First time grower, long time user :)

[ZeroSkill]

Hello, and welcome to my show. Tonight we have my first grow. So, the deets:

Blueberry Kush Seeds (female I hope). As you can see, the packaging says I must murder any males.



Grow tent 5x5
DWC courtesy of a 40 gallon resevour.
4 airstones, one below each net pot
SpiderFarmer sf4000
Fan, exhaust fan, maybe a homemade water chiller coming soon...



1/19/21 PLACED SEEDS IN ROCKWOOL IN SEED STARTER
(Sorry For caps ~ )

stardate 1.29.2021
grow tent setup complete
reservoir lid looks faulty. hole spacing seems at first glance inefficient.
I have all temp settings setup in the control module, which is nice. it shows me Temp, and RH. Has a programmable min and
max, which only vent when needed. And the best part, its controller reaches my PC
water temp is currently 63. Hoping once the lights come online, in a few hours I hit 65. Probably will need a chiller.


1/20/2021
Nutrients and Calmag in water.
Plants placed in netpots-- Plants looked stressed. maybe too much light? Lowered Dimmer to 60%

some time later...
for some reason, ph is shit again. back to 7.5.....
reapplied ph down. waiting 60 min.
ph=6.3. gonna check in an hour again. Go go gadget ocd.

Now, for some pics sorry, dont know how to rotate. I should probably figure that out at some point.

 

[ZeroSkill]

RSVP

 

[moses wellfleet]

Started out in DWC many years ago, so this brings back memories. Will be watching

 

[ZeroSkill]

Good morning stoners. A little worried about my baby's. They are not happy little children.

Glad to have you here moses wellfleet.


AM PH 6.4
added 2tb phdown @3hr: ph 6.1

 

[ZeroSkill]

So I cant seem to figure out what sex my plants are.

I know what they are supposed to look like from internet pics, but meh..

Plant1


Plant2

 

[ZeroSkill]

ok. so like 2 more weeks or so then.

some more questions i have. I am using a 40 gallon system, but only have 4 plants. Do I put nutrients in for 40 gallons of water, or a certain amount per plant. Feeding makes me nervous of overfeeding. Dont want to burn them out.

 

[ZeroSkill]

Yes you have to mix a 40gallon batch.
You should change the water every 2 to 3 weeks to avoid nutrient imbalance..

Since they are still young/small, feed them at 0.8-1.0ec (400-500ppm on .5conv)
If you use a two part nutrient 400-500ppm would be about half strength from the label
The highest I go is 2.0ec (1000ppm) during peak bloom

Ph will slowly drift up... Maybe .1 per day, you can(should) let it rise to ~6.4 then bring it back to 5.7

Keep everything clean

Good luck

Edit; keep your water lvl at or 1" below your net pots

Thanks for the advice. Appreciate it.
Just finished my first trim, here is a pic.
.

 

[hubcap]

Yay!

The family has a new member.

I love when this happens.

Keep us all in the loop. Please.

-cap

 

[Bud Green]

It just takes practice... and paying attention....

No one on here nailed it their first year..

but with all the info available these days, the old learning curve has been drastically reduced!

Good luck...

..

 

[ZeroSkill]

So, finally fixed my build from the rush job to my final rdwc build. Pics attatched.

question: do i really need an airstone in my reservoir tank? I have one in each planter.



when can i trim the side leaves off my plants that are dying. The topped centers are growing good on each.

 

[ZeroSkill]

Whoa nice setup!

Q1: one stone per planter should be plenty.

Q2: when a leaf is 50%+ damaged you can pick it as its not doing its job fully anymore.
But when a plant is this small it shouldn't be dying like that... Ppm? Ph?

Yes, there was a lack of nutrients in water, and they were all yellowing. Now that I have a better handle on what ppm and ec are, shouldn't (hopefully) happen again

A couple things I noticed

The 3rd picture shows your water coming in... The pipes on each side of the "Y" should be of equal length when recirculating. "Water follows the Path of least resistance" sorta thing

Secondly
Unless I missed something, how is it recirculating?
If the pump is pushing water, you'd have a 3/8hose going to the top of each bucket, splashing through hydroton. "Top fed"

If the pump is pulling water, you'd have a return line from between the "back" buckets.. Using a y or t with a reducer from 2" to 1" or 3/4" back to the reservoir.
"Gravity fed"

Ok. An explanation of my system incoming.. lol

So, from reservoir, into tent, splits at the y to the first tanks in series, and then continues to the second series.

Now that i read your post, i understand what i did wrong. I noticed during testing that the 2nd row of plants on my loop were getting slightly less circulation. To be improved

Onward, our the back from the 2 lanes of liquid, it reduces down to a 3/4 id hose to the silt filter, then to the pump.

pump output 5/8 to the chiller, to the res.

 

[ZeroSkill]

BTW i hate that i cannot edit my posts. sigh

anyhow, i guess you could say the whole system is fueled by the sucking of the pump more than the pumping of the water

 

[ZeroSkill]

Also, for some reason one of my plants just grows its but off, and I started some LST.

I'm attempting to mainline the plant, so i'm starting the T here.

 

[ZeroSkill]

nope, thats backwards.

here go

 

[ZeroSkill]

Thanks man. Kinda sad this morning. The baby I started LST with last night was looking so good i thought the ties came loose. So i went over and gave it a light tap and it snapped. Tried taping it, but i don't think that half will survive..

 

[ZeroSkill]

ok, so my big grower was looking like it slipped the ties from LST this morning (if i had bothered to use my eyes to look closer I would have seen the stalk perfectly placed). So I gave it the little tap, like i do all my leaves in the morning that are not bound down, and it snapped right off. Learning experience feels so bad right now

 

[ZeroSkill]

So, my leaf tips are doing this:


PH: 6.31
TEMP: 68
ECC: 1508
PPM: 754

So. Help

 

[ZeroSkill]

A little more information:

So I overfilled my res a few days ago. I noticed the problem when checking the roots of my plants, and saw that they were starting to get covered in brown mucas like stuff. Figured out it was root rot, from overfilling

So I reduced water level, labeled the inside of my res with a water line, and whatnot. The plant in the picture had the worst coving of the roots, so I gently rinsed the brown off. I figure the browning could be just stress of having its roots messed with. But figured I would just ask instead of assuming I have this covered.

 

[Fitzera]

I failed at my attempt of dwc, so take what I say with a grain of salt really.

I think you have 2 options to take care of the rot long term. Either run a sterilized system (I think people will run some h202 in their rez, I've read some people using bleach as well)

Or run a bunch of bennies. I cant recommend one product or another, others will have better input here.

 

[ZeroSkill]

Thanks guys. I'm pretty sure I swamped the net pots, the water level was high enough it came out the holes drilled to allow the air lines in for the stones.

I've taken steps to ensure there is no light bleed through. I was not happy with my spray paint on plastic approach, so I made top plates. Which double as a place to anchor for LST. With a screw or two

nothing stopping the board from moving side / side. Which is scary when bumping into it hen the plant is anchored. I'll have that sorted soon. On the bright side, just adding these boards lowered my water temp so much, had to adjust my chiller.





Ok. Serously. Is there a way for me to fix my images so they not side ways hahaa