your water culture plants are looking good but the flowering ones in medium look kind of stressed out. I would grab a sample of the medium or overflow during watering and check ph/ec orrrrrrrr use a meter and check ph/ec in situ.
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Yeah theyāre not happy. Iām done with soil 100% now so Iām just gonna let those chips fall where they may. I donāt like not knowing whatās going on with nutrient levels and pH.
Iāll definitely grab some overflow next time I water and test it.
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Transplant will solve your poor growing plants theyāve reached end of life in a beer cup combined problems of root bound nutrient lock out happens quick .just had 6 that over spent time in beer cups looking identical to yours my run off was 2800 ppm with 240 going in .
Theyāve been a week in new pots and starting to green up and grow again .
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Theyāre just for the cup challenge so no up-potting for them.
Also itās kind of a mini seed run at this point so Iām not looking for yield on them at all.
Ah ok can do a bit of root pruning is that allowed ? And a serious flush of low ppm maybe 250/350 ppm flower food would give them a extended stay .
Not sure about the root pruning. Definitely going to feed them though. Theyāre being fed every watering with 0.3 EC Lucas formula (GH Micro + Bloom in a 1:2 ratio).
The girls are responding well, their top leaves are definitely a deeper green. The males are taking longer, but weāll see. Iāll up the feed if the males donāt bounce back.
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The clones are going to 0.3 EC Lucas solution today.
For the 5G cloning tote, I added 10ml of GH Micro and 20ml of GH Bloom. This raised my EC by 0.38, so I overshot my goal a little. Iām still trying to figure out numbers that will get me close every time, so I can run more totes than I can monitor, which right now is one.
Before nuting but after a ~18hr off-gas and oxygenation, the pH was 8.5 and EC was 0.44.
After adding nutes and waiting 4 hours to stabilize, the pH went to 8.1 and EC to 0.82.
After adding 5ml of UC Roots and 4.5ml of AN pH-Down, for a hopefully final pH of 5.5 -ish (after some up-drift) and EC of 0.82.
Iām not sure how much stability Iām going to get out of this acid, but letās find out.
Less than half have roots - half of the Girl Scout Cookies, and a few Gorilla Glues, and none of the White Widows. I attribute that partially to the lower feed level than I ran the last clones at (who knows what they were run at, but it was higher), and partially because the White Widows were at the back of the container, and it wasnāt level.
Iām going to need to sort out a long term solution about where to store these ladies. Might have to come up with a shelving system.
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Holy update Batman! Itās been a while since I had a full update, and Iāve been busy.
I ended up completely reconfiguring both the cab I was using to flower the cup plants and my main grow space.
I moved every single plant. I decided that I was done with soil, and went and moved anything with roots in soil into the cab. That means the White Widows were flipped to flower last Saturday, 08/22.
My 2 cup plants are in the family way. Definitely going to get more seeds than I planted, so thatās a win. I also got some pollen so next time I donāt have to grow males to flower if I donāt want to. One of the males I collected pollen from, the shorter one, had a really nice smell on a stem rub (Iām shit at describing smells beyond āniceā or ānot niceā). I swear it also had some frost on it, but as I was planning to go get a loupe to look at it, my stoned ass dropped the whole plant into my dump bucket full of water, and promptly forgot to check.
The autos are all doing their own thing. About a day after putting them in the cab, one of the White Widows was looking mighty thirsty, so I decided to give them all a water. I ended up watering about 3G between all the plants, so I think itās safe to say they were unhappy because I wasnāt giving them enough water. I switched to using these sprayers and the nozzles are very slow. I took the nozzles off and gave them a good watering, and they seem to be happier, at least.
One of the Hubbabubbasmelloscopes is putting on some weight nicely. Itās still stunted and wonāt yield more than 6-8g, but it smells good, and some is better than none.
The other Hubbabubbasmelloscope is small, will always be small, and between the two of them Iāll probably get ~10g.
The Forum Stomper hasnāt started flowering yet. I donāt know if it was stalled, or itās secretly identifies as a photoperiod plant, but it looks happier now at least, and itās under 12/12 so it should start flowering soon regardless. My notes show itās 56 days old.
Underneath these 5, Iām flowering out the White Widows. They also seem happier after a thorough watering, and are busy stretching. I donāt think theyāll hit the light, but I also train daily to make sure they donāt.
Moving all those soil plants out of my space allowed me to shift the mother plants around, and reconfigure the space for a more serious photo flowering run. I also drained their res, and redid all their nutes with new EC targets. They seem happy enough for now.
(itās not really as dark as it looks, the whole room is pretty well lit)
(this pH dip is interesting and unexpected. My current hypothesis is that itās drinking a lot. If I top it back up the pH will bump up.
The Clonedome (as I shall now refer to it) has claimed itās second set of victims, but also is crowning itās first 4 champions:
Moving onto the big leagues are 2 Girl Scout Cookies, 1 Gorilla Glue and 1 White Widow.
Their prize:
Iām oxygenating and off-gassing this reservoir right now, but once thatās done (and that weird pH dip in the mother chart is monitored/resolved), Iāll be dropping the monitor into this rez, dosing it up and graduating the victorious clones.
Soon Iāll grab another set of clones (probably just GSC and GG for now) and weāll compete in round 3, for the last chance and the big leagues:
The res is undergoing waterproofing right now but isnāt going to be needed for 2 weeks at least.
These are my ringers for the next battle. Iām hoping to test some hydro cup stuff I saw in the 16oz competition and use it as an efficient way to germ seeds that I can drop into my DWC system, no hydroton. The water is just under the net cup, and the rockwool cube is sitting on the bottom. Iām relying on the bubbling from the air hoses to keep the cube just damp enough to encourage germination, but not too damp.
In the cups is an LSD fem photo and a Candy Kush fem photo.
If they get roots, theyāll join the next set of clones in the Clonedome. Iāll wait till they pop and see if I can slip them into a neoprene collar.
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And the winning clones are in. Thereās one clone hanging on for life, but the rest donāt have roots to keep up with the falling water level.
Iāll probably cut some new clones within a few days and get those going in the Clonedome.
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Iām enthused! They are looking really good, and definitely not stressed out. Ions could be concentrating as the water is used up faster than the nutrients. You could probably even out the graphs if you never allowed the water level to drop. You could hook up a simple siphon or something to replace the water as it was used for a 24 hour period as some kind of experiment to see what happens. I know my EC rises sharply when the water level gets low, I only measure EC once I am back to full volume.
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Yeah, Iāve been puzzling about that.
The problem is that Iām running 3 sites and can only monitor one at a time. My tap water pH is ludicrously high, and the EC is also pretty high. Any water I replace with has to be pH adjusted.
I could run a float valve hooked up to a manually dosed reservoir. I even have some supplies I bought for this very planā¦
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That setup would make for an excellent experiment!
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Iāve confirmed that the 2 seeds in rockwool have germinated. Just waiting for the tap root to break the rockwool and for them to poke their heads up. Iāll hit them with some super low level nutes.
I also am expecting a delivery over the next week of the last few items needed to set up a pre-prepped reservoir to try and keep the water level of one of systems static.
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Quick change of plans:
Despite my best efforts, I wasnāt able to kill one of the Gorilla Glue clones. I emptied the Clonedome shortly after posting my last update, and low and behold one little clone with a tap root in the water, clinging on to life. I admire moxy, so into the next DWC system it goes.
I donāt want to run a full Clonedome for one plant. So Iām doing something I almost never do, and thatās soaking a seed in paper towel. Iām hoping to get tails out by tomorrow and then into rockwook into the fourth germinator you see on the left.
The lucky seed is a Dark Spark x Blue Berry Hash Plant I picked up in the last server auction. Rolling the dice here on it being a male, but if it is Iāll just yank it and replace it, giving me one more opportunity to improve my grow strategy.
Also, hmmm 
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lol Iām lovinā it - mcdonalds. I see the float setup is ready for assembly! Canāt wait to see what the outcome is.
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Yeah needed a break from Taco Bell, haha.
Iāll be drilling and waterproofing the reservoir this weekend, and trying to figure out how to get a float valve into a reservoir thatās already full.
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The elbow joint of the float valve should allow you to adjust the angle, which gives you some flexibility in the height it will trigger below the mounting point on your lid.
Cause what I believe I am seeing is returns at the bottom of the buckets, feed at the top from the res bucket to the four sites. Water level is set by the total volume of the system from what Iām seeing in your case, and those look like three inch net cups I think?
So if the arm of your float valve wont swing low enough to clear the bottom of your net pots and still trigger off where you want get a few threaded pipe nipples and some female couplers. You can pop one hole in your lid, drop a male thread pipe nipple through the hole, screw a female coupling with an O ring on either side of the lid and sandwich it. Then youāve got a female thread a couple inches below your bucket lid to screw your float valve into, and the arm angle adjustment should do the rest.
One of theseā¦
https://www.homedepot.com/p/Orbit-1-2-in-x-Close-PVC-Riser-38081/100038935
And a couple of theseā¦
https://www.homedepot.com/p/Charlotte-Pipe-3-4-in-PVC-Sch-40-FPT-x-FPT-Coupling-PVC021020800HD/203811424
A couple of garden hose washers should work for the o rings I think, otherwise just find some that will fit in n the plumbing section. Or 1/2" versions of this if thatās what your float valve hasā¦
If this is unclear I can give you a picture tomorrow.
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Wow, thanks for the great response.
All the reservoirs are running a remote bucket that I use for water refills and dosing. Iāll probably do all that on the one bucket in each system that wonāt have a plant in it. That should help avoid all the stress of not getting in the way of the net cups.
Otherwise yeah, that sounds like a solid strategy.
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Oh yeah, I didnāt mean to put it in the buckets with your plants. I had assumed by the way your system appears to be plumbed that the water level for all buckets is the same, and as the system drinks all buckets drop together.
I was talking about mounting your float in the res bucket, but you will still need to get the float valve low enough to keep the water level in the entire system below the net pots in your plant buckets.
Ideally you mount it at a height In your res that the float elbow adjustment gives you enough swing to get from just above the bottom of your net pots to just a little below them. Itās nice to have that play depending on what medium or state of rooting your clones go in at.
If Iām wrong about your water level being consistent across the system then nevermind me.
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