Caregiver Growing DWC for Patient and need help/advice. 2 plants dying.

Hey all, I'm Validus and new to the site. I use to grow years ago, but now I'm back for reasons of medical use and been having problems with seedlings and their growth with DWC.

I'm using 5 gallon Black buckets and 6 inch net pots for each of the 6 plants. I plan on scrogging once they get bigger.
Temperature of room stays between 70 and 80 degrees.
Humidity stays around 45 to 55.
I have big bubblers in each bucket.
I use 24/24 lighting along with advanced LED lighting 350 diamond series lighting.
I have a ph, ppm and temp gauge with water temps around 70 degrees and ph 5.8 to 6.2. ( seems to fluctuate.)

Yesterday the plants were doing fine and then 2 of them fell over the very next day. Both the chemdawg 1 and blue dream 2 started to fall over.
I lifted up the chemdawg out of the netpot and hydroton and saw white roots coming out the bottom, but not very long. The bottom of the rockwool is dry, but the roots coming out the side from watering are brown, clearly root rot from over watering. ive been watering them in the morning and when the rockwool gets dry from the lighting until the roots extend long enough to hit the water in the reservoir.

The thing is though, I didnt water them for 24 hours and then 2 of them fell over and look like they are dying. I redid the reservoirs with adjusted ph levels with no nutes in them and made a watering buckets of just water adjusted of course to flush the plants because I saw nute burn on the chemdawg.

Im honestly not sure how to water these guys until the roots are showing out of the net pots. its been 12 days since germination by the way.

Any advice on how should I continue watering them? I have both a bucket adjusted with ph and temp for regular water and a bucket for nuts from week 2 of the instructions on the nutrients I have. I forget what they are called im using but its a duo formula. last time i used bc nutes and it worked well years ago. Im getting a little nervous and think the roots dont have enough oxygen getting to them.

Thanks again from an old grower to a new grower. Any help would be greatly appreciated, just cant seem to get the watering down until the roots come through. Any questions... ask away!

DWC is the most difficult method to master. If your patient is waiting, may I suggest start in soil and work up to DWC. Just tossing that out there.

Brown roots are dead. Water or not.

Well, I grew years ago DWC and did great. I also only see brown roots out the side of the rockwool, but through the bottom the 2 plants dying have roots that are healthy and white. Thx for the advice, but I already knew brown roots mean dead.

Are you recommending me to just transfer all my plants (even the healthier ones) to soil when they still have healthy roots heading to the reservoir?

And as of right now I have one patient and I already have enough for him so he isnt waiting. I did soil already too. Both indoor and out. Im just trying to see what people think why over night they fell over. Im guessing cause there isnt enough oxygen getting to the roots or I put too much nutrients into my measured watering bucket for watering them. Im not use to the high powered LED light yet for how much its drying out the plants too.

Dwc has to be, by far, the easiest way to grow. So few variables and everything so readily controlled. just about as basic as you can get and no soil to clean up.

They fell over because they are dying.

Drop those res temps and floom.

I agree but Im still having a little difficulty figuring out why 2 of the plants are so droopy.

Im thinking from either 3 things.

1. Overwatered.
2.Too many nutrients in the water used for watering.
3. not enough oxygen to the roots in the 5 gallon buckets.

Any advice on how to get more oxygen besides the air bubblers in water?
And how many times a day should I water them until they are through the net pots?
Just wait for the rockwool to be dry? Should I also just use regular water to flush then use either 1/2 strength or 1/4th strength of nutrients for watering?

Any ideas?

At 12 days old they do not need any nutes yet. I wait 2-3 weeks from seed before their first feeding. But I think your problem is that your water level was/is too low in the buckets. Try to get the water level right at the bottom of the net pots. If you have air stones in each bucket you should be ok with oxygen. Top watering a couple times a day is good to help the new roots find their way out of the rockwool and hydroton and into the water/nute solution. Since you have some healthy roots already coming out of the pots I would say keep the water levels up so those roots are submerged in bubbling water. From what you have written it seems your environment conditions are good so all else being equal my guess is that you will be fine.

DWC or any hydro setup seems more difficult but like most things in life once you learn the principles you'll be set. Couple other suggestions for new dwc growers. Get a good ph/tds meter and make sure to calibrate. Use much less nute solution than listed on the side of the bottles. Do not micro manage your grow. For example, if you notice your ph has gone up or down a couple of tenths don't go adding ph up or down right away. Or adding all of these supplements when you already use a complete nute solution. Or fighting to keep your air temps at 78, water temps at 68 and humidity at 63%. These are weeds and can take absurd amounts of abuse and still produce amazing plants.

The water in the buckets are half up so thats one thing I need to do is fill it at bottom of net pots again. Ironically, I did that last night and thought thats why it hurt the plants but in my worrying of everything I lowered the water to half. maybe the temperature of the water is too cold.

Thank you very much, Im going to just water them till nutrients are needed. Think they are adding too much salts to the rockwool too.

Look up flooming.

Run a recirculating dwc with chiller and keep rootzones in the mid 60's

Looks like overwatering to me. At this point you should top water your plants once a day until the roots hit the reservoir. Water them too much and they're gonna droop. And as blackstone said, you really shouldn't need much for nutes yet, I generally don't start feeding until they have a couple sets of true leaves. Start with like 1/4 of what your bottle of nutes says to feed. If they start to yellow a bit that means they want more food and you can bump up the ppm's a bit. But as Snaps said, the only way to go when growing DWC is by utilizing a recirculating system. You will create a circuit by connecting all your buckets together, preferably using 2" PVC pipes, and you will have one control bucket that you add your nutes / fresh water into. You'll also need an inline water pump to facilitate the circulation of your nutrient solution. Check out current cultures website (www.cch2o.com) for some ideas on how to setup a proper recirculating system.

When you get a chance get some pics of the root zone.

During the first few weeks when I top water I only water the hydroton around the rockwool. I also keep the water level right under the netpot so the bubbles from the airstone splash water onto the hydroton which wicks the moisture up to the roots. Within a few days the root should be coming out of the pots.

Overwatering and lack of oxygen are one and the same.

How do you overwater in DWC. Sorry if its a stupid question but doesn't the root ball sit in water? Could it be res temps are to high? Whats the ppm's? Lack of dissolved oxygen? My water levels in my system never go below net pot bottoms and level is actually 1" above bottom of net. Ive never had issues but water recircs continuosly.

From what I'm gathering, the water was too far from the net pots, resulting in dry hydroton and rockwool even with top watering. Took too long for the roots to grow downwards with too much top watering resulting in the roots dying and rotting. Maybe..?

First of all Merry Christmas to all!

Secondly, I agree it was from the water being too far away from the hydroton even with top watering. I def overwatered too much with powerful nutes at the beginning so they drooped over completely.

I still haven't seen any roots come out the sides of the net pot or the bottom so I can't really take any pictures yet.

Ill post more of my progress and photos soon, just sucks that they were fine and literally next day 2 of them fell over. Need to figure out when to water with this lighting system. Thanks so far from everyone.

Why dont you just raise the water level? I have never had to top water my net pots. I am a real newb so this may be totally wrong but i fill my net pots with about an 1" of balls and then put my cube (rock wool) on that, then cover the whole thing with balls. I make sure that the water just reaches the RW and thats it. Plants grow like mad lol. I dont run DWC so that may have a bearing on all this and I do add nutes but only 200ppm even though its probably not needed at that point. I run a 8" deep tray and its flooded all the time for flooming.

waterdawg said:

Why dont you just raise the water level? I have never had to top water my net pots. I am a real newb so this may be totally wrong but i fill my net pots with about an 1" of balls and then put my cube (rock wool) on that, then cover the whole thing with balls. I make sure that the water just reaches the RW and thats it. Plants grow like mad lol. I dont run DWC so that may have a bearing on all this and I do add nutes but only 200ppm even though its probably not needed at that point. I run a 8" deep tray and its flooded all the time for flooming.

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Don't sound like noob shit to me! Exactly what i've done for along time and it works every time. I've never had a plant fall over before. I do top water once or twice a day before the roots hit the res but it's just a cup or so. It's the same in DWC or flood. If the roots dry out or can't breath it's all over.

I also think they dried out from a lack of water. I would raise the water level up to the bottom of your rockwool cube. At that point the rw will wick the highly oxygenated water and you won't even have to top feed. Next run consider smaller net pots. The large baskets of clay balls only slow down the initial start getting roots into the res and introduces problems like you are having. it is also really fun to step on or pick up after you lift the lid and spill some everywhere. The larger baskets are to support trees but since you are training in a scrog the support from the net basket is not needed. Also consider the large basket takes up a good gallon of space meaning less water which means less stability which is going to equal more work. I use 2" net pots with foam pucks. Seedling roots are immediately in the dwc system amd they blow up. No dicking with top feeding waiting 2 weeks for roots to grow through the basket.