4800 Watts DWC first time hydroponics

th1986

Active Member
Won't continue to give my history each time , I posted it in my "journal directory" , which i hope is ok to have as I have a few different projects I'd like to log and it will be an easy place for me to go find which thread I want to post in.


This is my first water gro. I have my best friend , who is also the person I started growing with 5 years ago as my partner and mentor. It's been years since we had a mutual grow and since that time he came a lot way where as I kind of just slugged along wanting to throw the towel in but still going. Few months back decided I wanted to get into water and that I wasn't ready for the task on my own and he was more then happy to get in since he had lots of equipment just laying around.

We have

Strains - Spliff (i'm unsure if this is full proper name as i can't find much on it but i've seen , smoked and loved it.
- My buddy/grow partners cross , i think it's lemon haze and kiwi skunk maybe , all i know is he's fucking protective of it and had to remind me a million times not to give it to anyone. Haven't smoked it or seen it that i remember so excited for harvest time. I've heard from other's it's top notch.

3 - 1000watt hps
3 - 600watt hps
4 - 4' - 8 bulb T5's
1 - 4' - 4 bulb T5
(i added the 1000 watt last night , in replacement of a 400 watt which was used during the first 4.5 weeks of flower)
1 osilating fan
1 box fan
1 small clip on fan
DWC are made from 5 gallon buckets
Homemade 33 spot cloner (rubbermaid)
Medium in net pots is lava rock and some white stuff (big chunks of perlite perhaps)
The 8 outlet pumps with airstones (idk how many pumps)

The rest is just pretty basic. We both have a bunch of inline fans but decided we were gonna hold off on installing them until I get a dehumidfyer as i had an issue with powdery mildew last year and had my basement flood as well.

We burned tons of sulfur , thorughly whiped everything with bleach. Gutted the basement (as i didn't use the big open area to grow but am now) , threw away any old furniture as it had water damage. everything went and we cleaned.

I am in the works of finding a used dehumidyfier but have decided if i can't I'll just buy a new one after harvest so we can install the intake and outake fans and get that fresh c02 in there. Hoping it doesn't screw us much this time around but the basement is fairly open and there's no real doors just a make shift room from cardboard.

Oh , nutes. I'm in question about his way of going about nutes. He just wants to go with very cheap 2 part , micro and bloom , what he says is the "lucas formula" i think. Our other buddy , who ironically started after us , failed miserable grow after grow but is now levels ahead of us , if the one who told him to do lucas and is the one who he learned hydro from. So IDK what to think. My dad just got the deal of a lifetime for $500 , which included at least $1000 in nutes , not to mention a digital 600 ballast , mh/hps , huge hood , somewhere between the size of a mondo and raptor , inline fans , thermostat , a portable air conditioner , just all kinds of awesome and he's pretty clueless so I've been giving him a hand here and there and I'm sure he'd gladly let me get some of the nutes so i plan to grab some next time i go over since my buddy/grow partner said sure bring some as long as there not dark.

So yeah basically that's where it's at .

It's day 25 of Flower

The Veg room is lonely . 1 t5 8 bulb powered half way , providing for the clone box , which all are rooted , just waiting for some new growth and then to the DWC buckets they go. As well as 5 soil plants that were leftovers from last time and got huge in the cloner (super bushy) so we transplanted them to soil but they're just now starting to chipper up after a week or more. limpy and sickly looking for the longest time. Not surprising given the size of the root mass and going from water to soil , but there lookiing fairly normal now and i imagine new growth will be coming anytime. I don't think were keeping them. Selling them or I'm going to be sneaky and "buy" them but take them to my buddies house who he's so dead set against having the strain , and while that might sound wrong , I'll just see that he doesn't get a clone off them as he doesn't know how to and is basically like starting from the ground up. Not to mention he is looking for name brand strains and won't want them. Not sure if this is that bad , sneaky , but wrong? WE both want to sell them , I honestly don't have a buyer and neither does he , he agreed let's get $100 for them and split them , well I'll give him $50 , take them to my buddies who I'm setting up his first grow for and we have the dreadful 3.5-4 month wait till harvest and make things happen a little sooner by throwing them in flower while we wait on the others to veg.

I'll take pictures , we've had some nute deficities but neither of us really know what it is. He seems to go REALLY light on the nutes in my opinion so i really wanna start researching myself and voicing what i think , though ill need good arguements to do so and right now I'm about as dumb as a rock on hydro but something sparked me to join the forums and really look around for things i wanna know.

Temps stay with the lights on are around 72-79 not positive on low but house stays around 69 , RH has luckily been pretty low , 45-55 range as it's Snow season here , although when it rains i assume we will have a bit of problems.

So certainly need the dehumid and hook up our fans to bring air in after we take this harvest down. '

While the plan was as soon as we harvest we put the new ones in , we've decided we want to give veg time a bit longer. Last time 3 weeks didn't cut it. Some plants were the size/bushyness we wanted but not many at all. Thinking 4 weeks , 5 max which will leave us with a good week or more dowwtime as far as nothing flowering. Can clean real nice , hook up the fans and what not.

We've both always went 24/0 with our T5's but will be doing 18/6 (if 16/8 is viable please chime in) once we start veg the new ones which shouldn't be more then a week.

I discovered the FIRST major screw up today , and hopefully the last (i can handle little mistakes here and there but this is beyond stupid on both our parts)

So with nearly 5000 watts I've already had 2 new breakers installed which is fine running what i use to do on my own around 3000 but we had to become creative and use the washer and dryer breaker.

Well i bought a digital timer , one I've never seen before which only has one spot to plug anything into , right in front. So the timer went directly into the Dryer outlet , hooked to the timer was a extension cord , which strung into the grow room and to a power strip which apparently held every pump and 2 of our lights. Luckily when i was taking down the 400 and putting the 1000 up i made the mistake and put to much on that breaker , it didn't blow but the timer took a shit. So when I'm scrambling around trying to get this timer to work , check how much we have on each breaker etc it dawns on me that the pumps have been on the timer for 25 days into flower now. WOW. Major fuck up. We both had to of seen it , but just didn't realize since were use to double sided timers and the timer would never have been at the outlet with the extension plug in , rather it'd be on the other end of the extension. So yeah , that explains why they didn't seem to grow nearly as much as I'd expect the first 2-2.5 weeks in flower. I remedied the situation making sure there were no overloaded breakers and using a old school timer until i make it back to the store. 1 year warrenty on the timer , but I'm not sure if i have the box but hoping they do me a solid since in my resentful mind if they'd just of had the normal digital timers like every other store we'd never be in this situation. So luckily everything is in good working order now and hopefully by catching it sooner then later we can sacrifice anymore loss it would have brang to us. On the downside it's gonna be a long day of fully emptying each bucket and refilling them. We have 33 of them and usually just top off but this calls for a full drain and refill.

Other then that they don't look TOO bad , they just never got that first 2 week of veg jump im use to seeing. There all very tightly nodded and some have amazing sets tops but some are really slacking. We cloned from the best looking one so hoping it passes on genetics and prolonged veg will make the next ones to go in much fuller.

So yeah a whole lot of talking for not much insight to what we have going on. I'll get some pics tonight to post.


I'd say the flower room is about 15x15 give or take. Buckets lined up in 2's , 5 under 600 watts , 6 under the 1000 watts , except one 600 has 6 (2 stragglers that we contemplated holding back but decided to let them go).. The lights create a U-Shape so it's easy to manvuer.

Walls are brick , painted white , no double sided plastic or mylar , just plan white walls.

Very amateurish room at the moment.cardboard blocking the block windows , a makeshift cardboard door but all that will change soon. My basement was set up fine for about 3000 watts , i had a proper enclosed room , had my fans bringing air in and another kicking the old air to the laundry room , but i think after this first harvest we will upgrade.


A few things I'd like people to chime in on

WE don't have a PH tester, well i do laying around somewhere never opened but can't find it and he swear's we don't need it. I've heard from others that my city water's ph is pretty stable/where it needs to be.

At the moment it seems were barely giving nutes which IMO is causing defincincy but I'm thinking tomorrow when we empty all the buckets and add fresh water we will be doing fair amount of nutes. I need to learn a lot more about this hydro , since the nutes are essential , it's not like my dirt grows where i can just buy high quality soil and slack for the most part on feeding.

I've been told about the tester to make sure your nutes aren't too hot , actually from the same guy who said we can get by without a ph tester since our cities water is pretty optimal , i don't even know the name of this device . I mean as of right now he's given to little nutes if anything so it's not neccessary but he did give me the ok to get some nutes from my dad so before i start doing something i know nothing about I'm gonna have to do a lot more reading about the proper way to go about this.

Ill leave it at that and add pics/progress.

I tend to type long winded notes , but for the remainder of the journal it should be fairly simple and to the point , i just figured being damn near halfway through the first harvest i should give some back story.
 
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