New Grower Skatters perpetual DWC/Coco Grow Show

[SkatterBrayne]

So I woke up this morning, to my second disaster. These are trying times sofar! I wokeup to what sounded like a lawnmower running in the basement, and I could hear it all the way upstairs. My heart sunk, because I knew exactly what that sound was. My air pump had shaken off its hose in the middle of the night, disconnecting itself from my buckets. FUCK!

I ran downstairs, the white widow was slightly wilted from asphyxiation, but other than that everything looked fine. That was, until I lifted th net cup off of my abused critical jack. That slight browning issue in the roots turned into full blown root rot (only on the one plant, atleast). Awful, slimey, bullshit that looked like troll snot covering her roots. Not good... I sprayed h2o2 on them, but my strong 35% food grade h2o2 wont be here until tomorrow.

She hasnt grown in days, and all the other plant have passed her. Shes severely stunted, but i guess its a good thing since I have been applying cs to her for a sex reversal. Im hoping i can keep her alive for. few more weeks so I can collect her pollen and put her out of her misery. That poor girl has had a rough life sofar, and im starting to wonder if she has a voodoo curse on her. I cant recall pissin off any witch doctors lately, but this string of bad luck seems like more than a coincidence.

On a good note, the tent is up and its huge. Moving all the ladies in this afternoon, and will upload pics a little bit later. Im considering throwing 2 photoperiods into my smaller vacant tent

 

[Grim Reefer]

Hard luck man thats really bad luck ya get there, but at least the damage wasnt to bad. Id say that critical jack should survive.

 

[SkatterBrayne]

Hard luck man thats really bad luck ya get there, but at least the damage wasnt to bad. Id say that critical jack should survive.

Yeah atleast the same plant is taking the brunt of the damage haha. On the bright side, if i encounter every possible problem there is on my first grow, nothing will ever catch me by surprise surpriseon my future grows haha.

 

[SkatterBrayne]

Update​

Large 10x4 Tent is up and running. I have 3 DWC buckets placed under each light. On the left, I have the 600w MH running at 50% with the seedlings under them, and on the right is my 600w HPS running at 100% with my 2 Critical Jack, and 1 White Widow. Its awesome being able to walk into the tent, and move around. The other tent had to be accessed through the side due to its location, and it was an absolute nightmare to tend to the buckets. The smaller tent is now currently un-occupied, and I plan on starting another batch of seeds in 2-3 weeks, that way each light is about 1 month apart for staggered perpetual harvests.

The White widow is only 3 weeks old right now, and you can see how much larger its root structure is compared to the stunted critical jack. The roots are long, white, and healthy, and they continue to bulk up. It is noticable how much more she is drinking, and it really shows in her overall growth. I think one reason for this is that I have kept her water level much lower than the others, and basically havent been topping it off much at all to see the side by side comparisons. Her roots have been racing down chasing the water.

The root mass on that critical jack is pathetic, and as you can see full blown root rot has set it. I have kept the level higher than the WW, and its obvious that the roots got lazy and not that many of them have come out of the net pots. I'm going to wait it out and see what happens, but I'm losing hope that this girl is going to surivive. Shes been a lab rat for the most part, and has sacrificed herself for the health of the others haha

 

[flat9]

Sorry for the bad luck, but baller setup! How big is your space again?

 

[flat9]

Also, one thing I noticed is that you have quite a lot of buckets running off that single pump. What's the lpm? I hear you should have at the very least 1 lpm for every gallon in your bucket, but ideally much much more.

Actually, in the future so you don't have this air pump problem (they're noisy and annoying anyway), you could run a rdwc with waterfall top feed. You don't actually need air pumps to get dissolved oxygen in the water... Just a lot of flowing, disturbed water (think like a stream). Water pumps are pretty cheap and I think last a lot longer.

 

[Mrbubbles87]

Awesome looking setup! Very professional looking for a homemade tent. I actually built a similar tent several years ago. Yours looks waaay better! Lol Sorry to hear about the root rot hopefully it'll last long enough to get pollen. Personally when I ran hydro in the past I just used the fish aquarium pumps. Seemed to work great and ive been using them off and on for about 8 years lol. Good learning experience though. Looking forward to seeing that tent fill up.

 

[SkatterBrayne]

Also, one thing I noticed is that you have quite a lot of buckets running off that single pump. What's the lpm? I hear you should have at the very least 1 lpm for every gallon in your bucket, but ideally much much more.

Actually, in the future so you don't have this air pump problem (they're noisy and annoying anyway), you could run a rdwc with waterfall top feed. You don't actually need air pumps to get dissolved oxygen in the water... Just a lot of flowing, disturbed water (think like a stream). Water pumps are pretty cheap and I think last a lot longer.

I Iam planning to try rdwc in the future, but I am still in my trial / learning phase. I.want to do single dwc for the fact that i xcan expirament with each plant individually. I.also wont run the risk of total crop failure due to a shared res which is important. you also cant do perpetual in rdwc because of different nute requirements for different aged plants My pump is 70 watt I think like 90 liters per minute. I actually have a larger one coming, a 110 watt so that should easily handle all the buckets. The buckets are bubbling nicely already.though, the initial browning was the result of putting the rockwool cubes too.deep in the net pot potand some light was leaking through the net into the res because it wasnt fully covered.

Since my small tent is like impossible to manage dwc, im actually going to plant my next group of seeds in a coco/perilite mixture. Another variation on hydro, and i can compare the resukts side by side. Basically im just using thia summer as a crash course to learn as much as I possibly can. Doing alot on reading on coco and feel i may be able to manage more plants easier with that method. It will be interesting to see them both for sure!

Im just glad i planted them staggered anticipating that i would make some mistakes, and it paid off. Learned alot already, and all bu one of my plants are very healthy

 

[Mrbubbles87]

Have you looked into super soil or TLO? I've been researching it a lot lately. I'm planning to go that route in the future I just have a ton of Fox Farm nutes to go through first. Just an idea, I was considering coco myself but once I stumbled into TLO I've been fascinated by it.

 

[SkatterBrayne]

Have you looked into super soil or TLO? I've been researching it a lot lately. I'm planning to go that route in the future I just have a ton of Fox Farm nutes to go through first. Just an idea, I was considering coco myself but once I stumbled into TLO I've been fascinated by it.

I considered soil because it would be nice to learn how to use it for outdoor grows, but i decided against it for a few reasons.

Coco uses hydro nutes, and is basically just a different version of hydro. Fast and significant growth, with complete control over nutrients. It is also very easy to flush and correct mistakes.

The coco is super cheap, and I will be mixing it with perlite for additional airation which will also drive the costs down. The stuff is also completely reusable which is a big bonus. It wont cost much at all for me to do a trial run with it.

The fact that it is soilless also reduces my risk of pest infestation, which is a big concern i have with using soil indoors.

Coco appears to be the best of both worlds, the only downside is it needs frequent watering and has slightly less growth than dwc.