Has anybody had any experience with dwc using organic teas or nutrients. Any tips for organic dwc? I’m trying to stay 100% organic.
Good luck, you’re gonna need it.
Sterile reservoir is the way, the truth, and the light with DWC.
You’ll be chasing your tail the whole time. Just use regular hydroponic nutrients and run a sterile reservoir, defeats the purpose otherwise.
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Ya it would be pretty tough to go full organic. I’d recommend a ‘mostly’ organic nutrient like mega crop or pureblend pro, they’ll make life alot easier and you’ll get the best of both worlds.
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I’d argue PBP is too organic for hydroponics. Never tried Megacrop but it’s closer to what you’d want. I’d worry about all the amino acids in there. That’s just protein, and bacteria love it. But you don’t want bacteria.
You really don’t need or want ANY organic material in your reservoir water. I’d further argue there is no taste/smell/effect to be lost from omitting organics. If you want to do DWC, don’t reinvent the wheel, follow prescribed steps.
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It’s possible, but the main issue you’ll run into using air stones and such is the biofilm that will grow on it causing it to clog. You can get around that by using water pumps to aerate it by water turbulence.
Air stones dont really provide enough air to really get the biology booming where it needs to be. Also why good compost tea brewers have pumps instead of air stones
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I run recirculating systems mostly, and adding anything organic tends to gunk them up pretty fast. I tried using Floralicious plus a couple runs ago and within a couple days my drippers were clogged and there was gross stuff coming out of the drains. I use Zone to keep sterile most the time and I’m experimenting with Clorox to save money. Sterile is really the way for recirculating systems IMO.
Really if you want to do organics then stick to soil or soiless mixes IMO. There are some soil recipes where you just water with water (no pHing even) the whole grow. Nice and simple, totally organic.
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Maybe you can use an aquaponics system:
- edit: Small Scale Aquaponics:
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I would say avoid organics with dwc…the aquaponics sounds awesome!! Does anyone know if I can throw some goldfish in a 300ppm solution?
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Feeder goldfish will tolerate most anything.
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So I have a 5 gal dwc with 3 gal of water…would 5 goldfish be overkill or not enough?
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I had to give up ANYTHING made or derived from ANYTHING organic in my hydro setups. AS was mentioned above, bacteria/algae etc just LOVE that crap. You will be fighting PH and slime, smells, etc., unless you run a sterile rez - which kills what you are after in organics.
If you do any hydro, go with pure salts. Something like Jacks 321 is perfect. I had major troubles with Mega crop, Advanced Nutes PH Perfect line, Fox Farms, and General Hydroponics. Changing to Jacks cured all my problems. Be sure your additives are also NON organic as well.
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Depends on how aggressive the rate of growth is. 3 small goldfish become 3 large goldfish quickly. They’ll end up 1’ long, so plan accordingly.
Seems like more trouble than it’s worth, especially if you aren’t going to eat the goldfish. Really only seems appropriate at a much larger scale. If I had a big yard in Florida, and maybe a 300 gallon stock tank in a shady spot, sure. I’d use different fish, too. Something I could sell, like dwarf shrimp or maybe endler’s. Lot of moving parts. Might as well do it part time for all the work it’ll need.
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Good to hear. I’m in the process of switching to jacks myself. I just ordered some today. Always have issues with megacrop reservoir smelling like crap after a few days. I might have gotten another 21lb bag of MC if they made a 2 part but it’s not looking like that’s going to happen by the time I run out of my v2. I’ve tried aerating constantly, on for 10 mins every 3 hours, on for 5 mins every 3 hours with a stirring pump and a hose for a “waterfall” but nothing seemed to help. I am also tired of having to hold my breath or use a respirator while working with the stuff as even a little bit of agitation causes a LOT of dust to get into the air which can’t be good for ya. I find a lot of the extra stuff MC has also is in such small amounts that they aren’t even useful, like 1ppm of silicon just to say its in there.
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I’ve heard they only grow to the size of their environment? Thinking of goldfish and dwc, would the lack of light be bad for the fish? I’m not gonna do it if it’s borderline animal abuse…might just be a goldfish, but still.
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You’ll need a lot more fish (and generally bigger) to maintain the proper nitrate levels, and even then it’s generally not enough to feed cannabis. I’ve seen a few heads of lettuce run with some goldfish, but not much more than that. With cannabis I’ve seen folks do dual rootzone setups so they can supplement the plants feed w/o affecting the fish, but that’s not a setup for a first timer to aquaponics.
As others have said, sterile is the way to go with hydro. I run Jacks 321 and do HTH Pool Shock treatments once a week to ensure things stay clean. My reservoir is totally clean and clear – no smells, no biofilm, and pure white roots in the grow beds. Any time I’ve introduced beneficials into my system it’s turned into a nightmare.
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Thanks guys, y’all crack me up! Goldfish! Lmfao! 20 yrs ago I ran dwc for ten years. Envy a & Envy b was the best no hassle , hit a ph 6.5. No smells , took very little. Plants blew up. Was the only thing non organic in system. I did use fish tank water to bubble. I added a hand full of bat guano in control bucket and noticed it did bubble up on sides, but I could still see and taste the difference for the better in the plants. Also I would add a small amount of natural raw honey in the mix which made like a cloudy almost jell at water surface, but I could most definitely taste and see a great improvement with the plants. Every time I pulled a bucket ( 8 weeks)(2 buckets every 2 weeks, s.o.g. 8 buckets total) I would wash and sterilize. Never had a problem with the little organics I mixed in. I did replace the stones every time I pulled a bucket, they were clogging. It’s been awhile since I ran dwc and remembered no pure organics and was hoping one of you geniuses figured out something by now. So I’ll keep the 100% organic in a pot and chem. In my dwc. Thanks for the input!
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I’m about 2 weeks into a soil -> DWC project (last straw with a fungus gnat problem) & so far it’s OK. Only running the air-pump a few hours a day & haven’t got a PPM pen yet. (pump is noisy & will raise water temps, small plant)
Some foamy organic-ness forming & pH stability is an issue, especially using the less-desireable vingear, but otherwise looks OK. No growth explosion yet. Filtered tap water & Dyna-gro 9-3-6, bit of H2O2, & some hydroton to keep it upright.
Worst case I’ll just get it healthy & take clones.
Got my PPM pen today-- said 120 from the filter, 550 in the res. having just guessed, and 74F 
so I’m glad I got it. Nutrient bottle doesn’t have a sugg’d PPM but I’d guess I’m doing OK. (?) (seedlings aren’t going in the DWC, nor succulent, gnats & tattered leaves are from prior to being uprooted into water)
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No they keep growing until they die from being in too small a container. They really don’t need much light, carp mostly hang by the bottom where it’s dark, muddy rivers aren’t a problem.
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Now that the zoom function no longer works when yu have more than a single image in a post, its real hard to judge details when trying to diagnose problems or good stuff.
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