Newbie wants to go hydro

Alright so I have completed one soil grow semi successfully and wanted to experiment in hydro. I have two major questions since I am not willing to go buy a premade setup or the stuff I need to make my own. I am poor atm so give me a break Anyhow here are the questions. Can I just get a non clear shallow bucket with water at the bottom and then drain and refill with fresh water periodaclly or do I have to have a pump cycling water all the time? Next I know that hydro ferts have the trace elements most soil ferts don't have, but the miracle grow fert I have lists almost all the trace elements it says specifically:
Nitrogen 18%
Phosphate 18%
Soluble Potash 21%
Magnesium 0.5%
Copper 0.05%
Iron 0.1%
Manganese 0.05%
Zinc 0.05%

So could I use this stuff in my water for a hydro grow? And if so would I just use the package recomended dosage? If not are hydro ferts expensive? Compared to this stuff which is $5 1.5 pounds that lasts forever in a small indoor grow. Thanks for any advice on this and if any one can shoot me a link to a cheap simple no pump needed hydro setup that would be awesome too.

Check out my DWC thread in my signature. It was my first and was well better than expected, smoking on it now.

Don't use miracle grow, do get a ph meter and ppm meter (ph meters are more expensive and are touchy and need recalibration more). I'd recommend buying just flora nova flower and using it, that's what I did and its fool proof mixing wise and works well, you only need the flowering nute even for veg (its the lucas formula in one bottle).

DWC is stupid easy, easier than soil IMO and the increased speed and yield make up for the cost of nutes.

So yea I'd do dwc first and get these things... PH meter, ppm meter, flora nova bloom, PH down/up, hydroton, few net pots, air pump and stone sized appropriately, aquarium thermometer stick on strip to tell your buckets temp at a glance.

Listen to deft, he's got this down. You don't want to use MiracleGro for anything other than dirt grows.

DWC is the way to go. It was made for retarded fuckers like me. If I can do it, you can excel at it; bank on it.

I've got passive hydro down to being meter free and use ro water instead. 22 litres of ro water, 40ml of GH micro, 80ml of GH bloom and 15ml of Liquid Silicon. Give them 1 litre a day while in veg (seed plants not young clones) and 2 litres a day in flower. 11 litre pots or hempy buckets made from household buckets, 10 to 15 litres.

100% perlite works, as does the usual 3 to 1 p/v mix but I get the best results from using Fytocell. Feeding every day has the runoff automatically flush them.

Wasteful in nutes I know but it does make for a stress-free grower. No measuring ec or pH, no transplanting, no problems. (Sometimes a spot of rust on the larger plants if I miss feeding for a night or two.) And they say soil is easiest.

So yea I'd do dwc first and get these things... PH meter, ppm meter, flora nova bloom, PH down/up, hydroton, few net pots, air pump and stone sized appropriately, aquarium thermometer stick on strip to tell your buckets temp at a glance.

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excellent advise.

The trays are for you my freind cheap to build and run(check signature!), check em out and PM me if you have any questions..

Oh for nutes. this is easy to cheapest most effective is lucas you buy GH micro and GH bloom. thats it 2 base nutes. Or as mentioned floronova bloom.

Mix it 8ml micro 16ml bloom per gallon, your golden.You will also need a bloom enhancer to use in flower like GH kool bloom.(gh = General Hydroponics) I also Highly recommend ppm and ph meters, however they are a small investment.. I know what your saying with limited funds. Using lucas, if you flush and fill every 3-4 days. no problem. The trays are super stable I dont run to waste at all. I recirculate and adjust based on ppm/ph meter readings

It is more expensive intially to go into, but you will yeild more, so in the end you come out ahead!

Deft said:

Check out my DWC thread in my signature. It was my first and was well better than expected, smoking on it now.

Don't use miracle grow

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Ok thanks to all who responded, but three things since I am a newb and all
1. I don't know what DWC stands for, or what it is. I will be reading Deft's post about it after this reply,
2. I don't know what GH is. I am sure it is a brand of fertilizer, but I have no idea what brand that is.
3. I am trying to do this with stuff I already have in my apartment. If absolutely necasary I do have an old fish tank pump/filter, but I dont have any tubing. I would prefer to just use something like a bucket with water at the bottom that I change out 2 times a day. If that is possible do I always use nutrient rich water or no?

Its Deep Water Culture and General Hydroponics it's a common brand so i'm seeing on here anyway.
Good luck

Sounds like you need to do some reading. Start with the top threads and go from there. Hydro neds to be planned out properly if you are to succeed. Good luck

repoocbd said:

I would prefer to just use something like a bucket with water at the bottom that I change out 2 times a day. If that is possible do I always use nutrient rich water or no?

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yes you can do this, but if you forget to change the water out 1 time its dead plants from drown roots....much easier to use an air pump.

i dunno, it seems like you would be better off in soil untill you are ready tp make some investments in the proper equipment.

ogatec said:

yes you can do this, but if you forget to change the water out 1 time its dead plants from drown roots....much easier to use an air pump.

i dunno, it seems like you would be better off in soil untill you are ready tp make some investments in the proper equipment.

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Yeah sounds like I will need to wait till I can invest in more I may try the bucekt idea jsut as an experiment, not sure yet. Thanks for the advice

Hey repoocbd, it sound's like you should look into a Hempy bucket
>>> http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=98419&highlight=hempy+buckets <<<. I haven't used one, but from what I have seen on here, and on other sites, they seem to work pretty well, and are less maintenance than swapping out nutes 2x a day. Oh yeah, you can get by with miracle grow in soil, but it doesn't have the micro nutrients that the water will be lacking, so I would either look for some hydro nutrient(easy solution), or read up on what to supplement it with(which IMO is a P.I.T.A. to get right). Here is a valuable link that might help you too >>> http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=40637 <<<

toastfighter2 said:

Hey repoocbd, it sound's like you should look into a Hempy bucket
>>> http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=98419&highlight=hempy+buckets <<<. I haven't used one, but from what I have seen on here, and on other sites, they seem to work pretty well, and are less maintenance than swapping out nutes 2x a day. Oh yeah, you can get by with miracle grow in soil, but it doesn't have the micro nutrients that the water will be lacking, so I would either look for some hydro nutrient(easy solution), or read up on what to supplement it with(which IMO is a P.I.T.A. to get right). Here is a valuable link that might help you too >>> http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=40637 <<<

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Yes this is something I ould be very interested in trying I just need to find a place around here that sells General Hydro nutes. Thanks toastfighter

They don't have to be GH nutes, but I really like what they do for me(plus they aren't super expensive, at least compared to some other kinds). I know that this might sound crazy, but I was in a Sear hardware the other day and they had a bunch of emily's gardens for sale. I didn't really pay attention to what nutes they had for it, but I am assuming that they sell hydro nutes there.

I'm getting ready to start my first DWC grow, it def seems like the easiest way to go. cheap, too. I've already got an ass load of nutes, but I'm guessing it will cost somewhere around 50 bucks TOPS to get up and running.... allow 10 bucks (prob a lot less) for a rubbermaid in whichever size suites you best, 20 bucks for an air pump (wal mart, pet store), tubing I can grab at work for free, but it only costs a buck or two for a few feet anyway.... airstones for a few bucks, thats pretty much all there really is....
net pots + hydroton pellets or do like what i'm gonna do and just use some foam to hold the stem, since i'm doing a scrog and the screen will be able to support the plant when it gets big

Good luck man! DWC seems to me like the way to go for newbs like us!

An open secret for dwc is to use a frigging big airpump, mine is 145 litres per minute, sold for keeping Koi in a pond. Noisy bugger though.

There is a physical limit to how much dissolved oxygen a pump can put into the water and some control their res temps with that in mind which I feel is missing the point. It's the movement of the bubbles that does the magic. Doesn't have to be small bubbles either, I sacked the airstones and hot glued a Tee piece to the bottom of each bucket, no more worries about clogging. The air goes through the roots and gives a nft effect, growth can be explosive.

In practice, keeping the ec and pH in range can be a nightmare with bubblers and the smaller the res, the worse the problem. Having mobility problems I often ignored ec/pH but they refused to die, the plants looked awful but yielded ok so I ended up with a lazy routine that kept me in smoke.

Then the penny dropped. I'm a personal grower, all I need in the way of yield is enough to let me toke as much as I want with enough surplus to cover any hiccups. Once you set a yield target growing gets so much easier. There are lots of ways to improve my yields and I don't give a toss, I get to toke as much as I want and it takes me as little effort as possible to grow that bud. My grow is so skill free that I could have an idiot cousin capable of looking after it with an hours tuition.

All 'more yield' means to me is that my current growing cost of £10 per ounce gets lower. I really can't be arsed. How many people take their car to bits and make sure all the bearings move super smooth to get an few extra miles per gallon? That's how I see personal cultivation.

Decide what you want to get from the grow first and then decide what you are prepared to do and spend to get those results. ime that gives you a much better growing experience than forever looking for 'more yield'.

good news is I found a store that has everything including General Hydroponics nutes and hydroponic set ups now all I need is money and I can go hydro the right way. But in the mean time I think I will try a hempy bucket and see what happens.

Hempy is hydro. Easy and great way to go, i even have some outdoor hempy tomatoes....

clear = algea?

repoocbd said:

good news is I found a store that has everything including General Hydroponics nutes and hydroponic set ups now all I need is money and I can go hydro the right way. But in the mean time I think I will try a hempy bucket and see what happens.

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dude dont let people trick you into thinking DWC is cheap lol... I wish and thats what I thought to begin with. I'd say if rez temps werent an issue DWC would be the cheapest. But think about this most people say 65 to 70 degree's is where you want to keep your rez temps, so logically you would have to keep the air around your rez at 65 to 70 hence the word room temp water meaning that all water that is in one spot long enough will eventually nearly reach the ambient temp of the room. I'd say you will more than likley have rez temps over 75 no matter what if your not chilling your water. So if your looking for cheap and easy go with soil!!!! Some of the best buds Ive smoked have been from soil, and Ive smoked a fuck load of different buds. Just my time for my after work

But on another note I have a small DWC with a 5 gallon rez that is always at 75+ and its showing no sign of root rot, but to tell you the truth im just waiting for it to show its dirtty little face. Plus I use aqua sheild in the rez every week.

Hey bro, welcome to the "club". DWC is certainly easy, but you do need the proper equipment and that's not cheap. My entire rig, a DWC single plant SCROG cabinet w/ a 400 HPS, meters, nutes, fan, light/reflector/ballst, everything combined...about $700.

Now, you can certainly do a version of the same thing for MUCH less, but you probably need to understand the system better than if you were doing it with the right gear.

Here's what I'd recommend for you, if you really want to try hydro on a tight budget (This won't address lights/ventilation etc, just the hydro.).

Find a bucket, figure out a way to keep light out of it....I cover my res with white towels, some use aluminum foil, some use duct tape..whatever, just make it so light can't get in there. Go to Walmart or similar and buy a dual-output aquarium air pump...mine was less than $10...and several feet of tubing for it, that'll be another $1 or so...and a couple of 10" or 12" airstones to hook it to for another $2. Go to that hydro store you found and buy the smallest bottle of GH floranova bloom...that'll cost you another $15 or so and will be all the nutes you need. Pick up some liquid pH testing drops while you're there, should be able to find them for under $5.

Read up on DWC in the tutorials on this site and the hundreds of grow journals and logs located in this hydro forum as well as the journals forum on this site.

Then get some RO (reverse osmosis) or distilled water..., mix up your nutes and have at it. Read around and you'll find some recipes for getting a good nute mix from RO water and the pH that the mix should yield. Swap out your res water often (weekly should be fine), leave the airpump running all the time.

That's the cheapest way I can figure to go hydro, about $35 not counting lights and ventilation. It's easier and more productive to do it properly with meters and addback schemes, but you'll need to spend another $100 or so on meters to get to that point.

Personally if I was on a super tight budget and couldn't secure the right tools (i.e. meters), I'd use soil, and that's from someone who hates growing in soil.