DeewNikoms420
Member
Hello all! Thanks for stoping by my thread today!
I have come here to get some views and opinions, and hopefully one of them will help me see what I'm obviously missing.
Let me first start off by telling you that I have about 10 years growing experience, the last 4 years with dwc. Ive had many successful harvest oddly enough with the exact same setup I am still using today. I have experimented greatly with many unpopular ideas, but never had an issue like I'm having now on tried and true methods. Something is keeping me from even a decent anount of growth, and at this point I'm starting to think its Karma. I just cant see what else it could be.
Personally I believe its what I'm feeding my plants, because it seems as soon as a root hits water, it becomes brittle and browns and falls off with the slightest tug. The interesting part is that it doesnt seem to matter what kind of water I'm using. Its been 2 harvest since I would say things were going properly, and 2 harvest trying different waters yet still having the same issues with the roots. In my mind, it all started the first time I tried using fish tank water in the reservoir. Up until this point I had used either extremely soft conditioned tap water alone, or conditioned tap water with the gh trio. For years this seemed to work well enough. Through my first drip system, to flood and drain, and finally years later dwc. But ultimately one day I decided to try and maximize my results with what people raved about in soil. I swapped my basically sterile resis out to my fish tanks water change water... It immediately went bad! I understand now why, and in attempts to correct that I started using teas to try and make it work... Im sorry to say that for me this didnt help either. By the day the smells were getting worse, and the roots just junk. I tried 2 or 3 recipes only to get much worse before I gave it up completely and went back to my tried and true tap water. This saved my plants, but after those long weeks of stuggle, they just couldnt excel before the deadline. I had to harvest my poorest harvest ever, and move pitiful plants over to begin their new light cycle. In my mind I was expecting the plants to come back to life and be bountiful again eventually, but for some reason they never did.
Now I want to pause here to talk about a side note. Not only have I been struggling with my garden, I was also struggling to keep fish, snails, and aquatic plants in a fish tank I had set up. everything but the heartiest of fish would die within a week or two. I was using conditioned tap water there too. I started wondering if the two issues were related since they shared a common ingredient. I bought a gh/kh test kit and thats when I found out I had extremely soft water. With a ppm of 33 and a ph of 7.5 I discovered that I had 0 gh and 0 kh. In my tap water I dont have some of the key minerals for plants or livestock to thrive, and inevitably because of it they die. Finally though at least I had found a problem in black and white to correct and I was hopeful it would translate in my garden. If Im honest however, I dont understand how it would help since the gh trio is supposed to add all the necessary nutrients... I shouldnt need gh or kh in my source. But desperate for anything to work, I again switched water to tap water and used the buffer chemicals I was using in my tank to add gh and kh to the reservoir. This actually helped. I started seeing substantial growth again that I hadnt seen in a while, but it was short lived because of the ph. The buffering agents caused the ph to stay at 7.5. I would buffer it back down, but by the next day it was right back at 7.5. Despite the plants again growing, I 86'd the fish tank chemicals, and went back to gh since I knew they buffer to a much more stable 5.8-6.0. Almost immediately unfortunately they got worse. The rot that I first experienced with the fish tank water just never left completely, and now it was running rampant.
I did a lot of reading online and against my better judgement, I found myself adding bleach to the water. Before you reply here about how crazy that is, do yourself a favor and read about it. Many people apparently use it, even for maintenance with no issues at all. Ive seen it posted by many that a .5ml ppm in dwc is perfect for healthy roots pythium free. As a matter of fact I havent seen anyone who uses it say a single thing bad about it. Again Im desperate so I tried it. If youre having bacteria problems I cant urge you enough to learn about it too. Youll thank me for it later.
Personally I think it was the best thing ive done for my garden yet! Within a day the bleach had killed the foul smell, and my roots and equipment were pristine. My clear tubing clear again. Seriously in just 24 hours every root in the water went from a brown slimy sludge to a bright white that Ive only seen in these journals. I was sold right then! I am 100% confident that the right amount of bleach is very beneficial to dwc, especially if youre struggling with any type of pathogen. I'm sure there will be a few naysayers, there always are, but I can tell you now those naysayers have never tried it.
I enjoyed watching my plants recover again, this time pythium free. After a week things were so very green again, roots looked great, all was good.
Then here I go again getting in my own way again. One night while I was laying in bed I was thinking about how all those soil boys get such good results out of their fish water, and how in dwc it just doesnt work because of all the bacteria that goes bad in the reservoirs... and it hit me, now that im using bleach, I could get the nutritional benefits, and the bleach would take care of the bacteria good and bad before it could be a problem. Unfortunately though I was wrong. The waste water with bleach caused the plants to droop almost immediately. It didnt take a full day before I flushed yet again to conditioned tap water with gh trio and bleach.
During this same time I also decided it was time to invest in ro water. Although now that in my fish tank the fish and snails werent dying, My plants here wouldnt grow either. I have plants that are supposed to over grow my tank, yet theyre not growing at all. I'm conditioning my tap water, I'm remineralizing, Im using ferts, yet nothing is happening. I even added co2 in hopes of growth. I had apparently fixed the dying livestock with the remineralization, but I hadnt found the problem with the plants. Since I was also having problems in the garden again I questioned the tap water. I just decided that it would be best if I started from a clean slate with the water and put in the ingredient that I wanted.
I have come here to get some views and opinions, and hopefully one of them will help me see what I'm obviously missing.
Let me first start off by telling you that I have about 10 years growing experience, the last 4 years with dwc. Ive had many successful harvest oddly enough with the exact same setup I am still using today. I have experimented greatly with many unpopular ideas, but never had an issue like I'm having now on tried and true methods. Something is keeping me from even a decent anount of growth, and at this point I'm starting to think its Karma. I just cant see what else it could be.
Personally I believe its what I'm feeding my plants, because it seems as soon as a root hits water, it becomes brittle and browns and falls off with the slightest tug. The interesting part is that it doesnt seem to matter what kind of water I'm using. Its been 2 harvest since I would say things were going properly, and 2 harvest trying different waters yet still having the same issues with the roots. In my mind, it all started the first time I tried using fish tank water in the reservoir. Up until this point I had used either extremely soft conditioned tap water alone, or conditioned tap water with the gh trio. For years this seemed to work well enough. Through my first drip system, to flood and drain, and finally years later dwc. But ultimately one day I decided to try and maximize my results with what people raved about in soil. I swapped my basically sterile resis out to my fish tanks water change water... It immediately went bad! I understand now why, and in attempts to correct that I started using teas to try and make it work... Im sorry to say that for me this didnt help either. By the day the smells were getting worse, and the roots just junk. I tried 2 or 3 recipes only to get much worse before I gave it up completely and went back to my tried and true tap water. This saved my plants, but after those long weeks of stuggle, they just couldnt excel before the deadline. I had to harvest my poorest harvest ever, and move pitiful plants over to begin their new light cycle. In my mind I was expecting the plants to come back to life and be bountiful again eventually, but for some reason they never did.
Now I want to pause here to talk about a side note. Not only have I been struggling with my garden, I was also struggling to keep fish, snails, and aquatic plants in a fish tank I had set up. everything but the heartiest of fish would die within a week or two. I was using conditioned tap water there too. I started wondering if the two issues were related since they shared a common ingredient. I bought a gh/kh test kit and thats when I found out I had extremely soft water. With a ppm of 33 and a ph of 7.5 I discovered that I had 0 gh and 0 kh. In my tap water I dont have some of the key minerals for plants or livestock to thrive, and inevitably because of it they die. Finally though at least I had found a problem in black and white to correct and I was hopeful it would translate in my garden. If Im honest however, I dont understand how it would help since the gh trio is supposed to add all the necessary nutrients... I shouldnt need gh or kh in my source. But desperate for anything to work, I again switched water to tap water and used the buffer chemicals I was using in my tank to add gh and kh to the reservoir. This actually helped. I started seeing substantial growth again that I hadnt seen in a while, but it was short lived because of the ph. The buffering agents caused the ph to stay at 7.5. I would buffer it back down, but by the next day it was right back at 7.5. Despite the plants again growing, I 86'd the fish tank chemicals, and went back to gh since I knew they buffer to a much more stable 5.8-6.0. Almost immediately unfortunately they got worse. The rot that I first experienced with the fish tank water just never left completely, and now it was running rampant.
I did a lot of reading online and against my better judgement, I found myself adding bleach to the water. Before you reply here about how crazy that is, do yourself a favor and read about it. Many people apparently use it, even for maintenance with no issues at all. Ive seen it posted by many that a .5ml ppm in dwc is perfect for healthy roots pythium free. As a matter of fact I havent seen anyone who uses it say a single thing bad about it. Again Im desperate so I tried it. If youre having bacteria problems I cant urge you enough to learn about it too. Youll thank me for it later.
Personally I think it was the best thing ive done for my garden yet! Within a day the bleach had killed the foul smell, and my roots and equipment were pristine. My clear tubing clear again. Seriously in just 24 hours every root in the water went from a brown slimy sludge to a bright white that Ive only seen in these journals. I was sold right then! I am 100% confident that the right amount of bleach is very beneficial to dwc, especially if youre struggling with any type of pathogen. I'm sure there will be a few naysayers, there always are, but I can tell you now those naysayers have never tried it.
I enjoyed watching my plants recover again, this time pythium free. After a week things were so very green again, roots looked great, all was good.
Then here I go again getting in my own way again. One night while I was laying in bed I was thinking about how all those soil boys get such good results out of their fish water, and how in dwc it just doesnt work because of all the bacteria that goes bad in the reservoirs... and it hit me, now that im using bleach, I could get the nutritional benefits, and the bleach would take care of the bacteria good and bad before it could be a problem. Unfortunately though I was wrong. The waste water with bleach caused the plants to droop almost immediately. It didnt take a full day before I flushed yet again to conditioned tap water with gh trio and bleach.
During this same time I also decided it was time to invest in ro water. Although now that in my fish tank the fish and snails werent dying, My plants here wouldnt grow either. I have plants that are supposed to over grow my tank, yet theyre not growing at all. I'm conditioning my tap water, I'm remineralizing, Im using ferts, yet nothing is happening. I even added co2 in hopes of growth. I had apparently fixed the dying livestock with the remineralization, but I hadnt found the problem with the plants. Since I was also having problems in the garden again I questioned the tap water. I just decided that it would be best if I started from a clean slate with the water and put in the ingredient that I wanted.
