DWC 400w HPS: Northern Lights – White Widow

Indoor Growing Growroom Diaries
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Yes first grow in 15 years. I left the growing scene just before LED lights were introduced to growing. Many years has past and now things have aligned so now I can start again. After some quick research I noticed overgrow was back up and running. Perfect for me to have once again a great community to rely on. There are so many new techniques and systems so I may need to be brought up to speed.

I’m an ebb and flow kind of guy, but I decided to go with the DWC buckets. I built a DWC unit for cloning and it worked great, so why not for my main plants. 3 buckets are going to maintain 3 different strains.

Products needed for assembly:

5 gal buckets
8 inch net pot bucket covers
6 inch round air stones
253 GPH air pump
Black air tubing

First thing to do is to paint the outside of the buckets black to keep out the light. I picked up 2 can of black spray paint for under 2 bucks. Got this done rather quickly.

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I drilled a ¼ inch hole near the top of each bucket for the air tubing. After soaking the air stones for 30 minutes, I cut the tubing to the length of the air pump and connected everything together. The air stones are held down by 3 suction cups that allows you to put it where ever you want. I just keep my in the center.

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The amount of bubbles are good, however I wish there was more. I’ll invest into a bigger pump and possibly bigger stones

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I used a simple setup of CFLs and a bathroom fan for ventilation in a grow tent.

1.5 ft x 3 ft x 5.3 ft Tent
50 CFM ventilation fan
2x 600 watts CFL (1200 total)
18/6 timer
Remote thermometer

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The medium I use is hydroton clay pellets. I’m a big fan of this and will most likely use this medium my whole life.

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Now its setup so we just need to sure up the numbers and dry run for a couple weeks to work out any issue that may come up. Better now then when the plants are in the tent.

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I like the bubble buckets, but don’t understand your lighting. Are you really burning 1200 watts of CFL in there? or are those “replacement” watts? You’ve got 4.5 s.f. of canopy - seems like a 250w HPS or white LEDs would do the trick better at 1/5 the running cost. -b420

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Nice. Setup looks the part. Thanks for sharing it with us.

HppHrvst

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Your right about that. I am having trouble finding my old 250w HPS so I have this temporally until I can wire it up. The true wattage would be 168w of CFLs. And yes I’m well aware that is very low light standards for the size of the tent. However this tent is the mother tent, and would prefer if the plants didn’t grow so quickly. But yes good catch :grin: and I’ll have to look into the LEDs, I haven’t researched them all to much.

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The dry run has been great. No big issues except for water temperature. It was too low to support decent root growth. I’ll be installing separate submersible heaters with thermostats into each bucket to bring it up to my optimal water temp of 76f / 24c.

I did not add the nutrients to this dry run, because I wanted to make sure the water would maintain ph level with the low ppm. Any problem would come up if ph fluctuated since the water is pure and susceptible to any outside influence.

Pre-Operation Statistics:

Air Temp Day: 74f / 23c
Air Temp Night: 64f / 18c

Humidity Day: 55% – 60%
Humidity Night: 50% – 55%

Water Temp Day: 45f / 7c
Water Temp Night: 41f / 5c

Water Type: Distilled
Water PH: 5.5ph (adjusted)
Water PPM: 10ppm

The Hydroton clay pellets remain moist within the net pots until 1 inch (2.5cm) from the top. Also within the bucket the aeration system is doing a fantastic job at providing tiny bubbles and splashing that water up to the clay pellets.

All in all, the system is functioning great; air temps are great, humidity is perfect, and water is maintaining ph level, with the excepting of the water temp. We will fix the water temp before the seedling are transplanted.

Now onto the seeds. I’m bias on these and I’m sure there are better strains I could have picked from. However the reason I pick these ones, is because I have grown these strains before and know what to expect from them. It was 15 years ago but I’m going to go with what works for me.

Gypsy Nirvana:

Northern Lights (New)
White Widow (New)
Bubblegum (15 years old)

Now I’m not sure if the bubblegum seeds are going to sprout but we will give them time to do their thing.

I used the ol’ paper towel, plate, and ziplock style of germination. It took 2 days before I seen taproots for the new seeds. But nothing yet for the older seeds. I transferred each seed to its own rockwool cube soaked in 5.5ph distilled water. Each are labled and set in the dome with a small heating pad underneath the tray.

Again not sure if the older seeds will sprout or not but I am hoping they do.

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Please keep in mind I’m 15 years out of date. So if you see something that I could be doing better then let me know. Thanks in advanced

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Its good to see you again Hippy Harvest, been many years but I remember all your advice you gave me all those years ago. Thanks for joining me :kissing_heart:

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Hello there @Roux, it’s nice to have you and welcome back to OG!

Unfortunately, you gotme confused brother, i’m not HappyHarvest, that is only something i say at the bottom of my messages, like a signature thing u know…

My username is @MadScientist!

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lol ok got it. Well thanks for the kind words @MadScientist :grin:

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I Really, Really, Really hope your bubblegum seeds sprout for you. That would be awesome.

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Thay all have sprouted already bro! Thanks for the good vibes. Check out my 2nd grow here.

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i was talking about @Roux old azz bubblegum.

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Here we go! The heaters are now installed in the bubble buckets and temp is maintaining at its current setting. We dumped out test water out from last week, wiped down our buckets, and refilled them up with fresh distilled water and added some light nutrients. I’m a fan of GH nutrients, so I got a starter pack of their chemical line.

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Operation Statistics:

Air Temp Day: 74f / 23c
Air Temp Night: 64f / 18c

Humidity Day: 50% – 55%
Humidity Night: 50% – 55%

Water Temp Day: 72f / 22c
Water Temp Night: 72f / 22c

Water Amount: 3.3 gallons / bucket
Water Type: Distilled
Water PH: 5.7 (not adjusted)
Water PPM: 140 +/- ppm
Water Nutes: FloraMicro / FloraGro / FloraBloom

I did not adjust ph of the water because the nutrients tend to balance the distilled water. I’ll let it run and monitor ph for a rise or drop.

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From germination, 3 are starting to grow. Nothing from bubblegum yet, I expect that will take longer or may not ever come. 1 of the white widows did not come up but that’s ok. I think I damaged the tap root when transferring the seed to the rockwool.

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The seedlings will not be able to go into the buckets until roots are showing through the bottom of the rockwool. In the mean time I’ll be monitoring the growroom for any irregularities.

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Has the bubblegum sprouted yet?

I have been trying to follow, but so many new members
and threads keep you busy, which is a good thing!

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Very quick update…

Weekly Operation Statistics Average:
(WOSA from here on out)

Air Temp Day: 72f / 22c
Air Temp Night: 63f / 17c

Humidity Day: 50%
Humidity Night: 45%

Water Temp Day: 76f / 24c
Water Temp Night: 72f / 22c

Water Amount: 3 gallons / bucket
Water Type: Distilled
Water PH: 5.3 (adjusted)
Water PPM: 240 +/- ppm
Water Nutes: FloraMicro / FloraGro / FloraBloom / RapidStart / Floralicious Plus

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The three plants are doing very well. Roots have shown out the bottom of the net pots for all of them. I doubled up their nutrients and added the additives as well to feed them properly as they get bigger.

@MadScientist, I would have to say the 15 year old bubblegum seeds are a loss considering there has been zero activity with them. Oh well, worth the try.

However I have ran into an issue that would be great to get some advice on….

My ph level will not maintain between my sweet spot 5.2 – 5.8. I’ll correct the ph of the water, then the next day once I check it, it will read between 6.0 - 6.4, so I’ll reset the ph back to 5.2 and it will happen again the next day.

Anybody have an opinion on what’s going on? I have one thought but want to see if anybody matches my conclusion.

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Did you rinse the hydroton thoroughly before use? Cos, that would be my only guess for that!

Unless you are using baking soda/lime juice to control pH, which will only work for a few hours/minutes and then degrade and go back or what’s worst alter it a lot… I have no idea!

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All the clay hydroton pellets was washed, cleaned, dried, then soaked with plain distilled water, then dried completely again. As for ph control I use General hydroponics line of PH up and PH down, I use the crystal form of the ph down specifically designed for hydroponic use.

I’m not convinced it’s the hydroton clay considering the medium is never submerged in the nutrient water to alter ph levels so quickly and consistently.

I also want to add; this is happening in all 3 buckets that are separate.

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If it’s happening in all three separate buckets, then it’s somthing you’re pouring in the water that’s making it happen, eliminate variables, use a different bucket to mix everything the same way you do all the time, and then measure pH, after that eliminate something, and then something else and so forth… You might hit the jackpot!

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Your plants are eating. Ph will rise. It is ok, and good for the ph to swing. The clay pebbles will not affect the ph. You will want to raise your ph to around 5.5-5.8. You should be using equal parts of the gh flora series. Probably like 1.25ml per galon.

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Thanks for great diary, @Roux!

@Baudelaire is right about the lamps. CFL sucks for flowering as you can check in my old topic.

Good choice with bubblers and GH line. It works great in combination and keeping 1/3 dosage is recommended (I see you are measuring PPM :thumbsup: and that is even better way) .

I’d say that slight changes in pH can be attributed to clay pebbles. I do have experience only with liquid pH adjusters though so I’m not sure about pH stability with powder version… Anyway there are fluctuations all the time that depends on residual salts, type of nutrients and type of pH adjuster. You just want those to keep in reasonable range.

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Agreed with @LemonadeJoe, don’t sweat it as long as your pH is swinging within a range of 5.5-6.5, even 6.8, you’ll be fine. You’ve probably got some calcium in your water source that’s buffering the nute solution towards 6+. Don’t fight it. You can grow all day long at 6.2. You’ll do more harm dumping too much pH Down into your system trying to fight it. And you probably won’t fix it until you remove the buffering agents from your water (RO) which is likely not worth the trouble + expense. -b420

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