dwc question

[tyler_ hobbyist]

I have never grown dwc but I wanna try it and I had a question, if anyone can answer it I appricate it. I was wondering that if I make my nute/water solution plus Calimeg and ph to 6.0 how long will the water last in the res and will the pH stay the same for that time period if not how can I correct that? I go outa town for weeks at a time for business and want little work for my other half

[Grower-Aaron]

The ph drifts up and down occasionally. You should check it at minimum like every 3 days. Dwc is more work than soil. The res needs to be emptied and changed at least every 2 weeks. As far as correcting ph use small amounts of ph down at a time, wait a day then check again. If you use to much at once and your ph drops to low your kinda screwed and have to do a res change. It's not a good idea to have ph up and down in the same res it can cause nute lockout

[BuddMarsh]

As far as how often you need to add water between res changes depends on the size of the res compared to the size and number of plants drinking from the res. A plant can easily use a gallon or more a day during flowering.

[NebulaHaze]

If you're using non-organic nutrients like the General Hydroponics Flora trio you can pre-make the water up to 2 weeks ahead of time and let it sit as long as you keep it in a cool, dark place. The pH tends to drift a little bit over time even if it's stored in a container so it's always a good idea to re-check the pH before giving it to your plants.

If you want to go away for long periods of time, the best thing you can do is use a larger container. Not only will you need to top off less often, the pH drifts far less when there's a bigger reservoir of water.

Just to give you an idea, I use a 10 gallon container filled with ~6 gallons of water in it. That needs to be topped off every week or so in the beginning, and more than once a week by the time the plant gets big. Like BuddMarsh said, a large fast-growing plant can drink a gallon of water a day! It's good to completely change the reservoir every week or two, especially in the flowering stage. In the early vegetative stage the plants don't seem to mind as much if you just top off with nutrient water.

I try to check the pH every day but sometimes I've forgotten for days. I've noticed that the more closely I monitor the pH, the better the plants tend to look. If I'm only checking every few days the plant becomes more prone to deficiencies.

If you are using hard water that also helps keep the pH more stable because the extra "stuff" in the water acts as a buffer.

I personally love hydro! The plants grow faster, and to me checking the pH and changing the reservoir feels easier and more enjoyable than hand-watering plants and removing runoff. I feel like I get to spend more time with the plants, and the setup is forgiving if you do forget about your plants for a few days as long as you stay on top of it most of the time. But it's different for every person - some people feel like watering is easier!

[tyler_ hobbyist]

Thank u everyone. And thank u very much nebula for the guidness and knowledge I really appricate it thank you

[PigSquishy]

When it comes to any hydro setup, the bigger the res the more stable your pH and PPM/TDS will be which is influenced by how many plants you have growing off that water, the general rule of thumb I once heard was to try to 5-gallons of water for every 1-plant, because like others stated it is nothing for a plant to go through a gallon a day in some cases. Something people tend to over look in hydro is that the water will want to absorb the heat in the room, which requires the serious hydro growers to cool their res water to keep the temps within range about 60-F, as a hydro grower myself I can tell you that the temps of the water can seriously influence how long the water in the res will be stable for. When I say stable I watch the PPM's and pH of the water, and when the PPM's start to bounce up and down I know the water has reached time for a change, and based off this basis I have been playing around for a few years with hydro trying to get some of these types of things figured out, and here is the short of what I've learned from my personal findings.

How long the res water will be good for first depends on the brand of the nutrients, stay away from organic fertilizers in hydro it just leads to a mess of issues and problems, instead stick to chemical fertilizers; the brand I use is clear like water, it doesn't cloud the res so I can more closely keep an eye on the res water for any signs of issues or problems. I only need pH Down to bring my res water into a pH range of 6.0 and I like to change the res water every week, yes you can squeeze two weeks out of a res, but it always seems like the plants suffer with slower growth for it, which you notice again after you change the res water again. Depending on your water's pH at the start before adding anything you will either want to go with standard pH Down (35% phosphoric acid) or the lab grade pH Down if you have a high starting pH or are using a large res. Depending on which pH Down you use can also depend how much or how fast the pH can also swing in the res as well, I've personally noted. How much oxygen you also supply the water in the res also does seem to be a direct link to how long the res water will also stay stable for as well, as I have personally noticed in my experiments. The higher the oxygen rate in the water the faster the plant roots will also grow and the yields also increase accordingly.

Weekly water changes is what seems to be best, keeping the water temps between 60-70 will serve you best, but the higher the temps the faster the res water nutes tend to become unstable and are also influenced by oxygenation of the water as well. At around 60-degrees the res water can be pushed 10-14 days without any issues, at 65-70 the water lasts 7-10 days and 70+ and I can barely get a week out of it. The pH will stay stable usually all week long once it's been set, how much Cal-Mag you have in the water will also greatly influence how fast of a pH swing you can get... The pH should stay stable on most systems for the entire week staying within the 5.5 - 6.5 pH swing for hydro where you don't touch it and just let it do its thing.

[tyler_ hobbyist]

That's very helpful greenthumb thank you just for number sakes say 1 gal of water how much Calimeg and nutes do u add. I'm gunna be useing fox farms bigbloom grow big and for flower tiger bloom. If u use different ph products does the water stay more stable longer witch products the best

[PigSquishy]

Okay let me try to be 100% crystal clear on this, I loved Fox Farm Nutes for years and years, love their Oceanic Forest potting soil... so when I tried my hand at hydroponics I of coarse reached for the Fox Farm nutes to do it with... my personal experience was that Fox Farm nutes in hydro was just not stable in my different types of hydro systems I had set up to experiment with at the time. First my water temps were in the 70's which isn't good for hydro and since FF is organic and not knowing there was a difference for Big Bloom I think is it, one is designed for Soil the other for Hydro but the bottles look almost identical and I got the one for Soil and tried using it in a hydro system and it just didn't work out is perhaps the whole issue. All I know is my res water smelled from it, it was clouded to the point I couldn't see through it, the plants did okay for growth, nothing to really jump up and tell anyone about, they just slowly grew. I oxygenated my res at 5-gallons of air per minute to 1-gallon of water, as I even tried to see if I could make a difference by increasing the oxygenation of the water to help the situation. In the end the plants begin to show signs of nute deficiencies and I then learned of the Soil to Hydro difference on the Grow Big when I needed to reorder another bottle of that and a few of the others over the next couple of weeks. I also had issues with FF clogging the drip emitters on a drip flow system and the sprayers on the spray system.

Some of the other issues I had with FF looking back... The pH wouldn't stay stable for me I had a lot of issues with it shifting over a period of hours it would seriously drift, the PPM's also liked to spike 250-400 a week which I would later learn was algae grow happening in the res water, but I couldn't see it through the mix of nutes. Keep in mind res water past 64-holds less oxygen and makes it easier for algae to grow, I was in the 70's which is prime conditions for issues, not FF fault. But something to keep in mind is to find out how warm your res water is, because in combination with your nutes it can become an issue. Sledge Hammer, FF flushing agent didn't get along with the seriously oxygenated res and foamed up from the sprayers and the air stones in those systems and created a mess of foam to climb out which would then turn back into water and made a mess. Sledge Hammer is made with Yucca Root and any product containing that will foam when aerated, you can stop the issue by adding a little cooking oil to the res water to kill the foam.

When ordering the sales guy wanted me to try another brand nute more specific for hydro, I was told that the more organic nutes like FF needs time to break down by microorganisms etc... before it can then be used by a plant, things best found in soil. Thus chemical nutrients are better in hydro as its a ready to eat food for the plants; I compared it to buying food at the store to come home to cook and wait on over getting fast food right now. I expected a huge price difference of course with me paying out more for it, but actually it was cheaper for me than FF and I got it for more than 50% less than what I was planning to pay out for the FF, and when I tried the other brand nutes my plants just took off and within two weeks doubled in size. I've never used FF in hydro again and have since only made the mistake once later on when I would use "citric acid" as a pH Down product in a hydro system to learn my lesson once and for all time about organics and hydro, within 3-days the res water smelled worse than a kettle full of raw waste left in the desert to cook. A word of advice to any hydro grower is to never use an organic pH Up or pH Down product because not only will it become unstable in hours in hydro, but it will add bacteria's and stuff to your nute rich water to feast at rates you will very soon regret.

Fox Farm is a great company, I love their products in soil and for me they just didn't work out in hydro... so just make sure you get the Hydro Grow Big is you are using it for Hydro and perhaps you will have better results than I did. More than anything Fox Farm just didn't work out as being the best nute company for me in hydro,
because of the simply reason of how I have my different systems set up, thus hope my personal experience with them helps you.

[dontknownuttin]

Just harvested Fox Farm DWC grow! 1 plant harvest weight after ruff trim. 1,794 grams or 3.96 pounds! in 61 days!

[tyler_ hobbyist]

What strain?

[tyler_ hobbyist]

What was the good nutes u found for hydro? I'm planning on growing dwc bubble ponics my next grow

[PigSquishy]

Two of the one's we've been playing around with the most are Cultured Solutions for plants hydro system, but then we've been using RAW Nutrients on the fruit trees and bushes for those hydro systems and have been having amazing results on both. RAW Nutrients on Facebook last spring - summer - fall would post the size of things grown including cannabis on their FB, these things were winning all kinds of awards for size, taste, etc... Seeing is believing so we put the trees and bushes on it to see if it really lived up to all the hype, in the end we got about 3-4 years of growth out of them in a single growing season and the fruits well was honestly the best they have ever tasted. I have been using both RAW Veg & RAW Bloom, and then I'm using the individual RAW Nutrients with other area's with soil amendments like compost and such for other plants.