Overwatering in DWC?

JohnDoeTho

Well-Known Member
so the leaves have a odd feel and look swollen. The only thing I did out of the ordinary is over fill my buckets in my DWC system. They seem a tad better now. But water level is lower then fill line now. The only other thing I've done is work on getting my humidity down to mid 30's. Really the best way I can describe my symptoms is over watering but I'm in DWC.
 

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toaster struedel

Well-Known Member
If you have 1-2 inch space between your medium and you fluids you're fine. Just make sure your air stone isn't clogged or the pumps not working.
 

Johnei

Well-Known Member
The plants look great. THe more air pumping into the water the better, temps should be in the low to mid 60's in the water, feed low strength nutrients because in DWC the minerals are just so available and always keep it topped up with fresh nutrients. IF the EC in the bucket drops, they can use higher EC, if the EC in the bucket rises, they have too much EC, if the EC in the bucket stays the same or just slightly is lower EC than they are in the sweet spot. Install an overflow drain L fitting in the side of the bucket so never overfill again. Plants look great.
 

JohnDoeTho

Well-Known Member
Well that's one thing funny, the only other thing I did differently was add a second large stone, the other one was so buried in the root ball that I figured instead of digging in to get it I'd just run a second air line and drop in a second
 

JohnDoeTho

Well-Known Member
Water temp is higher then desireable. It's gonna match the room as I haven't successfully implemented my cooler yet. Rooms rise to 78 with both my lights on bloom mode. When only in veg it never went above 72. So you think possibly even with the addition of the second stone the water is just too warm to hold oxygen? Roots are still nice and white and there's a lot of them.
 

JohnDoeTho

Well-Known Member
I don't have an ec meter unfortunately, but I do use PPM to get an idea if it's dropping nutrient levels as well as water level or if they are remaining the same ect to decide to add fresh water or nutrient mixed water .
 

JohnDoeTho

Well-Known Member
If you have 1-2 inch space between your medium and you fluids you're fine. Just make sure your air stone isn't clogged or the pumps not working.
Well when I say one inch from the brim of the bucket that is well over the bottom of the nettle pot or what ever they call it.
 

Johnei

Well-Known Member
About the water temp, insulate with that bubble wrap for water heaters or something similar, think mylar, or those emergency fire blanket type things etc.. works good to keep things relatively cool and constant, and I said up there low 60's to mid 60's let me retract that.. not low 60's too cold, keep it around 65 is good place, 61ish I'm remembering now I actually had some issues in the past with too cold roots.
 

JohnDoeTho

Well-Known Member
Why the 30% RH?
Well if you hang around here long enough you will find out in like the over reactive first time mother(this is my first grow) and I also try to be preventative. So I've been reading about all the scares with mold and my plants are very thick and bushy, so I tried to drop humidity as a preventative to avoid mold. I had what i initially thought was mold growing on my stalk was what initially started the mold scare. Is having it that low maybe driving the leaves to absorb more water to fight the humidity? Resulting in the difference of what looked like the "over watering" symptoms of soil?
 

JohnDoeTho

Well-Known Member
About the water temp, insulate with that bubble wrap for water heaters or something similar, think mylar, or those emergency fire blanket type things etc.. works good to keep things relatively cool and constant, and I said up there low 60's to mid 60's let me retract that.. not low 60's too cold, keep it around 65 is good place, 61ish I'm remembering now I actually had some issues in the past with too cold roots.
I have a chiller waiting to be installed. Ran into some issues with leaks. Being my first grow and with assuming I will have setbacks to overcome with implementing it, I figured I'd just wait for the next round to implement the chiller.
 

Enigma

Well-Known Member
~68° F is the sweet spot for res temps, if the res is too hot it will limit how much oxygen can be dissolved. Adding the second airstone must be adding more heat to an already warm res.

$0.02

:leaf:
 

JohnDoeTho

Well-Known Member
I do run heavy doses of orca to try and accommodate for the higher then optimal water temp. As well as very oversized pump with two big air stones.
 

Enigma

Well-Known Member
Micro organisms will thrive in warmer temps, using something to control them is good but getting those temps down will solve the dissolved oxygen issue.

There is a neat way to setup a chiller. Peltier plate, heat sink with a fan, an aluminum cooling block and some thermal paste. Get a pump and recirculate that bitch. I think you could build one for less than fifty bucks if you can source the parts inexpensively.

:leaf:
 

Enigma

Well-Known Member
Oh, my fault. You'll need a thermostat as well to turn the cooling plate on and off, the pump and fan should run 24/0.

:leaf:
 

JohnDoeTho

Well-Known Member
~68° F is the sweet spot for res temps, if the res is too hot it will limit how much oxygen can be dissolved. Adding the second airstone must be adding more heat to an already warm res.

$0.02

:leaf:
Hmmmm that could be a very likely scenario......
 

JohnDoeTho

Well-Known Member
Micro organisms will thrive in warmer temps, using something to control them is good but getting those temps down will solve the dissolved oxygen issue.

There is a neat way to setup a chiller. Peltier plate, heat sink with a fan, an aluminum cooling block and some thermal paste. Get a pump and recirculate that bitch. I think you could build one for less than fifty bucks if you can source the parts inexpensively.

:leaf:
Where were you when I dropped over 200 on a chiller? Lol
 

Johnei

Well-Known Member
Idea just popped in my head.. Where the air pump is located is the surrounding air it is pumping into the bucket, placing the air pump in cool spot is good idea, if not already.
 

JohnDoeTho

Well-Known Member
An easy experiment will be to remove the airline for the first stone in both as the new one I dropped in is fresh and extra bubbly. So I don't have to dig the stone out of the root ball, but it also isn't putting even more air in there to warm it up.
 
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