First DWC grow

Thanks...I think I will do alright this time around. May not be ideal conditions but I think it'll produce. Next time ill sort out my feed better. All my grows keep improving so I must be learning!

I was reading your thread earlier this morning but had to leave for work so I stopped. And reading things on the phone sucks not to mention its really busy at work. Ill read more of it when I get home. Do you follow a lot of homebrewers threads? He's another user I wanna learn more from.

firsttimeARE said:

I do think I'm overfeeding the veneno as it rose to .78 which tells me its drinking more water than nutes and its growing node is reddish and none of the rest are.

I'm going to mix .8EC for the bubba and fruity which is about 600ppm or less and .7 for the veneno which is less than 500. The bubba 76 finally spit out roots yesterday! And the FCJ has like 8 inch long roots and there's some branching happening on it. The FCJ and veneno got like almost a dozen roots sticking out.

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What did you set veneno at again? .73 correct? If its not rasing over .1ec (like .83) I'd say your fine. A small swing is OK, you just don't want to feed at 1.0 EC and then check the next day to find 2.0 ya dig? I would keep the feed on this one the same, .7 or so. Anytime the ec gets a little high, just top off with plain ph'd water. In fact sometimes I over feed and then just add fresh water twice a day so the EC never spikes above 2 for too long. But I'm talking full sized flowering plants. With the sounds of the roots your ready for the fun part of veg....and eventually the REAL fun part lol

I did set the veneno at .73 it was .81 today.

They were all 5.9 after 24hrs so I downed to 5.8.

Got all my buckets nuted and phed and running right now and they're 7inches from the rim. Will transfer tomorrow or Saturday. Slackkeeerrrr

Put G13 Labs Pineapple Express down today, gave it 50ppm worth of nutes. Forget what that was in EC.


Fruity Chronic Juice - See the foam in the 2nd picture towards the top of the bucket.


Bubba 76 - See the foam in the 5th picture near the edge and in the last picture also. This was after I scooped a big piece out. Doesn't smell bad still.


Veneno - Whatchu think?


Still need to start that tea...Cleaned a bunch of things in the room today though. Next are those buckets they're in right now, THEN, I can start the tea.

They're looking good. Healthier then before. They were def hungry. I'd say the foam isn't a concern unless it gets worse. Is it snot like consistency or a frothy light foam?

Frothy light.

The snot form I had in my res in my flood table back in november. And you could tell that was bad, as soon as I opened the door to the room it reeked. All inside around edges was this nasty smelly foam and inside the water were these nasty snot like slime floating around under the surface of the water.

firsttimeARE said:

Frothy light.

The snot form I had in my res in my flood table back in november. And you could tell that was bad, as soon as I opened the door to the room it reeked. All inside around edges was this nasty smelly foam and inside the water were these nasty snot like slime floating around under the surface of the water.

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Yeah snot tends to be alge, just checking it wasn't that. Probably just from adding the great white myco to the buckets if I had to guess. It won't harm anything. Let me know if it comes back after u clean all the buckets and don't add great white.

Someguy15 said:

Yeah snot tends to be alge, just checking it wasn't that. Probably just from adding the great white myco to the buckets if I had to guess. It won't harm anything. Let me know if it comes back after u clean all the buckets and don't add great white.

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There is a little light leaking in at the tops of the netted part of my pots. Since I put the rw deep and only filled the pot with growstrones up to the RW there 1 row of holes not covered. Hopefully that makes sense. Lol

I had picked up a palm full of it yesterday and got it real close to my nose and it didn't smell bad. Kinda like the powdered mycos does in the jar. I also rub it around to feel if it was slimey. Was almost like doing dishes and taking the soap suds off the top. Real light and airy.

Roots looking good.. if you were like me when I was learning I was checking the bottoms every half hour. LOL.

Now my roots are like this and effortless:

firsttimeARE said:

There is a little light leaking in at the tops of the netted part of my pots. Since I put the rw deep and only filled the pot with growstrones up to the RW there 1 row of holes not covered. Hopefully that makes sense. Lol

I had picked up a palm full of it yesterday and got it real close to my nose and it didn't smell bad. Kinda like the powdered mycos does in the jar. I also rub it around to feel if it was slimey. Was almost like doing dishes and taking the soap suds off the top. Real light and airy.

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U can fill the rest up with grow stones as long as they don't crush the plant. Won't have any effect on them and it should block out that light.

BigBuddahCheese said:

Roots looking good.. if you were like me when I was learning I was checking the bottoms every half hour. LOL.

Now my roots are like this and effortless:

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Haha I don't check that often(I work full time and the grow isn't at my home so I can't check em that often) but everytime I do the roots are longer and more developed...happened fast too. The bubba 76 grew a half inch Wednesday night into yesterday.

And SG I was going to do that once the plant got bigger. I hear it'll start to grow roots where nodes were too

*EDIT*

Buckets were all at 5.8 still .74EC Bubba, .76EC Fruity, .81 Veneno

I checked the 3 buckets I had going for transplant and they were at 5.8 so I filled up a bucket and phed the water to 5.8 and took each pot out one by one and dipping it into the bucket and splashing water up at the stones and roots, which to my surprise made them all white(some had spots of brown, but that was from growstone dust). After a thorough rinse I put them into the new buckets and cleaned the old ones.

New feeds:

Veneno - 5.8/.69/.70EC
Bubba 76 - 5.8/.81EC
Fruity Chronic Juice - 5.8/.80EC

Cleaned and vacuumed the floor and made some tea. I found sticking the airstone inside the sock just filled up the sock with air and the sock didn't diffuse it out. So I put one under neath the tied-off-sock and one on top and called it a day. Put 10ml Aquashield, 1/8th scoop great white, and a handful of EWC with 1 gallon spring water.

And I filled up the pot with more growstones and snipped off the dying single bladed leaves on the bubba(is this bad, i heard it was good to divert energy being sent to the dying leaf) I then took the square plastic pot covers and cut them to be as circular as possible to fit "nicely" into the pot. Covers it up.

The bubba got too wet so its leaves were drooping a bit more than yesterday. Fruity chronic juice looks happy as ever. Veneno looks overfed and the slowest grower.

BigBuddahCheese said:

Roots looking good.. if you were like me when I was learning I was checking the bottoms every half hour. LOL.

Now my roots are like this and effortless:

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Your RW doesn't get wet having water level that high? Mine gets wet anything above 7 inches from the top.

My water level is always at the bottom of my net pot, they drink it goes down about 5 inches I refill. I use 3.75" net pots as my plants are rarely over 3-4' max. works for me as you can see.

My rockwool is on top of a bottom layer of hydroton, so if I keep my water at bottom of netpot the hydroton is buffer between water line and rockwool. I have had my rockwool in the water line and it was fine, the plant will just start to root out of the top of the hydroton (really what you dont want it to do) but it is ok when the water level drops the plant will continue to grow roots as normal and via top.

I found that my method works for me really well, seems like I have to give away plants now because they veg sooo fast I have no room left in flower. That's me I am no pro, but I know I love my setup now as I can't keep up with the results and that's MORE then I can ask for.

Peace.

I really need to get rid of my growstones. I got like 1 or 2 pots left of the stuff. I read somewhere that it wicks a lot more water than hydroton. I have water level 3-4 inches below netpot to keep the RW from being saturated.

How much air are you pumping into the buckets? That could also be part of it, spitting off so much spray then the stones absorb it like a sponge and get the ones around it wet until it moves to the RW. I only have an inch of growstones under and maybe 2 inches on each side of it.

My air stones move enough to create a movement on top of the water service. I have a 110lph airpump that has 8 ports that I turn up about 1/2 way that is split between two pots, so one air pump port has a T on the end of the airhose to provide air to (2) 2" cylender air stones (1 in each bucket). So I can have 16 buckets on this pump and even that is turned half way down.

Don't worry so much about the rockwoll being saturated, i had many plants with rockwool on bottom of netpot and water up into net pot 1/4 inch and they all grew fine and massive. As long as your water line is not above your plants root line your fine, and even then the plant will start to sprout roots from the trunk to stay alive, you just never want to be that extreme. You're concentrating too much on the rockwool saturation your plants are starving for the water and nutrients they need.

Move the water to bottom of your net pot and try that, I bet you will see improved speed and health.

You are still in the "omg I don't want to hurt my plant stage!" and reading too much value in other growers information. 95% of the crap you read on here is erroneous or largely fabricated..

So why are the leaves drooping when the RW is wet and as soon as I lower the level back to about 8 inches from rim they bounce back up perky when the RW feels dry? They were fine before I moved them into their new buckets and now the leaves are drooping today on the veneno and bubba 76. Brought them to 8 inches and tomorrow they'll probably be perky again like they were on Thursday after I had brought the water level down on Wednesday.

I figured they were being over watered?

I think the fruity is fine because the RW is about an inch above the rest and its only getting 10L/min and since each air pump has 4 ports I got 8 total ports and only 6 in use so the veneno and bubba 76 get 15L/min total.

firsttimeARE said:

So why are the leaves drooping when the RW is wet and as soon as I lower the level back to about 8 inches from rim they bounce back up perky when the RW feels dry? They were fine before I moved them into their new buckets and now the leaves are drooping today on the veneno and bubba 76. Brought them to 8 inches and tomorrow they'll probably be perky again like they were on Thursday after I had brought the water level down on Wednesday.

I figured they were being over watered?

I think the fruity is fine because the RW is about an inch above the rest and its only getting 10L/min and since each air pump has 4 ports I got 8 total ports and only 6 in use so the veneno and bubba 76 get 15L/min total.

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Upper roots are oxygen specialized. Drooping is NOT FROM OVERWATERING. Ok understand that in DWC there is no such thing. Overwatering is really oxygen deprivation in the root zone. Basically that rockwool being soaked is suffocating your roots, preventing the uptake of O2. What size is the Rockwool cube that you started in? The RW needs to dry out to force the plant to root downward and create those oxygen specialized roots in the top of the bucket instead of in the cube. I too am having a hard time understanding why your RW is so soaked, but I can say you need to get away from that stuff lol. It's just a pita the get the moisture level right and your only visiting your grow once a day doesn't really fit with it. Once the plants get their roots out of the RW and well into the buckets I think your problems will go away, until then it might be a bit of a struggle.

Someguy15 said:

Upper roots are oxygen specialized. Drooping is NOT FROM OVERWATERING. Ok understand that in DWC there is no such thing. Overwatering is really oxygen deprivation in the root zone. Basically that rockwool being soaked is suffocating your roots, preventing the uptake of O2. What size is the Rockwool cube that you started in? The RW needs to dry out to force the plant to root downward and create those oxygen specialized roots in the top of the bucket instead of in the cube. I too am having a hard time understanding why your RW is so soaked, but I can say you need to get away from that stuff lol. It's just a pita the get the moisture level right and your only visiting your grow once a day doesn't really fit with it. Once the plants get their roots out of the RW and well into the buckets I think your problems will go away, until then it might be a bit of a struggle.

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40mm.

I'm really just grasping at anything to be the culprit for why those 2 cubes are so much more wet than the FCJ. Overwatering wasn't the correct thing to call it, I just know they all were perky since wednesday after the veneno and bubba cubes dried out. And now that the veneno and bubba got wet again they're drooping. So yeah basically the water is driving out the oxygen in the cubes would have been the better wordage. Still the same issue. I'm just going to want a higher water level once my plants are drinking more water.

I'll keep the cubes dry and the water level low for now since that seems to work. Yeah I won't be using RW again in DWC, i'll save what I got left for the tables in the future.

I'm going to keep one of these plants to be a mom and practice cloning with an aerocloner so I can just have hydroton as a medium.

It seems the tea I gave them had tiny particles of EWC in it and gunked on my roots. Well I hope its that. They were pearly white yesterday before I dosed em, today they're like that.

While I was trying to figure out what it was I touched the roots with my hands to see if it was slimey, is this bad, too late now but i'll know for future. It wasn't slimey and came off with a touch. My hands were washed before I went in the room as always.


Bubba 76 - 5.9/.83/61F(15.7C) - I guess I answered my own question, NOT a good idea to snip off a dying leaf, had to do it to make room for the white cutouts I made, I ended up taking the extra growstones I put in to fill the gaps out anyways. This white film does the trick. But they've been drooping since Saturday after I did that to it Friday. Glad I only did it to this one. It's probably just stressed, the RW is dry now. It's still growing in root and vertical height, but not so much leaf wise. This was on par with the FCJ if not a bit taller and the FCJ just exploded past it.


Veneno - 5.8/.72/61F(15.7C) - New crud is appearing, the last picture shows the whole gamut.


FCJ - 5.9/.78/62F(16.8C) - Nothing wrong here. Excited for this lady. Well other than for that crud in the roots, can you see? I'm pretty sure its the EWC as its floating in the water.


Pineapple Express - Feeding .19EC from .11EC tap @ 5.8 - 4 days old. Slow start I think


Thanks for reading!

firsttimeARE said:

It seems the tea I gave them had tiny particles of EWC in it and gunked on my roots. Well I hope its that. They were pearly white yesterday before I dosed em, today they're like that.

While I was trying to figure out what it was I touched the roots with my hands to see if it was slimey, is this bad, too late now but i'll know for future. It wasn't slimey and came off with a touch. My hands were washed before I went in the room as always.

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Did you use a panty hose stocking to put the castings in while brewing? It captures most of the particles. Any residual won't hurt anything tho. Snipping the leaf is not causing the drooping, it's something else, most likely the same issue, O2. Drooping is almost always O2 related unless it coincides with cycle times (like before lights out, plants know it's coming and start drooping).

So I'm not supposed to cut off dying leafs? Your grow still seems to be doing good! Ima keep up with closely