cannaculturalist
Well-Known Member
Here's a snap prior to further topping
cannaculturalist's first hydro grow 600W RDWC ScrOG & bag seed
- Thread starter cannaculturalist
- Start date
Here's a snap prior to further topping
cannaculturalist
Well-Known Member
Week 2:
Res change-
Drained system, rinsed/wiped with h202 solution. Refill with 600ppm @.5 / 1.2EC 3:2:1 GMB + 1:1 calmag:silica to 700ppm/1.4EC, pH adjust to 5.74.
Have continued mainline training as appropriate - tying down, topping - more to be done in coming days.
Roots have grown about 1 foot during the week, doing very nicely. Very impressed. Having seen so many other DWC grows and the root development, it's nice to see it for myself.
As for the coco pots, fed them with 600ppm / 1.2 EC 3:2:1:1 GMB/Calmag/Silica. Pruned/topped as I thought best for each (not strictly mainlining these, though trying with the clones which have close enough nodes).
Question:
What's your thoughts on using jiffy pellets for cloning/germination to use in DWC, as opposed to rockwool?
Res change-
Drained system, rinsed/wiped with h202 solution. Refill with 600ppm @.5 / 1.2EC 3:2:1 GMB + 1:1 calmag:silica to 700ppm/1.4EC, pH adjust to 5.74.
Have continued mainline training as appropriate - tying down, topping - more to be done in coming days.
Roots have grown about 1 foot during the week, doing very nicely. Very impressed. Having seen so many other DWC grows and the root development, it's nice to see it for myself.
As for the coco pots, fed them with 600ppm / 1.2 EC 3:2:1:1 GMB/Calmag/Silica. Pruned/topped as I thought best for each (not strictly mainlining these, though trying with the clones which have close enough nodes).
Question:
What's your thoughts on using jiffy pellets for cloning/germination to use in DWC, as opposed to rockwool?
cannaculturalist
Well-Known Member
[video=youtube;lTSVOnhLtCs]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTSVOnhLtCs[/video]
That's right. I didn't do anything - I just stirred the tanks. And now, we have a problem.
I guess this was to be expected. I got slimed! And just when everything was going so well. The weather here has been extreme - it's the middle of summer and copping near 40C days all this week. I haven't been able to freeze bottles fast enough (think the fridge might be dying too now...) to keep water temps under control. Looking at my log book, they've been as high as 26.8C for an extended period, mostly between 24.2-25.8. Yep not very good. I was keeping them closer to 22C with occasional ice, but without any other cooling, the system just can't handle the heat. Despite efforts to prevent it - including using bennies, it's taken hold in the past 12 hours.
So, what does one do?
I'll start by pointing out the obvious to any experienced DWC grower (as you may well be) in that I was pushing the proverbial poo up the mountain.
Yep, you got me - I was ambitious
So what am I gonna do? Well, the plan is to make the most of what I have and that is the following scenario:
The plan:
I'll let the RDWC continue to run for the next couple of days just to see what happens - this is a learning project for me, and even though it's a bit crushing, I will follow on and watch the slow death (or who knows, I might just get lucky?...).
And with the survivors I am yet to decide exactly. The four female clones are obvious runners - however 2 of them look to be needing a pH adjustment (too high) as diagnosed from high N in fan leaves, nut burning and magnesium deficiency noted from purple stems and petioles. Will flush and adjust. The others are all looking great. Two are possibly male (whipped out the loupe and inspected first signs of preflowers, looking like balls on stalks so far). They are in 4.5L pots (the two male lookers are in 2.8's), and will be fine in those for a while - as I've been mainlining, they've yet to really start veging hard.
But here is the dilemma - in all my ambition in going for the DWC setup, I've not spent so much time thinking about how else to go about it - aside from some casual reading and prior experience with using coco in other situations. I'm tossing up the idea of using the regular basic plastic pots I have already, or to amp it up and go with fabric pots, or even hempy buckets. Hempy looks closer to what I have already been doing, just still wrapping my head around how best to use what I already have on hand - thought of continuing to use coco/perlite 70/30 mix with a hydroton reservoir in the 20L buckets I stuffed up when building my DWC buckets - the holes weren't well drilled (except that the buckets have two 3/4" holes each, approx 2" from the bottom, yet to suss out if they'll work). If not, I could always buy more pots/buckets, but would rather not - I'd rather try fabric pots as I've never used them. Air pots also look good but are much more expensive).
Until I noticed the slime, I was going to try Nutrifield's Coco A&B for the rest of the coco grow, but I still have my 3part GH flora series nutes. Depending on what costs I have in changing the pots/medium, I'll make the call on this.
So yeah, the ride has been bumpy, but I'm still holding on. Let's see what comes of it.
That's right. I didn't do anything - I just stirred the tanks. And now, we have a problem.
I guess this was to be expected. I got slimed! And just when everything was going so well. The weather here has been extreme - it's the middle of summer and copping near 40C days all this week. I haven't been able to freeze bottles fast enough (think the fridge might be dying too now...) to keep water temps under control. Looking at my log book, they've been as high as 26.8C for an extended period, mostly between 24.2-25.8. Yep not very good. I was keeping them closer to 22C with occasional ice, but without any other cooling, the system just can't handle the heat. Despite efforts to prevent it - including using bennies, it's taken hold in the past 12 hours.
So, what does one do?
I'll start by pointing out the obvious to any experienced DWC grower (as you may well be) in that I was pushing the proverbial poo up the mountain.
Yep, you got me - I was ambitious
So what am I gonna do? Well, the plan is to make the most of what I have and that is the following scenario:
- I had made room for a failure of some kind, be it slime, males, power outage/system failure etc. My backup was that I had 4 female clones and 3 other seedlings still in coco/perlite pots. So it is with these survivors that I will now work with. Oh yeah, I'm shelving the RDWC setup for now - I'd like to try it again (possibly in 2 bucket setup in my second grow during winter months). From now on, this grow will be coco based.
The plan:
I'll let the RDWC continue to run for the next couple of days just to see what happens - this is a learning project for me, and even though it's a bit crushing, I will follow on and watch the slow death (or who knows, I might just get lucky?...).
And with the survivors I am yet to decide exactly. The four female clones are obvious runners - however 2 of them look to be needing a pH adjustment (too high) as diagnosed from high N in fan leaves, nut burning and magnesium deficiency noted from purple stems and petioles. Will flush and adjust. The others are all looking great. Two are possibly male (whipped out the loupe and inspected first signs of preflowers, looking like balls on stalks so far). They are in 4.5L pots (the two male lookers are in 2.8's), and will be fine in those for a while - as I've been mainlining, they've yet to really start veging hard.
But here is the dilemma - in all my ambition in going for the DWC setup, I've not spent so much time thinking about how else to go about it - aside from some casual reading and prior experience with using coco in other situations. I'm tossing up the idea of using the regular basic plastic pots I have already, or to amp it up and go with fabric pots, or even hempy buckets. Hempy looks closer to what I have already been doing, just still wrapping my head around how best to use what I already have on hand - thought of continuing to use coco/perlite 70/30 mix with a hydroton reservoir in the 20L buckets I stuffed up when building my DWC buckets - the holes weren't well drilled (except that the buckets have two 3/4" holes each, approx 2" from the bottom, yet to suss out if they'll work). If not, I could always buy more pots/buckets, but would rather not - I'd rather try fabric pots as I've never used them. Air pots also look good but are much more expensive).
Until I noticed the slime, I was going to try Nutrifield's Coco A&B for the rest of the coco grow, but I still have my 3part GH flora series nutes. Depending on what costs I have in changing the pots/medium, I'll make the call on this.
So yeah, the ride has been bumpy, but I'm still holding on. Let's see what comes of it.
cannaculturalist
Well-Known Member
People! Ok well things have progressed since yesterday. After the initial excitement and emotion that came from the discovery of pythium, a new battle plan emerged. I surveyed what was ahead of me and made the most of it - I decided to push on with one of the 4 DWC plants - aptly designated #1 during the seedling stage as the candidate I most wanted to transplant and grow on. Why did I do this? Well of the 4, it was doing the best (prior to pyth, in regard to shoot growth) and I have a feeling it is female - thought this from seedling stage, but somewhat confirmed via loupe (though we will still wait and see). So I pulled the system apart, trashed the other plants and got to work with a dose of H2O2 followed by a serious disinfection with bleach. Overkill? Yep, exactly, kill the bugs left right and centre. Can you smell that? Can you smell that? *WHAT?* Napal---bleach son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. I LOVE the smell of bleach in the afternoon...
I pulled #1 out and sat it in a bucket of water with about 30mls of 3% H2O2 with an air stone for maybe 4 hours while I cleaned up. Once all the parts were cleaned, I put together 1 bucket with a tap, filled with water, used the 4 air stones and the entire pump output (800L/h - which as you might think is/was too low for 4 buckets, particularly with high temp) and double wrapped it in insulation. I threw in a couple of ice bottles to bring the temp down to just bellow 18C then added the following: .5EC 3:2:1 ratio of GMB + 1:1 calmag/silica, pH adjust to 5.67. I also added in about 10g of MycoApply Maxx and .5-1g of 420 Beneficial Bacteria to the res (stuff this tea business right now, I'm going direct. Will make more tea next week). I then took #1, washed the roots under the tap and removed any slime/dead roots/crap and dunked it in a fresh bucket of water with 4ml of 50% H2O2 for a few minutes before putting it back into the DWC bucket.
So for the moment that is the end of the story for this journal. As I am no longer following through with my initial plans, I'm not 100% if I'll continue to update this - particularly since few people seem interested in my goings on despite page views (note that I really mind, I don't. But I'm not needing to shout into empty spaces either). So we'll see how the new setup/plans go and how they evolve. I may come back to tell you a tale.
All the best and happy growing
I pulled #1 out and sat it in a bucket of water with about 30mls of 3% H2O2 with an air stone for maybe 4 hours while I cleaned up. Once all the parts were cleaned, I put together 1 bucket with a tap, filled with water, used the 4 air stones and the entire pump output (800L/h - which as you might think is/was too low for 4 buckets, particularly with high temp) and double wrapped it in insulation. I threw in a couple of ice bottles to bring the temp down to just bellow 18C then added the following: .5EC 3:2:1 ratio of GMB + 1:1 calmag/silica, pH adjust to 5.67. I also added in about 10g of MycoApply Maxx and .5-1g of 420 Beneficial Bacteria to the res (stuff this tea business right now, I'm going direct. Will make more tea next week). I then took #1, washed the roots under the tap and removed any slime/dead roots/crap and dunked it in a fresh bucket of water with 4ml of 50% H2O2 for a few minutes before putting it back into the DWC bucket.
So for the moment that is the end of the story for this journal. As I am no longer following through with my initial plans, I'm not 100% if I'll continue to update this - particularly since few people seem interested in my goings on despite page views (note that I really mind, I don't. But I'm not needing to shout into empty spaces either). So we'll see how the new setup/plans go and how they evolve. I may come back to tell you a tale.
All the best and happy growing