First pic is my plant 6 days ago when I left on a plane for Orlando. Second pic is yesterday when I got back off the plane from Orlando. I filled my dwc bucket to the brim before I left and figured for sure my soil plants would be dead because they are essentially in tiny cup sized pots, and while they did completely dry out all I had was some minute drooping. My dwc bucket however, was bone dry and about a good 30 percent of the drooping leaves are toast. I was in about week two of flower and I had vegged this plant out to fill the entire 2x4 and hadn’t done that before and was u aware of just how much water this beast would drink.
I havent given up hope and I have a couple weeks to play with while I wait on other clones to veg out and transition over to flower. I removed all the crispy leaves and there is still quite a bit of moisture in the tips where the buds are forming. I turned my HLG down as far as it will go and filled the bucket with plain ph’d water.
Yeah Hydro can be very unforgiving. I am currently getting ready to build my own dwc but I still use coco. Don’t give up. I’ve done hydro in the past from everything to flood and drain to dwc and the Dutch bucket style the buckets are cool and all but if one thing goes wrong it’s a headache. My last hydro was from my friends shop it always gave me problems so I switched to coco and my other friend who was living with me figured out how to make the buckets work properly and not leak etc…
Man I’ve had nothing but success with hydro and i prefer it greatly over soil. It requires very little maintenance once it’s dialed in and long as you’re on top of lst and defoliating you should be good. The growth can get out of control if you’re not on top of it. It really grows that fast. Overnight changes can be observed whereas soil takes days for noticeable growth to occur.
What I learned is I can’t grow plants that big in DWC unless I have the ability to refill the bucket every 3 days during the last 60-70 days. For this very reason I won’t ever try to run a 2x4 with less than 3 buckets. I now look at buckets like batteries that allow me freedom from watering. This was my first time trying to fill a 2x4 with one plant and I greatly underestimated the amount of water she would need.
Been there , almost done that. This is why I love being almost fully automated. And having cameras watching as well. Costly but worthwhile so this never happens. Sorry for your loss my fr
We have a lot of power outtages during the winter and we are deep in the mountains and get really wet heavy west coast snow that brings trees down on the powerlines all winter. I grow in dirt because of this. It’s forgiving. sorry for your loss!
I’m not ready to give up on hydro yet. I’m thinking I’m gonna add a res to my setup and just grow smaller plants to fill out the space instead of trying to use one bucket. Either that or try to find a 20 gallon bucket lol.
I run swc in my Phototrons and I have this feed-a-tron that adds water to my bucket/reservoir and I’m able to go on vacation for 2+ weeks and it will top off my bucket/reservoir…
Growing and traveling don’t mix well IMO. Maybe overnight trip or 2 days, but longer is a risk to anything going wrong. Growing has sacrifices. I consider extended travel one, unless completely automated and cams to monitor, especially the chilling requirement DWC does need. Sorry for your loss, but you reminded me why I don’t travel far or long when growing.
sorry for your loss!