Newbie DWC GSC Auto Grow: Please Help Me Get It Right

[sid]

Hey folks!
Quick question.
Ive been drying for a week now. Temps are in the low 30's, RH @ bout 70%, any experience how long to dry under similar circumstances ? Buds are not dense.

The snap the stem test, I suppose I choose one of the main stems to see how dry it is ? It still seems soft, not snappy.

Thanks folks!
Take care.

 

[r0am1ng st0ner]

Hey folks!
Quick question.
Ive been drying for a week now. Temps are in the low 30's, RH @ bout 70%, any experience how long to dry under similar circumstances ? Buds are not dense.

The snap the stem test, I suppose I choose one of the main stems to see how dry it is ? It still seems soft, not snappy.

Thanks folks!
Take care.

I get weird results trying to snap branches idk I squeeze the bud if there is a dry crunch to the outer layer I jar it with a moisture meter, if it gets above 70% I take all the bud out to sit in open for a couple hours. I then leave them in jar with boveda to artificially keep the RH

 

[sid]

hmmm... moisture meter for a jar.... amazon it is.
This spending, does it stop ?

 

[r0am1ng st0ner]

This is what I use but you could go without just squeeze the bud and see if it feels crisp or moist. keep out till crisp then jar for 3-4 days see if it's moist. leave it out to get crisp again before jaring to cure

Edit: I do not put one in every jar but rather for one plant I will put one in the densest buds it is just so I know the humidity is not spiking but I get more use out of my integra boost 2 way humidity packs if you are going to buy anything I would get these not the hygrometer. the boost pack I put in every jar because it will suck up extra humidity or give out RH

 

[sid]

Hey Folks!
Finally got my lazy ass to do something! First off, huge huge thanks to all guiding me through my first kinda succesfull grow, under a home made lights rig. This is what I got, and some more big jars. Its prolly poor by your standards, buts its the best weed i ever smoked. Its seeded, and that is ok. Free seeds to play with! Blimburn GSC auto.



And the deal was, if I get a smokable harvest, Ill spend on some proper equipment. So now I have a tent, Quantum lights (LM561c), and built myself a kinda proper RDWC system which is still a work in progress, leak issues and all. I am also attempting coco for the first time, and am enjoying the lack of wet! The DWC has a chiller attached and with ambient temps of 35 and 70+ rh, its a drip fountain.

DWC has 1 x Lemon auto, and 1 x GSC auto seed from the previous harvest.
The coco has 1 x GSC auto seed from the previous harvest.



Here is where it is gets interesting, bring in south asia, getting any of the commercial nute lines is a financial hazard. And there some local generic hydro nutes, quite reasonable. But Im gonna try my own. So with huge thanks to @Skybound and the great folks across a multitude of forums and hydrobuddy, I mixed this simple 2 part recipe up plus a calmag for the coco just in case.

2-part + Calmag

Coming up next. How it is doing and soliciting your help!

Thanks folks!

 

[sid]

So, as it is usually with me, always unprepared. Took a few seeds from the GSC buds and put them in a paper towel, 2 germinated!! One went into a DWC bucket and another in coco. Then I had some Lemon auto freebies of which 1 was germinated. I let the seedlings go for a while without any nutes, partially to see what a seedling does without nutes, mostly because I wasn't ready with anything.

Now. EC @ .85 / pH@5.6 / Res temp 19-20c / Ambient mid 30's / RH 70+
Light @ 36" or so. Germinated bout 12-14 days back.

DWC1 : The Seedsman Lemon auto. New growth is looking fine I think. Good root development. The new growth is quite a dark color, and the stem has dark color too, anything to worry about ?




COCO : GSC seed from Blimburn auto harvest. Started this in a coco plug, moved it to a fabric pot 5 days ago, and fed it with a .8 EC solution day 1, .4 EC CalMag solution day 3, .8EC solution day 4. It seems to be getting some color now, and new growth looks ok. To the best of my knowledge the coco is not buffered. I washed it and strained it and it nice and open and clean. No perlite etc. I think its plenty airy.



Im skipping the other GSC in the DWC bucket cause its really odd, and let us see where it goes. I have another seed that just popped in this netpot, and maybe ill pull this one out once the other seed comes out.

Thanks a ton for dropping by and entertaining my careless grows!
Take care folks!
Best!

 

[sid]

Hey folks!
Hope all well!

Ambient 35c RH 50-60%

DWC The Lemon Auto is looking ok I think, root growth is good, but the tops are slow. Res has stabilized at an EC of bout .86-.87 and a pH of 5.8, some reading suggest thick and slow growth could be a boron deficiency, which usually leads to Ca def. But maybe im overthinking it and the plant is doing well. res temps @ 19c




Coco : So clearly a deficiency in the coco grow. Im inclined to think im looking at a Mg deficit. Could be K. I did not buffer the coco, so it could be from that ? I have today flushed the medium with a ton of water. Then ran 2L of CalMag dilution to .3 EC (with a bg of .4 for a total of .7), which was 1ml/l. The cal mag is DIY as in 2 posts above. ph to 5.8

Ill run the same tomorrow, and then add the A-B nutes dayafter. My understanding is I need to saturate the medium with Ca and Mg to avoid it reacting with the same in the nute solution which leads to an unwanted reaction. I cant remember the details exactly, please accept my apologies.



Please correct me if im wrong.

Thanks a ton folks!
Be safe.

 

[sid]

Hey folks!

A little help.
home made nutes.
2 plants in DWC, one in Coco.
Coco was cleaned but not buffered.
I flushed the medium well and fed only calmag @ .300EC for 2 days.
Today I fed nutes @ EC1

Plants in DWC getting same nutes, sans calmag, and are nice an green.
This one in the coco is showing signs of nutes deficiency, but growing well otherwise.

I think its Magnesium, but I would not know better.
Any advise ?



Cheers folks!
Be safe.

 

[sid]

Hey folks!
Hope all well!

Update to the 3 plants, they have started moving. Hot in here, averaging 35c, RH @ 50%.
Home made nutes, simple A+B formula. Recipe a few post up.
2 plants in DWC and 1 in coco. I had to move the chiller for the DWC outside the room through a window behind the tent cause it was getting impossible to be in the room long. Trying to maintain 19c in the res. at bout 21 now.

Running an EC of bout 1.2

Plant 1. DWC. Lemon auto.
She has been doing well all along. Deep green color, growing well. Fat fan leaves. My only concern is that she is real stout and bushy. I tried some LST, but just dont have the space to do it right. The main stem is getting fat and difficult to bend. Next time for proper training, now im only tucking the fan leaves where i can.



Plant 2. DWC. Blimburn GSC auto (seeds from a previous harvest)
This plant started strage, first few sets of leaves were real mangled and all. But she seems to have recovered and is growing well. I had some discoloration on the early leaves, which i think is a lot better now, I have also started adding CalMag to the feed. This one definitely seems to be struggling with the heat, and towards the end of the light cycle the upper leaves are quite cupped in. Let is see. I am thinking perhaps try and shade it ? Or is she struggling with the nutes ?



Plant 3. Coco. Blimburn GSC auto (seeds from a previous harvest)

Experimenting with Coco, this plant is slow. She started showing a lot of discoloration soon after being potted, and I put that down to not buffering the coco. 2 days of only CalMag, and now adding 2ml calmag/ltr along with the A/B and feeding every other day. It think she will be fine ?




Thanks a ton for the time folks! Please advise on best way forward.

My biggest challenge right now is to get the res temps low enough. Moving the chiller outside, while helping with both the room and the operating temps of the chiller, I'm afraid has led to a loss of efficiency due to the additional pipe length. I need to look into that and a way to insulate the buckets.
Also, turning on the fan in the grow tent pushes the res temp to 24, and the chiller cant seem to keep up. Thats another worry. Room fan is blowing wind through the tent and there is some leaf movement.

Tent pic from a couple of days bk.


Take care folks!

 

[Skybound]

I suggest locating all devices that make heat to the outside of the tent. Obviously you can't take out the lights, but the drivers should be outside, the chiller makes heat too and should be outside the tent as well. You can wrap the tubing with pipe insulation and tape it up with duck tape. If the room has too much heat, you can increase air flow across the leaves to buy you time, but you need to correct that problem before it bites you on the ass. Ideal air temps and RH helps the plants regulate their perspiration which is needed for calcium movement. Actually, you should research Vapor Pressure Deficit (VPD) as there's a mapped chart that correlates ideal RH based on temp, so if your temp is X, you can make the RH Y and the plant will do much better and in most cases, it's easy to add RH or heat to the air, so you might could make a good work around if you can't address your climate any other way.

Your feed charts look good, though you shouldn't need to add CalMag to your ferts, it should just be included with your elemental PPM. Too much calcium can hinder P and K availability. Not such a big concern about K, but P levels usually are kept low, so if something makes it less ... Flushing the coco with it is one thing, but adding it to your A+B might create other problems.

Are you adding H2O2 or beneficial bacteria to keep the roots clean? I'm a proponent of using beneficial bacteria, but also a lot of better growers than me swear by H2O2. All I know is that submerged roots is a good scenario for pythium to develop and once you get that shit, it's curtains. Most growers that get pythium lose their crop, that shit kills plants fast. It turns your roots from nice and white and clean to brown and thick and snotty, and they look like lo mein noodles. Get just a little bit and that shit spreads fast, and to every plant in the same system, so RDWC grows fall flat on their face. H2O2 is said to prevent all types of bacteria from being able to thrive. Beneficial bacteria eats the pythium and keeps root hairs clean of exudates which the roots emit regularly. Naturally in soil, microbes liberate ionic elements from the colloids in the soil and exchange each ion for a unit of root exudate (sugars) making plant roots and soil microbes beneficiaries in common as they feed each other. So if you choose to use H2O2, there will still be the constant production of roots exuding those sugars and if there's no bacteria to eat that shit off the root hairs, it will build up on the roots and can impair uptake. Conversely, if you use beneficial bacteria (bennies) in DWC, they won't survive long so you will continually need to keep adding it to ensure that only the bennies colony is the strongest and it will always keep the pythium at bay while also keeping the exudates off the roots before themselves dying a few days after being added to your system.

Gear related issues aside, your plants look great!

 

[sid]

Hey Folks!
Hope all well!

As always, thanks a super ton @Skybound for all your help mate!
Im taking care of the temps, bringing in an inline water pump, adding insulation to the dwc buckets and pipes etc. But most of my implementation will prolly be when I build a new system, which is what I plan to do now. Buying another pair of buckets and some more pipe and unions is quite cheap. Super thanks for your lead on the RH and temp study! That will prove to be quite helpful.

The ambient temps have cooled since quite a bit, so im not worried much anymore. From my past few attempts, I learnt that one to have any success in growing and not getting root rot in DWC I need a chiller. I added a chiller midway through my last grow and saw an immediate flourish in the plants, but it was too late already, got a poor harvest. I believe as long as i have the res temps low, I dont need any bennies. And it seems to be holding so far. I do have some Bactor13 with me, but I want to use it once I can understand the benifits ill see. I also have mycorrhizae from the same company.

I am no longer using CalMag with in the DWC, but I really did not see a difference over the week I did use it along with the A/B, so i dunno.. hehe.
Im still struggling with the coco grow, but more of that in the next post.

Cheers!

 

[sid]

Hey folks!

So, over a month from seed now (I think closer to 8weeks). And I believe I have reason to be pleased. Making DIY nutes I really did not know what to expect...
3 plants
2 in a home built semi RDWC system, circulating through a chiller doing well.
1 in coco, not doing well.

A+B nutes in DWC
A+B and CalMag in the coco, but will stop the CalMag now.
DWC EC @ 1.2 + background, pH @ 5.8

Plant 1. Lemon Auto Seedsman. All has been fairly great through the grow, and she is still growing very well. If there is a deficiency I dont recognise it.



Plant 2. GSC Blimburn auto, seed from previous harvest.
This plant was showing signs of leaf chlorosis early on, but as I increased the EC of the res, she seems to have been doing great. Its a lighter shade than the lemon, but thats prolly what the pheno is ? Its growing very well, and I do suspect I still see a slight bit of yellowing... but Im kinda colour blind. Any advise ?



Plant 3. GSC Blimburn auto, seed from previous harvest.
I cant get this one to grow well. She has been pale and slow all along, and I can only think its the coco. I did not buffer it. Now I have flushed the coco a few times with a lot of plain tap water, then tried combination of only A+B, A+B+CalMag, only CalMag, flush again... but no results. Ive been feeding her a little heavy compared to the DWC, mostly ause of the CalMag, i think ill get the feed down to an EC of 1 + BG.
Still its improved a lot from before, but nothing like the 2 plants in the DWC. I would really appreciate help here. Im willing to start again with a fresh seed in coco.
Any mentor willing ?



Thanks a ton for your time folks!
Here is a pic of my setup now.



Be safe folks!
Cheers!

 

[Skybound]

That yellowish plant looks fine, some strains just express a lighter green than others, also some strains are not vigorous growers and also sometimes we get dud seeds that grow slow or sluggish. Not all seeds were meant to survive natural selection, but because we spend good money on them, we refuse to let some of the weak ones die off w/o giving us their bounty. I do that all the time, is what it is tho.

I still see all your drivers etc in the tent which is going to give you headaches. By chilling the water, you're enabling it to hold more dissolved O2, but the other heat sources are fighting against that and are making the chiller work harder, like putting a hot pot of stew into the fridge.

That brand of bacteria you have looks fantastic, you should use it once or twice a week as a preventative measure. It will keep the pythium at bay, but if you get the pythium, beginning to use the bennies after the roots get infected might not bring them back which makes it a better idea to use the bennies preemptively. Also, your plants will uptake nutes more efficiently while having the sugars cleaned off the root hairs. Plants have had a symbiotic relationship with bennies for millions of years and the plants will do much much better if you add the bennies to your system, both the DWC and the Coco. Just my 2 cents man.

 

[sid]

Done Sky! Ill add the bennies then. The LED drivers go out eventually too. Everything else is out, and all temps are now under control. Winter is coming so ill keep em in for the season.

Pics from now. A couple of issues, will discuss and seek assistance.

Both DWC plants continue growing well, with a small hiccup ill detail under. They have both started with preflowers, the bigger GSC auto sooner and more aggressively, she has also put on a stretch!



The GSC in the coco has started showing healthy growth and color too, but clearly this one is way behind the other 2 plants. Im fairly certain now it was me not buffering the coco. Im thinking ill start with coco again to confirm. I have dozens of seeds now.



Issue. So 2 days ago i woke up to find the front plant (Lemon auto), a little droopy, took me by surprise till I lay eyes on the GSC which had sagged a lot more, like it had not been watered for days. The roots still look white as snow, all temps check out fine, only change is the res has fallen to half (roots still fairly submerged), and I have the fan in the tent blowing now, but not directly on the plants, still it fairly breezy over the plants.
So I top off the res, and turn the fan off, my thinking being with all the wind the plants are transipring more than what the roots can cope with. 4-6 hours later both plants are nice and perked up, so I turn the fan on for the night. Yesterday morning I find the plants droopy again, so fan of, and by afternoon they were back up. Same story in the evening. The fan inside the tent has been off since.

So, my first question is, are my roots ok for plants this size ? They do give me the impression that they are a little lacking in volume.



My second concern, which I just noticed is that I may have a problem with my DIY nutes, I have something crystallising in my A concentrate, but I will be seeking assistance on that over on @Skybound's DIY nutes thread.

Take care folks!
Best

 

[Skybound]

Fans can become problematic if the RH is too low, but they are still needed to keep air always moving through the canopies as that constantly exchanges local air to replenish CO2, and also to ensure the plants perspire as that is needed for calcium movement up through the plant. If the direct air flow is causing problems, try aiming the fan at the tent walls, not straight at it, but blowing at an angle to the wall so the breeze skips off the walls and circulates the air.

Your roots look great, and the bennies will keep them looking that way too. Aside from eating the pythium, the bennies will also eat the root exudates which will free them up to uptake nutrients. You don't have to worry about pythium in your coco plants, but definitely in your DWC plants.

Your precipitation problems were addressed on my thread, but I suggest you ditch the A/B if possible. It makes weekly res changes more involved, but it still affords you the protection from substance reactions and also expands your capability to change your recipe as you see fit. My strategy is to mix all of the micros into a concentrate, then mix each macro complex into their own concentrate at 1 gram for every 10ml of RO/distilled. This way when Hydrobuddy tells me I need X.YY grams of MKP, I can shift the decimal point over one position and then the dose become XY.Yml of MKP or whatever other macro complex. Doing it this way, I can make minor changes to the feed to flesh out what is ideal for my plants in my medium in my room in my environment and really dial it in. Also, my being in peat moss am finding that when reusing old media, the chemistry changes and the needs change which means the feeds needed to change to produce the same result. That's less of a concern in DWC, but maybe not so much with coco, IDK if you guys reuse that stuff over and over, but I'm on my 5th or 6th run with the peat.

 

[sid]

Hey folks!
hope all goes well.

I thought with the new 4x4 I will have all the space I need. Im not too sure anymore.
Today dropped EC to 1.1 + bg (total 1.6/7) and pH is around 6. RH is bout 60% again and its a tad warmer around 31c. Trying to maintain the res @ 20c, but I really need to get my ass moving and build another 2 buckets with insulation.



Pre flowers all across the GSC (right rear), smaller ones on the Lemon (Front right), and even smaller ones on the Coco GSC (Front left)

The GSC and the Lemon in the DWC continue to look real good, except for a few hours after light on, where I find the GSC slow to wake up from her wilted self. But mid way through the lights cycle she is looking great. The 2 plants in the DWC continue to grow, and I have had to Supercrop the main brach on the GSC, will prolly need to do a couple of other branches too. Just to keep the canopy even.
The lemon has a lovely round shape to it and is a real pretty plant. Colors and all.

The GSC in the coco has started to slowly put colour and show healthy growth. I think Ill still manage a small harvest from this plant, though I need to figure out coco. @sky, I haven't seen any peat around, but coco and perlite is quite readily available.

Im debating should I defoliate ? I dont know what and where an how and if its too late or too early. Maybe just let this one run through ?

Any advise appreciated folks.

Be safe and thanks for your time!

 

[Diatomacious]

Damn this forum mooves fast! I was pushed to page 3 within hours!!!

Quick question, and an excuse for a bump!

As a propagation medium, after the paper towel, is it advisable If i sow the seed in coco, giving plain pH water till the roots develop a bit, say a week or so, before moving it to the hydroton in the DWC, or should I place the seed directly in the hydroton net pot ?

thanks again!

For seed I just plant about 1/2 inch below soil surface then water all the way through and let excess drip off. I alway start seed in very small pots and if they pop then I move them to larger pots (save filling larger pots with mix especially if you germinate say 20-30 seeds). I use fresh mix (mix that has not yet had any fertilizer put in it) and make sure you get a good flush (helps remove any excess salts that may be in the fresh mix). Healthy, fresh seed will usually pop on day 3... older seed may take up to two weeks. I have seen people use rapid rooters (like for clones) to germinate seed and this is probably a better option for hydroton... just make sure they don't dry out and use pure water (rain water does a great job and pH is almost perfect)

 

[Diatomacious]

Hello!

Quick update.
The seed went straight into the netpot with hydroton, precariously placed.
It up today, but with a helmet! So tweezers and needle to gently take that off, came off without much trouble, the ineers seem crinkly and dry. Hopefully will be ok. Before and after pics attached.



The roots are growing fast! And have already out from the bottom.

So far its been in plain RO water with a background EC of 156 and pH of 6.4, after adding pH down to bring the EC to 214 and pH to 5.8

However, almost 48hrs later now, the EC has climbed to 300 and the pH to 7.4
I can only attribute this to the hydroton, which I did wash, boil and then soak in pH water for 6-8 hrs, but not enough i suppose. It also does not help, now i realize, that the started the seed in a real small container, waiting for it to have a first set of leaves before moving it to the main 10L bucket. heho.. let us see.

Cheers!

Plain water is very hard to control the pH of... once you add in the nutrient chemicals they will stabilize your pH. I give my seedlings a dose of fertilizer as soon as I start seeing them green up. Sometimes the mother the seed came from had fertilizer issues and this can cause the dry look you were noticing... a proper dose of fertilizer as soon as you see green will correct the issue.

 

[Diatomacious]

Ok. There was a small skin from the inside of the seed casing ? holding the embryonic leaves together. Gently removed it without any resistance using tweezers (bless my wife), and looks good! The starter container pic also attached. Im keeping the dome over it for tonight atleast. Hope thats ok.

Plant looks good and healthy at this stage. Just be careful with excess humidity on the plant leaves as plants can easily mold when too much moisture is present.

 

[Diatomacious]

Hello!
Day 4 today.
Water pH has risen to 7.2, so im changing it again, using filtered water with a EC of 0.15 and a pH of 5.9

Roots are coming out from all over. Looks ok ?



Thanks!

Plants beginning to look a bit underfertilized... would also help with buffering pH.