DWC Drinking huge amounts of water

[dave1989]

Hi guys.

It's my first grow, I'm doing 4 soil and 1 Deep Water Culture.

The DWC plant grew to about twice the size of the others before flowering, it's now an almost 4 square foot SCROG canopy. I'm at around the first week of flowering.

Now this thing is an absolute beast, and is drinking litres and litres each day. Now, my situation is that I monitored PH for the first 4 weeks (now in week 8), and had no real fluctuations or problems at all( seriously, I didn't have to use ph up or down ONCE) so I stopped.

Now, the thing is drinking so much that I'm forced to top it up every day and change it completely once a week. My question is, should the water I'm adding have the same amount of nutrients as the original res water? Or should it just be water? I don't have an EC meter to test how hungry it is, but it's looking healthy so far.

 

[BuddroGreen]

Re: DWC Drinking huge amounts of water.

Always pH, and know your pH, it takes no time at all and can save your azz. I tell this to everyone I help with DWC, Nutrients are the lock & pH is the key (ph unlocks the nutrient elements to the plant...in DWC pH should run between 5.5 - 6.2...I run at 5.7-5.8pH.

I would get an EC/TDS/PPM meter along with a pH pen so you can dial those in. Once you have EC/TDS/PPM meter and the plant has drank a lot of water, test your rez for EC/TDS/PPM an adjust accordingly to the level you want with top off.

If the plant is drinking more water than using nutrients, the EC/TDS/PPM will be higher since the nutrients are becoming more concentrated so only pH'd water would be used to bring the EC/TDS/PPM level down to it's mark.

If the plant is using more nutrients, then you would top off with the difference in pH'd nutrient solution.

Watch your pH, it will swing a lot during different stages of growth.

 

[dave1989]

The thing about PH is that I only used strips, and I'm on such a small scale(1 dwc plant) that I can't see myself(or afford) buying a EC/ppm/ph pen. The strips when I used them, never showed any real variance in ph, I think I'm just lucky with the tap water I get. I understand that I've just been lucky, but I don't want to spend lots of money considering I'm almost done and won't be growing again for a while.

I'm basically just asking what everyone's best guess is. Is my huge plant taking in nutes as fast as water? Or should I be topping up with regular water?

 

[BuddroGreen]

An EC/TDS/PPM & pH pen are $20 each for a digital meter pen on Ebay/Amazon....get each with ATC (automatic temperature compensation)

I wish I could tell you what your plant is doing, they use water & nutrients in different ways during the grow, so it would be very hard for me to tell you what the plant is doing, sometimes they drink more water than they use nutrients, and sometimes they use more nutrients than water.

If you get those two tools EC/TDS/PPM & pH meters/pens (don't forget calibration solution for each, 1500ppm solution & 7.0 pH solution) you will know exactly what your plants are doing:

If the EC/TDS/PPM goes up, the plant is using more water since the EC/TDS/PPM went up (concentrated nutrients, only pH'd water is needed to hit EC/TDS/PPM level)

If the EC/TDS/PPM goes down, then the plant is using more nutrients (a pH'd nutrient solution with the difference in EC/TDS/PPM is needed for top off)

I would get those tools when ready so you will know exactly what your plants are doing, hope this helps.