Durban Poison RDWC 600W HPS/MH/LED Grow

WEEK 3, DAY 19 and 20 (VEG)


MAIN RDWC SYSTEM: All of my plants are roughly the same size and shape and have bushed out big time. I am READY to start flower tomorrow. I have the PPM/EC dialed in so there are very little fluctuations with EC and/or PH.

LED DWC: SLIGHTLY smaller than the main RDWC system, but bushy in its own right and also ready for flower tomorrow.


Sunshine/CFL Mother: Holy cow, she will not stop growing straight up. She already has multiple clones I could take today if I wanted (I don’t need them for another 2 months though). She’s sitting at about 15 inches now and grows an inch to half inch every 24 hour period. I'll probably switch her over to my Lucas formula method (a singular dry GH nutrient) once I start flowering her sisters tomorrow; it will be cheaper, less work, and all I need from her is to provide me with cones in 2 months so she doesn't need all the fancy nutrients I am using on my flowering plants.



Today I fill my mixing tank with 18 gallons of tap water and let it percolate all night. Tomorrow morning I’ll mix my week 4/FLOWER nutrients and then flush/refill the system tomorrow evening. I plan to switch out my MH bulb with HPS, and I will set my light schedule from 8am – 8pm starting tomorrow . If things continue to roll along, I should start seeing buds/flowers forming in 2 – 4 weeks.

 

WEEK 4, DAY 21, (FLOWER)


Last night after my MH light went off, I quickly changed the bulb from MH to HPS. I also adjusted the lights on schedule from 6am – 12am to 8am – 8PM. FLOWER HAS BEGUN!


I’m going to add my new nutrient mix this evening. Here are some pics from last night/this morning.

 

WEEK 4, DAY 21, (FLOWER)

Part 2


I did my nutrient changeover today. The plants, except for my mother plant, are now on a 12/12 light schedule and I started the GH week 4 “transition” phase nutrients. I also found a small bottle of GH Rapid Growth that I had misplaced at the start of my grow and so this was the first time adding it to the mix. WOW does it stink (rapid grow).

During my changeover I installed some upgrades to the main RDWC system in the form of PVC drain caps with screens. They have threaded inlets so I connected them to threaded PVC pipe connectors and slipped that over the inside pipe in each bucket to prevent roots from getting into the gravity return line. These arrived just in time as the roots are just about touching that pipe now.

 

WEEK 4, DAY 26 (FLOWER)


Main RDWC System: The plants are exploding in growth and starting their stretch. I have moved the light up several rungs over the past few days. Ph, PPM/EC, and water levels continue to be low to zero maintenance after the first 24 hours of the water/nutrient changeout. This system is working like a dream.


I continue to prune but it seems almost pointless as a jungle emerges. I took some pics of how I am managing that to a degree. One picture shows a bushy jungle foliage, and the other shows how I turn bucket lids to help break the jungle up a bit.




LED DWC: I am super impressed with the performance and I like having this plant in the tent because I can use it as a control plant. My original idea for this plant was to keep it around for the first week or two of the grow as an “emergency replacement” if any one of my 4 main system plants had issues. Since none of them had issues, my LED plant has just turned into a control plant that I can test higher nutrient levels on or different levels of PH.


So far, this LED DWC has been on slightly higher levels of nutrients than my main system and shows no signs of burn. That tells me I can probably go a bit higher on my main system during my next changeover.


I am very impressed by the LED light since it was sort of a “cheap” purchase I made as a cheap solution to a mother plant light. I am more than blown away by its performance, and have already looked into more established and better-quality lights for a complete MH/HPS light replacement.




Sunshine/CFL DWC: This plant is still super happy and must be about 15 or 16 inches tall now. It just continues to stretch and grow, and I continue to salivate at all the clones it will provide me in about 9 or 10 weeks….long time to wait!

 

WEEK 4, DAY 27 (FLOWER)

RDWC System: I checked on my system reservoir this morning like I always due and took measurements for my ph, EC/PPM (more on this later). It looked like the reservoir was a little low, and I also noticed a low waterline in my buckets so I adjusted the valves on my system, to allow a slower return to the reservoir. That got my water level where I wanted it in the buckets, but my reservoir is ALMOST empty! I have about 5 gallons in there now. WOW, the plants are really gulping up the nutrient solution!

By adjusting the system valves I was able to get the water levels where I like and I went ahead and mixed up my nutrient solution tonight so I can switch it out first thing tomorrow morning (instead of mixing it tomorrow and waiting 12 hours to change it out).

The system continues to work perfectly: zero leaks, zero water issues, amazing results. It is quiet, self sufficient, and easily customizable. Since I am doing a back to back grow, my only plans for “upgrading” the system while I cleans the system for the next grow, will be to fix the 1 inch piping so it’s not so wonky AND replace the water pump with a much stronger pump. I will also replace the bubbler strips I am using in each bucket and replace them with 4 inch disk bubblers. That will make for some happy plants! Major upgrades and redesign of the system will have to wait until after the second grow, when I take a break during the summer.


LED System: The LED plant is also gulping down the solution and is just loving life. It is SLIGHTLY less robust as the RDWC plants, but it was a runt to begin with and I started it slightly later on than the others.


Sunlight/CFL Plant: Besides the devil’s lettuce, I am growing hydroponic herbs and veggies, and I am waiting on parts for that edible garden, so I have a SECOND LED light, designed more in the white spectrum for the type of veggies I am growing, and I set it up on the mother plant. The plant is extremely happy and tall.

I’m switching over to the Lucas formula with dry Maxibloom nutes this week for this plant. I only need it to produce clones for me in a few weeks, so I don’t need to be feeding it expensive nutrients.


PPM/EC: For all of my past grows, I have only paid attention to the PPM. This grow, I decided to focus on EC, and I am glad I did. EC really does tell the real story, and the PPM reading does NOT always follow the same trajectory as the EC. The differences/errors are minor, but if you want precision, EC is the way to go. I continue to note both in my daily measurements, but I am focusing only on EC.


Now that the plants are gulping water and putting on weight, future root pictures are probably out of the question until I harvest

I have mixed up WEEK 5 GH nutrient solution and using 70% of the recommended strength. I am also adding Liquid Kabloom for the fist time in this grow. WEEK 4 was considered “transitionary”, and now we really jump into flower with these plants.

 

WEEK 5, DAY 33 (FLOWER)


The plants are gulping water and nutrients. I am adding about 1 – 2 gallons a day of RO water into the res daily now!


I have been defoliating around the base of the plant and cutting all over to keep good flow and open up the canopy for lower buds sights being blocked by big leaves. I cut some sizable branches today, and several cuttings would have made perfect clones. BUT, I won't need to clones for another 8 weeks or so, so into the trash they went.


White hairs have started clustering into small, nascent buds. I am nearing the end of week 2 in my flower, so not much to see yet but you can see in my pics clear bud sites and where they are starting to form.


I’m mixing my nutrients tomorrow for a Tuesday water exchange. I’m going 85% strength this time.

 

WEEK 6, DAY 35 (FLOWER)

I did my weekly nutrient exchange in all of my systems today: RDWC and my two DWC systems. This time I used 85% of the recommended nutrient strength. This week really bumped up the flowering nutrients so I am excited to see some more significant bud formation occur over the next few weeks.

How do I drain my 17 gallon reservoir and the 2 -3 gallons that rest in each bucket of my RDWC system? Well, I’ve tried two ways but one works better (and dryer) tan the other.

The fist method I tried involved using a submersible pump inside the reservoir, and then snaking a hose from the pump about 15 feet around a corner into my bathroom tub. Not only was it a pain to get the tubing to reach that far with it’s permanent coiling, but it was also difficult to get all of the water out of the system as a gallon or more was always left in the res, buckets, and pipes. It’s also incredibly messy and wet as that much tubing always drips back and out and it’s just too easy for water to escape.

The second method, the method I use, is a two-pronged approach. First, I shut off the gravity return pipe that returns water from my buckets back to the reservoir. I also shut off the water pump. Now, all of my buckets are essentially straight DWC systems. Next, I plug in my 8-gallon wet shop vac and begin sucking the water out or the reservoir in 5-gallon increments (if you go above that, the water will often splash into the overflow valve and onto your floor). Once the shop vac is full, I unplug it, wheel it to my tub, and empty it. I repeat this until the reservoir is empty.

Once the reservoir s empty, I will usually do a quick cleanup of the inside of the res. Once that is done, I turn the gravity return pipe back to the open position, and all of he water from my buckets comes rushing into the res. I use the shop vac to empty the res, then connect the end of the suction hose to the gravity return pipe inside my res to get even more water out. It works very well.

Finally, once the entire system has been completely drained, I take a submersible pump and stick it inside my 27 gallon mixing tank that is setup next to my main res. The pump goes into my mixing tank and the end of the hose that is attached to the pump goes into my main reservoir. Once the nutrient solution begins to flow, I turn on my RDWC water pump, and the system is active again. Total time my plants are without water: 2 – 5 minutes.

There are easier ways to do this depending on your grow space and area. Some folks have drains or sinks in their grow space, making this a MUCH easier process, others use battery hand pumps, which is something that worked well for me when I was growing DWC. The shop vac is the most effective method for me to drain that much water with the space that I have to work with.


Although it’s hard to tell from the pictures, I have been doing some significant defoliation over the past few days. There is a bit more I can do, but I am satisfied with how everything is cut right now. I don’t mind a few underdeveloped buds as I also make hash (it will be part of this grow journal) out of trimmings and malformed buds.

This strain is a little slower compared to what I have grown in the past; I did expect more significant bud development by this point. But I must be patient, especially now that I upped the nutrient strength and the nutrients are leaning heavily towards bud development.

 

WEEK 6, DAY 36 (FLOWER)

Things are really starting to take off now. The RDWC plans drained 1 gallon from my res, so I topped it back up with pure RO water. I’ll keep topping it off until there are three days left in the week and then I’ll let the buckets/reservoir lower so it’s less work for the end of week nutrient exchange.

I did some major defoliation again today and I am very satisfied with my work. While it’s hard to see from the pictures, I opened up the center of the canopy big time, and I can see all of the bud sites starting to form. Since this is technically the start off week 3 of my flower, it is nice to see the buds really start to take their form. I won’t see the beautiful colors and traditional looking buds for a few weeks yet, but white hair balls are a good sign.

Each plant in the RDWC system has 3 – 4 distinct tops with several surrounding/smaller colas/branches shooting up. The LST technique worked perfectly.

 

Day 38, Week 6 (grow), Week 3 of FLOWER.


The buds continue to form, and I feel less anxious now that they are starting to appear everywhere. The HPS light makes them difficult to see, but in a week or two they will be fat enough to where I can get some decent pics when the lights go off.


Video Tour of Grow Tent


The plants have drained about 2 gallons from my res. The PPM/EC remained exactly the same! Wow, the plants are either really dialed in right now.....or they are all about to die lol. Since they smell amazing and look healthy, I'll assume it's the former.


Something interesting I noticed when filming the above video: when I first began this grow, my RDWC system made a decent amount of noise with the water pump splashing water into all of the buckets. Even with the door closed, I could hear the water splashing into the buckets in the next room over. As you can hear from the video, you can BARELY hear any water now. The reason? The root balls are filling the buckets and cushioning/softening the splash of the water. They take up about 1/3 of the bucket now!

 

Day 38, Week 6 (grow), Week 3 of FLOWER - PART TWO

Just some quick pics with the lights off.

 

DAY 39, WEEK 6 (Week 3 Flower)


Wow is it smelling goooooooooooood inside the tent……

 

DAY 40, WEEK 6 (WEEK 3 FLOWER)

Mother/CFL/Sunshine Plant: As you can see, the mother lant is very tall now at 2 feet, 7 inches. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it once I take the clones. I suppose I can set it off to the side for flowering once my flower begins on grow #2, using my spare LED light. It’s already so tall though, I’m not sure what to do slow it down since I still have 7 weeks or so before clones. I think I will try topping it.

RDWC: Absolutely zero maintenance, it is being drained at 1 – 2 gallons a day. I added back a few gallons but I pretty much drain the system until nutrient switch day. Little buds continue to form and grow allover the plants. They are easy to see now. They smell A M A Z I N G. Very sweet, like strawberry shortcake.

LED DWC: To my surprise, this plant and this light continue to baffle me. The buds on this plant look SLIGHTLY bigger than compared to the RDWC. Not only that, but the vertical height and general health is indistinguishable from the plants under my HPS light. My LED light is a 600W Bloomspect, I guess it qualifies as a “blurple”, but damn…IT WORKS!

I have 20 gallons of tap water bubbling away and degassing in my mix chamber. Tomorrow I mix up my new nutrient batch and on Tuesday, I switch out the nutrients and begin week 7 of what will probably be a 12 or 13 week grow. 1 week before harvest day, I’ll take my clones, and then begin the new grow a week after harvest (or thereabouts).

 

DAY 43, WEEK 7 (Week 4 FLOWER)

I did my nutrient exchange yesterday. The plants in the RDWC have already drank a few gallons by the end of day today, so I topped off with RO water.

I was pretty impressed to see how with one plant that was bent over 90 degrees for LST, a new stem grew right out of that bend and became a new top0 (among multiples).

 

DAY 45, WEEK 7 (Week 4 FLOWER)


RDWC: The system continues to chug along. Still ZERO leaks, ZERO clogs, ZERO issues. The system was a bit loud when I first ran it, but with most of the space now filled with dense forest and wet buds, plus the roots taking up a good chunk of the bucket, I can’t even hear the fans OR any type of water noise. The difference in sound is staggering. You can hear it by comparing earlier video posts I did—where you can hear waterfall falling—and a few days ago where you can hear the soft hum of the air pumps and that’s about it.


The plants are drinking about a gallon and a half a day and I usually top off with plain water before I go to bed for the first few days of the week, but for the last few I just let them plants drain the res.


The main colas continue to stretch, with the tallest branch sitting at 5 feet, easy. They are about even level with the cool tube/light, but they are on the side right now so I am not worried about them getting fried. My light is reaching the upper limits; I have only a few links on my chain left to go!


LED DWC: This plant really loves the full spectrum light I have it under. No doubt, the RDWC is bushier and more robust, but in terms of bud production, they are equal and dare I say the LED plant has SLIGHTLY larger buds. It could just be a trick of the light of course.


I don’t know if the slightly more robust plants in my RDWC system are due to the RDWC or the HPS light compared to the SLIGHTLY less robust LED DWC plant, At the end of my RDWC system the plant branches that are farthest away from my HPS are reaching out towards the edges of my LED light, for one of the RDWC plants, about 1/3 of the plant is getting its light, happily, from the LED, while the rest gets the light from the HPS.


I am considering buying another full spectrum LED light and adding it closer to my HPS light for my net grow to give that full spectrum benefit AND to give better light towards the rear plants in my system that are farthest from my HPS. I wonder if that is a normal thing for to do?


CFL/Sunshine Mother Plant: This plant will not stop growing vertically! I have topped it, but it keeps growing back. I removed the chain that was hanging the CFL and replaced that with small O rings so I got a little more vertical space for my plant under the light.



The smell is just amazing in the tent. Very sweet odor, it’s not skunky at all like you would think, or like how it smells when it is dried. I’d say it smells like something sweet is baking in an oven and a honey bee hive, which has a unique, intoxicating smell. I’m sure I’m not the only grower who obsessively hovers their nose over a growing bud and inhales just for the joy of smelling that amazing aroma.


This is also when I start to get most nervous during the grow. This is when bugs and other disasters like to strike, after weeks of work and with so much prospective bud in sight.

 

Day 47, Week 7 (Week 4, Flower)




The buds on the plants SLOWLY continue to swell. I think there was a little slow down over a 24 hour period because I have had an unusual cold spell moving in and it got into the low 60’s in the grow room. I added a space heater in the room and it’s keeping it at a relatively toasty 71 degrees at night right now.

I was paranoid the other day as I noticed the leaves seem to be thin, and some are slightly curling up towards the light. But everything smells amazing, so I’m just assuming it’s doing a strain/flower thing.

 

DAY 49, WEEK 8 (WEEK 5 FLOWER)



Nutrient changeout today. Another 20 gallons @ 85% recommended nutrient strength. Everything smells fantastic. I am not accustomed to such thin leaves, especially after such monster growth during veg, but I am reading that this is normal for this pure sativa strain during flower.

 

DAY 53, WEEK 8 (Week 5 of Flower)

My PH has been dropping over the past two days and it has me worried. The PPM/TDS is pretty steady and the system is being drained at a gallon or so a day, so I think there might be too many nutes in the mix. The buds also seem somewhat small to me for 5 weeks into flower, although that could just be this train.

I went ahead and removed 4 gallons and replaced with 4 gallons of RO water and that dropped he PPM down to around 900. I’ll see what the PH does overnight. I checked the roots and they all looked great, everything smells fantastic, and the plants are starting to frost up everywhere so I am hoping this PH dip is just a nutrient or flowering thing. The frosting that is happening on the leaves and buds is nice to see. I just wish thee buds would fatten!

Am I just being paranoid? Do these buds look on the smallish side for Week 5?

 

DAY 54, WEEK 8 (Week 5 of FLOWER)

The PH and TDS have been stable since I watered down my nutrient solution, so I am confident that the plants were telling me that the solution was too strong. I have a nutrient changeout in 2 days, and I’m dropping the nutrient strength down to 60%; the plants did not seem to like the 85% strength I used last time.

While the leaves continue to get very frosty/crystally, the buds themselves still look smallish to me for being in week 5, heading into week 6. I guess I’ll just have to be patient and see how it all plays out.

 

DAY 56, WEEK 9 of grow, WEEK 6 of flower

I did my nutrient changeout today and I have my solution strength sitting at around 65% what my schedule recommends.

My TDS is sitting at around 900ppm, with the EC at around 1700. I’ll probably lower that by 10%-15% for WEEK 10. This week is a repeat of the previous week to add 1 extra week to the flower to allow the buds more time to develop.

As you can see in the pictures, the leaves are a beautiful shade of green. the buds are SLOWLY swelling, and the plant is covering itself with frosty trichomes. The smell is amazing inside the tent, and these are all signs of a happy, healthy plant.

I accidentally bumped into my light timer so my HPS took 5 minutes to come back on. In the meantime, I had my full spectrum LED lighting the tent for this video. Not a great color spectrum but it does give a good contrast of the white buds so you can get a better idea of their size: