DWC experiment not going great!!!!

freerider

Member
Thanks for the replies again, all insights welcome :-)

last night I scooped out a few litres of the solution and put some plain water in and got the ppm down to about 850, they should be pretty big now at around 3 weeks but still only 10 inches tall, the burnt tips must mean over fert so I will see how they get on with lower ppm.

I also did the same on the White widows which are only about 1 week in and were starting to show the first signs of nute burn so I got them down to about 600.

These numbers still sound high but check the canna calculator at http://www.canna-uk.com/growguide and it's what this recommends!
 

12268

Member
hey i have hard water and i use none of that junk

i just wanted to say I read it is best to have about 2 INCHES or so GAP between the bottom of the pot and the water :)
 

freerider

Member
hey i have hard water and i use none of that junk

i just wanted to say I read it is best to have about 2 INCHES or so GAP between the bottom of the pot and the water :)
I can well believe it matey, I read so many diff opinnions and ideas now I dunno what to believe anymore, I am doing some trial and error with new bubbler I started last night, week solution to start with an see how it goes, fingers crossed it works, I don't wanna go back to coco after puttin all this effort into hydro (not to mention the cash I spent on ferts, tubs, pumps etc..)
 

OregonMeds

Well-Known Member
Once you stress plants like you have been it takes time for them to recover, sometimes they just don't. I lumen shocked a crop recently and had to toss them because I knew it would be a waste of time and needed to start over with healthy plants. If your res is getting too warm it'll cause all kinds of issues, you need to change your reservoir to a cooler or insulate it, or get a chiller. If the roots get too cold at any time that's just as bad, maybe you need a heater for nighttime.

I would suggest you go check out this thread, these guys are the guys ____currently setting world records for rdwc___ and everything you need to know to pull off the best yield in your system directly relates to that rdwc system.

Here: http://www.thcfarmer.com/forums/f131/

Notice the nutrient schedule sticky thread? Read it... Read everything you can over there, soak up every tidbit of juicy knowledge.

Yes the small netpots will restrict the size of the plants, so will having them sharing the same root space. They fight each other for space and it's less productive than if each has it's own container. Bigger net pots with more media gives the surface area needed for the roots to feed via capilary action which takes up different nutrients better than being underwater, it's needed for bigger plants.

And no you don't need more air, you don't have too much but you sure as shit don't need more from your description.

Plenty of those guys had these problems, I do recall reading about it, and the answer is already posted there I'm sure of it I just don't recall what it was because I don't have any of these issues and just used tap water when I was running dwc.
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sixstring2112

Well-Known Member
It is more than likely your high res temps . 26c- 78F is too high. I had your problems with water and temps.Got the R/O and brought the temps down to 19c in the morning and around 21c by lights out. No more ph promlems no more nute burns.I also use cal- mag but not in heavy or recommended dosages, just a squirt here and there. bottles of ice work great and are the cheapest way to get your temps under control like now.I have found in hydro if your temps get up past 75F everything gets harder to control and nute burn happens often.
 

freerider

Member
Yes I got the temps sorted now, sometimes I get it down to 15c (59f) but it usually around 20c (68f) and much like yourself it gets upto about 21c (70f) by lights out, but I just pop a frozen bottle of water in their!

And I too don't go mad with the cal mag cos the bottles have a warning that normal ferts come with these already added so not to ever do it.

Thanks for the advice, the plants do seem to be settling down now, leaves lookin greener and they r reaching up for the rays, fingers crossed they get nice an big now :-)
 

sixstring2112

Well-Known Member
those are my temps 19-21.5 and everything goes smooth.when i had your problem it took a solid week to 10 days to really know i was on the right track.alot of that time was ok now i got good water, oh i need cal- mag, oh my temps are still hot. almost gave up on hydro altogether, then i turned the corner. sounds like you just came out of the last turn, now gouge on it and grow some monsters.
 

freerider

Member
I was the same, i was startin to get bummed out with it was not goin as well as it should and thinkin i might have to go back to coco, but im pleased to see they r lookin better now, i measured the height yesterday afternoon and they were 12 inches and this morning they r 12 and a half inches :-) so half an inch over night is very nice to see.

My only annoyance now is the new test bubbler i started, with the weak solution the ph goes up pretty quick, i mixed 1.5ml of vega and 2ml rhizo into the full res (4.2 litres) so it was 4x weaker than canna recommended, this gave me about 140ppm, but the ph shot up to 7 in a few hours, so i added 1ml cal, 1ml nitro, and 1ml mag to help it stabalize the ph which bumped it upto 450ppm, this seems high for newly rooted clone but i have been keeping a close eye on it over the last few days and i see no sign of nute burn yet, and the ph seems to linger around 6 which is good enough for me :-)
 

tea tree

Well-Known Member
nice thread. I am having some issues. I think they look like cal mag. i thot it was ph but got a fresh pen and that is ok.

I use hardwater and hardwater micro and gh three part. I checked my cities water and the cal was like 280 or so I think I may be way wrong but it was on the edge of hardwater micro use and regular micro and I checked the magnesium and it looked really low. Like 20 or so. I dont know what levels of magnesium I want but I was hoping one of you could post that. Thanks.

I am thinking of switching to regular micro and tapwater or as gh suggests mixing hardwater micro and regualar micro together to get it right.

I added a little epsom salts once and I swear I saw a jump in health. But not too credable.

Al least I got ph right. I was just letting it go with succes for so long. I have been up all night tweeking everytihn in my house with my ph pen. FUnny thing was when I first dunked in all my reservoirs (seperate five gallon bucks) almost all were at 5.8 anyway! That left me stunned as the gh was buffering just right.


Look for water quality reports and read the ppm of cal and mag.
 

sixstring2112

Well-Known Member
that mix of 450 ppm is where i put mine right out of cloning so you should be good.I use ionic and it wont help my ph until about 400 ppm but after 600 and up to 1800 ppm it puts my ph right at 6.2 so i just leave it.
 
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