DWC Deep Water Culture. first hydro attempt.

[WeedyMcWeedWeed]

do you use hygrozyme, or some other enzyme formula? also you could add some bene's if you don't do that either. either of those would help tremendously with roots if you haven't done either. hygrozyme all the time! bene's once in a while. superthrive is good too, but not like the other two as far as roots go.

the leaves are looking very healthy though! remind me again (im forgetful lol) when are you planning on going to 12/12? what is the plan about keeping a plant going to clone again later?

i have only used FF nutes. FFGB hydro & FFBB. with this res change i will be adding open sesame. as the big plant hasnt shown sex. i thought i had taken that clone from my lady in the tron. but it may have came from the unkown plant i culled out. either way ill be using the FFGBH &FFBB for a week then FFGBH, FFBB, & FFOS for at least 2 more weeks. as i dont wanna switch to 12/12 until all plants are around 2 feet tall. and they rang from 8" with the small bushy one in the DWC. 18" with the tall one in the DWC. 13" in the square pot, and 14" in the round pot. i have 7' ceilings id like to get some decent ladies, im hoping to flower at 2ft and end up with 4-5' at the end. hopefully

your plants are looking much healthier! +rep

thanks. yours are looking nice too.

Looking good.
+rep

thanks man

 

[Tunes420]

Looking super ...keep up great work

 

[WeedyMcWeedWeed]

thanks man. will do

 

[hapgrowy]

lookin good weedy... if you're still using the 2liter idea, try filling them with salt water because it freezes at a lower temp thus will stay frozen longer...
ne way lookin forward to future progress

 

[OldMedUser]

Hey there Weedy. Looking great. Ain't DWC the bomb?!

Just read through your postings and have a few things to comment on. Nothing negative.

The browning of the roots is likely normal as long as they're not going slimy. I use Advanced Nutrients non-organic and the roots stay white until I add Dr. Hornsby Big Bud then they turn light brown like yours. Big Bud is organic and it worried me the first time it happened but the roots kept growing fine.

Like dez97candycl says above add salt to the water in your bottles so they freeze at lower temps and last longer in your tanks. A quarter to one half cup is lots.

I wouldn't worry about adding too many air stones. I use one 12" per tank and that seems to work fine even with the bigger tanks.

If you're topping up with fresh water, pour it through the baskets to flush the roots and wash out any nute build up. Don't try to add any drip lines. Totally unnecessary with DWC.

I hope you have figured out a good way to support the massive colas you're going to get if you try to end up with 4-5' plants or they'll be flopping over like mine. lol

Great looking plants all round. Nice job! Plus rep for sure.

 

[WheeloFortune]

i like labrats suggestions,

just one thing. go with the blue freezer packs.

while it is true that adding salt will lower the freezing point, making it liquid longer and giving it a bit better heat capacity around the normal freezing point, overall it won't help. that's because the type of bonding in water molecules gives it an Extremely high cheat capacity. if you add salt, it will lower the heat capacity of the water by changing the bonding structure, and they will warm up even faster than regular water.

a few facts to convince you -
the freezing point of fresh water is 32*f while the freezing point of saturated salt water is about 28.6*f. that gets you 4* more of cold water in liquid form which would have a higher HC than ice for those 4*.

however fresh water has a HC (in btu/lb*F) of 1.07, while salt water has a HC of about 0.936.

meaning that salt water loses heat about 15% FASTER than distilled water.

-----------------------------------------

good luck buddy. your looking great anyways.

also about the roots, labrat is right a bit of browning could be due to your nutes, esp adding all those worm castings from FF. are they slimy at all? early in flower i like to add bene's like pirranha or voodoo juice. bosst the beneficial microbes that help the plant uptake and utilize the nutes you are giving them, plus they choke and kill any bad microbes living in your water.

they are expensive though, so your choice. I think you would see a diff if you used bene's. esp voodoo juice which is like $50 for a liter.



WOF

 

[OldMedUser]

i like labrats suggestions,

just one thing. go with the blue freezer packs.

while it is true that adding salt will lower the freezing point, making it liquid longer and giving it a bit better heat capacity around the normal freezing point, overall it won't help. that's because the type of bonding in water molecules gives it an Extremely high heat capacity. if you add salt, it will lower the heat capacity of the water by changing the bonding structure, and they will warm up even faster than regular water.

a few facts to convince you -
the freezing point of fresh water is 32*f while the freezing point of saturated salt water is about 28.6*f. that gets you 4* more of cold water in liquid form which would have a higher HC than ice for those 4*.

however fresh water has a HC (in btu/lb*F) of 1.07, while salt water has a HC of about 0.936.

meaning that salt water loses heat about 15% FASTER than distilled water.

It's been 19 years since I graduated chemical sciences so I certainly have no argument with the figures you quote.

I built a distillation condenser using a large coffee can with a copper coil inside built to hold a 2L pop bottle. I use it to distill petroleum ether from camp stove fuel (I prefer Coleman). At first I used RO water in the bottle and could only run for about 20-30 min before needing a new frozen bottle. Then I tried adding salt and freezing those. I can almost distill a 4L can of gas before needing another bottle.

Not very scientific but the empirical evidence tells me there is more to this than the numbers you are going by. My deep freeze is about -30C so is it possible that the supersaturated salt solution can "store" more cold than the RO water alone?

Now I just have to find out for sure and will have to do a little experimentation. Maybe dig up some of my old text books. There may be other compounds to use in the water for better results.

Any idea what is used in those freezer packs? I could maybe use the liquid from a few of those to fill my bottles and get better performance yet. Hmmmmm ... inquiring minds NEED to know.

Damn you for making this old cat curious! :0)

Thanks for the tip.

 

[WheeloFortune]

lol, no prob labrat. i am a bit of a labrat myself, and my thermo class was taken not that long ago. lol. Science rules my life!

-30*C is about -22*F for all my fellow americans. most regular freezers only get a few degrees below 0F. some chest freezers can get to -20F, but not most uprights. . . so you are really deep freezing your ice.

if you want to read more about it, and check for yourself, there are two things to take into consideration

1) Heat capacity
2)latent heat of fusion (the amount of energy it takes to turn a solid into a liquid or vice versa)

the latent heat of fusion of water is also one of the highest of common liquids. water really is one of the best. thats why those little blue guys are only a BIT more efficient than water. If they invented an ice that stayed cold SIGNIFICANTLY longer than water, it would be a huge item for coolers and camping and tailgating and stuff. but as it is now, regular water ice is still one of the cheapest and best ways to keep something cold.

the best thing you can do to keep it cold, is keep it well insulated. if you wrapped your coffee can in fiberglass insulation, you would get a longer time to stay cold.

here is a short explination from a book i have for grade schoolers. lol.

Explanation
Water, when heated, evaporates slowly in comparison to other liquids. This means that the heat of
vaporization is high—the highest of all common liquids. Water also has a high latent heat of fusion.
Latent heat of fusion refers to the amount of heat gained or lost when a substance changes from a solid to
a liquid, or a liquid to a solid. When ice is formed, large quantities of heat are given off. Liquid water also
has an extremely high heat capacity, the amount of heat required to raise its temperature (between the
freezing and boiling points). The high values of the heat capacity, heat of vaporization, and latent heat of
fusion mean that it takes more heat to cause a change in temperature in water than in most other substances.
This makes water a strong buffer against both rising and falling temperatures.

 

[WeedyMcWeedWeed]

lmao. thanks for the science class guys. a little more then i needed to know. but please feel free to continue the conversation. its nice to learn something new ya know.

but yeah i have some of those blue freezer packs. but ill buy some new ones, to put into the DWC. the ones i have are old as shit, so i dont really want to use them.

thank you again for all the info.

 

[Gemini61782]

Your ladies are look lookin' pretty groovy Weedy, I am gonna start a Bubble DWC soon, gonna run 4' florescent, clay, 1plant/pot, flora grow and flora micro, got a therm/rh for the room, and rock wool. At least that's what I got so far. I know I need a ppm metre and a ph test kit, but what else do you suggest I pick up? I just wanna get it all before I start.
Also, sorry to hear about your fam's loss, I know what you're goin' thru big dog.

Latro Gemini

 

[WeedyMcWeedWeed]

umm, well you need an air pump and air stones. definitely need a ppm pen, and ph test. also what kind of florescent? and whats the clay? also, youll need a fan. and a timer for the light. light proof your flower room. etc. and i thermometer for the water it self. keep it around 65*-70*. this is a very important factor that i didnt know at first.

other then that, my ladies have grown like champions. the only issue i see, is theres no way i could have 4 plants in it. and you should probably have clones from the same plant or seeds of the same strain. because you cant adjust for each plants liking. i might switch to 5 gallon bucket DWCs. but i have decided yet.

 

[WeedyMcWeedWeed]

ok i posted this in the problems, pests, and diseases. would you guys think that using the FF nutes would cause me to have organic sludge? because i did my flush/res change last night. and my roots have always had a little bit of brown to them. and when i did the flush i just used plain distilled water. my ppm gauge read it at 5, on a .5 scale, so it had a ppm of 10. and a pH of around 5.7-5.9. and i poured 3 gallons through the net pots, and i flushed with a total of 6 gallons, a little less then i run it with.

i let it flush for about 4 hours, cleaned res again, and then filled res with 8 gallons of distilled water, again ppm of 10, with no nutes. and proceeded to add nutes, now if you go buy FF schedule you would have to use for 8 gallons, 24 tsp of grow big hydro, 6 tbl of big bloom, and 2 tsp of open sesame. which seemed like a whole lot to me. we only used, 12 tsp of GBH, 4 tbl of BB and 2 tsp of OS. and our ppm read 627 which would acutaly be 1254. we only used about half of whats required. should we have used more the FF schedule says the ppm should be over 1600. but thats another story.

my issue is with the brown stuff all over the nutes, its not slimy. and it can be mostly sprayed off. is this just from the muddy FF nutes. it has me worried. before i thought light was getting in through the net pots, but the plants are plenty big enough to stop that, plus i added more hydroton to the netpots before anyways.

i have pics just not uploaded yet. they will be probably tonight or tomorrow. i have the find my usb adapter.

 

[WeedyMcWeedWeed]

 

[OldMedUser]

For Christ's sake Weedy, relax. If the girls are growing good the roots are good! The pic of your roots are great and the roots are perfect! I hope you didn't keep them out of the water too long. Like a fish it stresses the hell out of them when they can't breathe.

You're doing a fine job and if you could relax a bit you'd have a lot more fun.

 

[WeedyMcWeedWeed]

i just worry for the fact im on my first grow &1st hydro grow at the same time dont wanna fuck up ya know

 

[Tunes420]

Looking super!

 

[Doctor Dread]

i just worry for the fact im on my first grow &1st hydro grow at the same time dont wanna fuck up ya know

Hey man we all fuck up in some form or anouther along the way... Its all about learning from everything you do. Every aspect of growing is a learning experience. You just have to learn to go with it. If herb is a rollercoaster, buy the ticket, take the ride...

 

[WheeloFortune]

i F up all the time. usually cause im stoned and over analyze something.

the pic isn't the easiest to see, but the roots look ok. if you want huge root mass to get huge results, try adding some voodoo juice and piranha. you have no idea how much the voodoo juice will help.

 

[The Butcher]

The roots look healthy.Fox Farm makes a great nute regimine. Always remember to start quarter strength when it comes to ANY nute chart.Then work your way up. Check the labeling on some of you nutes.If you are using any nutes that aren't from the same line then read the lbeling carefully.there are nutes that will state that they are not to bu used in cunjuction with other nuts due to some of the chemocal reactions they can cause. Ant the results can be devistating as in lock out or rot.Then i say from experience.Just suggestion.adn 1 more thing hygrozyme may be expensive but ALWAYS go with it in your grows it will save a world of hurt.

Oh, and i read the whole journal great start.Learning is the key to growing.And sorry to hear about you cousin.I recently lost my father to alcohol, my simpathy and prayers goes out to you and you fams.

 

[Munki]

my ppm gauge read it at 5, on a .5 scale, so it had a ppm of 10.

Could you explain what you mean here Weedy? I think you may have a misunderstanding about TDS conversion rates with electronic meters. Do you have a meter that has a .5 conversion rate? If so that is converting from an EC (electrical conductivity) value, the one that is listed in the thousands. EC is also often reported divided by 1000, appearing more like a number like this, 1.6

A meter with a .5 conversion rate should be considered a 500 conversion rate in this case. The meter is calculating the display from its measured EC and multiplying it by 500 to display its PPM value. The 1.6 in the example would show as 800 PPM. The same solution would show as 1120 PPM on a meter that had the .7 conversion (700).

Here is a handy dandy little chart that can help.