DWC Set-up. Will it work?

I am interested in a perpetual grow system with the fewest plants possible while still yielding as much as possible. My idea is to go DWC in 5 gallon buckets. 8 buckets with a plant in each, all a week apart. 2-3 mothers will be kept to take cuttings from. Take the best looking clone each week and put it in one of the buckets while you harvest the oldest one. It's pretty much just like Al's set up but with each plant in its own container. I'm planning on keeping the mothers under fluorescent tubes and the clones under CFLs. The main room I'm thinking should have 2x 600 watt HPS lights, each covering 4 plants.

How much should I be expecting to harvest off each of these plants? 8 weeks 12/12 from clones in DWC 5gal. buckets. If I need to extend the growing period I can simply add buckets.

i don't see the need for 5 gal buckets if you are going to flower the clones,,they will never fill those unless u veg them

wiseguy316 said:

i don't see the need for 5 gal buckets if you are going to flower the clones,,they will never fill those unless u veg them

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To be honest I just picked the 5 gals because I have the space and I figured the bigger the better. Would it work better in say 3 or even 1 gallon containers? If it doesn't hurt them then I'll just use the 5 gals since they'll fit with no problems.

i was just looking at saving on nutes, you could prolly get away with gallon ice cream buckets

no 5 gal bucket will work but u may consider something in there to offset the volume

1 gallon buckets would be a nightmare to control the pH
The bigger the rez the more stable the pH which is what you want

they would go start to finish from clone in a gallon just fine

it would be more stable in 5 gals but if u check on it once a day it would be fine

I think I'll save the container size for my last worry as of now. Thanks for the input though buddy.

Also, anybody have any strain suggestions? I was looking at Barney's Farm LSD simply because of the potency and the looks of the plants, but I must say I prefer taste over potency in all honesty. Any good indica-dominant and tasty strains out there that anybody would recommend?

BeeRizzle said:

I think I'll save the container size for my last worry as of now. Thanks for the input though buddy.

Also, anybody have any strain suggestions? I was looking at Barney's Farm LSD simply because of the potency and the looks of the plants, but I must say I prefer taste over potency in all honesty. Any good indica-dominant and tasty strains out there that anybody would recommend?

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I like the seeds from Barney and have grown LSD. It is very sativa like, tall and lanky, and it took 10+ weeks in flower. I would suggest their Phatt Fruity.

What I did is I bought 3 10 gallon container buckets and cut 6 set net potting into two of the hoods. One bucket holds 6 plants vegging while the other bucket holds 6 plants flower. DWC with 2 12" air stones in each. The other bucket is for premixing water/nutes for change-out every two weeks. I think this may be a better fit instead of trying to cramp in 8 separate 5 gal buckets under your lights. Also 10 gal containers have been able to handle the massive root systems that grow throughout. 5 Gal will work too, but I was under the assumption you were trying to save space?

Actually space is not a problem as I was saying. I'm just looking to keep number of plants to a minimum. I figured separate containers for each plant would be better than a grouped bigger container. Am I wrong?

yeah but root tangle is not a big problem with my DWC buckets. It is but it never hurt my plants. Also the roots can be cut away from each other and the plant will still grow.

Doing a perpetual DWC is tough IMHO. In my large DWC systems I have all of the DWC's linked together. This makes water changes waaaaaay easier. You change the water once and it reachs the whole sysem. All the plants in the same system need to be on the same light/nute cycle. For example, you don't want to run a flush routine for your plants that are ready to pull when you have youngsters just starting to bud using the same water. If you were willing to spend a ot of time treating each plant as their own seperate systems then it would work fine. Your yield will depend on your light, genetics, and skill. If you have 1200 watts you should finish with a little over a pound for connesour varieties and upwards of over two pounds for higher yielding varieties. That is figuring that you have everything dialed in. Peace