1st hydro system - dwc

[bluntman_77]

ok . ive been searching around everywhere , hitting the hydro shops and seeing whats on offer . Ive decieded to go with a bubbler / dwc system . Ive got 2 black storage tubs 50L , Im going to run 2 pumps with two air stones each . Im going to run a 1.8h x 1.2w x 0.5d cupboard with a 400w mh/hps aircooled reflector .

 

So the questions .

 

How many plants per tub . 1 or 2 ? would 4 plants be to much in that space ? I just got a delivery of a sensi indoor pack so im growing semi unknown strains from seed , that means some males . It would be good to do say 4 to account for the males and also to get a couple of strains , clone from the fav , run the next grow in a scrog setup from the clones .

 

heat . its going to be in my garage , which is semi open at the back and in summer its going to get hot . thats why ive gone for a big cupboard and an aircooled reflector . ill run the best extraction fan I can find thats suitable for max ventilation . DWC systems seem particuarly prone to problems with heat , if the water gets hot root problems can occur . any suggestions ? im going to put a layer of white plastic across both tubs to reflect heat , perhaps something else to insulate ?

 

refilling and control . Basically i pop the top of the tub , fill it with nutes or water depending on the need to flush , let the plant drink . do it again . what level can the water get down to ? whats the idea of the control bucket ? Is that to keep the level of water constant and the roots submerged ? If I let the water go down to say 1/4 level and then top up again is that ok ? ive read root systems like air and dont like to be constantly submerged and the bubler will keep them moist . so can anyone explain the control bucket bit the dwc ? im still not getting it . sorry if im slow .

 

any feedback on this would be awesome . whats your thoughts on dwc ? good ? bad ? i like the simplicity . im just wondering about its long term stability , root condition and managing nutes and top up type things .

 

thanks heaps osers!

[Kelly_J]

Hi Skyhigh,

 

From my experience i have these comments, maybe others would have some other advice as well.

 

2 plants is enough room for a 50L tub. I had 4 plants in one tub at one stage and the root mass was just too great to deal with and was a hassell when flushing and doing general things with them. 2 plants is just perfect, diagonal from eachother and works out great.

 

as far as the heat problem goes, i have my setups in the garage and during the summer it is 30+ inside the garage and still around 30 inside the growroom. just good ventilation would be the best here, i made several mistakes of having those $20 250mm exhaust fans, they didn't extract half the heat i needed out of the room and they do an all round shitty job, invest like you said and get the best $120 hydro exhaust fan from hydro shop. during the winter i have my water heater on 21 degrees and during the summer i didn't have it on at all, either way i had no root problems at all.

 

That's what i did, every 7 days, usually on a monday morning just after he lights came on, i would get a water pump and pump the water out of the tub by opening the lid about 10cm to let the pump sit inside and a bucket to drain the water into. i then added clean water with my nutes. i usually top the tubs up every few days with clean water, ph adjusted of course. but when flowering came they drink more and more and you'd need to fill them up with clean water every day or every 2nd day. i made a few mistakes by letting the water go down, either i just wasn't home to do it or had guests or something came up which prevented me from doing it, so therfore you must not let the water go, say half way or even a quarter down.

 

with the control bucket i got no idea myself, never used it so maybe someone can comment on that one.

 

well my thoughts on DWC is excellent. i have had no experience growing at all with marijuana until a friend from this site (dywndorf) put me onto the DWC setup. i looked at other ways of doing it and really was lost, lost, lost but manage to really get into and it definetly has paid off by far. I love the Deep Water Culture setup, it's very easy and very straight forward for myself and i can only get better and better at it.

 

Read some of my earlier posts from a year or so ago and you'll see i had no idea how to grow marijuana, but now i do and i am one happy stoner!

 

Hope this helps and you didn't fall asleep!!

 

Kel.

[bluntman_77]

hi kelly , thanks lots for the reply , i appreciate it .

 

i read all your stuff , it was kinda the basis for this system cause you were inexperienced like me. If I can pull the same as you I will be extremely happy ! even the 4oz from your 1st go would be great , im not a big smoker and that would keep me till a 2nd harvest .

 

im going to go all out on extraction , premium fans from the hydro shop . In perth it can be 40 in the summer , not much you can do about that , ill probably switch to night time light cycles to try and keep things down

 

so when you were refilling what level did the water level get down to ? and what was it normally ? I would have thought letting it go to half or 1/4 level would have been the norm , to get air to the roots but it sounds like you kept your level pretty high all the time ?

 

thanks again for the advice

[Kelly_J]

I kept my water levels always high, except for the days when i couldn't, but 90% of the time, the water was always near the top.

 

i know on a monday night or whichever night i would check them and the next day at the same time the 1/2 of the water would be gone, that was towards the end of flowering, but during the veg stage it's easy to keep under control.

 

maybe others like to have there's go down once in a while, but in my case as a newbie i just kept it to the top.

[Guest Eikel]

Hi Skyhigh,

 

My Answers to your questions are in-line:

 

How many plants per tub . 1 or 2 ? would 4 plants be to much in that space ? I just got a delivery of a sensi indoor pack so im growing semi unknown strains from seed , that means some males . It would be good to do say 4 to account for the males and also to get a couple of strains , clone from the fav , run the next grow in a scrog setup from the clones .

 

With 50ltr tubs, you're probably best sticking to 2 plants/tub.

If your starting from seed a DWC grow with multiple plants in a single tub is probably not the best initially due to the relative difficulty of removing males (tangled roots in the tubs etc).

 

heat . its going to be in my garage , which is semi open at the back and in summer its going to get hot . thats why ive gone for a big cupboard and an aircooled reflector . ill run the best extraction fan I can find thats suitable for max ventilation . DWC systems seem particuarly prone to problems with heat , if the water gets hot root problems can occur . any suggestions ? im going to put a layer of white plastic across both tubs to reflect heat , perhaps something else to insulate ?

 

Heat I personally haven't had too big a problem with, if you have trouble keeping temps

down I'd suggest freezing water in some plastic bottles and popping them into the solution.

Only problem with this is - without a "control" bucket or "reservoir" feeding the bubblers the cold bottle may be in direct contact with your roots, this is probably not a good thing.

 

 

refilling and control . Basically i pop the top of the tub , fill it with nutes or water depending on the need to flush , let the plant drink . do it again . what level can the water get down to ? whats the idea of the control bucket ? Is that to keep the level of water constant and the roots submerged ? If I let the water go down to say 1/4 level and then top up again is that ok ? ive read root systems like air and dont like to be constantly submerged and the bubler will keep them moist . so can anyone explain the control bucket bit the dwc ? im still not getting it . sorry if im slow .

 

As long as the roots have some contact with water, that is fine, but you never want the tub to run totally dry.

 

A Control bucket connects to the "growth-tub" and maintains water levels, when you need to top-up, you just fill the control bucket. Basically get a container roughly the same height as your "growth-tub" and connect the new container to it via with PVC or rubber piping.

 

Pipeman's Bubbler Grow Diary is where I originally designed my setup from, he added a control-bucket to his setup at a later stage when his plant got bigger.

 

any feedback on this would be awesome . whats your thoughts on dwc ? good ? bad ? i like the simplicity . im just wondering about its long term stability , root condition and managing nutes and top up type things .

 

Well, my thoughts on DWC are - wow, those plants grow fast!

My little seedling in my makeshift DWC setup is growing at 2-3 times the rate of the plants I had in Soil and Coco. The only negative side is I have to be very careful monitoring ph & temps, and you'll need to add 2ml of OxyPlus (or any h202 product) every couple of days to keep the tank sterlie.

 

 

Hope this helps!

[Pure]

I personaly thikn it's best to use buckets to divide the plants , or use one in each ,

 

with dwc plants shairing a root space dieseses and pest will spread twice as fast , I personaly think your better off doublign the size of each plant and doign one per tub

 

two is definatly better than 4 though imo if you are determined to have more than one in each tub

[bluntman_77]

thanks heaps everyone i really appreciate it .

 

t . Im going to do 1 or 2 plants per tub , 2 tubs .

 

the wardrobe is 1800x1200x600 , so im not sure if thats big enough for 4 plants . after looking at pipemans root mass at the end of his harvest maybe 2 plants is a better idea . that thing is a brick !

 

im just concerned that i have to grow from seed and being the 1st grow im sure to screw something up , so 4 has more chance of 1 being a surviing female than 2 if you know what i mean .

 

ive finally got the concept of the control bucket . but i havent planned for it and its not really possible , i need everything in the cupboard and theres just not enough room . also pipeman had some issues , where he wasnt flushing properly and the control bucket had different ec than the grow tubs . so maybe its best to concentrate on the tubs .

 

I can put a tap in the bottom and a level meter tube in them and maybe a pipe at the top to fill with a pump to make working with the plants easier . kelly did without it and 2nd harvest was mighty impressive . was it ok to work with the plants when they were big kelly ?

 

again thanks heaps for the help , i think im almost ready !

[Luke Skywalker]

I concur with my esteemed colleague Pure. Individual containers allow individual plants to be removed and moved around during the grow, should they underperform or need to be spaced wider. A single plant will just need another week or so of veg time, and I personally would lean towards less plant numbers rather than more.

 

The more nutrient solution, the more insulation there is for nutrient fluctuation. Set up a control bucket with a float valve, which is set to the correct height. The float will then top up with water from a raised 50l tub (or other res/barrel) and keep the water level constant as the plant transpires solution to feed itself and keep the plants cool.

 

Being constantly bathed in nutrient solution is bad from a heat insulation point of view. With maintenance, you can grow ok in water up to 28 or so degrees. If the temps reach much past that the plants will certianly be shutting down, and they may stall in their growth for a while as they develop new root hairs if and when the temps return to a more reasonable level. With the summer now fading you should be okay with temps, but here's a few tricks. Reflective materials, like panda film covered boards to cover the tops of the containers and sheild them from direct light, and insulation material, like foams and bubble wraps, perhaps even astrofoil, helps to keep the temps stable. Larger the container will also even out the temp somewhat.

 

You can add frozen water bottles to reservoirs if they're not in direct contact with the roots, but in the case of a DWC system, you may be better not trying that, as the water directly next to the bottle could be far to cold for the roots, damaging them just as much as the heat would.

 

So yeah, try and keep your tanks well insulated, paint or cover them with some kind of reflective material and add some insulation. With adequate ventilation, good air circulation and adequate lighting, most rooms are at a good 20-25 degrees, peaking at about 30 in the summer months. If you can move all the air out of the room within 5 mins, or better yet, under 1, then you shouldn't have too much heat reaching the reservoirs.

 

Taps for the lines between the bubblers and the feeder res and control res will be useful for filling and dumping. Keep your nutrient levels low, most suggest about 1/3 strength at the highest, with 1/6 or so for beginning with new clones. I've run bubbler plants as high as 2.0ec without too much trouble, but you will have to see what works for you. Just start low and move up slowly when you do, with a weekly flushing out of the expanded clay in the netpot and you should do fine. DWC is a fairly easy, (if a little noisy) method of growing.

 

Try and get larger netpots if you're planning on growing from seed, the 5 inch ones appear a little small to me, and I found them such when I grew a seed DWC plant, so yeah, a larger initial container would be a good idea if growing from seed. IMHO. The first week you should keep the water level a little higher than for the rest of the crop, encouraging the root system to grow down into the water, and wicking water up through the expanded clay whilst the roots establish. As the roots grow, lower the water level slowly until you reach the final level of about 2-3 cm, (1 inch) below the base of the net pot. The underside of the lid on the bubbler should be misted from the bubbles being generated by the airstone.

 

You should seriously consider maintenance too, a small pump to empty the bubblers and control each week is very useful.

 

Hope something in that ramble helps.

[bluntman_77]

thanks luke , thats some good stuff .

 

im definetly evolving my thoughts on this setup .

 

perhaps now .... 2 wardrobes 1 x veg 400w mh , 1xflower 400w hps

 

individual tubs , probably get 3 in the wardrobe and a control bucket that way plants can easily be moved from veg to flower . Dont think I can do a 50l resevour and float vavle setup though , i cant have anything outside the wardrobe for stealth issues . without the res and float valve is the control much of an advantage still? thats what pipemans system entailed and it did seem to help in terms on maintaining the nutes and water levels without messing with the plants atleast .

 

id already thought of reflective material and insulation and that was planned . Im going to have aircooled reflectors with maximum , no expense spared extraction in the wardrobes so that will also help with temps hopefully .

[Tom]

probably get 3 in the wardrobe and a control bucket

Why have the control bucket in the wardrobe, I would be tempted to stick it outside the GR and increase the space inside, plus it would be cooler and easier to maintain too.