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HELP! DWC growers Please Help!!!

SinsemillaScientist

SinsemillaScientist

New member
I am three weeks away (hopefully) from the electric restoration of my home, I had old cloth lines which as most of you know are one of the largest fire hazards in an out of date home. But with that soon to be aside I have done some very serious thinking, may have been medicated. I am starting fresh from coir and moving to bubbleponics. I absolutely love the idea, complete control, above average growth, and extreme potency, all of which I favor. I have all of my equipment ordered and most will be shipped before I even get the chance to set up. With that in mind I will be running a ten gallon tote with two large airstones the drip manifold with pump and piping. Also air conditioner and dehumidifier for later in bloom, I will be using a small 2'x2'x5' tent, a 500w mh/has combo . As well as carbon scrubber with 6" fan system, any tips, comments, ideas, or kind thoughts are greatly appreciated, again I've never done this but absolutely love the idea, I hope to here from a lot of you fabulous folks!:o
 
I'm moving from DWC to Flood & Drain, myself, though I didn't set up a drip on the DWC.

Thoughts:

On my grow I'm actually seeing slower growth than soil, I have both mediums in this grow and all are clones from the same mother which is also flowering. It wasn't really noticeable until flower and the DWC started flower showing almost 2 weeks behind the soils and remains about 2 weeks behind in bud development. Now take that with a salt mine because there are several reasons particular to my grow that may have caused this, but it honestly did catch me by surprise.

If you're using RO water make sure to check your PH and PPM as you add each nute/additive. If you're running to get a feel for what does what. I've been pretty much able to eliminate any PH up/down by taking readings and adding a bit of nutes to the res, also just plain RO.

While I do suggest changing the res the first grow or so just to get in the groove and avoid any issues, I do prefer not changing every week. I schedule changes for any major shift in nutes, especially stopping any, so like 1 at veg, 1 at 12/12 switch, and one deep in flower when ppms are being lowered. Beyond that I do a change when they've drank an equivalent of the res and brought it back down to the pump or the ppms/PH gets whacked. I'll also change if I'm noticing anything that seems related to the solution. Once you get the hang of it's really nice and allows you to give the plant what it needs.

I personally despised Hydroguard etc. It always leaves some nasty residue and I'm just not a fan. Having said that I do keep a bottle on hand in case root rot were to show up but luckily I haven't had that issue yet. I am becoming a big proponent of H2O2 though and I'll probably use that as a preventative treatment in the F&D. I'm using it now as a leaf spray and a germination solution with apparent success. No WPM and all seeds cracked, so far, lol. I also am not sure what, if any, part the LED UV has in helping stop all that stuff.

Leave a nice air space between the water level and the bottom of the netpot. I'm not sure the mechanics behind it but it did seem to make a difference in overall plant vigor. I leave about a 3-4" gap.


A lot of that is my grow specific I suppose but it's what I know :)

I think you'll enjoy it I did for the most part, but being limited to the netpot, etc, wasn't what I'm looking to do but I fully intend to revisit DWC again.

Best of luck and looking forward to the grow!
 
I gotta ask, and I'm not trying to be an asshole. How is it so many people need a chiller in DWC? I mean unless you have 80+ in the tent/room the res shouldn't be to hot. Even with a part time submerged pump for drip it shouldn't be more than the room temp and usually a few degrees less. At least that's been my experience. Without a drip pump my tent runs 78 or so at the highest and the res stays at 2-3 degrees below, so I avg around 75 and the res 72-73 avg.

I guess I can see it if one is running hot temps and light with CO2 needing to chill, or live in an area where keeping it down below 80 isn't possible.

Like I said, not trying to be a jerk, it's something I honestly don't understand and don't see the need, but even if I don't see the need now, or ever, I'd like to understand. :)
 
You are probably getting slower growth in dwc because of not changing out, Your soil plants are getting flushed when you water by not changing out your dwc regularly It is not getting flushed enough. I would say.
 
He said he didn't do the top feed drip. That drop is what promotes the rapid growth of the roots down into the tank and is one of the advantages of bubbleponics
 
Yup the drip system is the big difference in growth with DWC but do not rotate the plant thinking itill promote growth every where in the net pop i stuned my plant by doing so thinking itd help now im finally done correcting that mistake
 
Possibly on the no change out, but I honestly don't think so.

As far as the drip, everyone seems to say the same thing, it accelerates early veg growth but offers nothing later. The slowness didn't develop until flower. And then only in the time taken to show flowering, before and after that they're right on schedule with the soils.

That's also fits in with it not being the res change schedule.

Actually my best guess, and it's just a guess is the start flowering res change caused it, since that would be the nearest event to the temporary slow-down. Which I guess would make it the res change schedule in the end, lol. That and these were the last of my, test clones, so they did go through some rough patches, but I would of guessed that would have been a more pronounced slow down.

It could also be that I have 3 plants in the res, though the roots have plenty of room and are doing fine, possibly oxygen.

It's just really weird, it only occurred during that time, even now they are the same amount of time behind the soils as far as where they are now.

I'm not really concerned because like I said it was just the time to show flowers, but it caught me by surprise because I was expecting the exact opposite if anything. /shrug
 
Ok just change your reservoir out 3 times during entire grow and see if it doesn't slow down your growth. Even with a top drip. It only helps until roots hit water after that they can get all the water they want.
 
Well, I do change it out more than 3 times. I only have 3 set time changes, actually usually 4. Everything other than those are dictated by the plant's or something going out of whack with the solution itself.

And again I said I don't think that's the problem, not that it wasn't. But if it was it should be a constant issue not just a specific 2 week period.

Beyond that, not changing on a 7-10 day schedule is not unheard of in hydro with no reported issues, now that's outside of cannabis growing but there are growers who follow the same basic idea and they don't have slow-down issues either.

All of that points to it being something else, at least to my mind, but again it's all a guess and not one that really concerns me much, just not what I expected to see. It's also possible that I'm misreading what happened and it's not that the DWC slowed down but that the soils accelerated. Which is possible now that we're talking about it since just before flower I switched the soils from Dynagro to GH because I was tired of mixing and dealing with 2 different nute companies and I was moved to GH for hydro.

I suppose the real test would be to run 2 res tanks and change one every 7 and run my schedule on the other and see if a difference occurs between the 2. I may actually do that with the F&D since I'm set up to run out of one res or different res's for the 2 trays. That would actually be a good side by side test.
 
SinsemillaScientist It sounds like a great setup to me! And if you have good AC going where you're growing, I agree with Burny: you may not need a chiller for your reservoir. I was told when I bought my grow box to get a window AC for my grow room and keep the temp at 70 during the hot weather. I neither wanted a window unit nor did I want to keep my house at 70 degrees, so I got a chiller for my reservoir. If you use Hydroguard and keep the temps decent in the room, you should be fine.
 
That's about what mine works out to, about 2-3 weeks. Though in veg it can extend to 4 weeks, depending, since there isn't a lot of change except increasing for the most part.

I'm probably gonna do a re-charge this Sunday. Res is trending down pretty hard. I'd like to wait another week for a scheduled change for lower PPM, but the plants and res are dictating differently and truth be told, they're the master of this relationship. At least until the sweet sweet end :)

If I was gonna run a set re-charge throughout the grow I'd do like you, every 2 weeks. Every week keeps it pretty safe but it's a waste of water and nutes, my opinion,
 
No Title

I'm not taking any chances on losing something like this over trying to save a couple of dollars on water and nutrients. My girls are more important than that.
 

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What a beautiful plant, Burny!

I don't think that it's an issue of being stingy about water/nutrients or lazy; I think that each grower is doing what appears to work best for his or her setup.
 
You didn't see the comment above saying that it was a waste to change out every week. How can that be a waste?
 
Exactly. The conservation, for me, is just an added benefit. I wouldn't have it any other way. Diversity keeps us fresh and improving as we learn from each other new ways that we may be able to apply to our own unique process.



Very nice plants!
 
Burny No, I missed that comment. So I would say this: as long as everything smells clean and fresh, as long as the roots aren't slimey, if it works, go for it.

My regimen is to change the water and clean the reservoir once a week for various reasons. There's always residue in my water, and I like to clean that out. I don't like gunk to accumulate around the roots. I wipe down the reservoir as needed with a solution of water and H2O2. I stick the air stones in the bucket and scrub off the gunk with a brush, I stick the chiller pump in there, too. That's what I need to do in my environment--or at least, so far that's been working well for me.

I'm in the second half of flowering now in my small box, so I'm lowering the nutes weekly--and that's another reason I do what I do. I like it to be so fresh and so clean.

And thanks for the congrats, Burny.
 
Everyone definitely does things differently. There is someone on here trying to grow using the kratky method(I think that is right) where you never change out. I'm kinda curious as to how that will go.
 
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