The road to DWC - ups, downs, info, failure, success, guidance....

So top up as required with ph water, monitor ppm and if it goes down beloe a threshold then add some nutes to bump it up, full water change every 15 days?

Theres no chance ill do this anytime soon. Its 30 plus celcius ambient here, the water would be a host to bacteria unless you treat it with hydrogen peroxide.
 
Sarge said:
So top up as required with ph water, monitor ppm and if it goes down beloe a threshold then add some nutes to bump it up, full water change every 15 days?

Theres no chance ill do this anytime soon. Its 30 plus celcius ambient here, the water would be a host to bacteria unless you treat it with hydrogen peroxide.
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Pretty much. You get chillers, but then again it's really advanced. 1 bucket you could manage without AC. I have thought about it. I see people here and on YouTube having DWC outside in the summer. How does that work? RDWC maybe ?

Temperature makes it perfect for winter growing. I have around 24-26c ambient. But the buckets is cooler as the floor is cooler where they are placed. Perfect.
 
Sarge said:
So top up as required with ph water, monitor ppm and if it goes down beloe a threshold then add some nutes to bump it up, full water change every 15 days?

Theres no chance ill do this anytime soon. Its 30 plus celcius ambient here, the water would be a host to bacteria unless you treat it with hydrogen peroxide.
Click to expand...
 
 
I wouldn't touch the nute strength once you have set it until you change it two weeks later. You have no idea which one of the nutes are being used up and if you add more, you can easily do damage to your plant. I can easily fo from 700-300 over a couple of weeks. It isn't an issue. 
 
Example: Nitrogen. Needed by a plant but once a plant has as much as it needs, it stops the uptake of nutes because it can't process anymore nitrogen. If there is too much N in the water then the plant will start to show deficiencies of other nutes like calcium and you will be chasing the cat's tail trying to figure out why you have a nute deficiency. 
 
Do you guys use regular tap water, rain water or special water? Tap water already has alot of other particles in it(sodium, chlorine, calcium etc) do you factor these into the ppm when adding your nutes to achieve a target level, e.g if you want to run a 700ppm nute solution but your water is already at 300ppm out of the tap, would you run a 1000ppm solution? Or must you remove, somehow, those other particles?
 
Since I need to experiment all the time and since the fans are doing their job well, I hooked up the second reflector and 250w cfl again. If I still can keep it .5-1.0 degrees under ambient then I will roll with the 500W 
 
Since I need to experiment all the time and since the fans are doing their job well, I hooked up the second reflector and 250w cfl again. If I still can keep it .5-1.0 degrees under ambient then I will roll with the 500W 


You need all the power you can with CFL's.

You will eventually find that you are going to have to trim a lot of branches out close to the base because of the light falloff.

I grew a few plants under CFL when I first started, thinking that's all I needed. Now those lights are delegated to seed starting.

you can effectively use those lights if you adopt a growing method that a lot of mj cultivators use.

I ended up growing with this method and the results are great. The acronym is SCROG (screen of green). Its a flat trellis system that you setup above your plants.

Once the plants reach the scrog, you will top your plant and let it develop side shoots. You train those side shoots to the scrog. you will end using your light to its fullest potential with this growing method.
 
Read about it, but not going there this year :)  
 
Its really growing in there. Look at all the flowers forming, especially on the Aji Habanero plant (second picture) 
 
 
10038389245_2f4434c8ae_b.jpg

 
compared to
 
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Aji Hab
 

10038393585_ee39ae0f63_b.jpg

 
 
 
 
Read about it, but not going there this year :)  
 
Its really growing in there. Look at all the flowers forming, especially on the Aji Habanero plant (second picture) 
 
 
10038389245_2f4434c8ae_b.jpg

 
compared to
 
9701501638_0c71339c2d_b.jpg

 
Aji Hab
 

10038393585_ee39ae0f63_b.jpg

 
 
 


Beautiful my friend!

On a side note. Growing peppers on a SCROG is called SCROP (screen of peppers).
 
Sarge said:
Can dwc grown plants be transfered to soil and get along fine or is ot a risky move.
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For me, it was hit or miss. some transferred fine with no signs of stress and others were droopy and didn't grow well at all in the soil. Those took a couple of months to recover and never did perform well. On those plants that got real droopy, the droopy vegetation never did spring back. The new growth was fine, but the old stayed droopy. YMMV
 
None died though.
 
 
For me, it was hit or miss. some transferred fine with no signs of stress and others were droopy and didn't grow well at all in the soil. Those took a couple of months to recover and never did perform well. On those plants that got real droopy, the droopy vegetation never did spring back. The new growth was fine, but the old stayed droopy. YMMV
 
None died though.


I agree with you fully on this!

I now live in a location where outdoors is not an option with the huge trees I have in my section of the yard that gets the southern exposure.

I am forced to remain hydroponic, which is fine by me. Only down side to it, is I have to grow enough to sell so I can recoup my electrical expenses.

I am finding flood and drain tables and nft trays are the way to go for bulk growing.

Cheers!
 
Another two weeks has gone by and it was time to clean and change the res! Easy job. Here is a overview of the plants from today. The Aji Hab is producing amazing yields already. The yolo is setting a lot of pods too. The jamacian hilo yellow is starting to flower as well as the african naga. The thai demon is also flowering up and had a full recovery from where it looked dead to now. I bumped up the nutes even more this time. Im now at 600ppm. PH steady at 6.0!
 
The Jamacian HiLo Yellow. Bushy as can be and new growth all over. Guess the establishment of DWC roots makes it grow as crazy: 
 
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The Yolo Wonder has about 10 pods, and 15 flowers now. Thick canopy:

10115757224_dd26c38435_b.jpg

 
The Thai Demon who was almost dead. Doing good!

10115854126_89d63a0d3a_b.jpg

 
Thick, dense, Arican Naga starting to grow well:

10115813795_19a282dd1b_b.jpg

 
The mystery plant is the slowest. It has a hard time adapting from soil to DWC but roots are really forming now:

10115925273_bff9d8cb28_b.jpg

 
Aji Habanero has exploded the last 4 weeks. From a stem to this bush. Lots of flowers and pods going on:

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I'll give you this bump, even though you're at the top, but I want to ask just a few more questions which the answers are probably in previous pages but I didn't read back and forgot what I read last time. Did you start any of your plants in dwc from the get go or were they soil then transplanted to a dwc setup. How deep are your net pots and will your plants every outgrow the space they're in to the point they topple over? I've got a bucket, its a 18L food grade black bucket. I gotta get a net pot for cut into the lid and the other ingredients then transplant one of my seedlings into the setup, or just prep it up for autumn next year and stick to soil for this season since the temperatures are quite high.
 
3 of them transplanted as pretty new plants from soil. You can just start them in the DWC, the roots underneath makes it steady. The net pots are about 6cm deep
 
every second sunday I clean out the res and mix new nutes and so on. Anyhow, on monday I noticed that two of the buckets had milky white water (cloudy). I checked the ppm and the PH and it was all good. The plants look good too. I added some more H2o2 and today they are the same. PH dead on 6.0 and ppm with a slight increase but that might be from the water they have been drinking. Any ideas on what makes the water cloudy/milky ? Read at some pot forums and the common opinion was not to bother too much. I also find milky residue on the sidewalls of the buckets. Not slimy, just as a thin layer without a feel of the thouch. 
 
the milky cloudy water remains. The ph is steady and the ppm is slightly dropping. The plants grow like crazy! Still don't know whats causing that cloudy water. Theliveculture, were are you!?! :D
 
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