DesignatedDave

Do not use the Anti-fragile soil, it made my plants do weird things, there is something wrong with that soil. rather go for orgasoilux, it’s a much better soil and you can easily top dress the soil later with their Elemental mix.

So does the Kushy Amino acid and it will work out cheaper. Kushy you use like 2ml - 4ml per 10L of water. Umya you use 100ml per 10L and is more expensive. Go with the Kushy, @Prom has done side by side trials with Kushy amino vs Bio-Heavan and found little to no difference. I use this for my plants and works great, however these guys are cheaper - https://gthydro.co.za/products/897-captain-black-strap-1l.html In veg you only going to use like 2ml per 1L water, feed once a week. I usually combine this with some calmag. In flower you can go up to 4ml - 5ml per 1L water, I still use it in combo with calmag here. one extra addition I would recommend if get a bottle of microbes - https://hydroponic.co.za/hydroponics/biodyne-environoc-401-microbes/ Add some microbes in at 0.5ml per 1L water, feed once a week, this will keep introducing new microbes into the grow medium. You can stick with Seagro if you using the molasses, it will be much of a muchness. Yeah those are fine, just keep in mind that you need to stop the humic acid from 3 weeks into flower (it can bring down terpene levels if given all the way through flower). Fulvic you give a little bit in veg, but more as you progress into flower. So it's not essential, but does help. I use Kelpak - https://www.greenhouston.co.za/products/kelpak - I only use it once a week, but its heavy on application with 5ml per 1L water, so I tend to go through it rather quickly. 2 or 3 bottles might be needed over the course of the grow.

So there is https://umya-nutrients.co.za/product/multi-amino/ There is also the Kushy Amino boost https://hydrobiz.co.za/products/amino-boost There is Bio-bizz Bio-Heaven on the expensive side. There is Kaya Farms Soluble Amino - https://www.kayafarm.co.za/product/soluble-amino-acids/ - This is as close to Bio-Heaven as you get having both come from soybeans. The molasses is not for the plant per-say, it's for the microbes in the soil to use as a food source, causing them feeding frenzy and reproduce rapidly. The big different between Seagrow and Fish-mix is that fish-mix is also mixed together with extracts of sugar beet, which accelerates the growth of microbes in the soil. Then you also have your humic and fulvic acids which condition the soil and fulvic acid increases nutrient uptake in the plant and helps prevent nutrient burn pretty well (unless you really going excessive). Kelp - is a growth regulator which improves the plant overall.

https://www.royalqueenseeds.com/blog-amino-acids-here-s-what-they-do-for-cannabis-plants-n1213

I go and drop a disinfectant fogger in my grow space, let it go off, seal it up, and after 20 minutes, turn on your extractor fan and let it all vent out. Then just wipe down the walls. They cost about R50

I had 4x 12v 105AH batteries connected in series and parallel to make 24v and 210AH. 200AH deep cycle batteries are not worth it, they only have like 300 cycles at 50% deep cycle. So if you do the maths, 3 x load shedding intervals a day = 3x a day your batteries are going to cycle to 50%. Within 100 days you will have hit the 300 cycles. After 365 days of load shedding 3 times a day, your batteries will be screwed and you wont get 20min out of them. At this point you will need to replace the batteries again. With these Batteries being about R2000, you will spend R4000 every time you replace them... It costs R9000 for a 12v 105AH Lithium Ion battery that will last you 6 years at least. So buying new batteries every year is going to work out a shitton more expensive than lithium ion.

To grow uninterrupted with all the load shedding you going to need a half decent 2.4kva Inverter with Lithium Ion Batteries (about R20k in total) - This will hold a 600w grow light and some fans for 2 hours, if you dim your lights down, you will make 4 hours. It's worth the investment. I've just replaced my 4 lead acid batteries with 4 lithium ion batteries and the different is chalk and cheese. I been running 1300w on it and even after 2 hours of load shedding, the battery indicator hasnt dropped. Tonight will be the first test on a 4 hour load shed.

You not wrong, its even been a consideration of mine, but i'll wait for the disappointment to subside first, no rash decisions here.

I'm about to replace my lead acid batteries in my UPS with Lithium Ion batteries. At this point I would just like to keep the extraction and fans going and hopefully that will help. The issue is when we get hit with 2x 4 hour load shedding schedules during a 12 hour period with only 4 hours of power in between. The UPS isn't able to charge the batteries up enough before the next load shedding hits. In addition to this, we being affected by this - https://www.news24.com/news24/southafrica/news/city-power-runs-out-of-stock-to-replace-vandalised-mini-substations-20230120 A mini-substation got vandalized, they replaced it and 3 days later, they vandalized it again, so city power has now replaced it for a Third time. When this happens, we don't have power for 18 hours at a time.

Between all the Stage 6 load shedding and the continual vandalization, theft and damaged to mini-substations in our area, my UPS hasn't been able to keep up and keep the fans on. Thus the "Gelato x Kmints x Runtz", "Criminal+" and "UK Cheese x Zombie Kush" has been hit with Powdery Mildew and I've had to throw them away 3 weeks before harvest. Pretty disappointed and despondent about this, I tried all I could to prevent PM, including a preventative IPM program, but I guess there is only so much you can do in a closed space without electricity before heat, humidity and stale stagnant air stresses the plaints out to the point they PM can set in. At this point, I'm even questioning the viability of growing indoor with the current stage 4 - 6 load shedding, the petrol cost to run 1800w of power for 4 hours just adds to the pain. The "Zombie Bride" has been pretty resilient so far (touch wood) and is going strong, I made a quick video of it: (sorry you have to view it on youtube because of their policies).

@Prom - Just FYI - There is a 50% sale at hydroponics.co.za at the moment on Biobizz stuff, 1L Top-Max is R315 a bottle.

I didn't realize it was specifically for Coco Coir? My understanding of it is that the aloe side aids the plants immune system and it also provides enzymes that break down the dead root material and turn it back into a nutrient form for the plants to re-uptake, thus keeping your root zone healthy and also aids in nutrient uptake. According to their feeding schedule for freedom farm grow medium, it should be used: Was the humic acid and fulvic acid I recommended not a viable replacement?

@Prom - I got myself some of that Canna amino acid (Or Kushy amino boost as its called now) - it's working great. I wanted to ask you, have you found a suitable replacement for the Biobizz Acti-Vera?

Quick update, the plants have now done their stretch and are flowering nicely. The Gelato x Kmints x Runtz have stretched all the way up to about 1.7m tall. I've slowly stared defoliating, however I won't be taking off to much, as long as there is airflow and the bud sites have direct light, I'm happy. My next update should include some nice bud shots.

Dear Diary, A quick update on the plants. The indoor plants are now ready to flip to flower and I started the 12/12 lighting from last night. They have grown like crazy and are so ridiculously happy on this Gold Label Nutrients it's insane. 2x Criminal+ in the front with 2x Gelato x Kmints x Runtz at the back. My UK Cheese x Zombie Kush however is the only two plants that aren't "growing" - they mostly have just bushed out and stayed short. I'm hoping they stretch themselves out nicely with flipping them. The Zombie Brides (Wedding Cake x Zombie Kush). My outdoor plants are looking rather worse for wear, they took a solid beating from a bad hailstorm this past week. Once they have recovered some I'll take some pics. That's it for now.

Time for a new light?

Man... You just gave me the answer to my last issue I had with my 4 DWC units, which was cooling them effectively. I have a Small chest freezer, I could run 4 copper lines through there and just a small 2nd pump for each DWC that will circulate the water from the reservoir through the freezer and back into the reservoir. Then as you say, put these pumps on temp controllers monitoring the reservoir temp. Thank you for that.

Yeah, it's pretty automated and plug `n play with chillers in the flow path. I been looking into Deep Water Culture and realize that you absolutely need to have a water chiller. I been looking at bringing in these 60L 200W Aquarium Water Chillers which cost around R2800 including shipping. So far this is the best I've found.

So this is something people tend to forget about when they try and do full hydroponics with stuff sitting in water. Yes 24° is too high, you need to bring that down to about 20°. The proper solution to the problem is a water chiller, however... 500ml or 1L coke bottles filled with water and put in the freezer also works. You do a bunch of them and keep them in your freezer, then just drop 1 or 2 into the reservoir and it will bring down the temps, they will last most of the day and you can just cycle them.

That would be awesome because the full set of bottles for "maximise growth" comes to about R6000 for the set (From Canna Kingdom), While I understand this was R&D'd for medical grade cannabis, I don't believe it should be that expensive (or maybe I'm wrong, but everything in their shop is marked up crazy... their pre-rolled joints are good though).

I like the NutriGold nutrients, they work well, This Gold Label nutrients caught my interest, I'm using their coco 70/30 grow medium which is Kiwa certified and from what I understand, their main market is medical cannabis facilities and are branching more consumer stuff. If you go through their bottles, its interesting that they include additional things like Silicon, Amino acids, Aloe Vera, Enzymes to break down dead root mass into nutrients, etc. It seems like a lot of R&D has gone into this nutrient bundle and I'm really keen to see the results of them. I buy a lot of stuff from GreenThumb on a monthly basis, It would be amazing if they could start stocking these Gold Label nutrients. Currently its being sold by 1 grow shop (Canna Kingdom @ Hillfox Shopping Center, JHB) and because of that, I believe it's marked up rather high.

Dear Diary, It's been almost a month since I last posted and a lot has happened and changed. About a week after I my last post, my indoor plants took a dive, they yellowed out on the new growth like an iron lockout from a PH issue. Considering these plants were 100% until I went and spent 4 days in cape town and forgot to open the reservoir tap before leaving. That coupled with a 36 hour power outage, a heatwave, 7000+ PPM of co2 and these were screwed. I initially I thought I could save them, but their growth was becoming deformed and I wasn't in the mood for a warped difficult grow, so I decided to trash the entire indoor grow and buy new clones and start over. So now we have a full ripper seeds grow: 2x Criminal+ (Critical cheese) 2x Gelato x Kmints x Runtz 2x Zombie Bride (Wedding Cake x Zombie Kush) 2x UK Cheese x Zombie Kush I also decided to switch out my nutrients from Nutriplex (NutriGold) to trying the Gold Label CoCo Nutrients with their Stimulators & Boosters - https://goldlabel.nl/nutrients/ - (I get that it's all just NPK `n shit, but lets give it a run and see, since I don't think there is anyone on this Forum running these nutrients). I acquired the clones on the 7th November and these are how they are looking today on the Gold Label Nutrients: Then on the Organic Outdoor side - these plants have been going great and getting big, I am considering changing their pots to 48L pots. I did a defoliation last Saturday and they seem to have recovered nicely. Still feeding them Biobizz Fish-mix, Calmag, Molasses, Enzymes. Blueberry Sunset Chempie x Purple Punch Zombie Kush that's it for now.

Hi there and welcome.

OMG I didn't know this topic existed...

Well recently I been preferring to go with Clones over seeds, it just saves you about a month in growth time. However yes you could do coco in there as well. For coco I start my seeds off in Jiffy's or glue plugs first and then I plant that into coco once they a bit bigger and have good roots growing.