SquirtleSquads adventures in DWC

Yeah this drop is over only a few days with a 8 gal per plant buffer.

I’ll keep an eye on it. I added Epsom at 0.5g/gal a few days ago

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I have been stubbornly resistant to any type of pumping system in order to maintain simplicity, but you are tempting me to come to the dark side @SquirtleSquad :sunglasses:

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I enjoy it. On my 8 site the supply manifold has a ball valve normally open to isolate the manifold with a tee that also has a ball valve that is normally closed and a barbed nipple for use with 1" polypropylene piping. I isolate the manifold by closing the valve and open up the drain valve and use the pump to drain the system. Then I go in with a shop vac to suck up what remains.

I’ve toyed with the idea of raising g the system above the control (this would allow for a higher fill on the control which would lengthen the time between top offs before the pump is starved) and having bulkheads on the bottom which help circulate water back to control but would also act is a drain to eliminate the need to shop vac the remaining water in each tote. I would be limited to shop vacing below the pumps point of removal in the control tote only.

But decided it wasn’t worth the effort

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Dont know if you’ve seen this. I cant remember where I found it, but it wored well for me when I was recirculating the rez.

I cant use the PH part of it because my PH is weird, so I use a simplified version now.

EC goes up and or PH goes down, lower EC
EC goes down and PH goes up, consider raising EC

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I’ve seen it before, but thank you for sharing. Easy to forget these things.

Falling EC, water level, pH static or rising slowly and my doser is kicking on.

EC is down again today. This makes 0.2EC drop over 84 hours.

Plants are 13-14" high now. Ready for screens and the 27gal system in a week.

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Nice roots and healthy looking plants congrats brother.

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Thanks for the kind words. I’m my own worst critic and they aren’t looking up to par for me. First time growing this strain so I’m cutting myself some slack.

I just labelled them last night and started taking notes of growth characteristics between them. The critical hog are a lot more bushier than chocolate chunk which I expected since I had heard chocolate chunk is a good SOG strain and the runt is showing me that with it’s growth. Getting taller than the rest with little axial branching.

@ReikoX autos are all sprouted in the aerocloner. Debating giving them nutrients right away since I’m worried about time, but it seems like if I starve them they are slow growing and if I give them too much(which is easy for me with my plants and setup) they are slow growing. Started with (4) Lowryder x UV #1 and (4) Lowryder x LA Diva. Going to make sure I transfer them to bubble buckets in a week or so.

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@SquirtleSquad - how have you been going with that pH controller? I have the exact same one but have not set it up yet. You mentioned the alarms on it. From what i read I thought the alarms were literally just alarms that sound when the pH swings past the thresholds. (I have also heard the alarms are super loud and sound like a smoke alarm. So not good for stealth grows when it goes off and everyone comes to your house to see if you are ok) I am wondering what pH down solution you have. I have one that is about 85% strength and from what i can tell in the instructions the lowest pump time is 1 second which would be too much for this strength solution for my 80 liter system. I am planning to use a float valve to add pH 6.0 water to the res as its level drops which over time will increase the pH then the pH controller will add pH down occasionally to adjust it to the correct pH. I guess I can just dilute my pH down solution. Better test it in an empty system before adding any plants :stuck_out_tongue:

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I’m just using general hydroponics pH down. Not sure the strength.

I poured it into an empty 500ml Bluelab 7.0 pH calibration fluid container since the cap and grommet that comes with it would only fit Bluelab pH and fuck buying their expensive pH down.

So far it’s working good. I’ll have to experiment more with it. I checked the pump run time today and it’s 20 seconds more than what it was the last time I checked.

I have a 20 second run time and then off for 10 minutes but my system is 200L system.

I’m surprised with how little trial and error I needed. You have to manually override the pump at first use to purge the air from the lines and when I did that it took about 20 seconds to put out 2-3ml of pH down so I figured that was a good point to start out at.

I’d rather undercorrect and have to do it multiple times than overcorrect and have a low pH.

I haven’t heard any alarms, but then again every time I see it the pH is rock solid at 5.8. in fact last night I moved it to my bubble buckets which the pH was 6.3 to see if it was busted lol. But it shot up to 6.3 and I didn’t hear any alarms. I’ll experiment on this and get back to you

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No worries. If 20 seconds did 3 mls then i think i should be fine as you can set it as low as 1 second which would be 0.15 mls which would only be a few drops. So I think I am going to be fine. Just the way the pump spins pretty quick i assumed it would pump a lot of solution. I am definitely interested in hearing how you go. Nice setup you have there. I’ll be hanging round to see how your grow turns out. God speed.

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It was only doing about 40rpms and the tubing diameter is so tiny so I couldn’t imagine it would pump a lot. Probably 5ml/min I’d guess

If all goes smooth I’m going to get another for my 550L system.

I like the idea of setting it and forgetting it as I go on week long vacations.

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The autos

Just to give an idea of how big these leaves are


It’s amazing to look back 9 days ago and they were still so small and today they are 4x the size

Edit had to upload 13 days ago to show the power of rdwc. Now these are some not too stretchy indicas and they are so much bigger. The top right plant is the bottom left.

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Holly fan leaves Batman ! Compact babies too !!

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I hear ya. I need to be able to get out of the house for a few days at a time and not have to worry if there will be any plants to come home to. Those are some healthy looking babies. :+1:

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Thanks

They are at 0.9EC from 1.2EC 5 days ago so I will give them 1.2EC again to see if maybe they were just hungry. Maybe 1.3EC.

Going to top them up today with fresh water and same nutrient ratios as I started them on. Keep that res for 1-2weeks before they move onto the bigger system in my flowering room where they will stay another week before flip.

Hoping to have them flipped by the end of this month for a end of January harvest. Can’t wait. I got some autoflowers I will flower out in the veg room while I start some FDM seeds (probably got C99 first) a couple weeks into flowering cycle so I can veg for 6 weeks from seeds. Should get pretty big in that time

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I have a question for you about your fuzzy roots in those pics above. What is the water level relative to the bottom of the net pots? Also, what kind of air stones are you using and what size air pump? Im thinking of doing some experiments to see if I can generate some mist for my aero setup doing something similar - but not dwc :slight_smile:

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Not using any air stones. This is in my RDWC waterfall setup. I positioned the elbows that top feed near the netpots about 6" away and anything that gets above the waterline is just splashing.

Bottom of netpots are around 3" above waterline. Maybe more

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Interesting. That throws some kinks into my off the wall idea, but still a good data point. Do you have an air stone in the control or is it all water fall?

Thanks!

I have in the past. Don’t feel it’s necessary since there’s agitation where it counts (near the roots).

I may if I run into issues.

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From the looks of those roots, Id say your doing just fine :slight_smile:

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