My last soil grow is finally coming to an end this weekend and is not very pretty. I was reading a post when I saw some massive bud porn on a single plant and saw it was being grown in a DWC Bucket, I decided after many years of soil growing to finally try something new, that was going to be DWC. After at least 18 hours of reading and watching video's on how to build a DWC bucket, I ran across a lot of info on how high maintenance it was going to be, Hell I wanted to try doing 12 DWC Buckets since my grow area is a 5x5x7 Tent, but reading about having to check each bucket at least 2 times a day started to make me wanting to go back to soil. Just as I was about to give up on the DWC Bucket idea I ran into BUDSLiNGER's post about how to build a Recirculating Deep Water Culture. I got all the equipment except a TDS Meter so eBay got a sale from me, Its scheduled to be delivered this Friday. A visit to Lowe's and a Hydro Shop got me the additional stuff needed to make the RDWC Buckets. Once everything is set up I will start to add pictures so anyone who wants to look can see the progress. My plan is to start about 30 seeds into germinating, the first 8 to show a root tap will then be transfered into 1.5" Rockwool Cubes. The cubes will then be placed into dixie cups cut in 1/2 and will sit under a 150 watt MH lamp allowing the plants to grow till they sprout and show roots growing out the sides of the cubes. The plants will then be transfered to the RDWC Buckets and allowed to Veg under a 400 watt MH lamp. Once the plants have grown enough to satisfy me they will be then put into flowering and again the lamps will be changed to 1000 watt HPS. Hopefully at the end of 12 to 14 weeks of flowering the plants will please me with some huge bud that is abundant with massive amounts of sticky THC The over all plan is to start with an 8 bucket RDWC system. I am hopeing for 4+ of the 8 plants to be female. Any males found will be destroyed and the bucket it contained will have a solid lid placed on it and allowed to continue to circulate with the rest of the system Questions and Comments are Appreciated I was not going to post any porn of the seeds sitting waiting to show root tap but for the ones who need it, here it is
you're going to put 8 buckets in a 5x5 tent? what size buckets are you using? I put 4 (5 gal) in a 4x4 tent, and i only veg for usually 2-3 weeks (from clone) , and by the time it is said and done they usually have overgrown the tent and I have to supercrop and thin the heck out of them repeatedly. I'll be following....
Correct 5 Gallon but I don't clone. I am expecting a couple to be males so the buckets they would use wont be used to grow, they will be topped with a solid lid and kept on the system as additional reservoir. I am shooting for 4 buckets to hold females
Its only been 18 hours and of course the seeds have not cracked yet I am in the process of building the 8 buckets and will show a few pictures of the buckets in different stages. The pictures are not of the same bucket but of the 8 different buckets at different stages
While I am waiting on the seeds to germinate here is the build of the RDWC Why buy light proof black 5 gallon buckets at $7.50 from the Hydro Store when you can get these for about $2.50 does the same job
When you snap the lid with the 6" net pot to the bucket you need about a 1" space from the bottom of the net pot to the fill hole. From the bottom of the lip where the handle is to the center of the 1/2" gromet was approx 5.5cm
The drain hole needs to be about 1" above the bottom of the bucket.... I added just a tad to it and made it about 1 1/2" or 4cm, That way the water level would not expose the air stone in case the system ran dangerously low on water
I filled the bucket with water and sat it next to the sink so I could test the fill and drain holes for water leaks before its all put togeather
Are you using the lids with the built in nepots? If not I HIGHLY recommend that you do. Nothing is more annoying than when the plants get big and they tip over or the netpot falls through. Don't put yourself through that. Trust me.
Net pots built in My understanding is they are light proof, they are silver, what I can do is hook up a 1000 watt light and check
Good with the built in net pots trust me you'll be glad. I would recommend checking those buckets but to be honest with the black netpot lid they might be fine especially once the plants get going and kinda block the light from going lower.
If by chance the buckets start to grow algae I can always treat it with Hydrogen Peroxide and then tape the buckets.
My meters I ordered the other day came in record time from eBay, 3 days total, what a massive suprise I checked the seeds to see how far along they was in germination and only saw one thats starting to crack with a tiny speck of tap root showing, not enough to get excited about, yet Hopefully within the next 48 hours the seeds will have gone thru the germination stage and be ready to plant them into some rock wool The way I set the plumbing up with the buckets will allow me to add or remove as needed, I might start off with 4 and add more as the seeds germinate and show roots
I got 9 seeds to show tap roots this morning and I planted them into rockwool cubes. Checking my tap water for pH gave me a 7.7 reading. For my starter water I have 2 gallon's (pH 5.7) sitting off to the side and I added enough veg nutes to give a about 1/3 str to be added to the rockwool cubes when they start to dry out. The final needed parts to complete the 8 bucket RDWC will be picked up Tuesday and I hope the cubes will have some nice roots growing out the sides and bottom and be ready to plant in Hydroton by then Pictures will be added when the cubes show roots and are ready to plant in Hydroton
I checked to see if any of the cubes had any sprouts yet, None Oh well. In a couple days they should sprout
when starting seeds you dont want any nutes at all.. and dont have to adjust ph either.. the young tap root will not do well in those conditions...
In my past soil grows I never adjusted the ph or added nutes till they was past two weeks of veg. I did adjust the ph down to 5.8 for the rockwell cubes but not added any nutes. I was going to wait till after they was planted in Hydroton rocks to add the 1/3rd str nutes. I checked the cubes a few minutes ago and found 3 of the nine have started to sprout but still have the shell attached. Hopefully by tommorrow or Wednesday at the latest the new sprouts will be ready for the RDWC buckets Gonne try to get out this afternoon and get the remaining items needed to finish the setup, if not it will be tommorrow afternoon Pictures of the young will soon follow
i use the same buckets....i stopped light proofing after i found i had no problems what so ever...lol I wish you luck! I tried running 5 individual buckets....wow what a chore!!!!