Well, I finally made the switch from soil to DWC. I transplanted four 30-inch White Russians from soil to DWC.using 5-gallon buckets with 10-inch net pots filled with hydroton and using a bubbler. I rinsed the roots free of most of the soil without losing any of them, put one small layer of hydroton on the bottom of the net pot, put the plant in, and then filled it with hydroton. Everything looks good so far. However, I am having a hard time trying to find out what the best water level should be when you transplant into DWC. I have read dozens and dozens of posts on this topic, and there seems to be an equal amount of votes for each of the following water levels: 1. 1-inch below the bottom of the net pot. 2. Just barely touching the bottom of the net pot. 3. 1-inch above the bottom of the net pot. Which one is correct - 1, 2, or 3 - and why?
Here is one of the more logical comments that I found - is this right? "If your roots are not showing out of the net pots - submerge your roots."
Basically what you want is the water level to be an inch below net level...the air stone should cause the bubbling to keep the net moist with out it being submerged..you might wanna consider using the 6 inch net pot as they are not so deepAs soon as the roots start coming through and getting to water level they explode with growthSent from my GT-I9100 using Grasscity Forum mobile app
That didn't seem to work very well. Maybe it only works that way when you have roots hanging out of the net pot? When I submerge the roots in water, the plants thrive. When I let the water level drop down to an inch below the net pot, the plants seemed to look droopy. When I put more water in to submerge the roots, the plants perked up again and grew an inch overnight! I'm guessing it's perfectly okay to submerge the roots, and in fact it seems to help.
Personally, fuck 1 inch below. I don't really understand the reasoning behind it. Your roots need water. The reservoir should have dissolved oxygen in it so the plant doesn't 'drown'. There's not really a reason to rely on bubbles popping to water your plant when you can just stick it right into the water. If they do better submerged, by all means, submerge them bitches. I've never had luck with the bubble thing, but maybe I'm not using enough bubbles.
^This guy's right on. If it does better in the water, put it in the water! When the roots grow outside the pot/hydroton, then you can drop the water level. The reason why most people opt out of popping the thing right inside the water is because they're usually small when first put in the bubbler, and they want the roots to grow and search for water. If you already have a decent rooball then by all means, drop 'er in.
I couldn't agree more with the two posts above. In fact, my first week's experience with DWC has proven what you both said. How can a plant get nutes from water vapor or splashing? The roots want access to water, oxygen and nutes - why tease them? Bubbling water with proper nutes provides everything they need except for lights! One of the things I absolutely LOVE about DWC hydroponics is that if you do something wrong (not enough nutes, too much nutes, not enough water, too much water, not enough oxygen) it can be remedied IMMEDIATELY by changing your water, air, and nutes appropriately. With soil, you are SCREWED if you overwater or overnute. All it takes is one time and you can lose a plant. I was always intimidated by hydro due to all the water pumps and reservoirs. DWC makes going hydro EASY!
I tried DWC a few months ago. I'm a new grower and tried to meld all the "good" advise for the 3 plants I started in hydro but ran into a sack full of problems. The plants were absolutely beautiful for the first month of veg then started to droop and the bottom leaves to turn completely yellow. It turned out to be root rot. Very quickly I transferred the plants to soil but still lost one plant. The 2 survivors have gone on to do quite well and are now in week 9 of flowering, almost ready to harvest. Nearly 2 weeks ago I moved 4 ten day old seedling into DWC to have another go at it. I sprouted these seedlings in soil and then waited until they had a sturdy tap root and several healthy hair roots before transplanting into 100% hydroton. What I', finding is the solution level is nothing to get too twisted about really. I set a base solution level by making sure the DWC container is level first of all. Th en using an empty netty pot I set the fluid level sothat it just touches the bottom of the pot with aeration bubbles coming up through the perforations in the bottom of the cup. Because of problem I have with solution temperature management-and me being too broke or cheap to buy a chiller-I have to either add either ice or frozen 10 oz. cola bottles to keep the temp down. This will often push the solution level to as much as 1/2 - 3/4 inch up on the cup. So every other day I have to siphon the level back down to the bottom of the netty pots and start over. During my next growing hiatus I'm going to install a drain spigot to do away with the siphoning and when money allows later on buy a chiller. So far the methods I'm using is making for some very nice, healthy seedling. I hope this will help you or someone else. Peace and keep on toking.
when you first transplant, water level should be just touching the bottom of the net pot, considering you placed the rockwool cube right at the bottom of the net, if you put lets say a half inch layer of hydroton then rookwoolon top of that, then water level should be half inch above the bottom. basically you want the water to barley touch the bottom of the rockwool whear you place it. now once you see roots poking out of the net, lower water level 1-3 iches below the net, an inch every other day once you see roots,, once shit gets GOING, the water level will be 3-6 inches below net, and most of the roots will be submerged, and about 20 to 40 percent in the air.
Never let rockwool to sit In water it will cause your stem to rot and will most likely kill your plant. plus Rockwell is so old school. Try using general hydroponics rapid Rooter grow plugs for your clones and seeds. they are amazing and they will only hold so much water which will help prevent against root rot. I personally use a recirculating dwc and I have zero problem with my roots. I feed from the top from a reservoir that sits outside of my room the stage approximately 7273 degrees All day everyday. I only have about 2 inches of water in the bottom of my grow containers. works perfect and I feed 24 hours a day 7 days a week no need 4 water timers or keeping the water level within so many inches of your net pots. As long as the water is recirculating and there is your current the feed from the top is all you need.
I also fill my buckets rather full when I fill them up. Mainly because they drink so much water during flowering and even veg. Can I ask how low you let the water level get? mine has gotten down to 2.5-3" in 5 days and I'm wondering if I should start changing it every 3 days or if that's ok. Thanks
I run mine in 5 gallon buckets with 6 inch net pot covers. I use a massive pump with 2 4 inch tube stones in each bucket. The water really boils like crazy. In past grows I kept the water 1 inch from the top of the bucket since I was using roters and they basically break down after time so the plants are tied directly into the hydtron. this grow I am keeping water just touching the bottom of the net pot. this works out to almost a perfect 3 gallons in each 5 gallon bucket. FYI: 3 inches equals almost a perfect inch in a standard lowes / home depot 5 gallon bucket. This 3 gallon seems to be working great except the water is starting to get used up daily. Its not uncommon after 24 hrs to find 2 gallons gone in some of the larger plants. I may increase to 4 gallons per bucket soon to help avoid roots getting any dry time. How about nutes? I am using the AN with all of the Grand Master line (veg cos. currently) adds. Its expensive as hell but I run at 50% suggested rates. I worry this may be too little as the growth is increasing so fast but at the end of the week my PPM is still over 700 from a starting 1300 PPM. How often to people like to change their water? AN says eveyr week at feeding which I don't agree with but I find that my PPM starts to incremeant each week regardless of how much the plant eats. Last round I had plants in week 6 of bloom with PPM almost at 3k. But they never burnt. Just curious about what others are doing and how its working. I am going to stick at 50% until I see a reason to increase. At the prices of the AN GN line I want to make them last as long as I can. I don't sell any product (its just a personal rule) so spending 750 a cycle on nutes gets pricey.
AN is infamous for running good with a higher ppm level then most other nutrient lines. You'd never get away with 3kppm on GH nutrients. Depends on strain too. Some strains tolerate more feed for sure. There a method for figuring out your plants optimal feed rate based on if it's lowering ppm faster than water level or water level faster then ppm. If the ppm is going up as the bucket is drained you can lower the ppm. If the ppm is lowering as the water goes down you can raise it and tune your plant to it's feed level to avoid using extra nutrients or getting an imbalance of certain elements after a while without a water change. IMO you can easily stretch water changes especially if the plant is a heavy feeder and dragging the ppm down instead of up. That means it's probably devouring most of the elements and leaving little behind. What happens is you put a solution in like 3k for a few weeks or more without a change and one day it takes you longer to get to the bucket. Once the plant gets the water down to a puddle it concentrates all the leftover nitrogen that it has left behind for weeks and nitro burns itself. I've seen it. Water changes get you back to base level of everything to avoid dangerous buildup like that. I vary from once a week to once every two weeks. Ideally in hydro you don't want to deal with a rockwool or any other starter material in your net pot IMO. I like to just have pebbles in there. You can accomplish this by using a medium-less cloning method like over the counter aeroponic cloners or homemade aero/fogponic/top feed & strait DWC cloners that use neoprene holders to dangle the start's stem in the res area. I've had amazing luck with roots in these as well. Everything roots. I use a turbo klone 24. When they come out of the clone machine with roots like this the best approach is to drill about 1/2" hole in the center of your net pot and dangle a good portion of the roots right through the hole when you plant it in the hydroton. The roots will keep the gravel from falling through the hole. You start day 1 with roots dangling in the pot instead of the usual couple of days to a week lag waiting for roots to drop in the reservoir. Even if you don't do the hole drill method with the long dangling roots the aero cloner produces they get planted in the net pots so close to the bottom they drop in within days. I use 6" pots from HTG called "rhizocore" bucket lids, $4 each. They have a cool risen up section in the center. This not only vents them a little better but makes them much stronger as well. Drill your hole right in the center of the top and drop your roots in. HTGSupply - 6" RhizoCore Basket Bucket Lid