HYDRO First grow fail, please read if you haven't yet started your grow.

[UndergroundFarmer]

If you are new to growing, you will make some mistakes. I hope you do better than I did on my first try! If you read through all the tutorials on GWE, you will have a better start than I did three years ago.
I decided to do hydro in DWC. So I bought my first tent, a 32"x32"x60" by LA Garden that is now my veg tent. I also bought a Vivosun 4" plastic-shelled blower & carbon filter, and a bank of T5 fluorescents (still in use in the veg tent). I also bought an aquarium air pump and an 8" air diffuser ring and a gray 30 gallon tote. I wanted to grow organically, so I went with Roots Organics Buddha Grow & Trinity.

So, where to start?

The tote - I ambitiously made eight holes in the lid to fit 3" net pots, assembled the tent and blower/filter then placed the tote in the tent and proceeded to fill it. The particular tote I bought was probably intended to hold large lightweight objects such as stuffed animals. The sides bulged so badly when full of water that I feared the lid would pop off! It did barely hold and I continued my screwing up. The nutrients I bought are good products, but they were meant for soil or for coco with cal-mag added. Then I noticed that when everything was turned on, the pump was not up to the task it had been given - pitiful few bubbles were coming from the bottom of the tote. So it was back to the hydro store to buy a beefier pump which will be employed later this year in a new RDWC setup. Now the bubbler ring was indeed bubbling away, but with so much racket that I hoped nobody came near the grow while it was running. (My state wasn't offering cultivation licenses yet.) Satisfied that it should work, I filled four of the net pots with hydroton and a seeded rooter plug for each. The seeds all popped and then everything went downhill.

The poor babies all damped off and died after their second set of leaves appeared for two reasons: concurrent nutrient deficiency and nutrient burn from not having nutrients made for hydro and worse, I used them at full strength!

Post mortem, here are the mistakes I recognized and didn't make again -
Don't use a tote for DWC unless it is heavy duty and no more than twelve gallons. Using a tall tote in a short tent would have seriously limited the height of my grow had it been successful!
Read everything you can about prospective nutrient programs before buying and bear in mind that their feeding schedules are set at a maximum level for big plants, half-strength is much safer. I stayed with Aurora and went with their Soul nutrient program which is made for hydro and are fortified with calcium, magnesium and silicon so no extra supplements are needed. The 30 or so gallons I failed with ended up going in my wife's veggie garden along with what was left in the bottles of Buddha Grow & Trinity.
I eliminated the racket the beefy air pump made by not using one in future grows. I found an article online about using a water pump with a venturi to aerate the nute solution and then found another article on how to build one.
I bought a Vivosun 36"x36"x72" tent for more headroom and floor space (and better zippers) and put the old tent on veg duty.
I learned that not using a clip fan in the tent would have caused me issues later on had the first grow's babies somehow survived.
The cheap blower fan had a tendency to come undone in the middle which lead to its eventual death from a bent shaft after three successful grows.
I now read every article I can find about how and why to do something before I run off half-cocked to try it.

In Memorium - two Purple Haze seedlings and two Gold Leaf Seedlings. Their sacrifice was not in vain.

[dphipps1020]

I did something very similar. I built a RDWC system and then when I put it in the tent it left very little room for my plants to actually grow. Frustrated, I built 2 more (different style) with 8 holes (2 huge totes with 4 holes each) that I figured would hopefully eliminate that problem. I was wrong. The system spread the plants out but still filled up the entire tent, I could barely fit my fan in there, and a few of the plants were way too close to the sides of the tent. In a nutshell, I still wasn't able to grow big plants. During all that I built another single tote system much smaller (maybe 10 gallons completely full) with 6 holes mainly for seed starting and clones. I have put the first system away because it's pretty much useless to me now. I have the 2 similar systems in my bigger tent now with one plant in each tote instead of the 2 each I originally figured I should be able to grow just fine. There's 2 plants in one system and 1 in the other (couldn't fit a fourth because of placement) and they are exploding. The smaller tote is in my 4x4 tent with one beast of a plant in it. I used to have air pumping into the water but have since removed it. Plants have all seemed to grow the same with or without, so I'm saving a little electricity. From here on I'm probably going to stick with one plant in the smaller setup and just grow a beast every time. I also made the mistake with the nutrients. I bought the right kind, but started over feeding them because I thought I was seeing nutrient deficiencies but it was actually the beginning of nutrient burn. Needless to say, the first grow died before it flowered. I had a couple grows like that at first, one mistake after another. Only had a few, what I would call, successful grows in hydro. I put it to the side for a bit to try my luck with soil and even though things are going better, I decided to drag out the hydro again 4 months ago and grew some beasts (still no air going into the water). I am definitely glad I didn't give up though, and finding this forum has helped a lot. So big thanks to SiriusFourside and NebulaHaze for creating a place for us all to get together and share our growing experiences. Not going to lie, I wish I had found it in the beginning.

[Jordann]

Sharing our stories of this nature. It will help lots of people keep from making them. It's a good idea to keep this thread alive.
one of my eff ups was making my own soil outdoors and using it to do my final transplant for my indoor plants, anyways after mixing and amending outdoors and leaving it there for a week as I got my shit together to transplant. End of the story was a 200 square foot grow room with a spider mite infection like never before. I managed to save some plants but alot got burnt in the back yard fireplace. Good times. Now I have 5 fifty gallon totes and all my mixing gets done in the basement or cold storage. I've purchased an old oven just to bake soil.
Another time I had to raise half my plants 3 feet off the floor to keep my room level and run some temporary plumbing and lines under the floor, anyways I had a friend build the framing and get it all set up he knew it had to hold a few hundred pounds. All was well I put the plants up on the shelf, what ever you want to call it. About 3 am huge bang wakes me up. Top of the shelf caved in lost 15 plants. From one end to the other there was no support for the floor the plants were sitting on. Kind of like building a house and not putting any studs in the floor and expecting the Tennant's not to fall into the basement. From then on I only trusted myself with anything to do with my grows.
Once I bought a cheap tent on a whim to save some money(don't do it) when I needed some extra room for some plants that grew too big for their home. lost a 300 dollar light when the roof support for hanging things bent and dropped and the light crushed 2 out of 4 plants. So I was out 2 plants, 1 light. And a 100 dollar tent.

Last one. When I started growing some 8 years ago and didn't know what I was doing I started 8 plants. Built a closet approx 6 foot high 2 deep and 4 wide. Out of 2x4 and panelling. Lined her up with tinfoil and stuck it in the back room of my apartment at the time. Hung up a 600 watt hps. All was well for about a month. When I was in the room I could smell like a dry wood smell but thought nothing of it, I mean I have this new closet made of wood after all. Water the plants and head to work. Get home from work and the closet had the top 2 feet burnt right off of it. The light was touching a 2x4 on the back of the box that I couldn't see. The light fell on the plants as it burnt all the support it had and the soil was burning. The thing that saved me was high ceilings and the vent sucking smoke outside. If I came home an hour or 2 later the house would likely be surrounded by fire trucks. It was one of the biggest learning experiences of my young life and I learned not to half ass anything ever again. We're all young and most likely stupid at one point thinking nothing bad will happen. Well it can and it will. Better off to get something pre made that can take the heat of the lights. Good times. Hopefully sharing our misfortune...or stupidity, can help someone else.