How To: DWC

Thanks Void!

kushnotbush said:

Hey VoidObject, love the tutorial bro. DWC is so simple in design it amazes me that it even works when you see how complicated some of the other systems are. Anyway just thought I would throw out some advice since it happened to me recently. I went in to my tent to change a res and low and behold no F'in bubbles, plant was looking terrible almost like a drowned soil plant. Found out one of my older pumps went out leaving two of my reservoirs without air! Man I was so pissed.

I also run two stones in each resevoir so to correct this I decided to run each res off of two pumps, meaning each stone gets air from a different pump. This gives me redundancy now so if one of my pumps goes out at least one stone is still pumping in oxygen. Now, I know in a power outage your still SOL but I hope this helps because these pumps do fail and if it goes unnoticed too long well you know...

Also anyone that experiences high reservoir temps in DWC I recommend trying a cooler as a reservoir and if your still too high then add the frozen water bottles. Using the cooler also helps making trips to the freezer less frequent.
KnB

Click to expand...

I have just started one plant in a 3.5 gallon bucket to give this a try. The bucket I had is white. So I wrapped with tin foil to avoid light leaks. I must have been getting light in as I could see algae building up. Washed out the res with water and bleach etc. mixed solution again and here we go. The roots are way deep in the water. Not a lot of them yet but they are going. I am not noticing a lot of difference in growth between this one and my soil plants. Using DNF nutrients. Have calmag. PH is good so far. Waiting for a ph pen. I find the large 5 g bucket difficult to lift because I am a girl. Where do you get these smaller black buckets.

thanks for the ton of work you put in on this thread its interesting to go back a few years and see the feed back kinda progress bunch of usefull tips again thanks void

How do you change water in bucket when your in later weeks of flower when plant is so heavy? Don't want to break branches cuz of heavy buds.

Lift the netpot off and place it directly ontop of a spare bucket beside your reservoir. Than drag out the original reservoir with nutes and replace it.

use foil tape it reflects lite away and reduces heat. lich lord has spoken! I miss Rift. or foil ot oww mylar is cheap tape mylar to iy with the foil tape, type/thought process in real time lol

grimdro said:

use foil tape it reflects lite away and reduces heat. lich lord has spoken! I miss Rift. or foil ot oww mylar is cheap tape mylar to iy with the foil tape, type/thought process in real time lol

Click to expand...

Some "foils" actually re-direct and focus light much like a mirror does. This creates heat spots and stress for the plant. In which case foil tape depending on the type might be a bad idea. I know I have seen people try and use aluminum foil before with horrible results lol.

metals block lite all im not sayin go noob foil u walls , but any lite on ur nut waterwill produce ill effects im sayin cover ur bucket wit mylar tape it up with foil tape would prevent lite on roots /nut watrand look real xool all shiny

any opinions on my idea to medusa a plant were u top then stake down arms then scrat,h bury um all makein roots there but instead of cut/clonin said aems you think tje extra roots would be benificial/ok?

im not illiteratr fyi only gota phone and to high/lazy to fix shuff lul

I would stick with mylar redirect 99% of the light back at the plant without any hot spots

Tyson457 said:

How do you change water in bucket when your in later weeks of flower when plant is so heavy? Don't want to break branches cuz of heavy buds.

Click to expand...

I have attached a tap on my 69l bucket so when it comes to nute change I just flip it down straight into a bucket then fill it back up with fresh nutes with a pump and hose

Are roots submerged in the water or ride on top the water

Im doing DWC no top feed for the first time. This is day 4 since transplant into hydroton and there are no roots yet, how long does it normally take. My plants were nice and dark green when they were in the Jiffy Peat under 125w cfl, but now that they been in DWC for 4 days under 1000w mh for 18/6 they are begining to slightly yellow. Well maybe not yellow but they definitely are not dark green like they were. I couldn't find a definitive answer when I transplanted so I added 2.5ml of Micro, Grow, and Bloom per gallon, I keep the solution at 6.0 and just touching the bottom of the baskets. I had to re-ph the first two nights but these last two the ph has stayed at 6.0. Tonight I removed a half gal of nutes and replaced with ph water. Ph still stayed at 6.0. Is this all normal and shouldnt I atleast see root tips by now? From what I understand this method is supposed to cause explosions of growth. Im using a EcoPlus2 pump and 4" air stone for each 5 gal bucket and I am unable to keep solution temp under 80f so I ordered Hydroguard to inoculate solution. Was it a mistake adding nutes to water at the time of transplant?

And leave the air pumps running 24/7?

Yup, 24/7 but I have roots now and they are bright white and grow several inches a day. It took them about 4 days to come into thier own but they are kickin now! Lol.

@chronicals77 how bad is the sound on that eco pump I have one fitted for 12 buckets haven't turned it on yet......do u do anything to hide it ?

You can definately hear it, I do nothing to hide it. Its on the outside of my tent. My AC and 420cfm fan is much louder. I can hear the bucket vibrating and the bubbles coming up through the hydroton more than the sound of the pump. If its the only thing running I can hear it down stairs but its not overly loud. I dont think anyway.

Yea I have a 745 hurricane fan that sounds like a dam chopper smh just ordered a fan speed controller to hopefully bring down noise....I've read that some people put the bucket on top of a workout mat and maybe towel and then create box with holes and insulation....idk it's an idea ill definitely put my bucket on a mat though

Trapgod1728 said:

Yea I have a 745 hurricane fan that sounds like a dam chopper smh just ordered a fan speed controller to hopefully bring down noise....I've read that some people put the bucket on top of a workout mat and maybe towel and then create box with holes and insulation....idk it's an idea ill definitely put my bucket on a mat though

Click to expand...

I have a speed controller but I have to run it wide open anyway.

Someone told me to put the buckets on bricks to wick the heat away, or on something with space below the buckets and use a fan to blow cool air under and around the buckets. I thought about insulated mylar. Its been cool the past couple days so my temps been staying ideal. It wont last though.