This is my first time doing a DWC hydroponics bucket grow and was hoping for some thoughts and suggestions on my setup / parameters. I plan on growing Jack Herer but am starting with Dark Devil as my guinea pig which I received as a sample from my seed guys. On day 1 I mixed up the bucket with nutes (No calmag or hydroguard yet as I await their arrival) and am seeing the following: Air temps (w/lights off. will be running an LED during Veg so I don't believe the temps will fluctuate too much): 68 Humidity: 40% Water Temp: 67 Water PPM: 151 PH: 5.5 I should point out that this is just a dry run to check my parameters over a week while my seeds germinate.
Dwc crash course mate. Set res to 200ppm plus the water source. Ph5.7 Once the ppm of the res starts dropping after a week or so go upto 300ppm. Once that ppm starts dropping after another week go upto 400ppm etc etc. Let the ph drift upto 6.3 before you fix it back to 5.7. Use hydroguard or h2o2 to keep the res clean and prevent root rot. Change res every 7-10 days regardless of how full it is. Not much else to it really. Root the seedlings up properly in a rockwool before you plug them in. Want at least 1 full set of leaves. If they go in straight away there’s a few things tend to go wrong. Stem can dampen off and kill them or they just drown from the rockwool being too wet. it’s easy though mate. Just keep the ppm dropping and not much can go wrong. If the ppm starts rising then the mix is getting stronger because the plant can’t absorb it all.
@Spanish@rcher nice crash course !!!! Great advice blade, the only thing I would add is that depending on your system size you may have to check res more often than 7 days, My 4 plant 25-gallon indoor system has to be topped off daily when plants are more mature, they can completely empty the entire system in 48 hours not to mention ph CAN fluctuate to dangerous levels in less than 24 hours.
Oh fuck yeah, once they’re bigger and spankin 20L a day things get a little harder to deal with but let’s not freak him out lol. Gotta break em in gently man baby steps haha
I grow in a 20L res and it can get a bit crazy. Still never have to adjust anything outwith top ups or res change though. Having said that, my res is now starting week 3 and my baby’s N toxed cos I was too drunk to mix nutes when I set it and been too drunk to change it ever since. back to work tomorrow though so I’ll fix her soon enough haha. Thank the canna gods for hydroguard lol.
im curious. why no calmag or hydroguard but you mixed the nutes? it will affect the ppm and ph. the calcium is a pretty strong buffer.
Thanks for the awesome advice - I will definitely use it! The calmag and the hydroguard just got delivered today so I have not had a chance to put it in - I realize there is a specific order to mixing the nutes so I will have to re-research it. I plan on transplanting the seed into a rapid rooter plug in a seedling tray for a few days before putting it into the DWC which is a 5 gal bucket.
thanks! when does the hydro guard go in? EDIT: after researching this again, this is the order I came up with: 1. CalMag 2. FloraMicro 3. FloraGrow 4. FloraBloom 5. Hydroguard