Calling all RDWC & Undercurrent Pros

[Hack]

In the spirit of learning and improving my RDWC skills I am interested in starting a thread for any and all issues pertaining to DWC. I have not seen a good thread since Overgrow shit the bed. I have gotten what I think are pretty good results for some time now but at times my gear just doesn't look dialed in. This should be a learning thread with egos put aside, to help newbies to advanced growers. I was thinking of growers weighing in on there setups, resoivoir management, air systems, recirculating concepts, nutrient programs, air quantity and delivery, temp, humidity, watts, a/c setups, airstones, transitioning clones to dwc, yields, PH and nute PPM's etc.

I will repost in more detail my idea of a detailed data layout if there is interest in this post.

The things that I have been working with to get better results are:

1. What is the optimum amount of air to the root zone
2. Can you have to much air
3. Are some airstones superior to others
4. Is it better to let PH drift in a range and what is the optimum range as opposed to constantly trying to hit a set ph

5. would I get better results with Ro water than my city water that is 160-180PPM's


6. I run a room with dialed in temps and my res has always been in the room and stayed somewhere around 69-72. Would I get better results with a chiller to res to maintain anything lower than 69.

This is off the top of my head anybody have any ideas how to get a great thread off and running feel free to run with it.

 

[Scrogerman]

Hey man, nice thread,
Im no pro, but luv rockin out a DWC grow or three(nothing doing atm though sadly).

Imo a Chiller is always a good idea if you need & can afford one, but like you said if your Res temps are always solid 69-72f that drops the need for one. I have had issues in the past with larger compressor pumps 70lmp in a 70l Res, blowing warm air straight into my Res, esp with roots swamping airstones later on in the grow, creating a bit of backpressure, & making the compressor pump run hot. A simple fix was to use a dedicated clip-on fan right on the air inlet, kept the pump lovely n cool, Res temps have always been 68-70f since.

In answer to Q-1&2, Im not sure if you can add to much air but you can definately have too little, damaging roots would be my main concern with lpm overkill. Running tote DWC, 70lpm in a 70l res, runs great with 2-4 plants per tote, if id of had more space id of prolly turned it into RDWC. would of made things more effecient.

3. Ive got by fine with the cheap 12" blue aquarium ceramic ones(x6 in my 70l res, hung with fishing line to reduce vibration noise ). Bubbletubing is pants, the rubber flexible ones are better. Flat ceramic discs are good, but quality varys & seen in the price. I fancy having a whirl at the large 24" flat VHO micropore for salt water aqariums, but at over £30 a pop i cant see it happeniing in the near future.

4. I let PH drift real slow, say 0.4 over a couple of days, 5.4 upto 5.8, lower in Veg usually, higher bloom.
use various nute lines/addys, Ionic, Canna, Vitalink, they all work good, i like H2o2 & liquid silicon too.

5. probably not, doesnt seem too hard to me. a chemical analysis from your waterboard may give you a better idea, should be free too.

6. 69f is pretty much optimal for DWC ime. if you dont have to buy a chiller all the better.

Ideas, not atm but something will prolly come to light later on. Any thread with DWC diccusion is a good one in my book.

Type stuff!!

G'luck!

 

[Hack]

I spent a spell fixed on ph of 6.2 to 6.3 and thinking back plants never seemed quite on. I just jumped into dwc headfirst and read info and just started doing it and got hooked at the simplicity and results. The last two years was the learning phase I never realized that dwc was its own little animal regarding ppm's, the last five grows my ppms have gone lower from 1300-1500 to no higher than 500ppm with a hanna meter. I actually just learned how to dial in a rdwc recently, I finally started seeing quality with the low ppms, cuz I would read hydro info and all I ever read was people just blasting their stuff with 1400 and up in other hydro mediums, then I realized that dwc was its own animal, the roots have no medium and are bathing in the nutes constantly. Lots of strains can take it, but do they use it and need it? upside been saving tons on nutes.

I have been reading everything I can find on dwc PH and coming away with drift from 5.5 to 6.o and 5.7-6.2 being the most accepted and practiced every now and then I find someone saying 5.1-5.5 seems a little low. recently i started trying to maintain 6.0 which my stuff still at times seems not quite on, for some reason I never like to see ph in the high fives so i would adjust, think adjusting to much has been a problem.

somewhere on down the line I decided that it wasn't necessary to run air 24/7 and have had some grows where everything looked great running air just on light cycle, recently every primer on dwc says air 247 so wondering after a few grows where the roots just didn't seem right started going back 247. Is it really beneficial and necessary to run air 24/7

running three of largest hydrofarm air pumps to 24 buckets under 5,000 watts they put out 113 litres per minute and consume somewhere around 113 watts, at times I will be rockin as low as five or six 5 gallon dwc buckets on just one of these, I wonder at times if this amount of air is not upsetting the ph and the water churns so much it looks like it could blow the roots off the plants.

I am convinced after much trial and error that transitioning aero clones to rockwool just is a hoop that i would rather not jump through, all your doing is putting another medium the platn has to grow through and risking the wicking and overwatering that comes with it, have lost many perfect clones transitioning from aero, to rockwool to dwc because of overwatering and other crap. anyone take em right out ofaero and transition em into hydroton in top of buckets with success?

all for now.

 

[gdtrfb]

first - great thread idea
second - i'm no pro, i've only been soaking my girls feet in 5 gallon buckets of water for a year or so, but i'll chime in w/ what i do/what i've figured out works for me all the same

1 & 2) i have no idea, i'm largely faking it in that territory. i use a LT24 linear air pump to feed 12 buckets - on one occasion, i had only 6 buckets being fed by the pump (w/ the other outlets closed off), and it w/out a doubt caused very different root growth - they couldn't reach the bottom half of the bucket if they tried. i wouldn't say it was 'less' root growth, just that what roots were there were jammed much tighter into a lesser area.
just generally speaking, if things look more like this and less like a cylindrical cake of roots that stops 6 inches below the pot, i figure they're happy w/ the amount of air

3) probably, but....again, i really have no idea. more than anything, i guess i've just leaned to the territory that the best airstone is a new one every batch. i use 6 inch stick silica airstones, but i've got admit my reasoning is their availability in bulk at decent price (facilitating that whole 'new one every batch' aspect), not known superior efficiency.

4) i'm an absolute believer in the ph drift. first, i just hate pissing around with PH up/down if i don't have to. i do nute addbacks and top off manually - generally topping off w/ RO every day or every other day, and doing a nute addback every 4 or 5 days. as i add water (and 'thin out' the nutrients), the ph climbs, when i add nutes back, it drops - so in a 4 to 5 day cycle, the girls see from 5.7 to 6.1, and then back down again.
the 2nd reason i fit in that drift believer camp...i rarely run an absolute monocrop. i've had some plants that could take up mag at 5.7, and some that absolutely refused unless ph was 5.8/5.9. just letting things meander across the 'good' range of ph over the course of a couple days makes sure everybody has their acceptable range for uptake in front of them.

5) not sure, i've just always had an RO filter - the city water where i'm at is closer to 1.0 ec (700ppm by the meter i use) right out of the tap...just didn't seem like an option really worth trying for me.

6) i think that's more a matter of what you feed with and/or supplement with. i use nothing but salts, no bennies..and times of year like currently, i'm fighting to stay in the low 80s in the room - so water temps see 77-79 fairly regularly. i've ran chillers before in other applications (large saltwater aquariums) and had decided they'd enter my grow room over my dead body...the amperage draw and the need to vent yet another heat source were just headaches i didn't want. since i wasn't going for any bennies of any kiind, a dead res made more sense than a chiller.
that said, i've also got my nose in my rootzone every day checking to make sure that 'happy root' smell is present, and if it isn't exactly the 'happy root' odor (it's hard to explain...if you've smelled happy roots, and you've smelled roots 2 days away from being a snarl of root rot mess, you know the difference) i'm there with the bleach holy water, giving benediction by the cap full with a quickness. if it was a setup where i couldn't visit daily, i'd probably have to re-think that 'death before chillers' mindset.

re: aero cloner to dwc transition - that's typically what i'm up to. i leave the cuts in the aero cloner until there's about 7-8 inches of roots with a good amount of 'zipper shoots' (root nubs perpendicular to the main root lines) - some times that means i need to add a small amount of nutes to the cloner before i can pull things and put them in dwc, some times it doesn't. just depends on the cuts/timeline/phase of the moon, i guess.
i knock one, maybe two of the plastic strips out of the bottom of the netpots i'm using, and just dangle the root thru it, then pour hydroton around it...just my impression, but the sooner you have roots in the water, the sooner that explosive growth happens...so i just make sure it starts off that way. they seem happier for it, at least.
rockwool would just be an extra hassle/something extra to buy you don't need - again, at least by my experience. if you had an e/f stage in your veg, i suppose it would make sense, but going directly from aero to dwc, i wouldn't bother.

 

[Shafto]

Great thread Hack.

I'll weigh in on the too much air air question.

I ran a 45W air pump in 2 10 gallon grow containers and it was certainly too much air. One day the hose on the air pump blew itself off and when I checked the res that day I had noticed that the plants had drank much more water and consumed more nutrients than expected. I plugged the pump back in and watched it go down again the next day, and then I tried unplugging it again, same thing, more drinking, more nute uptake.

So now I've followed Heath Robinson's advice and gone with high flow water circulation and ditched the air pump completely. You can see others like Billy Liar doing the same thing with success.

So glad to have ditched that noisy heatpump. A few months ago I would have told you all about how I added fans on my air pump and how I built a silencer for it to make it much quieter, but screw that, just ditch the thing entirely and gear up for more water flow.

Also, all I've ever done is plant clones from the bubble cloner directly into hydroton, works perfectly well, no rockwool needed.

 

[Scrogerman]

Yeah i dropped RW from DWC completely, Root in a bubblecloner & straight into hydroton, no bother at all. RW aint needed.

 

[captaincanabis]

i am intrested in rdwc. who has an easy diy setup that could point me in the right direction. it would be a four bucket with option to upgrade to eight. thats what i need

 

[Hack]

first - great thread idea
second - i'm no pro, i've only been soaking my girls feet in 5 gallon buckets of water for a year or so, but i'll chime in w/ what i do/what i've figured out works for me all the same

1 & 2) i have no idea, i'm largely faking it in that territory. i use a LT24 linear air pump to feed 12 buckets - on one occasion, i had only 6 buckets being fed by the pump (w/ the other outlets closed off), and it w/out a doubt caused very different root growth - they couldn't reach the bottom half of the bucket if they tried. i wouldn't say it was 'less' root growth, just that what roots were there were jammed much tighter into a lesser area.
just generally speaking, if things look more like this and less like a cylindrical cake of roots that stops 6 inches below the pot, i figure they're happy w/ the amount of air

3) probably, but....again, i really have no idea. more than anything, i guess i've just leaned to the territory that the best airstone is a new one every batch. i use 6 inch stick silica airstones, but i've got admit my reasoning is their availability in bulk at decent price (facilitating that whole 'new one every batch' aspect), not known superior efficiency.

4) i'm an absolute believer in the ph drift. first, i just hate pissing around with PH up/down if i don't have to. i do nute addbacks and top off manually - generally topping off w/ RO every day or every other day, and doing a nute addback every 4 or 5 days. as i add water (and 'thin out' the nutrients), the ph climbs, when i add nutes back, it drops - so in a 4 to 5 day cycle, the girls see from 5.7 to 6.1, and then back down again.
the 2nd reason i fit in that drift believer camp...i rarely run an absolute monocrop. i've had some plants that could take up mag at 5.7, and some that absolutely refused unless ph was 5.8/5.9. just letting things meander across the 'good' range of ph over the course of a couple days makes sure everybody has their acceptable range for uptake in front of them.

5) not sure, i've just always had an RO filter - the city water where i'm at is closer to 1.0 ec (700ppm by the meter i use) right out of the tap...just didn't seem like an option really worth trying for me.

6) i think that's more a matter of what you feed with and/or supplement with. i use nothing but salts, no bennies..and times of year like currently, i'm fighting to stay in the low 80s in the room - so water temps see 77-79 fairly regularly. i've ran chillers before in other applications (large saltwater aquariums) and had decided they'd enter my grow room over my dead body...the amperage draw and the need to vent yet another heat source were just headaches i didn't want. since i wasn't going for any bennies of any kiind, a dead res made more sense than a chiller.
that said, i've also got my nose in my rootzone every day checking to make sure that 'happy root' smell is present, and if it isn't exactly the 'happy root' odor (it's hard to explain...if you've smelled happy roots, and you've smelled roots 2 days away from being a snarl of root rot mess, you know the difference) i'm there with the bleach holy water, giving benediction by the cap full with a quickness. if it was a setup where i couldn't visit daily, i'd probably have to re-think that 'death before chillers' mindset.

re: aero cloner to dwc transition - that's typically what i'm up to. i leave the cuts in the aero cloner until there's about 7-8 inches of roots with a good amount of 'zipper shoots' (root nubs perpendicular to the main root lines) - some times that means i need to add a small amount of nutes to the cloner before i can pull things and put them in dwc, some times it doesn't. just depends on the cuts/timeline/phase of the moon, i guess.
i knock one, maybe two of the plastic strips out of the bottom of the netpots i'm using, and just dangle the root thru it, then pour hydroton around it...just my impression, but the sooner you have roots in the water, the sooner that explosive growth happens...so i just make sure it starts off that way. they seem happier for it, at least.
rockwool would just be an extra hassle/something extra to buy you don't need - again, at least by my experience. if you had an e/f stage in your veg, i suppose it would make sense, but going directly from aero to dwc, i wouldn't bother.

good stuff on the ph drift I think I have hurt myself by trying to hit a setpoint and I rarely hit the high 5's and at times with multiple strains there are always plants that look off with cal mag.

the rockwool has been a royal pita have lost many perfectly rooted aero clones to rockwool from overwater or ec build up in the cube if vegging for more than a week before loading in bucket tops.

 

[Hack]

Another point that I want to explore is size of the bucket top, i started out using huge tops that took a ton of hydroton, don't remember the exact size , but I started to see know correlation to root ball in bucket and amount of hydroton so I went to six inchers and save alot of money and time on the rock cleaning end.

any thoughts on this?

 

[MediRI88]

RDWC

RDWC




I use a dual rez 8 gallon buckets system with hydrofarms 1/2 water chiller best system i think you can buy on the market for the yeild you get, these pictures are week 1 ..



theres nothing to it basicly put your nutrients in the control bucket and leave it for a week or two and watch the magic happen .... the rate of growth that you will see is unmatched ! so ask away and il try and answer your questions

 

[Hack]

first - great thread idea
second - i'm no pro, i've only been soaking my girls feet in 5 gallon buckets of water for a year or so, but i'll chime in w/ what i do/what i've figured out works for me all the same

1 & 2) i have no idea, i'm largely faking it in that territory. i use a LT24 linear air pump to feed 12 buckets - on one occasion, i had only 6 buckets being fed by the pump (w/ the other outlets closed off), and it w/out a doubt caused very different root growth - they couldn't reach the bottom half of the bucket if they tried. i wouldn't say it was 'less' root growth, just that what roots were there were jammed much tighter into a lesser area.
just generally speaking, if things look more like this and less like a cylindrical cake of roots that stops 6 inches below the pot, i figure they're happy w/ the amount of air

3) probably, but....again, i really have no idea. more than anything, i guess i've just leaned to the territory that the best airstone is a new one every batch. i use 6 inch stick silica airstones, but i've got admit my reasoning is their availability in bulk at decent price (facilitating that whole 'new one every batch' aspect), not known superior efficiency.

4) i'm an absolute believer in the ph drift. first, i just hate pissing around with PH up/down if i don't have to. i do nute addbacks and top off manually - generally topping off w/ RO every day or every other day, and doing a nute addback every 4 or 5 days. as i add water (and 'thin out' the nutrients), the ph climbs, when i add nutes back, it drops - so in a 4 to 5 day cycle, the girls see from 5.7 to 6.1, and then back down again.
the 2nd reason i fit in that drift believer camp...i rarely run an absolute monocrop. i've had some plants that could take up mag at 5.7, and some that absolutely refused unless ph was 5.8/5.9. just letting things meander across the 'good' range of ph over the course of a couple days makes sure everybody has their acceptable range for uptake in front of them.

5) not sure, i've just always had an RO filter - the city water where i'm at is closer to 1.0 ec (700ppm by the meter i use) right out of the tap...just didn't seem like an option really worth trying for me.

6) i think that's more a matter of what you feed with and/or supplement with. i use nothing but salts, no bennies..and times of year like currently, i'm fighting to stay in the low 80s in the room - so water temps see 77-79 fairly regularly. i've ran chillers before in other applications (large saltwater aquariums) and had decided they'd enter my grow room over my dead body...the amperage draw and the need to vent yet another heat source were just headaches i didn't want. since i wasn't going for any bennies of any kiind, a dead res made more sense than a chiller.
that said, i've also got my nose in my rootzone every day checking to make sure that 'happy root' smell is present, and if it isn't exactly the 'happy root' odor (it's hard to explain...if you've smelled happy roots, and you've smelled roots 2 days away from being a snarl of root rot mess, you know the difference) i'm there with the bleach holy water, giving benediction by the cap full with a quickness. if it was a setup where i couldn't visit daily, i'd probably have to re-think that 'death before chillers' mindset.

re: aero cloner to dwc transition - that's typically what i'm up to. i leave the cuts in the aero cloner until there's about 7-8 inches of roots with a good amount of 'zipper shoots' (root nubs perpendicular to the main root lines) - some times that means i need to add a small amount of nutes to the cloner before i can pull things and put them in dwc, some times it doesn't. just depends on the cuts/timeline/phase of the moon, i guess.
i knock one, maybe two of the plastic strips out of the bottom of the netpots i'm using, and just dangle the root thru it, then pour hydroton around it...just my impression, but the sooner you have roots in the water, the sooner that explosive growth happens...so i just make sure it starts off that way. they seem happier for it, at least.
rockwool would just be an extra hassle/something extra to buy you don't need - again, at least by my experience. if you had an e/f stage in your veg, i suppose it would make sense, but going directly from aero to dwc, i wouldn't bother.

I am just starting to play with aero to dwc and tried a small batch with huge root systems from the aero cloner, i was reluctant to cut the baskets becuz i didn't want hydroton down in the water, so I kind of rolled the roots around in the hdroton and put rocks on them, I had mixed results.

do you bring the water level up in to the lower basket and keep it their? or just get a little root started down in the water and have most of root in hydroton and then top water. Hydroton wicks when it is wet will the water level just on the bottom of the rocks wick enough upward to keep the roots wet enough?


I am totally over rockwool and have a batch of clones coming up from the aero but don't have the luxury of a learning curve.

any info is appreciated. Thanks.

 

[Scrogerman]

Yeah as long as your Pump & stones produce enough splashing action, enough being the prominant word as apposed to too much or too little, its almost like Aero in the gap between the water level & your netpot, splashing/fizzing etc in hydroton filled nets keeps that rootball in perfect moist conditions. yeah there is cappillary action your right.

I do raise sol levels to meet the first roots, sooner they are in the solution the faster they take off ime.

btw, yeah, ive done the same with over rooted clones in the past, just rolled them around(with some dangling through) & filled in-inbetween with hydroton same as you, didnt have any issues at all, but i was a little concerned till they took off. just me being Lazy.

Ime, Big netpots aint needed at all to produce 'Huge' plants, 3-4" nets is all i need, the Res takes the bulk of the roots. Bigger the netpots the more fannying about to get them to take off. but yeah id raise levels right into the pot if i was using big ones.

MediRI88 thats one hell of a nice Rig you got there, v neat!k

G'Luck!

 

[sub dermal]

1. optimum air is as much as is it wants. i dunno. i run my temps very high for common DWC habits (80F res temps. i keep my room warm 80-83 with co2) so i pump a lot of air into my roots. the water simply cannot hold as much dissolved olxygen at higher temperatures, so i replenish very quickly. i use a 600gph pump (2,200 l/hr, 36 litres/min). it can handle very many tubs.

someone mentioned the air crowding the roots or something. that'll happen. to me, that's like being rootbound. i don't know or care if it's detrimental like in soil, but i account for plant growth. i start in shallow containers to train the plants' roots through the pots and into water. then 5gal, or sometime straight to 18gal tubs.

if there is so much root in the container, then there is less water. water gets taken up by the roots, it becomes powerfully concentrated nutrientwise. pH swings come easier. there's less water to buffer.

when my water level has gone from 8/10ths of a 5gal, to 1/2, there is VERY little water. because there's a ton of roots taking up space.

if my tub is down to half full in an 18gal tub (say 2-3 days of no refill) then i still have, 6+ gallons in there. has it concentrated? sure. but not nearly as much.

so anyway, if the res is too small for roots and air, then i consider it too small for my use and upsize...

3. i have liked flex wands, but honestly, i string 3-4 (small, 2") air stones together using 'T' connectors. i make it about 12" long. they span the bottom of a large rubbermaid tub, and cover enough area that roots won't kill circulation. they're cheap too. i just make a bunch, and change the 'assembly' out each cycle.

4. my tap here is 180ppm, calcium rich. i use that. the pH stays more steady, and i don't need to use hardwater nutes either. a lot of people go RO. i've done so in the past. if possible,. i try not to. my water is 9+ pH, then is brought down to 5.8-6 with nutes.
and it stays there, within a .4 range.

about the temps. look. temps don't cause root rot. bacteria and/or fungus do.

if you cultivate beneficial bacteria, high temps=lower DO (dissolved oxygen) levels, and anaerobic bacteria (bacteria that don't need air) can thrive, which is bad for our roots. they sure like warmer water too, but cool temps alone won't save you.

personally, i keep my res clean with regular h2o2, lots of air. i use chem nutes, and keep my res as free of bacteria as possible. beneficial or not. a plants roots will reach temps higher than 72F, they grow in some very hot climates after all. but given air and water properly, they seem to grow and grow and grow...

best of luck to you in your dwc adventures!

here's some roots from constant 80F res temps.

this is uh, not required or recommended, but it is possible. if doable, stay cool.

 

[Scrogerman]

G'stuff Sub-d,

Its all about the DO & aerobic conditions(& keeping it that way). theres getting by & then theres Optimal. 68-70f for DWC.

I see a few people running DWC at higher sol temps & get away with it, but its not exactly optimal.

Gotta luv H2o2 bro!

try either putting a cooling fan on your airpump inlet or duct some cool air to it(with a fan) & watch how much difference that makes to ya solution temps. Ill be surprised if it has no effect, pumps luv blowing warm air straight into res. easy fix! like ya Scrog btw, using Co2 too, cool! mmm

G'Luck!

 

[Hack]

Thanks, to everone for getting this off to a great start. I thought of some other areas to talk about. Ya all have some good looking systems.

1.I found a nice little article in a maximum yield mag that didn't specifically relate to dwc for mj but just in general. It said 5.5 to 6.5 and more specifically 6.0 6.3 for veg and 5.7 5.9 for flower.

2. I also picked up somewhere in an article that in veg its better to keep water level real high and that by lowering it in flower significantly it can be a flower trigger in conjunction with photoperiod changes and other flower triggers. anyone heard such a thing?


3. I have worked with a nutrient program that brings pretty good results and I am excited to do some runs with PH swings now from 5.5-6.0 with less adjustment. I have used flora nova grow and bloom for sometime now and like its ease of use but is a hassle to mix after settling, a gallon will have the whole area jus fubar from the tossing back in forth in gallon containers, recently I have read numerous times that it does not mix consistently and dissolve in the water and really was not meant or good for dwc, could this also be whats keeping me from that next level of results, any way i started using gh's flora blend compost tea really very clean and no precipitate have notices a real boost in root development and plant vigor use at the 5ml gallon, am trying recomended 10 ml gallon.
Have used sm-90 religiously for years now and believe in it as a water conditioner and at times honest to god seems like it kept very small mite action in check and believe at times kept them away, i ad half recommended big bud, bud candy in week 345 and sometimes six and at end used overdrive in last weeks at 1.5 to 2 ml gallon. I am working with the recommended 2 ml ltr for big bud, budcandy and overdrive. I want to dump flora nova and am starting another run with gh's new 2 part flora duo and one room seems off to a flying start with a much cleaner res. also have used floralicious plus with the above.

I know this is not a nutrient pissing match but the advanced nutrient jury is still out for me, I just don't know, I was convinced their big bud and overdrive are the real deal, but alot of the other snake oil bullshit turned me off, I heard they fried thousands of crops in the early days with there outrageous ppm's and additives to the mix. anybody ever done a run with just a good 2 part and no additives? would be interesting.

I also picked up recently house and gardens root exellurator and drip clean and using them in the rockwool stage of growth, have seen prolific root action with excellurator, bunch of scuttle on internet about how excellurator is not meant for oxygenated reses and am afraid to try it in ez cloner although some have. drip clean pulls all salt ions down so they don't build up.

Have gotten extreme density and quality with the above but still looking for perfect crops. is that wrong?

while i am on a roll I have 2 ez cloner 120's all tricked out with chillers and clean the shit out of em each time, I am not totally getting consistent results with those either, since chillers have tried 69 degrees as the sweet spot for temps cuz the main knock on those are the motors driving up the water temps past the sweet spot, after much research their website says run chiller to 69 degrees for the sweet spot and then you get the directions with em that says optimum water temp is 75 pretty big literature discrepancy, no wonder newbs have such issues at times, I am real simple through in some aqua and ph to around 6.0 and have done both clone gel dip with a soak on the stem while i am loading the cuts and without cloning gel. have never seen a node in less than 10 days and decent roots in less than 18-20 days sometimes get 90 percent and sometimes 40-50 rooting rate, alot of hoops to jump through for those numbers and at almost a grand a machine with chillers, thinkin about goin back to flats with rockwool. Anyone else get really consistent results with ez cloners?

how do ya all recirculate? is use quater inch hose off a main line into top of bucket with out drippers and put on timer like 10 minutes on hour off, have resisted drippers and running 24/7 like some do, is there a benefit in running drippers 24/7 in keeping buckets level? what about dripper clogs. how do ya all circulate

I now yield are like fish story's and always felt a pound a light was good with a heavy yielding strain, thought people were lying about 1.5 per thousand and 2 per thousand untill i started dialing in my rig with ppm's around 5oo and no higher than 600 than I realized i just really sucked. I actually recently pulled 1.5 on eight seed plants under two six hundreds with a heavy yielding strain called jacky white thought I would piss myself, especially with the quality, If someone is really looking for a real ass kicking production strain, paradise all female jacky white pheno's with real broad leaves are real ass kickers they won't say exact lineage but say 75/25 sativa hybrid, you can taste haze in them I think its there version to kind of duplicate jack herrer. they were almost perfect at 6.0 6.2 but really like 75 degrees and around 50 humidity and look good at nine weeks but really throw on the trich's at10 weeks and get huge and hard. they have great quality, taste, smell and potency. The other phenos with narrow leaves are real buggers to grow with alot of haze coming out in them. tested one especially frosty gal over at full spectrum at 19.2 percent thc not bad for like i say production strain. its not connasewer bud but damn good.

I know I am all over the place here but I am just foaming at the mouth and hungry for info. also i am a grower not an english major so bear with me. scroggerman thanks for the good input it is all looked at and appreciated.

I have searched here on this forum for quite some time but haven't done alot of posting.
I hope to get a camera and start throwing out some stuff on my op. I got an outrageous clone here in colorado from a really good grower/breeder who was nice enough to sell something of that quality. Its called mob boss and its off the damn hook, I did a test run on flood and drain, but want to pull it in on a run as soon as the mother grows and I clone it. its a chem dawg tang tang cross and was tested at 27-29 percent several times I am going to try and do some posts of my dwc grow over on grindhouse forum. It dazed and confused my tired old mind and then ko'd me for the count and then some, been along time since i have seen that kind of power. I am sure grindhouse has no problems with me raving about it, and should or is available in seed forum. check it out over at grindhouse on icmag.

Peace to all.

 

[Scrogerman]

My good buddy is running jacky white atm(hey bro) in coco, 2nd time with the strain for him, 2 different seed batches, 2 diff styles, nice strain & id run her myself. hope he keeps me a bit wink wink bro!

DWC PH ive always run 5.3-5.8 lower in Veg(5.3-5.6 always) a bit higher in bloom, theres always a bit of fluctuation but im always happy between this range, over 6 causes issues or has done for me in the past.
6.3-6.5-never, soil ph. i do rate n get max yield regular, good mag.

Show me a hydro nute manafacturer that recommends PH over 6.2? after here your off outta range & gonna get lock out!

Sub-D is running a stable PH-6.5 with lucas, thats a no no in DWC or SWC imo!

Something else of interest, is plants stress with PH changes of 0.5+ in one hit, so adjusting in incriments of 0.2 over a period of an hour or 2 helps to reduce any stress caused by large & instant swings.
no-body like nanners!

I best go n read the rest of your huge post man, cool!

 

[Scrogerman]

Thanks, to everone for getting this off to a great start. I thought of some other areas to talk about. Ya all have some good looking systems.

Thanks man.

1.I found a nice little article in a maximum yield mag that didn't specifically relate to dwc for mj but just in general. It said 5.5 to 6.5 and more specifically 6.0 6.3 for veg and 5.7 5.9 for flower.

definately not specifically refering to water culture growing imo

2. I also picked up somewhere in an article that in veg its better to keep water level real high and that by lowering it in flower significantly it can be a flower trigger in conjunction with photoperiod changes and other flower triggers. anyone heard such a thing?

I believe you may be referring to drought type stress's iirc, the amount of solution they tend to drink up early to mid bloom tends to make this happen in tote DWC without a controller.


3. I have worked with a nutrient program that brings pretty good results and I am excited to do some runs with PH swings now from 5.5-6.0 with less adjustment. I have used flora nova grow and bloom for sometime now and like its ease of use but is a hassle to mix after settling, a gallon will have the whole area jus fubar from the tossing back in forth in gallon containers, recently I have read numerous times that it does not mix consistently and dissolve in the water and really was not meant or good for dwc, could this also be whats keeping me from that next level of results, any way i started using gh's flora blend compost tea really very clean and no precipitate have notices a real boost in root development and plant vigor use at the 5ml gallon, am trying recomended 10 ml gallon.
Have used sm-90 religiously for years now and believe in it as a water conditioner and at times honest to god seems like it kept very small mite action in check and believe at times kept them away, i ad half recommended big bud, bud candy in week 345 and sometimes six and at end used overdrive in last weeks at 1.5 to 2 ml gallon. I am working with the recommended 2 ml ltr for big bud, budcandy and overdrive. I want to dump flora nova and am starting another run with gh's new 2 part flora duo and one room seems off to a flying start with a much cleaner res. also have used floralicious plus with the above.

I know this is not a nutrient pissing match but the advanced nutrient jury is still out for me, I just don't know, I was convinced their big bud and overdrive are the real deal, but alot of the other snake oil bullshit turned me off, I heard they fried thousands of crops in the early days with there outrageous ppm's and additives to the mix. anybody ever done a run with just a good 2 part and no additives? would be interesting.

I also picked up recently house and gardens root exellurator and drip clean and using them in the rockwool stage of growth, have seen prolific root action with excellurator, bunch of scuttle on internet about how excellurator is not meant for oxygenated reses and am afraid to try it in ez cloner although some have. drip clean pulls all salt ions down so they don't build up.

Have gotten extreme density and quality with the above but still looking for perfect crops. is that wrong?

while i am on a roll I have 2 ez cloner 120's all tricked out with chillers and clean the shit out of em each time, I am not totally getting consistent results with those either, since chillers have tried 69 degrees as the sweet spot for temps cuz the main knock on those are the motors driving up the water temps past the sweet spot, after much research their website says run chiller to 69 degrees for the sweet spot and then you get the directions with em that says optimum water temp is 75 pretty big literature discrepancy, no wonder newbs have such issues at times, I am real simple through in some aqua and ph to around 6.0 and have done both clone gel dip with a soak on the stem while i am loading the cuts and without cloning gel. have never seen a node in less than 10 days and decent roots in less than 18-20 days sometimes get 90 percent and sometimes 40-50 rooting rate, alot of hoops to jump through for those numbers and at almost a grand a machine with chillers, thinkin about goin back to flats with rockwool. Anyone else get really consistent results with ez cloners?

Aint used most of what you mention here so cant really comment, on temps 69 is optimal for D'O2 content, whereas slightly warmer temps may be favoured by actual roots, all i can think of with such a discrepincy.? try Bubblecloning dude, you'll lov it, cant get much better than areo type cloning though imo. ill always bubbleclone in future, fast & efficient.


how do ya all recirculate? is use quater inch hose off a main line into top of bucket with out drippers and put on timer like 10 minutes on hour off, have resisted drippers and running 24/7 like some do, is there a benefit in running drippers 24/7 in keeping buckets level? what about dripper clogs. how do ya all circulate

I dont re-circ, it would depend on the system spec, but drippers arnt really needed ime, though i see people using drippers early on when using big netpots.

I now yield are like fish story's and always felt a pound a light was good with a heavy yielding strain, thought people were lying about 1.5 per thousand and 2 per thousand untill i started dialing in my rig with ppm's around 5oo and no higher than 600 than I realized i just really sucked. I actually recently pulled 1.5 on eight seed plants under two six hundreds with a heavy yielding strain called jacky white thought I would piss myself, especially with the quality, If someone is really looking for a real ass kicking production strain, paradise all female jacky white pheno's with real broad leaves are real ass kickers they won't say exact lineage but say 75/25 sativa hybrid, you can taste haze in them I think its there version to kind of duplicate jack herrer. they were almost perfect at 6.0 6.2 but really like 75 degrees and around 50 humidity and look good at nine weeks but really throw on the trich's at10 weeks and get huge and hard. they have great quality, taste, smell and potency. The other phenos with narrow leaves are real buggers to grow with alot of haze coming out in them. tested one especially frosty gal over at full spectrum at 19.2 percent thc not bad for like i say production strain. its not connasewer bud but damn good.

I liked this strain alot, definate white JH type taste-grapefruity i got iirc, good stone to boot, id defo grow it myself, see if i can blag my mate to let us take some shady snap pics .

I know I am all over the place here but I am just foaming at the mouth and hungry for info. also i am a grower not an english major so bear with me. scroggerman thanks for the good input it is all looked at and appreciated.

No worries bro, im a DWC enthusiast too

I have searched here on this forum for quite some time but haven't done alot of posting.
I hope to get a camera and start throwing out some stuff on my op. I got an outrageous clone here in colorado from a really good grower/breeder who was nice enough to sell something of that quality. Its called mob boss and its off the damn hook, I did a test run on flood and drain, but want to pull it in on a run as soon as the mother grows and I clone it. its a chem dawg tang tang cross and was tested at 27-29 percent several times I am going to try and do some posts of my dwc grow over on grindhouse forum. It dazed and confused my tired old mind and then ko'd me for the count and then some, been along time since i have seen that kind of power. I am sure grindhouse has no problems with me raving about it, and should or is available in seed forum. check it out over at grindhouse on icmag.

grindhouse gear all sounds good, esp bluesonja mmm, might have to blitz her out in the near futre too, just soo much good choice out there, spoilt for choice.

Thought id try to answer, your points q's etc. G'Luck bro!

Peace to all.

No i cant fkin multiquote ass!

 

[Scrogerman]

Still cant use that fkin Multiquote lol! sorry man ill try to edit! messy!

i cant see what i did wrong there, its quoted the bottm one? hasnt the rest? duhhha lol!

 

[Scrogerman]

What temps you been using to clone, i think thats the improtant bit, 83f-85f. works everytime with bubblecloning!

 

[Hack]

What temps you been using to clone, i think thats the improtant bit, 83f-85f. works everytime with bubblecloning!

Ok, when you say bubblecloning is that in the ez clone type aero machine or where you take mini net baskets with some hydroton and put in tray with airstone running 24/7?

I actually did this several years ago and did have good results

but if your referring to ez cloners or aerocloners thats what I am using and their motors heat the water up past the sweet spot and they slime out, some people have put frozen water bottles in them to cool them down, i went nuts and put small chillers on em that get the water right to the temp you want, I do pretty well withem but should be getting 100 percent jumping through a thousand dollar rig.
but anyway i have been edging the digital on the chiller up to around 72 on the run I am doing now and we will see, but i also know if you don't really clean em between runs they will slime out your next run real easy.