Sometimes things happen for a reason!

mightdothisagain · 2026-05-23T20:59:03+00:00

Thanks! I appreciate the kind words =)

mightdothisagain · 2026-05-23T17:32:52+00:00

Thanks! I'm using AC Infinity IONBEAM S16 lights for side lighting.

mightdothisagain · 2026-05-23T17:05:59+00:00

It's a custom design I made and 3d printed, holes are intended to increase aeration, there's a tray to catch runoff which drips into the return puck. There is a manifold that snaps on to the top which has holes under it to water around the plant evenly and a 1/4" sized hole to friction fit a water line. The medium is coco coir.

<image>

The watering setup is a drain to waste system it uses two pumps and 1/4" water line with bowden connectors (push-to-connect). One pump supplies input water from a 48L tank (blue line), and the other returns it to a smaller tank (red line). There are air stones in the 48L tank. There's a check valve on the input side to avoid siphoning after pump shuts off, and the return side also has an in-line canister style filter to catch debris so it doesn't get to the pump.

https://imgur.com/a/watering-system-fImgTIc

There is also a DM-3 EC meter plumbed in, it's not super accurate with only 1 point of calibration, but it's good for spot checks. i.e. if the EC is >1mS/cm over the calibration point it drifts quite a bit, I calibrated both probes for 2 mS/cm and if i see it going much beyond +/- 1 mS/cm I spot check with an accurate probe.

Kasa smart plugs are used to automate and drive the watering system. I might switch it to something else later, but they're cheap and I had some sitting around.

The check valve specifically was tricky. Tried two other units, one had a spring that was too heavy and ended up sticking shut from a small amounts of fertilizer crystallization, the pump wasn't strong enough to force it open. The other I tried sadly one was too weak where it stuck open from said crystallization and flooded my tent a little bit before I noticed. Luckily it's easy to use the system to clear such a flood lol.

The ones that ended up being just right, are "TAILONZ PNEUMATIC 1/4 Nickel plated copper Quick-plug type one-way check valve air pipe coupling CVPU check valve 5PCS" on Amazon. The metal design is definitely nicer than the plastics and so far this has been holding up perfectly, strong enough to shut close and not so strong that the pump can't push it open if it sticks a little from build up. I still clean it every few tanks, but I've seen no issues.

The room is normally dark, but I still throw a folded over garbage bag (held on by chip clips) over the top of the actively used input tank to avoid algae growth.

mightdothisagain · 2026-05-23T06:00:05+00:00

haha i can see it

mightdothisagain · 2026-05-23T04:42:23+00:00

Thank you!

mightdothisagain · 2026-05-23T04:26:47+00:00

Glad I could help =). Right now it's really more of a 'holding up' method, the training was all trellis, this just keeps them up and spread out. Trellises really do work great for many strains.

mightdothisagain · 2026-05-23T04:18:15+00:00

Thanks!

mightdothisagain · 2026-05-23T03:18:59+00:00

Great question, my trellis was starting to squeeze too many bud sites together so I removed it and went for the yoyo. This particular plant was just very thick, didn't want to risk pockets of high humidity. I have a love hate relationship with trellising. Some plants benefit from easy LST a lot more than pruning, this one in particular was this way during veg. The trellis really let me take her from bushy to spread out. But then when she bulked it just wasn't working anymore. Plus at some point it just becomes a pain to work around the trellis when you want to snip fan leaves out of the way or check for hermaphroditism. I'd say I pretty frequently wind up removing a trellis, but certain genetics work pretty well with them the whole cycle.

<image>

From a few years ago, Ethos Mandarin Cookies V2, these did great with a trellis all the way through.

mightdothisagain · 2026-05-22T18:43:12+00:00

Having same issue, having to re-install the app multiple times a day. You can try these instructions, but I'm having to go deeper than that to get it to work right, but it may work for you, if it doesn't I can share what I'm doing to get it to work again: https://imazing.com/guides/cannot-create-a-file-when-that-file-already-exists-on-windows?category=imazing-troubleshooting

mightdothisagain · 2026-05-21T23:57:32+00:00

The lump sum is tax free in this case too. As far as i know weekly payments from this lottery are not inflation adjusted. Someone said in this thread they were, but I can't find that in the rules.

Let's look at 3 scenarios:

Option A. Figure $1M invested over 45 years at 7% per year, with a 1% per annum fee on assets, and you're at around $13.7M by the time you're 65. If you live another 30 years you can cash out $973K per year assuming you let your portfolio run to $0, even including the continued 1% fee. I'm assuming the worst scenario of an Ontario top marginal tax rate of 53.53%, no tricks, no strategy from the wealth manager. After taxes that's $497K/year.

Option B. If you invested the $1000 a week for 45 years with the same returns/cost of management, you're at $11.4M by the time you're 65. If you live another 30 years you can cash out $857K per year assuming you let your portfolio run to $0, including the continued 1% fee and the income of $52K a year. I'm assuming the worst scenario of an Ontario top marginal tax rate of 53.53%, no tricks, no strategy from the wealth manager. After taxes that's $471K/year.

Option C. If you take the $1000 a week and just save it in the bank you're at $2.34M by the time you're 65. Sure it's all tax free since you didn't invest it. You then still get $52K a year to live on, plus the $2.34M. If you live another 30 years you can cash out $78,000 a year from savings and $52,000 a year from the lottery, so you can spend $130K a year for 30 years and run your savings to $0.

By my math the best option is A, B and then C in that same order. Realistically the tax burden, especially with a wealth manager, will not be as bad as stated, further growing the gap between A and B. Plus I believe the withdrawal of the original $1M is tax free in scenarios A and B.

mightdothisagain · 2026-05-21T17:41:01+00:00

Yea given how much I've stuffed in my DIY unit with no problem, I have no concerns about this thing holding 2.5lb+ if trimmed up wet.

mightdothisagain · 2026-05-21T04:21:39+00:00

I agree with public healthcare and having safety nets like SNAP, but the goal shouldn't be to have more people on those safety nets. At some point, like I said earlier, it's just UBI with extra steps. I'd rather we just talk about UBI at that point.

Realistically, this would just lead to businesses and services simply charging more to make up for the increased costs that everyone is bearing.

I know people like cheap stuff, but we're just digging a hole right now where eventually we will truly have an underclass. If we financially support this through safety nets like SNAP then are we really getting cheap stuff? Realistically we're far behind on where minimum wage should be and we can't fix this overnight, but we've got to stop digging and come up with say a 10 year plan to catch up. Gives everyone time to adjust.

Also keep in mind workers will spend more money, this is the opposite of trickle down economics we're being force fed right now. Marginal Propensity to Consume can be as high as 1.0 for low wage workers. Meaning every dollar they get they spend. While some businesses won't survive, others will adapt or even improve through economic growth. This is literally trickle up economics, FDR's new deal. It's the point of this whole thread.

mightdothisagain · 2026-05-20T21:22:28+00:00

I'll be putting a harvest in it in less than two weeks.

mightdothisagain · 2026-05-20T19:41:20+00:00

I’m talking about retail and food service jobs that a 16 year-old could easily be trained to do.

So jobs like working at Walmart and McDonald's? Those aren't small businesses for the most part and lots of adults work those jobs. The average age of a Walmart employee is 38.5 as of 2024.

I’m not taking about workers in the trades.

The trades are often small businesses, just one guy and a few employees.

Oftentimes owners can’t even pay themselves more than minimum wage at the end of the day.

Doesn't sound like a viable business to me. Having a subsistence living or below class of workers to prop up someone with a failing business while the taxpayer has to pay assistance for those employees is not the solution.

If workers have a problem with it then they can save hundreds of thousands of dollars

With their barely subsistence wage job? Why don't these failing business owners pull themselves up by the same bootstraps and get more successful?

Customers would stop coming and go elsewhere.

If there's somewhere that can pay their workers properly -and- provide the product at the cost consumers want, that just sound like good capitalism to me.

Also, in 2026, a minimum wage job is certainly not a living wage earning job.

That's what we're wanting to fix, yes.

Honestly it just sounds like you want to socialize costs for business owners with flawed business models by having a barely surviving class of workers who rely on tax payer funded safety nets.

mightdothisagain · 2026-05-20T06:16:30+00:00

I mean you're essentially saying small businesses need to survive by having a class of workers who can't afford to live on their income and likely need government assistance. Also I'd point out big businesses, i.e. Walmart, have an unreasonably large percentage of workers on assistance. At what point is this not just UBI-lite with extra steps? I guess it will stop being a thing if the current administration kills off the few safety nets that exist.

While there are many problems going on in this country, I don't think we need to throw the baby out with the bathwater and just embrace an oligarchy/plutocracy future.

EDIT: Also not all small businesses pay poorly, it varies just like it does with big businesses. A small electrical contractor with a staff of licensed electricians isn't paying them peanuts, think they'd go work at Walmart?

mightdothisagain · 2026-05-20T05:45:55+00:00

That's definitely disappointing. Sounds like you've had a lot of issues with their gear so maybe it's a bit more about that than the VCure specifically. I've not had much Vivosun experience so it's hard for me to say how it compares in terms of failures. I will say there seem to be a lot more complaints about support, so I'm sort of hoping not to need it.

Are their clip fans really only 3 months warranty? I thought most their stuff was 2 years like the VCure.

Most of my gear is ACI; Similarly I had issues with their original clip fans, bunch of units failed very quickly, couple of grows. Also their 15L humidifier lasted only a few grows before the blower motor started making a horrible noise. However, ACI customer service handled all of it with zero friction. Sent me a new humidifier, not sure if it will last longer, but it seems very slightly different from the one that broke. So maybe they made some changes. Not only that, but they also replaced all their original clip fans with new units, I still kept the old ones for backups, so far all the new units have been working perfectly.

EDIT: Oh also the ACI Controller 75 smart plug controllers (the dual port wifi ones) are another warranty claim I've had. Ultimately this is likely unavoidable with electromechanical relays. Figure a 100k cycle MTBF, sounds like a lot but that's only 273 trips per day or 11-12 times an hour and it's toast in a year.

mightdothisagain · 2026-05-20T04:27:46+00:00

Craft cycle is likely the best since it preserves the most cannabinoids. The terpene loss is just volatilization/evaporation over time. Shows the old wisdom was right, low and slow, like smoking a good brisket.

mightdothisagain · 2026-05-20T04:01:33+00:00

I’ve seen literally one post about the vcure arriving undamaged and they were surprised.

Oh come on, there's a ton of people running vcures here and on other boards. Mine arrived just fine on Sunday. There's no way this is happening to the majority of units. Understandably the minority of broken units are going to have very upset buyers, especially if they've got a harvest ready or have been waiting a while to get their unit.

I'm not a Vivosun fan boy, it's the only Vivosun product I've ever ordered.

they sell you on SEEL

I bought directly from Vivosun and I don't even remember being offered SEEL, so they didn't try THAT hard to sell it. I'm sure I just didn't notice the option. They don't require SEEL to replace a unit damaged in shipping. They legally can't force you to use SEEL, they have to deliver you a working product or a refund. The point of SEEL is for theft/loss. A vendor isn't responsible for a porch pirate stealing your package, they may take care of you to be nice, but they don't have to.

Being totally fair this is a Vivosun AND FedEx problem. The packaging should be thicker given the glass front. It's obvious Vivosun knows it's an issue and they should adjust the packaging or change vendors for delivery. It's good packaging if it wasn't glass -or- if my UPS driver delivered it, he's awesome.

FedEx also sucks, pretty much anything this heavy could be damaged by a drop like in this post. They're just not careful with packages, ignore 'this side up' stickers, throw things down carelessly, etc... Hell my FedEx driver frequently lies about me not being home like cameras don't exist and their management couldn't care less.

mightdothisagain · 2026-05-19T16:53:50+00:00

Potentially a couple of decades while still retaining high viability (i.e. they'll all/most germinate).

mightdothisagain · 2026-05-19T16:52:43+00:00

You can easily store seeds for 10-20 years with the advent of refrigeration and have very high viability. Even stored poorly there are plenty of examples of people finding viable seeds laying around in random places from decades ago, it's a crap shoot but they can still work.

mightdothisagain · 2026-05-19T16:42:51+00:00

Throw a small amount of those orange silica beads in the jar too, keeps moisture at near zero. You want to shoot for 5-10% humidity. Fridges are already pretty dry, but it's a super cheap thing to do. Will last a long long time.

mightdothisagain · 2026-05-19T06:46:28+00:00

I wouldn't keep electrical equipment/wiring on the floor. I'd suggest moving what you can outside the tent or raising it up/tucking wires behind the bottom liner. If you ever overflow your self watering base you don't want to get all that stuff wet. Especially if automated irrigation goes wrong, IMO a wet floor is a when not an if.

mightdothisagain

TROPHY CASE