Hey there boys and girls and others! I am… an original OG, but nobody remembers that. Instead, I am back to post more grow material. So, let me introduce myself: I am a legal cannabis grower from canada. Not the moon. Also, I grow in a deep water culture of my own design. That is to say… as much of a design as a bucket full of water is. Been doing it forever. If Anyone can recognize who I am, it will be through the growing method I use, which is not standard. Why am I here? I need…something from people. I need the crazy days…when people were doing shit. Shit you never seen. I need to be motherfucking amazed by someshit. rock my world.
Anyways, report is that the legal scene up here is crap. I mean… the govn’t botched it bad and cost me everything. blah blah I was someone and all that crap. until everyone I know was caught up in some supreme court case. Now, I bitch about it and grow more weed.
Check out the 
micro-grows… @Mr.Sparkle pretty much owns the grams per watt world title… I think a 1/2 LB cost him about 10$. 
And @MadScientist’s solo-cup challenges.
There’s a handful of well-dialed larger grows here but those folks are busy gardening more than snapping pictures. 
Check out the seed preservation giveaways…
Some good stuff goin on here.
Pffff I’d say B.S. to @cannabissequoia comment about myself, but look around the forums and you may see some grows you like.
Have you ever had issues with root rot or anything? If so, what have you found to be an effective remedy for this?
I’ve done dwc for 10+ years and my last 3 attempts in 3 months have failed because the rot. I haven’t changed my methods at all…in fact I’ve added another air pump.
Curious to hear your experiences.
Welcome back!! Can’t wait to see your setup and what strain(s) you’re running!!!
Are you running bleach and peroxide in your reservoir?
What’s your reservoir temps?
Welcome back, theres a little bit of everything here, but mostly home growers for personal/medical use. Plenty of information here, check out the search bar.
yeah gotta go sterile is what I found. Either specifically Clorox bleach at 0.4ml per 1 gallon (will give ~5ppm free chlorine). or like 0.3grams of hth poolshock per 10 gallons (will also give ~4ppm of free chlorine). Research has determined up to 5.5ppm of chlorine is absolutely unnoticeable and will not harm the plant. You need at least 3ppm to kill all bacteria in the water. Dose every week and/or water change.
mmm I feel the warm goodness of cannabis producers here! Been reading and looking since I wrote that first post. Good stuff.
OK! Questions, questions! The secret to maximizing your oxygen concentration in the water is lower temps, of course. Root rot, AKA pythium fungus loves derrrr… 7ppm and lower concentrations of oxygen. So! Max your oxygen by keeping the water temps at 18C, if possible. Performance will suffer if you get the water warm, right up to when the fungus gets ya. So, in summary: keep your water temps at 18C. 30C will prove to be dangerous. 20C is acceptable.
I use a temperature gun from canadian tire. Uh also there’s something about pumping in enough oxygen as well. 750CC per 20litre, but also due to physics you can saturate the water with agitation as well. That’s really what the pump or waterfall or flowing water or whatever method you use is doing, exposing new water surfaces to oxygen so it can penetrate. 750CC from a pump seems to agitate the water enough, that’s why I use that as a rule of thumb.
I personally scrub the buckets between each grow with detergent.
I love questions, and I love to answer them: don’t think you can ask too many. I will explain everything in excruciating detail. 
Those are meat breath plants. They started out highly contaminated with parasites, so I used “protocol zero” to eliminate them. PRotocol 1 was to never bring in outside plant material to prevent contamination, so protocol 0 replaced it. As you can see in the photo, the air comes from a pump through a hose into the lid of a 20 liter pail. Eh that’s basically it to my fancy ass system lol. Also my classic pipe cleaners from the roof to support the plant in it’s bucket of solution. The black neoprene is merely there to block the light. Decades ago, I eliminated the hydrotron due to fungus gnat contamination. Since the little buggers feast on organics, I eliminated that part of the system.
lol I must admit a small tear of joy formed in my eye when I saw some of the grows here.
Plants look great, really nice roots! Where do you find pipe cleaners that long lol
the pipe cleaner is on the end of a long string tied to a fastener on the ceiling. As long as you use at least 2 strings/pipe cleaners per plant it should be stable depending on the bud load.
here’s the pump I use, it’s standard issue. Any additional questions about how the system works, feel free to ask!
I got the sugar black rose and some king tut going on there. Since I’m literally rebuilding from the ashes still, you can all see it unfold as I pit several plants against each other in a grow to the death. The loser dies and the winner lives.
The finish line consists of a couple different conditions. To reach status “live” the plant has to achieve the following parameters:
- puff-a-bility! Does it tweak the cuddly bone? qualitative measurement. smoke it
- crank-potential! can it crank out a good supply? quantitative measurement. weigh it.
- hash-o-magical! Does this plant in question produce full melt lumps of gnarly hash? qualitative and quantitative. Weigh and smoke! wheee!!!
Determine which plant checks all the boxes and in the best way it can… then, dump the loser in the compost. Round one was already complete, bobs burgers hybrid lost to Big Bud. Ok so defending champion checked 1 and 3. 2 was a risky .6 grams per watt. Not the best, but also I’m not sure it’s dialled in yet. because I was doing other stupid experiments that cost yield on the big bud but not bobs burgers. Dialing into the best productivity will take a bit. Still fiddling with the knobs to see what happens!
From JOTI?
20charact
no idea where it originated from but “some guy” wandered over here with that plant on new years as an infested clone in potting mix. It’ll probably get a run for gold in 2 months.
here’s a nice root porn shot. If I ever touch the bucket and there are no vibrations from bubbles, I will take off the end of the hose to break the crusts out. Due to the laws of physics, salt crusts happen, so handle them. Besides that, potential problem it’s fairly worry free. If you use good air pumps they should last as long as you clean the gunk out of the dust filters once in a while. No wally world stupid aquarium pumps! As for “additives” in there… I just run the basic solution. Things like thrive alive will really stain the roots.
Hey man, you seem to have a lot of experience with DWCs, I’ve only run two plants through them. Autoflowers, at that. Think I did well, little paranoid about pictures. Gonna probably run regular seeds next run as I won some sweet seeds on here I have to try.
But lets talk water!
How do you handle altering your solutions between the growing and flowering stage? Do you mix your own nutes? Do you use RO water or just dechlorinated (like me… when I have the time)?
And, welcome back I guess!
Cheers
Edit: and what are you growing out of?! Your main roots seem to burst outta something…
@2K19Starter the black thing you see above the root ball is a piece of neoprene. I have a couple of different neoprene shapes, but it only blocks the light. I take the neoprene out when it falls off the plants bulky ass stalk. You can see the neoprene on those small meat breaths, they are the cup-shaped ones. Others are flat thin disks and some more are thick round plugs. I’ll take some quick photos of those later, so everyone can see the “components” of my system. I would say my setup is called medium-less water culture. I promise…eventually, people will see the days of old, when I stand beside a plant as large as I am.
I just use some well water, it seems to work without RO there is traces of iron and calcium, which are both useless. aka RUST and LIMESTONE!
things are growing! I got my defending champion, big bud and the runner up king tut. Those sugar black rose are slated for sunset. Why do I keep the runner up and the champ? why not just knock off the runner and keep the champ? For reasons unknown to even myself… I like to keep one plant that produces hash by the boatload and one that produces high-yield buds. Two of the three boxes checked is good. I think the reasons are for data gathering. If there’s one thing I know about myself, I’m always looking for more data.
above: the champion(big bud)
above: the rival.(king tut)