Any RDWC or UC experts? Help please

Toaster1

Member
Hopefully there are some experts out there that can help out as I can't figure my problem out. I used to grow in an aero system so I don't have much experience with RDWC. I vegged 12 plants in a DIY veg that simply sprays the roots every 15 minutes or so and works very well for cloning/vegging. My plants were all vegged to about 12"-18" tall with roots that were about 12". At this point I transferred them to my new CCH2O system and switched the lighting from 24/24 to 18/6.

It has been about 12 days now and ever since then I have been seeing very slow and unhealthy looking growth. I was expecting them to just take off. I am seeing a few curls on the leafs am also seeing some of the older leaves yellow up which is unusual in veg in my experience. Here is the initial nutrient line up that I use (Mostly Botanicare nutes) which brought the PPM's to about 375. I wanted to start low as CCH2O says to start with half of your normal PPM's. Also this nutrient line up has worked very well for me in the past in an aeroponic setup.

Added to tap water @ 170 PPM out of tap:
Pure Pro Grow 480 ml
Karma 180 ml
Cal Mag 120 ml
Silica Blast 600 ml
Aquashield 900 ml
Great White 12 ml

After about a week I thought maybe they were being starved due to the yellow leafs and what I thought might be some other things that looked like nutrient deficiencies. I doubled the dose, which brought the whole system to about 570-580 PPM's. The PH has remained between 5.6 and 6.4 the whole time and hasn't had much swing. It has been a couple days since I upped the dosage but I haven't really noticed any changes.

I just can't for the life of me figure out why they aren't showing explosive growth? They were doing so well prior to the transplant. Any help would be greatly appreciated? What am I missing?
 

Malevolence

New Member
a picture of the plants and one of the roots would be useful if possible...

are the roots brown or slimy/mushy at all? I have found my tap water (110ppm with chloramine) kills the aquashield and I get slime blooms very quickly if I don't treat it with conditioner. I know a lot of people like SS run straight tap with success, but I think that also has to do with where you live.... if the roots are pristine white fishbones you probably don't have this problem.

I assume you are using large net baskets with hydroton and a rockwool cube. Are the roots in the nute solution?

what are water temps? I have found heat in DWC turns roots into brown noodles.

how are you oxygenating the water in the system? You would see leaf droop if not enough o2.

you said your leafs are curling... are they curling up or down? is it the edges of the leaf or the tip?

have you grown the strain before? If not, it could be low vigor beans. Did the growth speed slow when transplanting from your aero sprayers to rdwc?

I am def no expert, but these are some questions to consider.
 
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