Your plants are looking great @treycer11! You’d be surprised how much weight cannabis plant’s can pack on in their final weeks of flower, if they have all the light they need. I’m glad you were able to pull your seedlings through. I’ve always found rockwool cubes very hard to start seeds in. My success rate sucked! So now I use Root Riot plugs and will never use anything else. They have great airflow so your seeds and roots can never get oversaturated.
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Thank you for your response to ease my mind about the weight of my auto. Read something on here the other day…(maybe from @oldguy? Sorry if it wasn’t you! Lol) that the times that are advertised for the auto’s are only their flower times? Which would add another 2-4 weeks onto the time left for mine! That would be awesome.
I tried my local hydro shop’s version of root riot plugs my very first time I tried germinating seedlings. Terrible fail. But it was 100% my fault. I soaked them in what I now know was a very hot solution of nutrients. I was ignorant and excited and thought I could juice them up early. I didn’t have the best experience with rock wool but it did work for me. Might do some experimenting in the next grow and try to improve my skills on both rock wool and plugs. I’ve been noticing a lot of people on here love their plugs. If I can get the rate of growth up from the time they germinate through the early veg stage, I think I’ve got a decent handle on everything else. Of course, I can always do better and there’s always more upgrades!
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Hey while I’m here and at it…
Topping off the res in the middle of the week. How do you all top it off and maintain ppms? Right now at res change-outs I’ve built it up to around 1000-1100 ppms. Ppms have stayed close to that number so they are taking in just as much water. But they are CHUGGING what I’m giving. So I’ll have to add more water around 3 days later. How can I figure out what I need to add to maintain those ppm levels?
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I top off with 1/2 strength nutes @treycer11. That should keep you ppms right about the same depending on how fast your plants are feeding. I might notice a slight increase sometimes but no more that 50-100 by weeks end.
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I’ve also used Mother’s Earth and Ancient Earth but returned them to get my money back. Mother Earth stinks like death for a DWC setup, plus AN grower support assured me I didn’t need them cause I already run their full lineup. They were a waste of money for me personally.
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I like the fact that they gave you an honest answer and refunded you! That’s great customer service. 
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THANK YOU for your response about ancient earth and Mother Earth. Been trying to read as much as I can find on them to see if they would be beneficial here and there. But like you, I’m running practically the fully lineup.
Quick question: do you use rhino skin in veg at all? It’s a silica supplement which in my understanding is good for cell wall strength and health. Seems like it would be ideal for something you would want in your mid to late veg stages. But AN only suggests it for flower stages…
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@treycer11 It was suggested to me to use Rhino Skin starting my 2nd week in Veg all throughout till the end of flower. That’s what I’ve been doing with great results! But I only run all my addons 1ml/L. To keep my ppms reasonable.
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If you want the cheapest A.N. products these are the guys. They’re wholesalers and will beat any price. They ship out of CA 3 day priority mail. Discount Advanced Nutrients. SAVE3 is the code I always use. 
They honor A.N. 100% growers satisfaction gurantee or your money back.
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1st week of flower analysis, update, and photos coming later today!
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1st week of flower seems to have gone pretty well for the most part. The auto beefed up a tad, two plants look healthy, one looks good but some bottom leaves look like they have a cal mag deficiency. What do you think? They do look a little hungry to me so I pumped up the nutes another 100ppm making it 1100ppm. (Thanks to @Tygrow78 simple explanation I nailed the desired ppm without having to changeout the entire res and just topping off.). I think I’m around 85-90% strength of what AN suggests at this point. Plants are somewhere in the 18” range. I did buy a trellis net to install maybe next week. The first week stretch definitely helped get some air flow through the plants. There are certain angles where I can see all the way through the plants now. We did defoliate or prune again earlier in the week. (not sure there’s a difference between those two ha).
AN nutrient lineup used:
Connoisseur Coco Bloom A & B
Sensizym
Sensi Cal Mag Xtra (half strength)
Rhino Skin
Bud Ignitor
B-52
I did a lot more research this week into what exactly each supplement is and what it does for the plants. For example, I knew that Voodoo Juice, Piranha, and Tarantula were all for the roots. But I had no idea what exactly they were and what they did. They are all the beneficials for the rhizosphere. Voodoo juice is Bacteria, where Piranha is the fungi (mycorrhizae), and tarantula is the microbes. Found more out about their entire lineup with only a few question marks here and there. Pretty cool stuff!
Any questions, comments, or concerns you see hit me up! Thanks again all!
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Your plants are looking really good @treycer11! I’m a big fan of AN lineup. They have a great marketing strategy and they kind of hooked me. I’ve been using the Sensi line but plan on try out connoisseur after I finish the rest of my Sensi bottles.
Thank’s for explaining the difference between the 3 root mass expanders. Each 1 serves it’s own purpose. 
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Thank you for the kind words! I know exactly what you mean about their marketing strategy. They hooked me too lol. But hey, I’m not mad at what they’re giving me. I think it’s working out pretty nicely for my first go around.
Yea I guess what sparked it is I had been reading that generally the bloom base nutrients have lower Nitrogen ratios. And then I realized, at least for the one I’m using, that the nitrogen ratios weren’t that different between the grow and blooms. So I decided to look into. Learned a whole lot. Like how they have PK boosters specific for each stage of flower…I didnt know there were different phosphorus’s and different potassium’s that were beneficial for each stage, rhino skin promotes cell wall strength and immunity, how Revive works and would probably do well after a flush using Flawless Finish. A lot of cool and valuable stuff. Still trying to read up on chelation. Maximum yield has a good article about it. I’m probably going to have to read it slower and take notes next time I read it again because it was pretty dense for me the first time I read it lol
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2nd week of flower update, analysis, and photos coming later today! Can’t wait to show them off! A few questions about anti-mold environments, how to know when I’ve defoliated enough/not enough. Things like that.
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Second week of flower officially complete. Overall I’m still very happy with the setup and the nutrient line. Plants are staying healthy and happy. 2nd week stretch was definitely more than the first. Bud sites are everywhere, which is what Bud Ignitor is supposed to do. Very pleased with that specific supplement. I used it the last week of veg and these first two weeks. This week it will be subbed out by Big Bud and Nirvana. Had a little bit of a scare last night. The ducting slipped off of the fan (used duct tape so I guess it just lost its adhesion over time) and the humidity rose to almost 80%. Happened sometime between 7pm and 8am this morning when my partner caught it. Light is on between 9am and 9pm so luckily the temp didn’t go too high. Fixed it and RH dropped to low 60’s again. In that little amount of time, would that be enough for mold to grow? I looked them over really good and didn’t see anything that concerned me or looked like mold.
We also defoliated again. This time a tad more aggressive than last time. Gaining more confidence with it just scared to stress them out too much. I understand the concept and purpose of defoliation but could one of you post a pic of where exactly on the leaf stems you cut? Not sure if I’m too close or not close enough in some spots.
Read something the other day that in fact you CAN defoliate autoflowers. Not sure I did enough training in the beginning of mine and also I’m not sure if I’m too late in the game to even think about something like that. A lot of Bud sites are covered and wish they could get more light to them. I took some pictures using a cheap microscope butted up against my phone camera. Sorry for their amateur level but hey I’m going to post them any way lol. Any of you prune/defoliate autos and if so what stages?
Bumped up the ppms again this week to 90% of AN suggested amounts. Set up the trellis net and trained a few taller stems. Super excited for next week.
Any questions, comments, or concerns let me know! Have a great week and happy growing!
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I wouldn’t worry to much about your spike in humidity @treycer11. That was very brief and you were on top of it. I’ve stepped away from my grow before for longer and had my humidity spike because of one of my controllers, and my plants were fine. Some strains can be more prone to mold or PM issues tho. I’ve tried to always research my strains before growing them so I know what they can and can’t handle. We’re so spoiled these days with all the info we have access to!
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Thanks for the response! Good point about researching the strains beforehand! I’ve done that but bought way too many different ones to remember them all. I will refresh on the ones that are in there now! I was mainly worried about the auto. Because I didn’t train it much at all and it’s pretty dense and in flower. That’s when the risk for mold is higher I’ve read. Anyway, thank you for easing my mind!
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Oh yea, your auto, I would clip those fan leaves off that were really covering up your bud sites. I’d try not to get too carried away, but you can clip them anywhere. If I can get close to the stem I do, but if it’s too much work I leave a little so the fan leaves stems sticking out. All depends on access to the branch @treycer11. Now I’ve never grown autos before but I don’t think it should make a huge difference.
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