DWC Nutrient Question

[CuriousKiwi]

Heya All

Big Hello from NZ
Got a question on what the majority of you guys do with nutrient dosing to your RDWC or DWC's.
Say i had individual DWC's with water volumes of 50Litres each, now the plants will use approx 5 litres each per week, leaving 45 litres of nutirent water to dispose off and refresh weekly.

Question Part........Do you add nutients to the water for only the 5litres the plants are using or are you dosing nutrients to the water for 50litres.......the plants are only going to take up what they want, so seems like a massive waste of nutrients as well as environmental damage to dump unessicarily.

Curiuos as to what routine or dosing schedule/water change you guys have found to give best to plants with minimal waste.......

Thnaks

 

[Papageno]

There is no good answer to your question only individuals opinions supported by systems that are not relevant to you. Unless they have they exact system and lights and ventilation and ambient temps / RH... Unless they are running your system it is only relative not absolute.

There are many ways to run a DWC. I have a good buddy who is able to run without a res change through his entire grow. Many people opt to make things easy and dump the res weekly with a program that requires no monitoring but that costs a bit more money.

Most people can not go an entire grow without dumping the res. Each grower does what they do based on their skill level, knowledge, and bank account.

The more skilled you are the less you have to spend...but still if you are a professional with hundreds of plants in a warehouse the cost benefit ratio for doing things very simple and consistent outweighs the extra cost of some more expensive programs.

It is recommended that you check your res daily. The res results will tell you a lot about what is happening. If the water goes down and the PPM stays the same that is a very different thing to deal with than the res goes down and PPM goes up. And that is very different than both water and PPM going down. Some things do not get added weekly. Some things may be added daily if the plants are drinking it up. The actual dosing schedule is dependent on a lot of things and no bottle has enough label space to describe all possible programs. They usually have one concentration labeled that is for during peak growth in a perfect environment under professional lighting.

So to answer the question directly. If you are dumping your res weekly yes you are wasting money... but depending on what you are trying to accomplish that may not matter! Having no need of monitoring your res may be your goal. Not too smart however when you are new to this. You really want to try and learn as much as you can. If you have some knowledge and skill you can extend the res changes much longer and even indefinitely like my buddy does (not recommended). To do that yes you measure your res, understand what the needs are, mix up the appropriate top off, dump that into the res, measure the res again.

No one can give you exact numbers. Everyone always tries to ask. I tried once to explain why that is a bogus question here...go smoke a bowl first... it is a long read.

Optimal PH and PPM from Seed/clone - Harvest?


Best of luck!!!


You should have access to Mills brand nutes down in Kiwi land...real good and easy to use.