Hi 420, I recently tried my hand at DWC as my Hempy cups were not performing as expected and I wanted to have more control over the root environment as well as being able to check up on the roots.
The standard DWC setup seemed simple and cheap enough for me to try so I bought a cheap but powerful air pump and a small plastic container that can hold a liter of water with enough of a gap left that the bottom of the plant medium does not sit directly in the water.
I soaked the air stones in ph 5.5 water for just over an hour and the ph rose to 5.6 in that time, I have an Amnesia clone in rockwool that had developed quite a strong root system so I decided she would be given the honour of being my first true hydro girl(thanks to heaps of bad luck now my only vegging plant of this pheno, it's slightly older clone sister just opened her legs in the flower room to show me some beautiful mini bud sites first time I've grown a plant to the point where buds are forming so a big milestone in my green career)
The res was stable at 5.8 740ppm and the first two days the clone was in the DWC all was gravy the roots exploded and height almost doubled, then on the third day when I checked the res I noticed a slimey substance on the roots so I gently washed it off then checked the ph to find it was at 8.2! The plant had drunk about a 1/4l of water with hardly any nute uptake as the ppm rose by 200 which should therefore lower the ph but it keeps rising, that third day I brought the ph back down to 5.9 (btw I use fresh lemons to ph down) and the next day it was back up to over 7 with more gunk forming so I changed the res and cleaned the air stones and res then reset back to original ph and ppm. The next day it rose again and no matter how many times I adjust the ph it keeps rising back to over 7 and if I leave it more than a day it will climb past 8, the clone which was exploding in growth has now completely stopped both in root structure and plant structure and the leaves are developing a bleached look starting from the tips.
Can someone advise as to why my ph is spiking so radically as I can't figure out what it is. Also I used a 1/2 and 1/2 mix of mineral and tap water for the first res then when I realised I would probably be chucking out that water every other day the next two res changes were with just tap water at 140ppm, the nutes I use are Hesi hydro and the Temps inside my cab are about 80 degrees at the moment.
Any help is greatly appreciated
The standard DWC setup seemed simple and cheap enough for me to try so I bought a cheap but powerful air pump and a small plastic container that can hold a liter of water with enough of a gap left that the bottom of the plant medium does not sit directly in the water.
I soaked the air stones in ph 5.5 water for just over an hour and the ph rose to 5.6 in that time, I have an Amnesia clone in rockwool that had developed quite a strong root system so I decided she would be given the honour of being my first true hydro girl(thanks to heaps of bad luck now my only vegging plant of this pheno, it's slightly older clone sister just opened her legs in the flower room to show me some beautiful mini bud sites first time I've grown a plant to the point where buds are forming so a big milestone in my green career)
The res was stable at 5.8 740ppm and the first two days the clone was in the DWC all was gravy the roots exploded and height almost doubled, then on the third day when I checked the res I noticed a slimey substance on the roots so I gently washed it off then checked the ph to find it was at 8.2! The plant had drunk about a 1/4l of water with hardly any nute uptake as the ppm rose by 200 which should therefore lower the ph but it keeps rising, that third day I brought the ph back down to 5.9 (btw I use fresh lemons to ph down) and the next day it was back up to over 7 with more gunk forming so I changed the res and cleaned the air stones and res then reset back to original ph and ppm. The next day it rose again and no matter how many times I adjust the ph it keeps rising back to over 7 and if I leave it more than a day it will climb past 8, the clone which was exploding in growth has now completely stopped both in root structure and plant structure and the leaves are developing a bleached look starting from the tips.
Can someone advise as to why my ph is spiking so radically as I can't figure out what it is. Also I used a 1/2 and 1/2 mix of mineral and tap water for the first res then when I realised I would probably be chucking out that water every other day the next two res changes were with just tap water at 140ppm, the nutes I use are Hesi hydro and the Temps inside my cab are about 80 degrees at the moment.
Any help is greatly appreciated