Moving sprouts to DWC + few other questions

Hello,

I'm very close to starting my first grow. I installed my grow room, got my hydro box ready (almost), and today or tomorrow I'm about to germinate the seeds and transfer them to rockwool. Since this is my first grow, and god is in the details, I thought I'll ask here if what I plan to do is ok.

1. Germinate in wet paper towel method after soaking the seeds in glass of water overnight.
2. Cut the rockwool, spray with water the inside of the rockwool at the bottom where the root is gonna be, place the germinated sprout in it ( i read it should not be soaking wet, but damp... so I'm guessing just spraying the water around the inside of the rockwool cube is enough?)

3. Fill the hydrobox net pots with 1 inch of hydroton, place the rockwool with seedling on top of it, fill up the net pots with hydroton
4. Leave it like that, and get my LED lights on 18/6 schedule, and get the air pump running. The water should be just at the bottom of the net pots, so the bottom of the hydroton (the first layer) should be damp from the bubbles created with air pump, and that is enough for the seedling to grow roots into the water under.

Water would be no nutrient plain water,as the roots would not be touching the water anyway for about 10 days to two weeks? After which I should do my firstwater change with proper pH and proper nutrient concentration.

Does that sound about right to start it off?

Thanks

I always wet the rockwool thoroughly then shake the excess water out..
Make sure the rw isn't so low in the net pot that it stays wet.
Sounds like you've got a good plan! Good luck.

Yep thats pretty much it. I use a small aquarium pump with 2 small hoses into the net pot, I dont run it continuously 5 mins a few times a day. I'm not convinced about just relying on the water to splash up through the hydroton to reach the rock wool or rapid rooter and using the feeder pump definitely helps in my opinion.

>I'm not convinced about just relying on the water to splash up through the hydroton to reach the rock wool or rapid rooter and using the feeder pump definitely helps in my opinion.

Apparently it does in the first stages of the grow, it speeds up roots reaching the water, but apparently that's about it from what I heard. And it does make sense...once the root is in the water (99,9 % of the time), top feed doesn't do much.

I'm a bit worried about light leaking into my hydro box. I'm taping it with aluminum foil, but there still seem to be few leaks here and there due to the shape of my DWC box. Hope super small amounts of light leaking in is not a big problem?

White.Black said:

Hope super small amounts of light leaking in is not a big problem

Click to expand...

Depends, the light leaking in will most likely cause algae to grow, so if your aiming for the sterile hydro approach, it’s not ideal.

White.Black said:

>I'm not convinced about just relying on the water to splash up through the hydroton to reach the rock wool or rapid rooter and using the feeder pump definitely helps in my opinion.

Apparently it does in the first stages of the grow, it speeds up roots reaching the water, but apparently that's about it from what I heard. And it does make sense...once the root is in the water (99,9 % of the time), top feed doesn't do much.

I'm a bit worried about light leaking into my hydro box. I'm taping it with aluminum foil, but there still seem to be few leaks here and there due to the shape of my DWC box. Hope super small amounts of light leaking in is not a big problem?

Click to expand...

I'm going off what I've experienced with my set up so this may or may not apply to your set up. I use rapid rooters in hydroton in a 6" net pot and b4 the roots are showing I keep water and inch or less from the bottom. It keeps it wet enough to where I don't top feed. I adjust the water level lower if hydroton is to wet or higher if it's not. Once I have a good bunch of roots coming out the bottom of net pot I lower water level to 2" or so below net pot. I like a good air gap and once roots are established I don't really like hydroton being to wet.

The more AIR you can put into your system, the better your results. Lots of good air stones, clean lines and a good pump or two. Bubbles help aerate and saturate the beginings of your root systems n also.

I'm thinking 3 plants in a 10 gallon (40 lit) box. I have one air pump 5w with 2 outputs, and 2 air stones, but I might buy another one. They are cheap anyway. I understand it's recommended not to go more than 2 in a 10 gallon box,but I don't mind smaller yield, I just want to make sure at least 1 plant survives my first noob attempt at this.

At this point, just waiting for water chiller to arrive, and trying to find and fix all the light leaks that I have due to the shape of the box.
Any tips on this? Currently I'm using aluminum foil,which works well, but there are spots on the box that are hard to insulate, and there's tiny amount of light coming in at like 4-5 different places. Spray paint or something? Since these spots are hard to access and stick aluminum foil effectively, so something like paint would work well for that, accessibility wise.

White.Black said:

I'm thinking 3 plants in a 10 gallon (40 lit) box. I have one air pump 5w with 2 outputs, and 2 air stones, but I might buy another one. They are cheap anyway. I understand it's recommended not to go more than 2 in a 10 gallon box,but I don't mind smaller yield, I just want to make sure at least 1 plant survives my first noob attempt at this.

At this point, just waiting for water chiller to arrive, and trying to find and fix all the light leaks that I have due to the shape of the box.
Any tips on this? Currently I'm using aluminum foil,which works well, but there are spots on the box that are hard to insulate, and there's tiny amount of light coming in at like 4-5 different places. Spray paint or something? Since these spots are hard to access and stick aluminum foil effectively, so something like paint would work well for that, accessibility wise.

Click to expand...

You need to consider one plant per container
More plants more problems
Besides I never recommend more than one plant in any container no matter the grow style
I see a root issue in your future with multiple plants in a ten gallon

White.Black said:

I'm thinking 3 plants in a 10 gallon (40 lit) box. I have one air pump 5w with 2 outputs, and 2 air stones, but I might buy another one. They are cheap anyway. I understand it's recommended not to go more than 2 in a 10 gallon box,but I don't mind smaller yield, I just want to make sure at least 1 plant survives my first noob attempt at this.

At this point, just waiting for water chiller to arrive, and trying to find and fix all the light leaks that I have due to the shape of the box.
Any tips on this? Currently I'm using aluminum foil,which works well, but there are spots on the box that are hard to insulate, and there's tiny amount of light coming in at like 4-5 different places. Spray paint or something? Since these spots are hard to access and stick aluminum foil effectively, so something like paint would work well for that, accessibility wise.

Click to expand...

White.Black said:

Hello,

I'm very close to starting my first grow. I installed my grow room, got my hydro box ready (almost), and today or tomorrow I'm about to germinate the seeds and transfer them to rockwool. Since this is my first grow, and god is in the details, I thought I'll ask here if what I plan to do is ok.

1. Germinate in wet paper towel method after soaking the seeds in glass of water overnight.
2. Cut the rockwool, spray with water the inside of the rockwool at the bottom where the root is gonna be, place the germinated sprout in it ( i read it should not be soaking wet, but damp... so I'm guessing just spraying the water around the inside of the rockwool cube is enough?)

3. Fill the hydrobox net pots with 1 inch of hydroton, place the rockwool with seedling on top of it, fill up the net pots with hydroton
4. Leave it like that, and get my LED lights on 18/6 schedule, and get the air pump running. The water should be just at the bottom of the net pots, so the bottom of the hydroton (the first layer) should be damp from the bubbles created with airunder.

Water would be no nutrient plain water,as the roots would not be touching the water anyway for about 10 days to two weeks? After which I should do my firstwater change with proper pH and proper nutrient concentration.

Does that sound about right to start it off?

Thanks

Click to expand...

What is a hydro box? What size net pots? Why rockwool? I wouldn't have more than one in a container especially different stains..

> What is a hydro box? What size net pots? Why rockwool?

DWC plastic container in which the nutrient solution will be. I don't know proper terminology so I'm sort of inventing my own
Net pots 10 cm, just less than 4 inches.
Rockwool because it's the only thing that's available where I am.

> I wouldn't have more than one in a container especially different stains..

> You need to consider one plant per container

Yeah, that does seem like the way to go... but i already commited to this. I might setup another smaller container and have 2 in the 10 gallon, and 1 in the 5 gallon, just to experiment and to increase my chances of a successful grow. I would prefer to have 2 plants successfully harvested, but even 1 for a first timer would be satisfactory.

The problem is water chillers, they're not exactly cheap, and if I have multiple containers I would have to have multiple water chillers. I'm in the tropics, so air and water temperature goes up to 30c in the room. Far above the recommended 22c.

White.Black said:

> What is a hydro box? What size net pots? Why rockwool?

DWC plastic container in which the nutrient solution will be. I don't know proper terminology so I'm sort of inventing my own
Net pots 10 cm, just less than 4 inches.
Rockwool because it's the only thing that's available where I am.

> I wouldn't have more than one in a container especially different stains..

> You need to consider one plant per container

Yeah, that does seem like the way to go... but i already commited to this. I might setup another smaller container and have 2 in the 10 gallon, and 1 in the 5 gallon, just to experiment and to increase my chances of a successful grow. I would prefer to have 2 plants successfully harvested, but even 1 for a first timer would be satisfactory.

The problem is water chillers, they're not exactly cheap, and if I have multiple containers I would have to have multiple water chillers. I'm in the tropics, so air and water temperature goes up to 30c in the room. Far above the recommended 22c.

Click to expand...

I was thinking you meant like what we call a tote but wasn't sure if was a brand or something. I'm trying to get a mental image cause I didn't see any pics. I need a chiller myself but dont have the budget for one so I know how it is.

shiva71 said:

Yep thats pretty much it. I use a small aquarium pump with 2 small hoses into the net pot, I dont run it continuously 5 mins a few times a day. I'm not convinced about just relying on the water to splash up through the hydroton to reach the rock wool or rapid rooter and using the feeder pump definitely helps in my opinion.

Click to expand...

They say if you use the pump first week or 2, you get a lot faster growth in dwc

I wouldnt use aluminium foil to cover he hole it reflects light shitty creates hotspots and plants usually dont like light hitting from underside of leafs.

If you have access to a basement or cold stone floor if you put the airpump there it will put cold air in to the bucket all the time

amneziaHaze said:

They say if you use the pump first week or 2, you get a lot faster growth in dwc

Click to expand...

That's for the top feed. Speeds up initial growth, but apparently, not necessary.

> I was thinking you meant like what we call a tote

Yeah, that's it I think. Tote.

White.Black said:

I'm thinking 3 plants in a 10 gallon (40 lit) box. I have one air pump 5w with 2 outputs, and 2 air stones, but I might buy another one. They are cheap anyway. I understand it's recommended not to go more than 2 in a 10 gallon box,but I don't mind smaller yield, I just want to make sure at least 1 plant survives my first noob attempt at this.

At this point, just waiting for water chiller to arrive, and trying to find and fix all the light leaks that I have due to the shape of the box.
Any tips on this? Currently I'm using aluminum foil,which works well, but there are spots on the box that are hard to insulate, and there's tiny amount of light coming in at like 4-5 different places. Spray paint or something? Since these spots are hard to access and stick aluminum foil effectively, so something like paint would work well for that, accessibility wise.

Click to expand...

3 plants sharing a 10 gal tote is less than ideal. If its a nominal 10 gal tote, you'll only have roughly 1/2 that volume available as a reservoir.

The smaller the reservoir, the harder it is to avoid issues with pH and EC stability.

Not that it can't be done, there's just a much smaller margin of error.

> The smaller the reservoir, the harder it is to avoid issues with pH and EC stability.

I bought this:

I'm going to use it for continuous monitoring of PH, EC, Temp etc.
It's going to be on all the time.

White.Black said:

> The smaller the reservoir, the harder it is to avoid issues with pH and EC stability.

I bought this:

103.95C$ 36% OFF|Yieryi 7 In 1 Online Multi parameter Water Quality Monitor PH Meter Aquarium ORP EC TDS RH CF TEMP Conductivity Teter Tool|PH Meters| - AliExpress

Smarter Shopping, Better Living! Aliexpress.com

www.aliexpress.com

I'm going to use it for continuous monitoring of PH, EC, Temp etc.
It's going to be on all the time.

Click to expand...

What do you have from monitoring when you work 8h sleep 8h i got 10L per plant and ph goes 0.2 each day in early veg

White.Black said:

> The smaller the reservoir, the harder it is to avoid issues with pH and EC stability.

I bought this:

103.95C$ 36% OFF|Yieryi 7 In 1 Online Multi parameter Water Quality Monitor PH Meter Aquarium ORP EC TDS RH CF TEMP Conductivity Teter Tool|PH Meters| - AliExpress

Smarter Shopping, Better Living! Aliexpress.com

www.aliexpress.com

I'm going to use it for continuous monitoring of PH, EC, Temp etc.
It's going to be on all the time.

Click to expand...

That may help to monitor your parameters but doesn't change the fact that 3 plants sharing a ~5 gal reservoir is going to be problematic
Best of luck

I did several DWC runs some years back in diy 13 gallon totes . I too thought I'd put 2 plants in each unit . I only did one run like that , turned out to be a real pita .

One thing I learned was not to skimp on the air pump . You can always bleed some off but you can't make a cheap pump produce more air and they don't last long before they get tired .

> What do you have from monitoring when you work 8h sleep 8h i got 10L per plant and ph goes 0.2 each day in early veg

In my case, there's an 8 hour window where I can't check. If the system cannot be left alone for 8 hours, then there's a massive problem with it, and I have to re-think the whole thing.

Either way, yes... I also do believe that I made a mistake thinking 3 plants in 10galon tote, and I might change that to two.. and then add one more in a separate system.