First DWC grow

BigBuddahCheese said:

Right on brother, no way was I cutting your grow down. I was just stating this so you can pinpoint your problems and get them corrected. Anyone can read, search correct information but understanding them, correcting them, adjusting or just learning from mistakes is more important. Also do what works for YOU not others, if you can think out side the box you will be way ahead of the curve.

I run my water to bottom of pot the ENTIRE grow, unless I don't top off that night. 5" nets are ok, but you're putting the seedlings in too early if you are not top feeding them or watering them by hand regularly. Either way note your progress and adjust, other poster is right we all start somewhere and I am no expert. All I can do is tell you what I encountered in DWC and how I corrected it.

Not sure if I missed them, but you say you are worried about giving them too much? Do you have a PPM meter? If not get one. Monitor the ppm daily or every other, and adjust. Lower ppm need more nutes, higher ppm more water etc. The plants will talk to you if you have the right gear to understand them, sad problem people want to cheap out on the most important aspect of hydro the WATER. You need to know what is in it, and how much at all times and what the plants are doing in it.
Good luck.

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Bigz -- Definitely mate!

And I know u weren't picking on me bbc...I just need to not compare for my own peace of mind. Your plants do look real great though!

This time around I waited till the RW was full of roots out the bottom before transfer.

I do have a meter and I don't cheap out on my grow...I got almost 4k invested into it. But I got everything I need.

My main problem with reading my plants is I feel they don't drink anything cause I've never had the roots go into the water yet. So my water level stays the same and so does my EC. Which if my water level was dropping and ec was staying constant that would tell me I'm feeding the right feed. Butsince my water isn't dropping and ec isn't dropping so I'm going to assume they aren't drinking. I do top feed only once a day. I do have waterfarms I coulda hooked up to avoid top feeding manually. But too late now that my pots are full.

But once a day I do fill up a a measuring cup and pour about 2 cups of water from the buckets around the rw thru the stones. Then I check the ph of the water cause I've noticed it brings up the ph. Like ill check my pots and find out they're 6.0 so ill ph to 5.8 top feed check water again and it'll be 5.9 so ill ph to 5.8 pour over the roacks again and check ph till it stays 5.8

firsttimeARE said:

Bigz -- Definitely mate!

And I know u weren't picking on me bbc...I just need to not compare for my own peace of mind. Your plants do look real great though!

This time around I waited till the RW was full of roots out the bottom before transfer.

I do have a meter and I don't cheap out on my grow...I got almost 4k invested into it. But I got everything I need.

My main problem with reading my plants is I feel they don't drink anything cause I've never had the roots go into the water yet. So my water level stays the same and so does my EC. Which if my water level was dropping and ec was staying constant that would tell me I'm feeding the right feed. Butsince my water isn't dropping and ec isn't dropping so I'm going to assume they aren't drinking. I do top feed only once a day. I do have waterfarms I coulda hooked up to avoid top feeding manually. But too late now that my pots are full.

But once a day I do fill up a a measuring cup and pour about 2 cups of water from the buckets around the rw thru the stones. Then I check the ph of the water cause I've noticed it brings up the ph. Like ill check my pots and find out they're 6.0 so ill ph to 5.8 top feed check water again and it'll be 5.9 so ill ph to 5.8 pour over the roacks again and check ph till it stays 5.8

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I was there man.. looking at the buds, plants and growth rates. Yet mine were problematic, semi-good at best.. then I started thinking and working about growing better plants, not just weed. It turned into a fascinating hobby, that I never intended but to grow medicine. If you don't flush your hydro ton good before you put your plants in, it can make the ph swing pretty bad. I rinse mine well then pour the entire bag into a buck with ph water and few drops H2o and scope out some with a netty as I need it.

So this round I didn't use h2o2 and wanted to go the bene route. I added some great white about a tenth of a scoop to each bucket 4 days ago. These buckets are 8 days old total. I look into the buckets today and on the bubba 76 there's a little foam around the perimeter of bucket at the surface level. They look like bubbles that came to the surface and collected to the edge. Not a bad smell coming from the buckets. Smells like calmag and mycorrihizae good thing is roots are coming out the bottoms!! So siked. Nothing yesterday and today I got like 2 inches of roots sticking out 2 seperate roots. Seeing daily growth...everytime I go in the room they look bigger. Still seeing some yellowing at .7ec. Hmmm. Ill take pictures of the froth and plants and post them when I get home.

Drooping stopped on all but the veneno. Finally I feel like something is going right in thur. Gotta settle that foam though. Its not bad like it was when I had my flood table going and that stunk like aquarium in the whole room and the water was cloudy and there was shit tons of foam at the top. Nasty foul smelling foam. Maybe this is a colony of mycos? Iunno. Either way imma brew some tea tonight finally. Gosh I'm a lazy stoner haha.

I got a. Gallon of poland springs...that shouldn't have chlorine in it?

firsttimeARE said:

So this round I didn't use h2o2 and wanted to go the bene route. I added some great white about a tenth of a scoop to each bucket 4 days ago. These buckets are 8 days old total. I look into the buckets today and on the bubba 76 there's a little foam around the perimeter of bucket at the surface level. They look like bubbles that came to the surface and collected to the edge. Not a bad smell coming from the buckets. Smells like calmag and mycorrihizae good thing is roots are coming out the bottoms!! So siked. Nothing yesterday and today I got like 2 inches of roots sticking out 2 seperate roots. Seeing daily growth...everytime I go in the room they look bigger. Still seeing some yellowing at .7ec. Hmmm. Ill take pictures of the froth and plants and post them when I get home.

Drooping stopped on all but the veneno. Finally I feel like something is going right in thur. Gotta settle that foam though. Its not bad like it was when I had my flood table going and that stunk like aquarium in the whole room and the water was cloudy and there was shit tons of foam at the top. Nasty foul smelling foam. Maybe this is a colony of mycos? Iunno. Either way imma brew some tea tonight finally. Gosh I'm a lazy stoner haha.

I got a. Gallon of poland springs...that shouldn't have chlorine in it?

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Nope. And the general rule of thumb is if it doesn't smell bad it's ok. Minor foam can happen from the myco powder. I suggest you use it in the tea and not directly in the buckets themselves in the future. The tea will be your benes, other than that I'd just run you chem nutes in the buckets and add the tea once every week or two.

Just wait until those roots really get going in a week, the growth will start to explode. Esp with all that air you have going in there. DWC more air = more success from what I've seen.

Yeah I cannot wait, i've never made it this far so it'll be nice to see quick growth.

Room was 77 today, we got almost 80 degree weather. Buckets are all 18-19C(about 63-66F)

Veneno @ .78EC/6.0/18.6C - Could tell that it had too much feed, this confirms it, i'm going to fix that tomorrow as I mixed it at .73 EC
Bubba 76 @ .73 EC/6.0/18.3C
Fruity Chronic Juice @ 6.0/18C around I forget what the feed is .8EC or something I wrote it down but don't have it anymore and I dont remember this ones EC exactly

Corrected to 5.8


Fruity Chronic Juice


Bubba 76


Veneno


BUCKETS and my recent addition to the gene pool

Cutting a small peace of reflective material to shade the cube would help them dry out less

Bigz2277 said:

Cutting a small peace of reflective material to shade the cube would help them dry out less

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Naw u got roots already coming through. Just keep top watering for the next couple days to a week. Once you have root tips in the rez they should just take off. At that point no more top watering needed.

Yep just keep going, if they don't die you're winning

Few new root strands sticking out on the fruity and the veneno. The fruity is like 5 inches long now and dipping into the water. Blueberry gum passed away. Put it down next to all the other fallen strains. I got a pineapple express in paper towels though! I figure if I dont have any def. issues they'll catch up to the ones I got going in no time(getting more confident in my abilities)

I cannot decide if its the new res changes that makes the PH shift all crazy or if its from the rocks not being PH buffered. Wondering if I should start 3 buckets now so I can do a res change in a few days and start the tea on a fresh batch of nutes.

I want to lower the veneno back down to .6EC. I feel the .73EC its at is too high. And i'm going to up the fruity and bubba to .85 and .8 respectively.

Veneno @ 5.8/.73EC
Fruity @ 5.8/.76EC(if it was at .8 it ate, yay!)
Bubba 76 @ 5.8/.73EC

The bubba 76 has yet to spit out new leaves. I think its time to up the calmag, starting to see what appears to be a magnesium/calcium deficiences. Seeing the burnt spots you can see on picture 4 of the Fruity Chronic Juice. Speaking of FCJ its first set of single bladed leaves fell off(you can see them in the 1st picture, the yellow most leaf that has brown crispy tips, well that progressed and turned the whole leaf to a crisp)

The FCJ is putting off its first set of 5 leaves, this means its out of seedling stage?

If you are using the 500 scale for EC.. 800+ ppm is too high.. WAY too high for those babies. You should be in the 300-500 range maybe lower depending on Nute brand.

I'm using a different conversion it works out to be a Little over 500ppm for the .73 EC

firsttimeARE said:

I'm using a different conversion it works out to be a Little over 500ppm for the .73 EC

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Ok you are using the .7 err something.. does your nutrient also measure at that reading? I and anyone I know always uses .5

firsttimeARE said:

I'm using a different conversion it works out to be a Little over 500ppm for the .73 EC

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Yes lol this is why we should all use EC. No offense, but I have no idea where bbc came up with 800 ppm out of .73EC. That's not even close. On the .5 scale that's 350ppm and the .7 scale it's 490ppm. Keep at it, should be getting good soon. I think your feed levels are still pretty spot on.

I wasn't too sure either. By the formula: conversion factor=ppm/(ECx1000)

Not too sure on my ppm figure, I think its around 540, but I could be wrong. I'll get exact numbers once I check on my kids. I'm going to start 3 new buckets today and hopefully transplant tommorow or friday. Im interested to see if it was my growstones not being buffered that was raising the PH so quickly or if it was the result of a fresh batch. I'm hoping it was the growstones so I don't have to do this every res change.

I'm also anxious to see the new root growth. How much calmag should I add to my buckets at this stage? I have about 1ml/gal in there right now.

firsttimeARE said:

I wasn't too sure either. By the formula: conversion factor=ppm/(ECx1000)

Not too sure on my ppm figure, I think its around 540, but I could be wrong. I'll get exact numbers once I check on my kids. I'm going to start 3 new buckets today and hopefully transplant tommorow or friday. Im interested to see if it was my growstones not being buffered that was raising the PH so quickly or if it was the result of a fresh batch. I'm hoping it was the growstones so I don't have to do this every res change.

I'm also anxious to see the new root growth. How much calmag should I add to my buckets at this stage? I have about 1ml/gal in there right now.

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You set the correct ec conversion on the meter... it is the one that does the calculating when measured after it reads it you have nothing to calculate, so not sure I follow.

BigBuddahCheese said:

You set the correct ec conversion on the meter... it is the one that does the calculating when measured after it reads it you have nothing to calculate, so not sure I follow.

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Here's a table. Not all meters are selectable. EC is always the best measurement because there is only one scale. Besides, ppm meters actually are just taking EC and converting it, there's no such thing as a true ppm meter. Well not one that doesn't cost thousands of dollars. So to end all this thread jumble, if we all used EC then we wouldn't have these issues. Otherwise, ref this table.

so im scratching my head at this one...the fruity chronic juice RW is about a half inch above the others yet is the driest and has the most water in the bucket by atleast an inch. So simple math says the FCJ is the closest to the water...what gives?

I had to remove another inch or two out of the other plants in hopes of the RW drying out. But now those 2 plants have like 2 gallons in them. The probe I'm using for my meter can touch the bottom of the bucket and still not be submerged. Probe is probably 7 to 8 inches. So I'm working with like 7 inches of water. I feel like once my plants are drinking more that that won't be enough. So how do I get drier RW without sacrificing so much water space.

Someguy15 said:

Yes lol this is why we should all use EC. No offense, but I have no idea where bbc came up with 800 ppm out of .73EC. That's not even close. On the .5 scale that's 350ppm and the .7 scale it's 490ppm. Keep at it, should be getting good soon. I think your feed levels are still pretty spot on.

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** respect to OP ..

I do think I'm overfeeding the veneno as it rose to .78 which tells me its drinking more water than nutes and its growing node is reddish and none of the rest are.

I'm going to mix .8EC for the bubba and fruity which is about 600ppm or less and .7 for the veneno which is less than 500. The bubba 76 finally spit out roots yesterday! And the FCJ has like 8 inch long roots and there's some branching happening on it. The FCJ and veneno got like almost a dozen roots sticking out.

firsttimeARE said:

Aw BBC don't be like that. You both grow awesome plants. All SG was saying was he didn't know how you came out with that number and that we should all use EC as its universal...and to be honest neither did I understand how you got 800(but to me it wasn't worth calling you out on). It works out to be a 1.09 conversion factor which isn't anything I've heard of. SG has been nothing but modest from what I've seen him post about on my thread and others.

I do think I'm overfeeding the veneno as it rose to .78 which tells me its drinking more water than nutes and its growing node is reddish and none of the rest are.

I'm going to mix .8EC for the bubba and fruity which is about 600ppm or less and .7 for the veneno which is less than 500. The bubba 76 finally spit out roots yesterday! And the FCJ has like 8 inch long roots and there's some branching happening on it. The FCJ and veneno got like almost a dozen roots sticking out.

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Apologies for trolling up the thread on my part.. may you figure it out no matter what the issue is brother. Peace.