DWC Under Fluro's / LED

[Shiner]

Hey everyone

I recently started a new tent grow in which I will be using a dwc set up to grow my girls I have been a long time soil grower both indoor and outdoor but this is my first venture at attempting hydro and I'm extremely excited to see if I can master the other side of the fence. Currently have 4 seeds being germinated in peat pellets. Of the four 2 are unknown and 2 are original blueberry from BC bud depot it's been 5 days so far and still awaiting cotyledons to present but I'm not worried before to long we are gonna get this thing cranking. My plan is to run t5's with bloom bulbs through the vegetative growth (red spectrum lighting during vegetative growth decreases stretching in my experience) during my transition week I will change the lighting over to a 180 watt led UFO fixture. I will be using calmag, orca liquid mycorrhizal, h2o2 and general hydro's maxi series (dry) nutes with liquid koolbloom for a bulking agent, koolbloom (dry) for ripening and florakleen for a flush. My tub is a 10 gal Rubbermaid tub with four 5.5" net pots and two separate 2" air stones with 150 GPH of air passing through them stay tuned I will be updating this journal as much as possible...

 

[Shiner]

For the first run I will be utilizing topping, super cropping, and lst after I've switched my girls over 21 days into flowering I will pull clones to start monster cropping

 

[Shiner]

Any input would be appreciated being new to hydro but not new to growing I'm hoping to have a leg up on most first time dwc experiences

 

[CronicHempHog]

everything sounds good so far couple things tho
if your usinga big container with 4+ netpots and you plan to keep it in there
the roots will get intertwined and tangled
how often do you plan to clean change out res?
you say your doing dwc so im assuming your doing a bubbler setup
not a sprayer setup
besides the roots being intertwined which i dont know or thinl will be an issue if you dont try to seperate them
not sure if the roots will choke each other tho
i used to start it like that in 3" netpots but they were moved once going into bloom into its own seperate pots
because i wanted to be able to keep them on different schedules which would in turn make my nutes on its own schedule so i couldnt do it with a single res for all
helping it be perpetual or as close to it as i could get it
im not sure on the light setup you using they all work tho
i started with just t-8's almost my whole first grow under those and it wasnt too bad
they were special made bulbs tho
as full spectrum as you can get
even an afterglow when the lights go out to imitate sunset theyre called litro grow lamps
after i got a couple advanced led's diamond series i used them only to veg and for side lighting
works great both lights
hats off to advanced led's for the great product i never expected led's to produce like they did
thats about all i can think of for now im using different nutes so for that i guess you know what you use and how well it should perform
oh yea one other thing and i havent a clue if itll make a difference
i used a 150gph pump to veg
i used a 600 gph pump for bloom with 2 airstone per bucket
like i said i dont know if itll make a difference i think it does but never really did a test
i did however inadvertently not have water in my empty bucket when i was doing a nl/skunk causing it to have no backpressure thuse all the air went out in the bucket with nothing in it starving the nl/skunk for air it started looking like nute issues and such
by the time i noticed there was no bubbles in the bucket with the plant i notice the other bucket was bone dry so i dont know how long it was starving for air
but it didnt die
only looked like i had some kinda issues with nutes or something
plant didnt thrive like normal most of them once in the bloom tent used to stretch very quik and to the point of touching the light
the nl/skunk was a bit short but produced just over 1 oz dried and for all the issues it wasnt to bad at all
but that on the extreme end of no air lol just a thought like i said i never did experiment to see a difference i just had that extreme accident of no air at all and i think i probably coulda doubled my dry weight if that didnt happen
anywho hope some of my ranting helps ill be subbed and checking your journal out

 

[Shiner]

Planning to clean and change the res one time a week adding water throughout the week as necessary while still maintaining a proper ppm mix. I was planning on training the roots as much as possible with hemp string this is a pre trial run for my main project in which every individual plant would receive its own 5 gal bucket and either a 180 watt led UFO or if the light doesn't yield to my expectations I will be subbing in t5s over the buckets and 2 plants per every 4' fixture ... I've had success in the past with t5 fixtures over soil

 

[CronicHempHog]

Planning to clean and change the res one time a week adding water throughout the week as necessary while still maintaining a proper ppm mix. I was planning on training the roots as much as possible with hemp string this is a pre trial run for my main project in which every individual plant would receive its own 5 gal bucket and either a 180 watt led UFO or if the light doesn't yield to my expectations I will be subbing in t5s over the buckets and 2 plants per every 4' fixture ... I've had success in the past with t5 fixtures over soil

nice ill be hanging out wanna see how everything goes

 

[Shiner]

You and me both but it's a hurry up and wait kind of game

 

[Shiner]

Out of curiosity what ranges do you keep for your different stages of plant growth my research has yielded the following
Seedling,early sprout - 100-250 ppm
Early veg 300-400ppm
Full veg 450-700ppm
Early Bloom 750-950 ppm using equal parts of veg and bloom notes during the first week (transition)
Full mature bloom 1000-1600 ppm not going over 1300 realistically to not expect nute burn

 

[CronicHempHog]

honestly i dont have a ppm meter only a ph meter lol
i have changed amd cleaned out my res 1 time a week
when i add during the week i only use phed water nonutes
seems to be working out ok
i use the feeding chart that the guy told me to use with the hutes i bought
using organic stuff

 

[Shiner]

I have the feed chart that general hydro put out for the maxi series it just seems a bit excessive
Here's the chart online Feedcharts

 

[budgreene]

My first indoor hydro also bro, these are 12 days from seed but I think I started them to hot to fast (1000 w mh ) , but i have 9 gal in each res 1 gal per hr drip 24/7 .... it started out great ,they were jumping but the ast 24 hrs been looking very yellow. any advice would be greatly appreciated

 

[Shiner]

Yellowing only comes from two things not enough light and too much nitrogen it looks like nute burn time to flush those girls check your ppm before hand only reason I'm not guessing that its your lighting is because at this stage your plants are fighting to get as much light as possible and almost no one ever has too little lighting indoors later on in the plants growth if lighting becomes an issue the plant will yellow from the bottom up

I'd be quick about it based on how far down the leaves it is in the lower left hand corner of that pic the one girl might be stunting itself to protect against absorbing all those nutrient salts

 

[CronicHempHog]

yea my lower leaves always start to yellow a bit when they are in bloom cause they stretch so fast to the lights they tend to block out the light that it dont reach the bottom too well
also had an issue with air at one time causing leaves to yellow
they are pretty hearty plants tho as long as you dont overstress them too much
im also using flouros and led's for main lighting on bloom
and i am not using drip im all bubbler here so its always in water
also them mh and hps lights have alot of heat make sure its not too close to the plants
the flouros i use to veg are really cool i have had my veg plants growing into the fixture at which time i move the light up but i have limited height in the veg tent
its really hard as none of us are using the exact same setup and nutes but as i said they are hearty plants
as long as you dont kill them with overzealous kindness lol
but as soon as they are in the bubbler they get half nutes for the first week then i follow the schedule of the feeding chart starting 2nd week

 

[budgreene]

thx 4 info also hdog ill keep yall up to date on their progress

 

[CronicHempHog]

shows you got a total of 21ml for the first week at seedling stage
the base feeding for mine on week 1 shows15 ml on the first week but
i dont do the feeding schedule on the first week at seedling i do half nutes for 1 week then i got to the regular feeding chart
the advanced feeding chart ive used shows 32ml but i dont use all the formulas so i just up the base number a bit to get near the total if i was only using the base feeding formula if that makes any sense
i was told there was certain things in the advanced feeding chart i didnt really need
but yea as seedling ive never tried full nutes at least for the first week so i dont know how it would fare under full nutes
besides the fact that the roots are still so tiny and few why waste full nutes when it cant really uptake it all
also noted on the page for the feeding chart link you posted, monitor for stress when feeding aggresive formulas

 

[Shiner]

Yeah I saw that and never do full nutes on the first week that's a good way to stunt them from the jump

 

[budgreene]

First week I had 8 gals in one res and 9 in other 15 ml humbolt grow ( 3 gal dose ) 15ml miracle grow 4 deck plants ( 3 gal dose ) 4.5 ml superstrive ( 3 gal dose ).... But I dont know chit about hydro or hydroton , learning from others ( some r sum very smart mofos lol ) I HATE THE WAIT !!

 

[Shiner]

That's part of the game bro I hate to say it but old experienced growers who barely pay any attention to their gardens have the biggest yields

 

[budgreene]

pumped out reservoirs and gotem 5.4 again they wereat 7.8 again today but I only put 4 gals of distilled in each . ppm is at 277 but the veins in the centers are going back rich green

 

[CronicHempHog]

get your ph up to at least 5.6, 5.8 is optimal up to 6.2 will work
and shiner even old experienced growers like to watch thier grow closely its how they catch pests or nutrient issues
also its cool to see it change on an almost daily basis
oh yea hydroton as far as i know holds moisture for one but in reality i believe all the hydroton is for is to give the plant a medium to root in and something to keep it up till the roots grab onto the netpot
everyone has different ideas of how deep or shallow the water should be ive done bubbler
your using drip if im not mistaken so theres a bit of a difference on how you would want the depth of water in the bucket