Hydro DWC help

H

Hillbilly420

New Member
Hey guys and gals, its me again back with a question that has been bugging me to death and has me working my ass off. Here lately my pH has been dropping like crazy. Say I wake up and the pH would be at 5.63, I would raise it to 5.85 then through out the day it would drop back down low. I repete the same process. Last night it went to freaking 5.3 , I raised it up I turned around and sat for about 30 mins to an hr and it dropped! I changed out my water every Sunday everything under it looks awesome some tanning roots but still a lot of white. I'm on my last week of vegg. This past Sunday (yesterday) I cut back on the nutes. I have the "claw" going on also. Any suggestions?
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Things like that is why I decided on coco. Not too familiar with dwc, dealing with ph issues, or flushing. Personally I would just keep on. Your issues don't look bad enough to do emergency crisis management. I've learned too much micro managing will drive you nuts. Just use nutes that are made for our lady's and work with your system.
 
Well in a healthy system tanking pH means you need more nutes...It is a long explanation... But you have too much N so yes first is dump the res. Those leaves wont recover so just let them be until the wither and fall off.

Dumping the res and starting over should solve your issues unless you have an infection in the medium. What are the res temps?


To truly diagnose this type of issue I want to know 3 days worth of water levels, PPM and pH. With that info I can pretty much nail what is going on.

Your situation is a bit hairy.

Dump the res, Take the basket to the sink or bathtub and rinse it out thoroughly. The pH swing wont hurt the plant at all. The plant can handle all sorts of pH...it is the nutes that can't. Give it a good like looooong cleaning. Then start a new res. That plant "should be" at about the time it takes off BUT it is probably stunted now. So you could go 1/3 - 1/2 max nutes if you knew what that was for your setup But maybe stick to 1/4 since it is probably stunted. Take 3 days of measurements and repost. As it may be stunted we may see little change in the first 3 days unless you have an infection or problem in the medium now. In that case we would take even more "drastic" actions.

If it were me I would just go for it and after the rinse and new res I would dump in a pile of beneficial bacteria through the medium to clean it up and you would be good to go.

So that brings up the question... are you running sterile or living?

You probably don't have an infection yet so you could stay sterile. Sterile works until it doesn't then you have to go living and make the plant happy.

:thumb:
 
All I can say is wow, lol I have some learning to do still, but here all I know what to tell you lol, my temps in the res stays between 65-69f I don't let it get past that point, my ph goes from a 5.87 down to a 5.56, I have a 6 in one meter. I read at all times. Now on my water level as of right now is a little below my net pot, I'm thinking of adding a little water to her, now on the sterile part, I'm not sure. All I know is every Sunday I change water, I buy the great value purified drinking water, I add about 2Ml per gallon of calimagic to make up what's not there, not to mention I'm a noob on hydro, I'm not going to lie this is some hard stuff. Which I get stressed out over cause its my only girl, yea the other day it showed me a baby pistol lol. But back to where we was. Last Sunday well this past Sunday when she got new water I cut back on the nutes, but not by to much I was scared that she would be wanting what I took, I don't have any Nute burn, but my res is a gallon and a half. I only mix my 3 part gh to the gallon and a half. My addys I mix for 1 gal. This coming up Sunday I'm going to mix everything for just 1 gal. Yes I know flowering is going to be rough with the limited water for her. Sunday before last she was 12 inches and Sunday is was 13 and a half inches. I haven't messure her today or nothing. But last night she took a rough turn I thought I was going to have to pull the plug x.x she was durppy looking shit was going all to hell, I just let some fresh air come in and this morning when I came in here she's perked up and a sign of relief came over me. Now villiageidiot what should u suggest about all of this and o yea temps in the room stay from 68-74f
 
First I would say I still don't have the info I need but I will throw some stuff out. I would prefer to just link to some threads where I have explained things. Some if it gets complicated. I try hard to take a 200 page article and get it down to a few paragraphs that a pot head can understand but still some of it takes a bit of care to understand.

This morning I explained on the last page or so of this journal (It may have been updated since then) WHY in a healthy res pH is based off PPM.

Perpetual Grow Among Other Things!


That said I am confused as in your first post you said your pH was tanking but now you say it isn't.

Changing the res is not necessary. I have a friend that does his entire grow without changing the res. I wont do that... I go about 4-6 weeks or if there is a problem I will change it. Really depends on many factors. In heavy growth where I am topping off 1/5 of the res a day it doesn't even make sense to be changing as you are just going through so much.

I don't really see a lot of info in there to go off and I don't understand what the problem is at this point. In the pictures above you are showing an overdose of nutes which is likely due to too little light. You can back off the nutes too but probably you just need a lot more photosynthesis going on.

But to be honest without PPM data on your solution and not understanding the feeding / top off schedule I can't really say much.

Are you saying you dump the res once a week and refill it once a week and do not top off as the week goes on? Also sounds like you may be having the water too high. In DWC you want it at least an inch below the basket once roots come out of the basket.

I could go on and on about what if's.....

I would suggest you read through this guys journal. He documented everything and followed my advice to a tee and is getting his first real results. 100% DIY setup and he is only into like his 4th or 5th grow and he has outstanding results now. I pretty much explain everything you need to know about DWC at some point in his journal.

ClosetCase420's - RDWC - 600W MH/HPS - Wonder Woman - Grow Journal - 2015

As far as sterile goes. This is a religious debate. Many people will only run sterile mostly because someone told them to. They have been able to make it work and have had great results so they are too scared to change. I think most people actually run a living res (and many don't even realize it) which is essentially putting in beneficial microorganisms that live and breed in the res killing off any bad stuff and keeping it clean and providing lots of extra nute absorption and a lot more fun stuff. Many people are just following the recipes or recommendations from the nute manf. and all of them sell the basic forms of microbes. So if a person is just following a program and doesn't really understand the bottles they are probably running a living res.

One thing at a time though. Read the last few posts of mine post in the one journal...then get real high and take an hour to read through ClosetCase's Journal. Then See if you understand what your problem is.

My bet is your ratio of photosynthesis to solution concentration is out of balance. You need to back way off and also understand and learn about pH cycling and understand a bit more about how during Veg we want to promote a different ratio of nutes through all the different stages of growth.

:thumb:
 
I'm back y'all, alright I dumped my res on Friday. My res is only a gallon and a half, so I mixed everything to a gallon so if I'm right that's 3/4 mix or 1/2 mix I'm not sure. Now my leaves use to be perked up in them or,ing and the lay down around there bedtime. My ppm is around 480 to 500 but my ph is still going down. Like mad I'm fighting with it everyday. I did what village said wash out my medium well I did yesterday, my top of my girl bent over when I did it took her all day just to stand back up. So what's ppl suggestions?
 
I'm back y'all, alright I dumped my res on Friday. My res is only a gallon and a half, so I mixed everything to a gallon so if I'm right that's 3/4 mix or 1/2 mix I'm not sure. Now my leaves use to be perked up in them or,ing and the lay down around there bedtime. My ppm is around 480 to 500 but my ph is still going down. Like mad I'm fighting with it everyday. I did what village said wash out my medium well I did yesterday, my top of my girl bent over when I did it took her all day just to stand back up. So what's ppl suggestions?
 
I recommend taking daily readings of your res and then you will know whats up. typically in a time of problems you might want to take readings 2-3 times a day to see what is happening.

If you have a clean system and the PPM is stable and the water level is dropping and pH is dropping then you need to up the nutes....

But I wouldn't just up the nutes without data on your res. That may not be what is happening. It is very hard to grow Hydro without monitoring the res.
 
Well man, here is what's going on. I took your advice and washed out my medium and changed out water, when I ran water through her, her top (never topped) leaned over a bit. Well I figured where she had to have that pocket if air she was over water, I cut back the nutes, she went a couple of days and she acted like she was needing food. Well my ph was still jumping down, I dumped again and changed water. Upped the feed and lowered the nitrogen. Now her ph is still going down my friend let me have some forlasheild so I'm going to flush her medium once again. That's son thing like that h2o2 if I'm not mistaken, now you asked that if I had any beneficial bacteria, the answer is yes, I didn't find out until last night after I did research. Its my floralicious plus go figure. But she's looking fine besides the fucked up ph.
 
Well typically dropping pH is for lack of nutes in a healthy res. If it isn't for lack of nutes then there is possibly an infection. Sounds like you were doing the right things to fix an infection. H2O2 is a way to prevent and infection but once you have an infection often times that is not strong enough and you need a good bacterial tea. I doubt you have an infection I suspect you are underfeeding her.

I have saved multiple grows on this website using a bacterial brew concoction I have posted on here many times. It isn't hard to find in the DWC section. I would hesitate to just point you at it without knowing anything about the situation. My tea is a complete plant food and used incorrectly in DWC you can burn your plants. There are hundreds of tea recipes out there though. It sounds to me like you just have too low a PPM still but it is hard to tell without res readings.

How does the res smell? How do the roots look? What temp is the res? What PPM are you at? Has the plant stopped growing vigorously ( you should be seeing a few inches a week min)?

Without the right info I can't really help.


The plant drooping a little after washing the medium is to be expected.

:goodluck:
 
Alright the res is 1 gallon and a half. My ppm 800, my water level right now is a little below the need mark, my temps range from 67 to 70.50 I never let it go over 71 I just don't want any unwanted bacteria. She drinks about a 1/4th a gallon every so many days. My Nute mix is off the gh feeding chart.
 
AH...

In DWC rule of thumb is 5 gallons a plant. Less than that and it makes it difficult to control accurately and in step. More than that is not needed but the more you have the easier it is to grow. You can do it easily for under 5 gal a plant and many do it around 3-4 using a 5 gallon bucket.

1.5 is very low. You will have to be in there monitoring and adjusting a few times a day.

in a very healthy system a plant can easily go through a gallon a day. My last grow I screwed up all sorts of things and my 4 plants were going through more than 5 gallons a day. I was using a res at about 28-30 gallons and would come in and top off a full bucket daily at the peak.

Also another good thing there is I could let it go down to 25 or even 20 gallons to accelerate root growth if I wanted to.

Anyway it is hard to maintain control that small. So a lot of rules of thumb are out the window. You are going to have to manage it closely.


And you say your are following a chart. Those charts are based on ideal conditions with optimal growing standards. Most people are not running grows like this which is what those charts represent.

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And they can't put on the label every formula for every type of micro garden. It is likely that you are not running the most optimal lighting and have optimized humidity and temps. so the photosynthesis is reduced some. Also they nute start of low and get bigger until the middle of bloom. That is because the nutes support photosynthesis. so as we keep adding more fan leaves we need to add more support. but we don't want the same amount now as we will want when the plant is really big. And as the plant starts to shut down those leaves in late bloom we need to back off the nutes again.

Here is a chart that explains a lot of the things needed for a popper healthy fast vigorous high yield grow. Scientifically developed but the people who make the best hydro product for cannabis on the market.

CCH2O-Recommendations-Graph-1024x743.jpg




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Man you know what I read somewhere on here that the bigger the res easier it is to maintenance everything, well I'm right on top of the ph and the temp and everything, since you know it's my first and like anyone on there first they are all over it, well if I do the math in a 5 gallon and took room for the net pot that's about 4 gallons of water a time, let me see if I can't get a hold of a new bucket it "with the lid" and change over everything I'll let you know then man.. I was on the path lol
 
How about a 5 gallon tote, it brings it to 3 gallon of just water my buddy is doing that he is also fighting ph his net pot is 6in water temps 68-70 ppms stay the same, his drinks about half a gallon every so many days. We believe if we cut of the flora plus out the ph will be alright. We also got to thinking we use the sheild once a week with washout the rocks and roots, that will be washing slats from out the net pot and rocks. Now that's a gallon and a half more than mine. What do u think villiage?
 
Many people work it fine at 3. But you can't venture far off ;)

Flora shield I think is a product used when running a sterile system. Not to be used with any of the stuff I do. So I can only help you once it gets bad because once you get a bad infection that stuff doesn't work anymore.


I think you mean Floralicious Plus? Yeah I think you probably don't have a well tuned enough system to use that correctly. In fact again I think that is best used in a living system not sterile.


I bet you are confused and don't know what I mean by living vs. sterile system. That really is one of the first things to decide before you go buy stuff. do you want to fight nature and try to run it sterile or do you want to work with nature and run a living ecosystem full of symbiotic and beneficial organisms.

It is a religious debate. There is a place for both of them. I prefer the results from a living system myself.

What you don't want to do is put beneficial organisms into a sterile environments and just waste money.

I gotta run for tonight but I will catch up with you tomorrow.
 
so village has covered alot there.

I would say you need a bigger res for sure. bigger res is more stable and you dont need to keep topping it up. not sure why you chose dwc if running that size res.

As far as im concerned for beginners a sterile res is easier to understand and have success with. id empty res, rinse off roots and medium with water and start again. The beauty of dwc is that is can be fixed quickly 9 times out of 10.

I work in ec so in veg you dont need res any higher than ec 1.4 and in flower 1.8ec max.

dont keep tampering with ph. usually between 5.5 and 6.2 is fine. theres no need to keep it at a fixed number as long as its fluctuating between those numbers.
 
I must be Alice and I live in wonderland I can't wake up lol Man I came in here this morning the p h is 5.85 last night before I played down 5.73 now I must be in wonderland lol I bet the infection died or where I didn't had much plus them little bacterias died hell I don't know what's going on
 
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