse, give it another couple days to get plenty of light (thick DE coverage partially blocks the light that reaches the leaves), then repeat at least another time or two. Then just monitor closely.
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That is the exact system I use - only I am currently using just two of the buckets instead of all 6 (which is nice, because up until I put the screens over my plants, changing reservoirs was super easy).
My last grow I transplanted 6 ILGM Crystal plants from soil to hydro. I think the key to successfully doing this was a lot of patience, and then making sure I had a LOT of air going into the buckets - the air pump that comes with that system is great, and you can plug up the extra nozzles with wire nuts if you decide not to run all 6 buckets.
For the transplant, what I did was get a 5ga bucket of PH’d plain water and a spray bottle with same. My plants were transplanted from their jiffy cubes to 6" pots and let them grow until they were at 3 nodes.
- I took the plant out and broke off (very gently!) as much soil as I could into an empty bucket.
- Then I dipped the plant into the bucket of water and gently massaged the dirt off the roots as best as I could.
- Then I used the spray bottle of water and sprayed the roots, washing away as much dirt as possible.
- I put gently put them in the Bubble Boy buckets and used hydrocorn/clay pellets as the medium for them
Because I was paranoid of what @Countryboyjvd1971 pointed out, I swapped the water out in the reservoir completely after 3 days, and then again after another week. At that point they were fine and I didn’t have any issues. The more air the better!
I can tell you that it was enough of as PITA that I decided to just grow completely in hydro from the outset this time around, but it wasn’t actually that horrible.
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@Bogleg Nice! How many plants do you have? I’ve been seeing so many pictures of people combining two plants in one bucket vs using individuals, something i’ve been thinking about. Also how many times do you change out the water once a week? Also thank you for the steps you took in transplanting. I don’t plan on using all the buckets so I guess i’ll have to find some wire-nuts to plug with.
Yeah, I almost mentioned coco. That’s what I use and it’s bloody awesome.
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Hydro has a number of pitfalls related to reservoir size, heat and fungus/algae growth that kinda puts a damper on it.
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Right now I have two plants in a 4’x4’x80" tent. They are both 47 days old. You can follow my grow here:
With the 3.5ga buckets that come with the Bubble Boy system, you only want to have a single plant in each bucket. To give you perspective, my GL right now has a root ball that is almost taking up the entire bucket and I am actually considering moving it to a 5ga bucket.
My first grow, some of which you can find here:
…I tried to grow 6 plants in my 4x4 tent. I don’t recommend this for a novice grower like myself. While I learned a lot of lessons I just had too many things going on at once to really understand the process like I am starting to understand it with fewer plants.
If you read through both of those you will have a really good idea of what/how I handled a lot of the things you are asking about, but for the sake of saving you time I’m happy to answer those questions here.
I committed to changing the water once per week. With my schedule doing complete water changes every Sunday morning was perfect. During veg I topped off midweek on Wednesdays and adjusted PH then - other than that I didn’t pay much attention to them other than staring at them fondly over my morning coffee the other days of the week.
When I got to flower - which is what you’ll see described in the second thread I posted - the level of attention I had to give them increased tenfold. Once you have big plants on top of those buckets, you have to think about the best way to change the water. Simply swapping the bucket with a new one isn’t always an option once you get full grown plants - and if you do a SCROG there is almost no way to do it without some kind of pulley system to raise the entire lid, plant and screen up at once… so the simplest, easiest solution is to invest in a siphon pump so you can just siphon water in and out of your buckets.
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@Myfriendis410 Yea all my reading says it requires more attention going with Hydroponics vs Soil for those reasons you mentioned.
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Look at coco if you want to dip your toe into hydro. I love the medium for a number of reasons and it’s very easy to work with.
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I can kill any house plant but with the help of everyone here i successfully harvested over 14oz. Its so much fun!!!
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@Myfriendis410 I wouldnt mind trying Coco but i’ve purchased everything for hydro down to the Nutrients.
@Laurap I strongly believe if I hadn’t posted my plants here they would have died. =P The ILGM forum saving me lots of headache. Everyone’s passionate about their grows so it’s easy to build from there. I love it too.
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Maybe I can try one plant in Coco everyone speaks highly of it.
@kushpa I just worry that soil may hinder the speed of the grow. I think my biggest mistake was using Kitchen lights during Germination on my 1st attempt. My Kitchen is where I have a fruit Bowel. If there’s a single Gnat in my apt it will typically hover near the fruit. There’s a lot to be said being that everyone recommends Coco or soil.
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First grow i used soil. Its Very forgiving but nasty lil bugs like it. This time coco who has to be watered every day. If you use either buy some food grade DE. I sprinkled it on top of my pots & even mixed a lil with coir. Very disheartening to see your girls being eaten.
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If you have the nutes for hydro you’ve already made the big expense in coco. All you need is the medium and some fabric pots. Probably $25 all up.
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just wanted to post the new grow light. It got me by sursurprise I had to grab some sun glasses it let up my room like a football field. I’m guessing I’m not supposed to use both Florcent bulbs with the Led light right?
I would STRONGLY suggest investing in some high quality LED sunglasses specifically made for grow lights. If you’re exposed to that bright light for any length of time on a regular basis, it will slowly damage your vision.
Also, it’s fine to use LED and CFL together. I’ve seen a lot of folks use LED as overhead and CFL on the sides. Just do your respective measurements for wattage and distance, and watch for light burn.
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