New to DWC. A water question.

Hey fellers. I’m trying my hand in DWC for the first time. I have a Rubbermaid tote with an air stone in it. The water is about an inch below the bottom of the pot. There’s about an inch of rock and then a cube with the plant in it. It’s about 1/2” to 3/4” tall after about 2 days but doesn’t seem to be growing on day 5. I put it in there after germination and it popped up but like I said it feels like it hasn’t done anything else.

Is the cube supposed to be constantly soaked? Because it always is. It’s not submerged into the water. Just wondering if I’m doing this right.

Pics?

I find that after getting a seedling started in a RapidRooter and getting some roots showing, I then put that into a 4x4 rockwool cube. Sits on an inch or so of hydroton in my 6" netlid. I only allow the cube to stay wey until roots drop down into solution, my water level never touches the bottom of the basket. I also notice that it will take a week or so while the plants roots grow through the cube and then they really thump when they get into solution.

JaxMouse said:

Hey fellers. I’m trying my hand in DWC for the first time. I have a Rubbermaid tote with an air stone in it. The water is about an inch below the bottom of the pot. There’s about an inch of rock and then a cube with the plant in it. It’s about 1/2” to 3/4” tall after about 2 days but doesn’t seem to be growing on day 5. I put it in there after germination and it popped up but like I said it feels like it hasn’t done anything else.

Is the cube supposed to be constantly soaked? Because it always is. It’s not submerged into the water. Just wondering if I’m doing this right.

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The cube should never be soaked. You will damp them off..
Its a fine line between getting the cube high enough in the netpot to not stay too wet, but not dry out either.
If you wait until they have 3 sets of leaves or so they will transplant much better and you will hardly notice a slowdown.

You literally need to soak a 2" cube once at the beginning for your plant to get big enough to have established roots in most cases. If humidity stays around 50% or higher, it stays quite wet. If below that, you may need to start it a few dozen times to get it where it needs to be again. But those rockwools are deceiving and hard to gauge. I highly recommend you switch to rapid rooters OR Root Riot Cubes for much more success. They need the same once wetting until it's basically large and ready to go.

The BIGGEST SECRET to ANY CUBE media, is keeping it IN A TRAY or in some way covered on all sides except the top like a tray would cradle them for cloning. That way your roots can grow large and girthy, IN the cube, and once it's out into hydroton, they explode out.