I am in the flowering cycle on my first grow using an Current Culture 4XL13 system. Under Current XL 13 : Current Culture Hydroponics, superior hydroponic systems. As you can see if you clicked the link this system uses 4 - 13 gal buckets connected to a 13 gal. control reservoir. I use Canna Aqua line of nutes at their recommended levels. The entire system hold 45 gal of solution. I am dumping anywhere from 300 - 427 ml of Vega or Flora into the mix at one time. 427 ml of CannaZym! That's a lot of nutes for 4 plants! My question is - do I need to change the nutes out during the grow? I have read that others running these types of systems do not change out the nutes but just adjust them during the grow. Obviously this would be desirable due to the large amount used. I would appreciate any advice on using this type of system. Thanks in advance.
check out my link, to the UC grow i helped build, its my partners grow, i built this room. the amount of nutrients used isnt for each plant, its for each gallon, or little of water in rez, or system. with the UC, or DWC, or systems where roots are submerged in water 100% of the time, u can cut back on the food. and dont just monitor the mL of nutrients used, but ppm or EC of the solution after mixed, and log it! this way u know what ppm ur food is if ur plants go deficient, or are over feed. u should change the nutrient solution in ur system every week, but if needed u can go two, but u run the risk of creating problems, like root rot, unwanted bacteria/ biofilms etc. with our UC system i think we used $600-800 worth of house & garden the first run. we dropped the UC system because buckets kept cracking, to many nutrients used, a lot of water used. it did perform though, we pulled 4-8oz per plant (people are claiming upwards of 4lbs per plant... prob bullshit) so it is worth it to run, if u want to spent the money on nuts and water hope this helps, good luck
If I didn't already understand that you mix the nutes up by the gallon not by the plant I would be pretty stupid wouldn't I? Thanks for the advice but honestly it goes against most of what I have heard already from others who use the undercurrent on a regular basis. Can you give me any basis for the nutes, if unchanged, causing root rot? Never heard of that one.
thats what i meant when i said ur not adding for each plant, ur adding for each gallon of water. because u said 427mL is a lot for 4 plants. but its not for 4 plants its for the 45gal rez u have, thats less then 10mL per gal, so no thats not a lot. root rot is caused by lack of O2 in the water, if u do not have proper aeration, and the older the water is, it can cause root rot, once the O2 is depleted. or, the older the water, the more bacteria build up, when bacteria build up, along with other microbes, biofilms can build up, sometimes these can be beneficial, but they also use up the food u put in the rez for ur plants. so what im saying, it is not wise to leave the water throughout the grow, u will create a swamp. it is better to swap out the water every week or so, to avoid problems
Hello fellow grower I made a system using 5 gallon buckets ( 4planters and 1 controll bucket) you don't have to switch nuets out every week. For my nuets I used house and garden aqua flakes and fox farm trio ( open seasame, beastie bloom , cha Ching) I did a 4 week veg and I didn't change the water during that time. I followed the nutrient calculator from house and garden and fox farm Nuet charts for administering the soliubles. I just added week 1 nuets which was 150ml of a&b and week 2 was 175ml so I just added 25 ml of a&b for the second week and week 3 was 212ml so I added 37 ml of each and didn't add the open sesame till the 4th week at 1/4 tsp per gallon. I shot for 25 gallons and had only 20 gallons in my system total the extra was because I was usin RO water and the extra nuets helped with deficiencies mainly cal and mag. But when I flipped into flowering I switch my Rez a week after to add beastie bloom in place of open sesame. So I decided to switch water and replace with new ( 6 weeks old Rez water) fresh RO water. Added like 200ml of a&b and beastie bloom.. According to fox farm it says I need to run it a week so I'm goin to run it for 2 weeks and switch out my Rez so I can add the final soluable cha Ching for the next 3 weeks the 1 week flush for a total of 10 weeks flowering. This is a loose translation of the regiment . But mainly showing how I add and change nuets for a RDWC system. Pics are 3 weeks into flowering
Oh also to help keep Rez clean later I added Dutch masters zone as a conditioner works awesome since I'm not running benifical bacteria.
janemba - thanks for trying to help but although you help build a system, I am not sure you understand what type of system I am running. An undercurrent system like mine heavily oxygenates the water. That is the entire reason for the system. Using bubble buckets I grew 4 plants with only 10 gal of nutrient solution. As all growers, my goal is max production with as low costs as possible while still maintaining quality. xSpecialEDx - thanks for the advice. I was really looking for someone who is running an undercurrent on a regular basis to see what they have done. My hope is (and I am beginning to find others who do this) that I can run my solution with additions through veg and then do one change out for flower.
[quote name='"Marsdude"']janemba - thanks for trying to help but although you help build a system, I am not sure you understand what type of system I am running. An undercurrent system like mine heavily oxygenates the water. That is the entire reason for the system. Using bubble buckets I grew 4 plants with only 10 gal of nutrient solution. As all growers, my goal is max production with as low costs as possible while still maintaining quality. xSpecialEDx - thanks for the advice. I was really looking for someone who is running an undercurrent on a regular basis to see what they have done. My hope is (and I am beginning to find others who do this) that I can run my solution with additions through veg and then do one change out for flower.[/quote] I've been running my undercurrent for the last 8 months in the middle of flowing now 1 month in
I'm about a week and a half from harvest. I will say that the I have WAY more buds on these plants with the undercurrent that with just using the bubble buckets. I also found out I was running the nute solution in my buckets too high by talking to a grower at a local grow shop.
I run a home made undercurrent DWC (see signature). For all intents and purposes, it's the same as yours, only smaller. I use the Lucas formula, for several reasons, one of which is that I can use the same nutes/water for the entire grow, without changing them.
Thanks for the info and the link to the Lucas thread. I had heard of the Lucas formula before but didn't have the link. Lots of great info there. I checked out your build. Very nice! That is exactly what I was going to build. I went to my local grow shop to see if they had those square buckets and he sold me this used Current Culture system for $200! I had a larger pump so that is what I am using. So far I really like the system. I would appreciate any tips or insight you have gained from running your system.
this was my first hydro grow ever. only one soil grow before. ran ionic 'grow' for a 6 week veg to house and garden for flower for 10 weeks and only used drip clean, bud xl, top booster, and shooting powder. did weekly water changes using a home made undercurrent system, just buy the uni-seals and a 3'' hole saw, never checked pH once or ec using tap water around 115 ppm. followed house and gardens nutrient calculator to the point. on just one plant under a 600w light i pulled 17 oz off this beauty. might have used more nutes in the long run, but played it safe by the books and never had one problem until the last 2 weeks of flower. i had a 7 inch diameter top cola that developed stem rot from the extra water content, even at 40% humidity it was inevitable. i would love to see 2-3 lbs per plant under a 1000w light next grow. happy growing!