Indoor Marty's 1st DWC Nightmare!!! The plants are taking over!!!

[Marty5678]

Welcome AFN, I'm Marty, been growing in soil for around 2 and a half years now, always lurking around the site but don't really do journals often, I'm usually pretty busy so it can be hard to keep everything up to date. Ive had some pretty decent yielding autos, and some not so good yields in this time. If any of you are like me, you will always be looking for little bits and pieces to upgrade your setup with.

Soooooo while at my local hydro shop the other week I decided to pick up a 19L IWS DWC bubble bucket, as I've always wanted to try DWC, but, always thought it was going to be too much of a fuck on with PPM/EC pH etc. After around a 2 hour discussion in shop I ended up walking away with the bucket, some clay pebbles and some air stones.

So my problem being, when I got home, I already had youngish plants in my tent, but like a kid at Christmas, I had to get that bucket up and running with a seed in. Which I did. Now, 2 weeks later, everything has grown, and my space has not!!! But hopefully it will be soon if I can persuade the girlfriend to clear out the spare room

So here's the setup,

Tent is secret JArdin 60x60x170cm

Lights - 2 x Cree cxb3590 3000k

Driver - meanwell hlg-185-1400B

So both lights are running at around 100w each for 24hrs a day.

NUTRIENTS - Advanced Nutrients
Sense grow + bloom as my base nutes.
Additives - voodoo juice, sensizym, rhino skin, big bud, b-52, and overdrive.

Intake 4" fan

Outake - 4" 150cfm fan with rpm carbon filter.

Pots (soil) - 1 x 10L airpots, 1 x 10L standard garden pot and 1 10L plastic sack pot.

Medium - plagron light mix + perlite.

DWC bucket - 19L

Res temps - 18.3 degrees

pH - 6.1

2 x helia 4" air disks.


Here what I'm currently running in soil.

White widow - dinafem - Germination 20/11/2016

Random seed - sweet seeds - germination 08/11/2016

Auto daiquiri lime - Dutch passion - germination 04/12/2016

And in the DWC bucket.

Auto night queen - Dutch passion - germination 16/12/2016.

Started in a root riot cube, into net basket with clay pebbles, and hand watered the top for around 5 days, until I seen taproot poking out bottom then just let it do its thing.

Currently just base nutes at 1ml per litre, and some voodoo juice at 2ml p/L. The leaves were starting to crinkle up on night queen which I put down as a pH problem as was sitting at 6.8 when I checked today. Brought it down before. But very impressed with growth so far, and been pleasantly hassle free up until now.

Haven't done a reservoir change yet, will probably leave it another week or so, once roots are just a little bit more established.

Right so, here's some pictures, I'll start off with soil grows, then finish with night queen.

White widow - showing some deficiencies, I've been in hospital for the past week, so my girlfriend has been looking after things, mainly with just plain water to keep them going.
Standing at 24" tall, drinks around a litre of water a day, 1.5ml of base nutes per L. Along with 1ml big bud per litre.

Sweet seeds - little fella, but nice resin coverage, it's a pretty slow one, I had to recentl get my dog out to sleep, and everything got a bit neglected and this one really didn't take to it well, it nearly went in the bin tbh.

Auto daiquiri lime - 19" tall so far, she's just about ready to explode, which is the fear at the moment with the tent being so full!! She already has a lime aroma to her which is lovely, she's exhibiting signs of overwatering, but then peeking up, then dropping down again, and peeking back up, its very strange, she seems to like to rest.
At one bud site it's as if she's topped herself, very impressed with the structure of this plant, could have done with the lights being a few inches closer to stop some of that stretching in the lower nodes.

AutoNight queen - as you can see, bit of crinkling on the leaves, which I've put down to pH but if any body has any other ideas please let me know.
Happy with rate of growth on this. Fairly trouble free, a lot less than I was expecting. Also this system can be left longer without checking up on it which is always a bonus to me.

This is the tent currently

Hope you can all join me on my first DWC experience, any hints or tips would be greatly appreciated, or, even a hello will be very well received.

Peace.
Marty.


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[woody]

Quite a jungle you have in there mate! Like you i spent my first year growing in soil with okay results now i only grow in hydro- yeilds have doubled. Dwc is fun but they can get really big.
You using anything to protect the roots/keep them healthy

 

[Marty5678]

Yes with soil I was always more of a 'too many plants isn't enough plants' kinda grower, but, I'm thinking with hydro is gonna be a case of stick to one. Hard to juggle it all st the moment. I've seen some of the monsters you've grown in dwc! They're massiveee!

I've been adding voodoo juice, that's it's really, anything else that you would recommend?


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[woody]

Its not so bad at this time of year but during summer the res temps can get high and it can harm the roots with nasty stuff growing in there leding to root rot.
I swear by a product called sm90 its about 20 quid for a litre. Add .5ml per litre to your res and the roots can handle anything. My res temps were in the high 20s and they stayed nice and white with that stuff

 

[Marty5678]

Ah sweet. Cheers man. I'll pick a bottle up when I'm next at hydro shop

One of my main concern was res temps before I started, but they've sat pretty nicely between 18-19 degrees so far. But I imagine in summer will creep up pretty quickly causing all sorts of problems.

I haven't got round to getting anything to measure ppms at the moment, my thinking is just hold back a bit on nutes, and see how we get on that way. Got pH meter, hopefully get by with that for the moment.


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[woody]

Yea its possible to do it without one but theyre a handy tool. You can see how much nutrients a plant is using. Ppms rising means the res is too strong. Ppm dropping means they need more

 

[Marty5678]

Cool, I do plan on getting one, just suffering from a pretty serious burnt foot at the moment so driving is out of question for next couple of weeks unfortunately
One thing I've noticed about DWC, the growth is so much more rapid, every time I pop my head in tent there's noticeable difference in growth.


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[Marty5678]

Just a quick update, not much change really.

Night queen is on day 18, I think, up to 4th node of growth, still got some crinkling on lower leaves but newer growth seems to be better. Lowest 2 leaves seem to be getting an orange colour to them, not the usual calcium spots, but something different, will monitor this to see if it spreads, may just be nutrients have ended up on leaves somehow.

Daiquiri lime day 30 is really getting into its stride, growth of 5cm over night, she's really going to outgrow my tent quickly, may need to sort another grow area quicker than I expected! Wish I had a bit more space to open her up.

Not much to update on white widow and sweet seeds.

I think I'll be doing a res change on NQ later tonight actually, so I will post a more detailed update of her later hopefully. But overall impressed with rate of growth in the dwc system, just hoping these few problems can be ironed out as soon as possible.

Cheers

Marty


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[Marty5678]

Just done a res change there, looked at roots and they're looking a bit brown to me.

In reservoir there's
Voodoo juice 2ml/L
Sensizym 2ml/L
Carboload 2ml/L
Sensi grow bloom a+b. 1ml/L
Cal/mag+ 1ml/L

Ph'd solution to 5.6 once nutrients were mixed in.
I'm using advanced nutrients, now they claim to be pH perfect, I've not had problems with this claim when growing in soil. Hydroponics however, pH seems to be sitting around 6.9 when everything is added, should I be using pH down to bring this down or will this buffer?

When I've emptied the bucket, it is normal for there to be a sediment at the bottom? Water also felt a bit slimy so there may be a light leak which I'm gonna need to sort.

Currently on day 18
Orange turning lower leaves, I've put this down to pH problems, and fairly brown roots.

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[Marty5678]

Right I have a pretty serious case of root rot!
Checked roots this morning and covered in brown/orange slime.
I've been using voodoo juice and sensizym together, but if I'm honest, it seems to have caused the rot!
Is there anything I can do to combat this?
I done a res change two days ago, as I suspected roots were going a bit brown, yesterday it didn't look too bad, but this morning, it isn't a good sight at all!! Here's a picture of plants and roots at day 20. Really don't want to lose this so any advice would be greatly appreciated!!

Cheers
Marty

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