lol I love dwc it’s like some kind of jungle producer. People are always surprised at the size of em. I’ve heard lots of strange biases in my day, though. Some organic grower is like “ohh but you’ll grow lots of weed, and mine will have a better flavour” buzzzz wrong. I’m not sure they know we’re in the same contest for weed judging, and mine scored 3rd place out of twenty of 'em. Soooo… then how can he say it doesn’t have enough flavour? That’s a hard bias to change, believe me. pops had that bias, had to grow lots of tomatoes and cucumbers and peppers and melons to prove otherwise. I taught them that the harvesting tech used by commercial growers results in a lack of flavour. Of course, if you botch the grow, there’ll be no flavour.
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you have root problems in DWC?
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I did when I was using tap+bennies. It was better when I went to tap+poolshock but I must not have the dosage right on that as the roots basically refused to be in the water. Tap+Clorox I haven’t had a single issue so far.
I never used any of this stuff back in the day and never had root problems in DWC, this is recent for me and I think it’s my tap water but I’m too lazy/cheap at the moment to get an RO system or anything. it comes out ph 8 and 150ppm so its not horrible but man.
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I like a cold res…but this is the second time im reading about bleach…how much do you add per gallon.
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do you know what kind of pathogens you are trying to kill?
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yep. i botched my last grow and it just doesn’t have the same flavour. Still nice but it doesnt make my mouth water like the previous grows of the same strain.
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I think the most important thing about DWC when it comes to root disease is to keep the nutrient cool. I keep my res and buckets at 21 degrees using a chiller. I also use tiny doses of chlorine every 4 days. Less than most usually use. I rely on the chiller to keep it in check and the tiny doses of chlorine are just a safety net in case something wants to try and take hold during res changes etc where the temp of the nutes might rise for short periods.
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21 degrees is definitely reasonable! Shouldn’t be having problems at that temp. It’s when the oxygen levels are approaching 7ppm you’re in trouble. I will dig for my private and confidential oxygen data it’s around here somewhere. I find the flavour is killed easiest by elevating the conductivity of the solution to crazy levels. According to the expert, when your plant undergoes stress it starts breaking down the precursor molecules to maintain it’s life. So theoretically, the flavor and the potency are matched. AKA if you kill the flavour, you kill the potency. heh heh that’s what Bridgette told me, the girl with the THC molecule tattooed on her uhh chest.
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ok the data says:
10C/50F 13ppm
30C/86F 7ppm
The respiration of the root zone doubles with every 10C increase in temps up to 30C they die.
if you are experiencing temperature spikes in solution the plant will be temporarily deprived of oxygen. Also they claim the root mass is directly related to oxygen uptake. So theoretically… The larger the root mass, the more nutrients it can absorb in a certain period of time.
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lol thanks for reminding me I have a cache of stolen agricultural studies from years ago!
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Yeah, i do not let it get above 22C and the hard line where i would be throwing in ice cubes if i didn’t have the chiller is 24C. I have read in many places that from 24C and up you start creating perfect environment for bad bacteria. I think many good bacteria are still good from 24C down to as far as 10C but that doesn’t matter for me though as i am running the sterile res.
yah 24 is in the danger zone, there is a real threat that the oxygen levels could hit 7ppm if the plant is respiring huge. Which it will be if the ambient temps and root temps are elevated. If the oxygen levels hit 7ppm a fungus known as pythium, which is a water mold…and terrestrial pathogen, will start to grow. You can smell when the roots are stressed, it gives off an earthen smell. The smell of healthy roots is like…a cucumber I suppose, except really faint. Also, if your water isn’t circulating/bubbling enough so that the oxygen isn’t being replaced fast enough your plant will suffer slow growth or even anaerobic conditions which will cause death. I run my system at 20-22C, using the earth itself to cool the buckets. aka concrete underground you seen the pics. I would say the minimum hard line for cubic centimeters of airflow would be 700CC per 20 liter pail. On a side note, different plants roots operate in different parameters and smell strongly. I use the pepper plant as an example. You have to scrub some black crud out of the bucket after you grow one. Strong root stink.
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I grew 3 kilos of jalapeno peppers in DWC, I’m still eating those things and it was years ago!!
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hahahah classic. I have grown a few different peppers before. My brother is crazy about them. We have done the ghost pepper, carolina reaper and plenty of others. I have thought about doing one in hydro in my tents. Just do a little single bucket DWC. Good to know they respond well to hydroponics.
I have some pretty crazy aeration. There are only 2 x 50L buckets holding about 30L of solution each. They are pretty wide buckets and the entire bottom of each bucket is covered with large air stones. Only reason why there is not more is because there is no room. They feed back into a rez that has 2 large air stones blasting away and the feed into the buckets is poured in from the top of the bucket so it gets aerated a little there too. I have set them up so that there are two pumps and each pump feeds stones in each bucket for redundancy and i am about to include a UPS for the air pumps because the power here is not the most reliable. The UPS will also feed a few other things but that is a whole other story which in short is to prevent any plant stress or loss of sync in the day if the power goes out for periods of up to 4 hours at a time by feeding the air pumps, water pumps, small fans and 10W lights that are in sync with the tents main lights. I dont want to keep losing quality because of power outages.
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when the power goes out you have 24 hours before the plants suffer. If you go down there in the dark and stir the water a bit, you can give it a new lease on life. Not that I’m saying that’s a good thing… but during long blackouts it’ll work. I’ve done it before.
Nice roots 
and plants/buds
thanks for the look
Dequilo
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Yeah for sure, i have been through them before and been fine but I have had situations like 2 blackouts 2 hours long and 2 hours apart in the middle of the light cycle, 4 days after switch to 12/12. Same strain i’ve grown many times and it took 16 days to start flowering instead of the usual 7 and when it did start it did not do much at all for the first week of the flower. so delayed by over a week and lost product. I guess in short. I am more building this to cover the lights during outages so the plant wont grow under low light but wont lose the cycle and freak out. So if i have all that set up i may as well also plug in my pumps etc and keep them super happy.
preaching to the choir there. Last round a power outage edge case I generated made the plants get freaky. Only a couple pollen sacks though… no seeds spotted…yet
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