Deep water culture

[BAM55448]

My questions are
1 what EC at what week should I be measuring?
2 what PH should I shoot for?

Currently I have a good setup and it is working ok. I wanted to get into growing/reading of the plants, before I got into complex growing. I am thinking this will be a basic introduction to Hydroponics for me. I am going with Advanced Nutrients.
i have been growing soil for just about a year. I measure EC and PH, I have a calendar that I fill out every feeding. How much water, what nutrients, how many ml from each then PH and EC.
I HAVE
a Mars hydro tent 120x120 with a MH ts 3000 (this may get updated to a lumeteck 600 pro)
12l buckets with net pots and bubblers

so I was looking on Advanced Site for a hydro feeding schedule, ie. Where should the EC be in veg ? I have it around 1200 to start but the soil gives stuff too by the end of the Bloom cycle I am at around 1900 EC. I have a soil chart I have been referring too it works really well, ie what EC at what week/phase. I just can’t find one for Hydro growing. 2nd what PH should I shoot for? in soil I am going for 6.3 ph I get close most of the time.

Thank you for reading and I am thankful for any Wisdom you guys can throw my way.

 

[TysonOG]

In DWC you need less ppm than soil. Think of it like eating one big meal a day vs many small meals a day. I never exceed 1.0 ec (700ppm) at any point of my grows. The plant will be constantly snacking so you don't need as much. I normally stay around 500 during veg and max out around 650 during weeks 5-7 of flower. I use GH nutes and ro water BTW.
As far as pH, you want it lower than soil. I run 5.8-6.1 in veg and 5.6-5.8 in flower.

 

[GrowTek]

Advanced Nutrients feeding schedules leave a lot to be desired. The ones that I have seen give you the amount to add to a gallon of water but it never tells you what the resulting EC should be. I heard they have good customer service though so you could always email them or give them a call.

 

[Delps8]

BAM - your favorite search engine will help. Seriously.

Two items come to mind - start your plants off with a fraction of what the manufacturer recommends. A nice fraction is ½, though there are others.

Another thing to watch out for it EC vs PPM and that's coming up in this thread already. TysonOG is using the 700 PPM scale but there's also the 500 PPM = EC of 1.0. It makes a difference - I almost pooched my first grow because I wasn't aware of the difference.

EC is the "international standard" because that's how a TDS meter determines TDS. Once the meter measures the electrical conductivity of the solution, it can convert that reading into another scale, one being 500 PPM = 1.0 EC, the other conversion will give a number based on 700 PPM = 1.0 EC.

Options are to always use EC or be aware of which scale is in use.

1200 PPM is a lot of nutes for seedlings. For a seedling, you'll want to start off at ¼ of that. I just finished and auto grow and I never gave it more than EC 1.2.

Re. the nute manufacturer not giving PPM for their mix - there's an easy way around that. I have a 35 gallon res for RDWC (28 gallons usable). I mix a 4 gallon bucket at 100% strength and checks TDS. I use that figure to determine the quantities of individual nutes that are needed to create the 28 gallons of nutrient mix that go in my res. I plug the numbers into an an Excel spreadsheet it gives me the formula for the 28 gallon batch. The 4 gallons at 100% don't go to waste - I use it to top off the res, as needed.

Hope that make sense.

 

[BAM55448]

BAM - your favorite search engine will help. Seriously.

Two items come to mind - start your plants off with a fraction of what the manufacturer recommends. A nice fraction is ½, though there are others.

Another thing to watch out for it EC vs PPM and that's coming up in this thread already. TysonOG is using the 700 PPM scale but there's also the 500 PPM = EC of 1.0. It makes a difference - I almost pooched my first grow because I wasn't aware of the difference.

EC is the "international standard" because that's how a TDS meter determines TDS. Once the meter measures the electrical conductivity of the solution, it can convert that reading into another scale, one being 500 PPM = 1.0 EC, the other conversion will give a number based on 700 PPM = 1.0 EC.

Options are to always use EC or be aware of which scale is in use.

1200 PPM is a lot of nutes for seedlings. For a seedling, you'll want to start off at ¼ of that. I just finished and auto grow and I never gave it more than EC 1.2.

Re. the nute manufacturer not giving PPM for their mix - there's an easy way around that. I have a 35 gallon res for RDWC (28 gallons usable). I mix a 4 gallon bucket at 100% strength and checks TDS. I use that figure to determine the quantities of individual nutes that are needed to create the 28 gallons of nutrient mix that go in my res. I plug the numbers into an an Excel spreadsheet it gives me the formula for the 28 gallon batch. The 4 gallons at 100% don't go to waste - I use it to top off the res, as needed.

Hope that make sense.

It does make sense, I do use EC for the reasons you mentioned above the early research I did told me about PPM and having to do the math, i.e. 700PPM= 1.0EC.
Thank you, though, Good info always. The point I grabbed is start at 1/2, That is about the direction I was going I was going to start at 30%, Advanced recommendations, so I would not burn them I will be doing Queen Berry HulkBerry Auto 10 Weeks. This is a really nice plant, I had it in soil a few cycles ago it was up to EC 1.9, and I had a few slips that I let go i.e. EC1.2 - EC1.5 the next day. I know that soil buffers I will have to measure better this cycle, and I will need to read up on Hydro. I'm doing 3 Gallon freestanding bubble buckets, so no large res. How often should I change the nuts out? Do I check the mixture in the buckets daily, weekly, every x day's?
Thanks for the info.

 

[Delps8]

I know that soil buffers I will have to measure better this cycle, and I will need to read up on Hydro. I'm doing 3 Gallon freestanding bubble buckets, so no large res. How often should I change the nuts out? Do I check the mixture in the buckets daily, weekly, every x day's?
Thanks for the info.

The only bucket I've grown in is my 35 gallon res so I'm thinking this through rather than giving info based on experience with buckets that size.

Growing in a three gallon bucket, I'd check pH and EC daily, at least. The reason for this is that, as the plants get larger, their increased mass will influence the environment to a greater extent so, when they start taking up nutes, pH will tend to rise more quickly than if they were in a larger bucket. I would suspect that, pretty soon, you're going to have a "really full bucket" where the roots dominate the interior space so you'll end up spending a lot of time adding water and/or adding nutes. I did a photo grow in 2017 (that was my first grow, the auto grow this year was my second) and I'm pretty certain that there were days when the plants (two of them) were taking up a couple of gallons a day. That was in a warm climate (SoCal) and the plants were about 4' tall.

What about moving to a larger bucket? Going to 5 gallon buckets is not just an increase of 40% in volume. When you factor in that root mass could take up…a gallon, you'd be going from 3-1= 2 "free" gallons to 5-1= 4 "free" gallons.

Sorry I can't speak from experience on this. Perhaps someone who's grown in freestanding buckets could chime in here.

 

[Dr Fish]

Not a bubble bucket, but Waterfarms are almost the same as buckets with 8" net pot lids. Except they use a drip ring instead of air stones.. Drip on hydroton supplies all the O2 a plant needs without adding any heat.. The another thing the dripring can do is move water from a remote reservoir without any electric water pump.. Sounds hard to believe that a simple plumbing change in a connection to a reservoir could do that.. Half the people reading this are calling BS... Hard to believe a 5 gal grow bucket, on its own can pull 120 gals a day from a remote reservoir.. Simple gravity return.. Each added bucket will do that on its own.. It's all in the plumbing..