Hello and good day my fellow farmers. I have been growing my own supply out of soil for a couple years now and I thought I should try my hand at hydroponics. I went ahead and built myself a simple deep water culture system out of four 4 gal buckets and one 5 gal bucket. I have run into some problems right off the bat with the roots already. For the first couple of days they were doing fine and then after a pretty bad temperature spike, up to 88 for a couple days, the roots have begun to go very bad. They are all brown and slimy with a goop of some sort on them. Here are all of my readings. 20 gallon system PH- 6.4 all the time. It doesn't change much. PPM between 550 and 600 air temp- 80 degrees water temp- 74 degrees I also run about 6oz of H2O2 every other day. Please tell me if I am missing something. thank you
Your ph should be in the 5.8 to 6.2 range. I assume you are using some kind of air/stone pump? The warmer your water the more air you will need.
hey man i had the same problem as you. I'm on my first grow. i recommend botanicare hydroguard. also wrap your buckets in tin foil then duct tape over so its not all shiny. also do this to the lid. get those reservoir temps as low as possible and you'll be alright. i keep mine now below 60 but under 70 and you should be ok
You gots the root rot I think Lookup heisenberg tea, thats a solution 48 hours away minimum tho You need to drop your water temp yesterday, mine is 72 and some would say even that is too warm Until then the H202 is a losing battle Edit my bad just reread u have it at 74 I thought it was still 88! Lower wouldnt hurt tho my 72 works cause i have a live res of bennies http://forum.grasscity.com/index.php?/topic/1354378-hddani%27s-Journey-to-a-Harvest
I had the same problem with high temps, get a chiller, your plants will thank you for it. H2O2 does help control the problem, you dont need that much either, I used 10ml on a 50 gallon system every other day and it kept the roots clean, make sure you don't have light leaks, lightproof your airlines, or get black ones.
hydro is real difficult if you don't have complete control over the environment random temp swings and the such are not gonna make a happy plant point a fan directly at your reservoir, this will bring the temp down 1-2 degrees also, cover your res with something, anything. any sort of insulation will help
I'm new to hydro but I learned that the black net pots I'm using were absorbing heat from the light. So I covered them in reflective HVAC aluminum tape and reservoir temperature dropped 2 degrees. Every little bit helps. Sent from my iPhone using Grasscity Forum
I dont think I have any light leaks. I got some frozen water bottles in the buckets to lower the water temperatures, and I flushed the system and cleaned the all the buckets. I'll let you guys know if anything changes, thank you for your various advice.
Do a search here and/or google, for "pool shock in hydroponics". Bleach works too, for a sterile res. There's a plethora of off the shelf products like DM zone and whatnot, chlorine is cheap though. Or beneficial bacteria, if you wanna run a live res.
Not all hydroponics methods are as unforgiving as DWC when it comes to nutrient solution temperatures. E&F and NFT are a lot more tolerant to high temperatures. I used DWC for a while, but I found that E&F tables performed just as well, but easier with less maintenance. No air pumps/air stones to mess with, no problems with high reservoir temps, and much easier to dial in a regimen that produces repeatable results. The only adjustment I have to make for higher summer time res temperatures is reduce the over all nutrient concentration a bit to compensate for the increased uptake/transpiration rates in warmer conditions.