well im planning on going for a sog grow style again but instead of using soil i want to use dwc. at first i was thinking ok, i could maybe fit 16 5gal buckets in my 4x4 tent. thought about it more, and that would be a pain in the ass to change each bucket every 2 weeks and check the ph of each one everyday or so. ive thought about setting up a recirculating dwc system but i have no idea how i would set it up. ive decided to go with a couple 10gal rubbermade containers. i plan on flowering after a week or 2 of veg from clones. i should be able to fit 4 6" net pots in each. would 4 plants in each container be too much? before i cut the holes, i was first thinking 2 per each container would be best, but if i cut 4 holes, i have the option of vegging more plants and if it becomes a problem having 4 per container(during flower) i could always remove 2 net pots and just add more containers.
I'm not an expert but that sounds like it might be abit cramped, I'v heard you can grow 1 plant per sq ft so its possible, but from what iv read of sog you tend to flower right away once your clones have rooted decently. Maby like 1 week veg? Also pretty sure there is some threads on how to setup a recirculating DWC system, wether you put em in rubbermaids or still use buckets you simple just attach hoses to each bucket at the bottom, make it water tight and then have a resevior. Could pump all the water out of the buckets into resevior and then test however often you have to. I'm not an expert though so i'd check out some threads from people who have done it. I'm looking at growing in a 4x4 or 6x6 space and thinking of growing 4 or 6 plants respectively, 4 dwc buckets wouldnt be to hard to monitor water and you just train the plants to fill out the whole space.
yes 4 plants each in 5 gallon dwc buckets is pretty simple to take care of. thats what ive been doing for a few months now. instead of having 4 large plants i want at least 8-16 plants flowering at once. ive had a perpetual grow going for a while now, and sometimes the plants take longer to flower and end up with 600w running to flower a single plant...which is bad since im wasting space and power. i want 1 large harvest, then run 4 mother plants in 5 gal buckets at once until the next sog batch is ready to go in. the plants i plan on using in the rubbermades are nl5xsk1 which is showing to be a bit bushy, but short and compact node spacing. also trying out a strain i crossed between c99 and a skunk/haze cross, and also a landrace afghan kush. im pretty sure with manicuring them i can flower at least 2 per container. i have yet to flower any of these plants so idk how bushy they will end up. the containers are 20"x14" and can fit 6 of them into the tent with a bit of space between each. im thinking i can get at least 12 at once which is a little over 1sq ft per plant.
well after buying the 6" net pots, i can only fit 2 per 10 gallon container which is fine with me since that is what i was planning on at first. i also picked up an 8 outlet active aqua air pump and also have 2 2outlet ones. usually i use 1 airstone in a 5 gal bucket with awesome results, so 2 should be fine in each container. for now since i only have 2 containers, could i T together 2 outlets for each air stone? that would give me twice the air to the airstone, and i have 4 new airstones which would work out perfectly for now.
What if you connected all the buckets at the bottom? You could run a controller bucket and just change out water and adjust ppm/pH from there.
i plan on adding a control bucket and making it recirculating after i have all of the containers. the thing i dont get with recirculating systems is how do you keep it recirculating? like say i have 2 of these containers now, and buy a larger container for a res. i would pump water into the containers from the res. but how do you return the water before it over flows? i guess ill have to search how exactly a recirculating system works with dwc. seems like im over analyzing how it works. and to answer my own question, i did hook up 2 T's for the 2 airstones in the container, and holy god... i could probably get away with running 1 airstone off of 2 outlets that way lol but i think the plants will love the extra air, until i have more containers to run. now its time to cut the holes in the tops, and fire up the cloner cant wait to get this all up and running.
you simple have to have the level of water in the resavoir the same as you want it in your buckets, as you pump into your bucked its flows around back to your resevior. or if you wanted to be able to get all the water into the resevoir for changing you could have the buckets higher and it would gravity drain once the pump was off, theres more complicated ways to do it with float triggers to turn off water when it gets so high. I'v seen it explained in some other threads
heres what i ended up with, after cutting the holes. got 2 of them identical and plan on buying 4 more. hopefully there is enough distance between the pots, i should be able to manicure them or lst them away from the center. . heres the crazy amount of air and water movement in the bucket from using 2 outlets per air stone should have awesome growth. idc if its recirculating but changing out the buckets are going to suck. im thinking of just running a water pump to pull the water out when i change nutrients.
You connect all of the containers at the bottom using tubing or pvc. Gravity keeps the water level the same.
yeh i saw that for the under current rdwc systems, might as well run a water pump at the end and pull the water back to a control bucket also. i plan on building one pretty soon, these buckets are going to be too small to flower 2 plants each. i found some square 5gal buckets with a fold up lids just like the ones you buy in the under current systems. that should make it much easier to control.