A couple ?'s on DWC bubbleponics

I am just about ready to finish up my first grow. THis one was in soil and a scrog and it has turned out quite nice. I should know my yield in a few weeks. But I have found that soil is a pain. Hydro seems like the easier route to get good healthy plants, especially under a scrog.

I have looked around and done some reading and I have already built an aerocloner that will be getting some fresh clones soon. But I am having trouble what size to make my res or res('s). I currenlty have a 4'x5' screen under a 1000watt air cooled hps. I would like to put 6 plants are so under there. I have read that your res size should be about 2-5 gallons per plant. I went to walmart and was looking at totes and seen some that were 18gallon and some that were 30 gallon. My question now is should I have more than one res for the 6 plants. Would it be best to do it all in the one 30 gallon. Or should I do 2 18 gallons?

I plan on using the general hydroponics dual diaphram air pump. How many of those would I need to aerate the water for your chosen res size?

I also have a question on temperature. My grow room temps range from 60 at night to about 80 by the end of the day. I expect my daytime temps will be going down soon too with winter coming. Would I have any problems keeping my res temp at a decent temperature? I was thinking of use a cooler for my res, but it is much more expensive than totes so I would like to avoid that if possible.

Thanks in advance for the help. Heres a couple pics of my current grow.

BlueFossil said:

I am just about ready to finish up my first grow. THis one was in soil and a scrog and it has turned out quite nice. I should know my yield in a few weeks. But I have found that soil is a pain. Hydro seems like the easier route to get good healthy plants, especially under a scrog.

I have looked around and done some reading and I have already built an aerocloner that will be getting some fresh clones soon. But I am having trouble what size to make my res or res('s). I currenlty have a 4'x5' screen under a 1000watt air cooled hps. I would like to put 6 plants are so under there. I have read that your res size should be about 2-5 gallons per plant. I went to walmart and was looking at totes and seen some that were 18gallon and some that were 30 gallon. My question now is should I have more than one res for the 6 plants. Would it be best to do it all in the one 30 gallon. Or should I do 2 18 gallons?

I plan on using the general hydroponics dual diaphram air pump. How many of those would I need to aerate the water for your chosen res size?

I also have a question on temperature. My grow room temps range from 60 at night to about 80 by the end of the day. I expect my daytime temps will be going down soon too with winter coming. Would I have any problems keeping my res temp at a decent temperature? I was thinking of use a cooler for my res, but it is much more expensive than totes so I would like to avoid that if possible.

Thanks in advance for the help. Heres a couple pics of my current grow.

Click to expand...

The 1000W will heat up that room big time.. I use the coolers and my temps stay 65-69 degrees..I would say go the cooler route unless you have a portable AC in your grow room ...View attachment 1169529

Hey Blue - I chose to go with individual 4 Gal. containers for my last DWC SCROG grow instead of the big tubs. It gives you lots of options to try different nute levels and additives on individual plants and could save some of the harvest in the event of a major problem as opposed to one res. Also in a shared res the roots will tangle.. just be aware that you can't pull or turn them after a certain point.
Other side of the coin: I've never grown grown large plants in a shared res and don't know what other advantages it might have. Nice full screen on you're first scrog. Congrats.

Well I think I am gonna split it up into two res's. I think I am just gonna go with ttwo 18gallon totes with three plants in each with 6" pots. Each unit will have it's own General Hydroponics Dual Diaphragm air pump with a variety of air stones in there. I know I might have a problem with temps but it is getting cool outside and I vent in fresh air so I dont' think i will have any problems until next summer, even then I plan on have an ac unit the room.

I took some clones last night and put them in the aerocloner I built. It leaks a little bit, but I am gonna get some weather stripping today and try to fix that problem. I have 4 White Widow, and 4 Afghan kush. I will take the best 3 of each of those and put them in the DWC buckets I will be making soon. I am doing this under a scrog so i will have to get a pump and install valves on my buckets so I can pump water to and from them. I also plan on buying another bucket the same size for mixing nutes, then pumping into the res.

I'm getting excited to have my first harvest soon.

I am using the same setup but using a DWC and each 5 gallon bucket is hooked together making a daisy chain of 3 and one plant per bucket. I keep 2 gallons in each bucket and change every week. In my signature is my new journal of White Widow and somewhere is my old grow of OG Kush in my system.

Do u plan on vegging the clones for any amount of time? Reason i ask is cuz ive done 8 plants with zero veg in an 18 gallon tub. And harvested anywhere from a half to a zip per plant with a 400 watt lamp. If i was u THO With ur 1k lamp id give them a good 3-4 week veg before flower. Split them up into 3 18 gallon tubs im saying its only another 3 dollars lol. 2/tub. With my 400 watt lamp ive harvested anywhere from 3-7 zips per plant depending on strain. I couldnt imagine what would have happened if i used a 1k lamp. But i would assume u could expect at least 5 zips per plant given proper veg. Prolly more with ur strains. Good stuff cant wait to see it when it happens. Peace

IMO 18 gal for 3 plants is entirely too much. The cost of adding nutes at res change will be steep and unnecessary. Your probably thinking you'll only change the res every 2 weeks so it's not that bad. If this is your first grow trust me, you'll make mistakes, the water will become cloudy, or something will happen to make you have to scrap the res and change the water early. Regardless of how big the res is, weekly changes are still the best bet.

For three plants, I would use a 10 gal tote and only fill it with about 8 gal. I've done this in the past with three plants, and got over 8oz.

I like that you are thinking ahead about water change. Once you begin the scrog, the lid will become very difficult to remove or even lift. A pump will be a must. Maintaining root health will be key in your case, because you will not be able to take them out and rinse once they are scrogged.

To tolerate higher res temps you can do two things; run a sterilizing agent in the water constantly, such as dutch master zone, or even better, introduce beneficial bacteria. Both options will let you get away with water temps in the 70's.

Well i've been doing some thinking and I have decided to revert back to the original idea of the cooler. It does look expensive at first but when comparing it to the cost of everything else I have put into this project, it seems a lot cheaper. I just don't want to build everything up with totes just to find that my temps are too high and I need a cooler anyway. I have found an igloo cooler that is 50qts, which comes to 12.5 gallons. This would probably only be filled to 10 gallons at the very most.

I am going to have a T fitting coming from the drain of the pipe so I can add a piece of tubing coming from one end so I can check water levels w/o opening the cooler, and then add a ball valve on the other end of the T and this will go to my res changer, which will be an 18 gallon tote with a ball valve. Then I will have a mag drive pump running inline so I can move the water from the tub to the coolers and vice versa.

Now one of my questions is how much air do I NEED to be flowing through the water. I was originally thinking one of the dual diaphragm pumps per cooler, but then again they are expensive and if I could get away with using one between the two that would be great.

I do plan on vegging the plants for a while once they are in the coolers. I plan on taking the clones directly from my aero-cloner and putting them in my coolers shortly after they have some decent roots coming, which i am guessing will be in a couple of weeks. I will then veg the plants in there until I have my scrog ~40% filled. My ballast is a digital ballast and I do have the MH bulb just in case you guys were wondering.

I noticed a mistake I made yesterday. I checked the ph on my aerocloner in the morning then forgot to turn it back on. So when I came home last night all of my clones looked quite dead. But I plugged it in and I looked this morning and they are perking back up. HOpefully they make it. If not I have more plants that I can pull clones from. I definitely need to make sure that I remember to turn shit back on in the future.

Thanks for the help. I can't wait to be growing hydro style.

*Bump*

Some pointers on the volume of air needed per plant or per gallon of water would be nice.

Peace

I believe its 1 watt per gal. if im not mistaken,but more will not hurt either,my water looks like its boiling and my plants are doing fine. good luck