Blueneon's DWC Grow Journal: Critical + Cheese, 400W MH, 400W HPS, 2018

[blueneon007]

Germination Started: 01 October 2018

Setup:
Hybrid DWC/Aero Tote
250W CFL (Germination/Seedling stage)
400W MH (Veg)
400W HPS (Bloom)
600W Adjustable (250W/400W/600W Digital Ballast)
30W Air compressor (15cm dia round airstone)
DIY Manifold from 20mm PVA pipe and irrigation sprays for Aero (only used until roots hit the DWC)

Seeds:
Critical + Cheese from Dinafem

 

[blueneon007]

On 1st Oct 2018, I received my Critical + Cheese seeds and proceeded to germinate 2 of them.

Method: Pre-soak rockwool in pH 5.5 water for a few hours, pop a small hole in the cube with a toothpick, drop seed in (pointed side up). Chuck both cubes into a see through plastic lunchbox and keep in a warm place, checking every day to ensure the cubes don't dry out.

On the 5th of Oct I had a root popping out the bottom of one of the cubes...

This happened sooner than I anticipated, which was awesome.. so it was time to pop it into the hydro.

The setup is DIY, consisting of a spraying manifold (connected to a submerged pump in the res). The idea being that this would pray the netpots with pH adjusted water for the first week or so or until the roots hit the water in the res. Once that happens, stop the aero spray (remove the manifold and submerged pump and install the air compressor and air stone for normal DWC for the rest of the grow.

Here's some pics of the DIY for the res....



Here's the DIY under way for the CFL light fixture (consists of 250W):



So the little rooting cubes were placed into the hydro and I waited patiently for the cotys to show up:

 

[blueneon007]

About two days later, the cotys on one of the cubes shows their beautiful colour green and I was super stoked, unfortunately the other cube still was not showing any sign of rooting or cotys.

Ignore the blue air pump, that's not on at this stage and its not going to be used in the end, its more of a backup.

 

[blueneon007]

5 days later, with nothing but pH adjusted water spraying the netpots and the CFL lights pumping 18/6...

Unfortunately it appears that the other seed has not taken off. Might end up a single plant grow

 

[blueneon007]

Another 5 days later (15 Oct) and we're looking good... the roots have shown themselves out of the netpot already and it's time to switch from aero to DWC.

At this point I also replaced the lid on the tote with a single pot hole in the center... since it seems we're not going to get the second seed to grow.

 

[blueneon007]

The next day and all is well with baby Crit in pure DWC, still no nutes at this point.

 

[blueneon007]

Next day again (now 17th Oct) and she's starting to take off... it's time to switch the CFLs to MH setup.

I've also introduced very weak nutes (about 200ppm) using only General Hydro's Micro & Bloom (no Grow) using a sort of Lucas style formula.

 

[blueneon007]

21 Oct.

Here she is under the 400W MH. The MH is in a cooltube reflector connected to ducting with an in-line fan sucking air out of the cool tube and sending it out of the window.

 

[blueneon007]

22 Oct

She's going wild now!

So nutes have been upped to 450ppm (was actually aiming for around 400ppm, will watch closely for any signs of nute burn and dilute if needed, but she really seems to be growing rapidly so let's see). I also FIM'ed her today. She's destined for Scrog since she's a loner ~ need to get the most out of her.

 

[blueneon007]

23rd, nutes seem ok, she drank some so they're down to 430ppm now, will leave it and see how much it drops before jumping the gun and adding more strength. Forgot to mention that when I upped the nutes I also went away from Lucas formla and back to standard GH recommendations per the bottle, but a quite a bit less dosage. In other words I've added the Grow nutes into the mix now.

pH has been around 5.8 - 6.0 throughout so far... I'm starting to see the pH rise every 24h or so, while nutes decrease ever so slightly, so we're in good shape at this time!

Roots are also looking healthy and white:

 

[EastCoastGhost]

I will sub up for this one, she’s looking good. I’m doing a one plant dwc right now for the first time and I’m really like dwc so far. I’m in a 5 gallon bucket right now but I’m gonna build at least a 10-gallon toat to play with next run. I’m interested in the Lucas formula also, are you running GH flora series?

 

[blueneon007]

I will sub up for this one, she’s looking good. I’m doing a one plant dwc right now for the first time and I’m really like dwc so far. I’m in a 5 gallon bucket right now but I’m gonna build at least a 10-gallon toat to play with next run. I’m interested in the Lucas formula also, are you running GH flora series?

Hi EastCoastGhost,

Thanks for subscribing.

Yeah, I'm using GH Flora Series...

Lucas calls for 8ml/16ml Micro/Bloom (full stength) or 4ml/8ml (half strength). I did that in the very early stage (not to save on nutes, just purely because I've used it before quite successfully), but to be very honest I did notice that the plant was not looking green enough for my liking (every plant prefers a different meal), this was likely a Nitro shortage. So I switched back to using GH's normal series, ie. I included the Grow into the nute mix and went with a slightly different formula to their recommendations and certainly much less dosage over all (I'm topping off with it, not making the whole res with it, that would be far too much nutes for DWC).

GH calls for the formula 3-2-1 (grow-micro-bloom), but their actual measurements are something like 390ml, 260ml, 180ml per 100 litres. I've just gone with a clean-cut 3-2-1 at 300ml, 200ml and 100ml per 100 litres and I mix up a batch of 1 litre at a time, so 3ml, 2ml, 1ml per 1 litre (or for the guys in the USA, 11.4ml, 7.6ml, 3.8ml per gallon).

I then use that mix to "top-off" the res as needed when my nutes go lower than my 400ppm target, or I top-off with plain pH 5.6 water if the nutes rise above that target.

The aim is of course to see your pH rising with ppm falling. Which would mean that the plant is eating nicely.

So far I'm getting exactly that, since switching to the normal 3-2-1 (before hand it was doing the same but as I mentioned the plant just didnt "pop" with green, it had a slight yellowy tint to its leaves).

Yesterday ppm was 430ppm and pH was 5.91, this morning ppm is 410 and pH is 5.95. So I've just added a little pH adjusted 5.6 water (normally you'd top-off with the nute mix but I want to let the res get to down to my 400ppm target and pH to stay around 5.6 - 5.8 for now).

With DWC less is always more. So don't get sucked into all the hype around ppm needing to be 900 for veg and 1300 for bloom etc. Just let the plant tell you what it wants. A plant will only "use" what it needs, no matter what you put in the res, and it's always easier to fix a plant that is hungry than a plant that has been shocked and burnt by too much nutes.

Golden rule:
- pH goes up, ppm goes down = plant is eating well - just top-up with nutes to get ppm back to target (adjust stength as needed throughout the grow)

- pH goes down, ppm goes up = you have too much nutes in the res (dilute with only pH adjusted water, if pH is getting too low, dilute with a higher pH water to get back to target)

- pH and ppm stay stable = you've hit the magic number (though this is almost impossible to achieve in a home grow)

 

[EastCoastGhost]

Thanks for all the info, I’m really liking dwc so far.

 

[blueneon007]

26 Oct (20 days since the seed popped) and all is looking good today. The pH is stable at 5.8 and ppm hasn't moved much (even with res going lower) so looks like for now I've hit a sweet spot on the nutes.

Pic below (added the TDS meter for size reference).

 

[blueneon007]

On a side note, the growth definitely seems to have slowed down a bit since I fimmed on the 22nd. Not a lot happening at the fim site... (hope it recovers soon).

 

[blueneon007]

27 Oct

Ph dropped a little today down to 5.7 and PPM still went down by about 30ppm. So I just topped off with 5.8pH water.

Decided to build my scrog screen so long to pass the time...

 

[EastCoastGhost]

Nice job on the Scrooge screen. Is it gonna make it hard to change Rez?

 

[blueneon007]

Nice job on the Scrooge screen. Is it gonna make it hard to change Rez?

I have a drain tap on the right of the res that let's me just dump the entire contents any time I need, and there is a plug on the top, for refilling. So I don't need to "change" the res at any point really, changing the "tea" in the res is easy peasy. But if I had to physically change out the res due to an emergency, it would still be doable (and I have a backup spare for just that).

 

[blueneon007]

My baby is doing well. Getting closer to her Scrog.

Today pH 5.9 and ppm 481. So standard top off done.

Here's some pics.

 

[blueneon007]

Hmm.. so the plant has finally started to touch the scrog today, however it seems my FIM attempt has failed, still only one main top (and some deformed leaves where the FIM took place). Should have just topped it! Grrr.

I'm wondering though if its too late to top at this stage or if I should just continue as is and let the scrog do all the work... Any thoughts, all those landscape gurus out there?