Deep Water Culture

[wassily]

Hey Buddy and any others who use it, why do people say dwc is simple. Is it real low maintenance or something? Most of the setups I've seen seem more complicated than a simple recirculating system. ie - all you have in that is one res and some trays to catch the runoff and drain it back to the res - not individual buckets and a control bucket and a space command centre - is it better for some reason? Like does the growth rate shit on a recirc system, etc... They seem complicated to me but I don't fully understand why folks use them. Could anyone who uses it clue me in?

Cheers

Vaz

[wassily]

OhmyGod!! that was post 333 for me, half the number of the beast. I've got one little horn! ::

[pipeman]

hey vaz, they are meant to be faster than standard recirc system. What I like about them is there's virtually no medium. One of the major hassles of indoor growing is dealing with the medium for each grow. lotsa work.

 

IN terms of simplicity I think they're simple and I'm pretty dumb.

[wassily]

Right, and could you setup that control bucket nasa thingy outside the closet and run the tubing through the wall? It seems a waste of room to have to have ot inside the growspace, not to mention the heat getting to it.

[pipeman]

bingo, plus you can do PH checks/water changes in the dark cycle during flower. that being said, I got mine inside with the buckets for stealth. eventually, I will run piping to an adjacent cupboard which will contain res and control bucket as well as ballasts, equipment storage etc

[pipeman]

hey I forgot to ask, what does your friend Stinky Pete say about bubblers

[Buddy]

G'day Wassily,

I decided I liked DWC after my grow finished way ahead of a friend who was using the flood and drain technique with clones from the same mother.

I prefer to use DWC because of its simplicity....no leaky complicated plumbing.... overflows due to clogging, of pipes or pumps

The key to good DWC is to have more than enough aeration going on and to stick to the correct nutrient temperatures and humidity.....be sure to keep light out of the tank....simple common sense stuff.

I always check my plants everyday and do a PH and PPM test then adjust them accordingly.

Every two weeks without fail I throw out the old nutrients and replace it with fresh.

I've been growing for three years now and I cant understand why so many people seem to have problems with their grows as I've always had problem free crops, all I can put it down too is lack of time and effort in making sure everything is done right the first time and thereafter.

[wassily]

I asked Stinky Pete, and he said "Bubblers? Isn't that when you let one rip in the bathtub?" . Stinky Pete even looks in amazement at my ph meter. Calls it "damfangled new paraphenalia". He only ever checks his tds. And grows the biggest fuckin buds I ever saw indoors. Seriously, you could adopt one and give it a name. I love the way old growers just go "fuck it son, it's just a weed...."

Vazcomplicated

[Luke Skywalker]

Hey Wassily... I did a bubbler grow with mj recently... it turned out pretty well. I'm not going with this system again in the near future (well, for mj anyway, don't exclude veggies possibly) because of the noise tho, my airpump, even silenced with a growool pad and on low setting. The thing just pisses me off at night. Anyway, I'll be moving the grow to a new position soon, and going back to the good ol perlite mixes... hee hee

 

I suppose it's just me, but I'm more inclined to use a recirc media based sys than a bubbler. Cleaning the bucket and making sure no pathogens get into the water is a bitch, and whilst you may have those problems to some degree with a recirc res, I don't usually have to monitor the ec and ph of the recirc res anywhere near as much as I have to with the bubblers. It's sorta a trade off, to my mind...

 

Yeah, the root growth can be quite amazing to watch, but I feel that's partly more to do with the fact that you don't see the roots in a media based sys, until harvest anyway. I'm not sure if anyone's ever done comparison grows of root ball size and effective yeilds between a "media" recirc or rtw sys... and whether both are truly related.

 

Not saying bubblers don't have a few advantages tho, head height is one, they're a lot shorter than your avg res sys just because water has to go down into the res, and so the pots have to be above the res level. If you have a prob with head height, (and don't we all? ) then you could consider it as a sys to account for that.

 

But still, I won't be using em this summer.

That's my two cents anyway.

[pipeman]

I asked Stinky Pete, and he said "Bubblers? Isn't that when you let one rip in the bathtub?" .  Stinky Pete even looks in amazement at my ph meter. Calls it "damfangled new paraphenalia".  He only ever checks his tds.  And grows the biggest fuckin buds I ever saw indoors. Seriously, you could adopt one and give it a name.  I love the way old growers just go "fuck it son, it's just a weed...."

Vazcomplicated

that is fucking awesome vaz. I wish I had a friend called Stinky Pete