Hi, A small intro about me. I'm new to the forum and to growing. For sometime now I've wanted to get away from the grip of having to spend money for something that's able to be grown at home. Let's face it in this economy right lol.... The reason I started the thread was to get advise and to make sure on the methods I'm taking on my first grow. As you all know the internet is full of opinions and different methods as to how we should grow, so I did my best to try and find the similarities between the different setups. The tent was built from homedepo materials, as I was trying to save as much $$ as I could. I used PVC for the frame, and refletix insulation for the walls. Part of the reason was cause a lot of the growers kept saying spend the money on the light, cause lights can make or break a grow. Armed with this knowledge I purchased the SF-2000 by spyder farmer. I started my first grow Monday 5:59 am, after I did my best to get the water as close to 5.5 PH. I was able to get it between 5.6 - 5.7. I felt this was well within range as I believe the range is 5.5 - 6.5. I didn't do any other adjustments or tests to water. As I don't have anything else on my table to adjust the water for a seedling. I'm gonna invest in a RO for future water use. Soaked the Rockwool cube for 2hrs, and didn't squeeze the cube. I saved the same PH water in a container under the hand wash in the dark, to re-use when repleneshing the water for the seed's. As someone online mentioned it wouldn't hurt to feed the seedling the same PH treated water they started with. Here's where my concern starts. The seed took almost 5 days to start coming out. The seeds were purchased from ILGM Gorilla Glue. I was starting to freak out on the 4th that the seeds never sprouted and that I needed to start another set. Money is tight so the 10 I purchase need to count "in my head lol". I was like screw it, I moved the cube a bit, and noticed the seed had started so I'm like omg what have I done. Maybe I prevented them from coming out or nearly drowned them. The list goes on as to all the things I thought I did wrong. I re-closed them and since I've had to move a heater in the room, and pumped the lights up to 60%. I've been re-using the same ph water to also wet the inside of the dome. This is where I am now, and I would like to get as much advise on how I should proceed and what can I do to improve. The images are from the status of the plants just 30mins ago, I hope tell the story better.
First, welcome! Second, relax and let the plant do its thing. It doesn’t look like you’ve damaged your seedling at all, so you’re in business. Your setup looks pretty good to me, and I think you have a reasonable shot at a successful first grow. This part of the grow is going to be the most exciting and anxious, but it’s best to just leave it the fuck alone or LITFA as the acronym goes. You’re off to a good start.
DWC is a mighty task for your first grow! In my experience DWC is harder to get the environmental conditions right, as you need to worry about 2 environments (inside the bucket and outside the bucket). A water cooler will be your friend but they are expensive. You are definitely off to a good start and I agree with the last fellow in regards to being patient and don’t over think it. Cannabis is a resilient plant so often times you can ruin a crop by trying too hard while ignoring the basic important stuff. My last DWC grow it took me 10 days to have roots coming out of the cube. You’ll want to have the cube in the basket with clay pebbles before the roots start to show. I’d say get the buckets going and put them in there now. There is a technique called “bubbleponics” where the popping air bubbles in your bucket splash up into your roots. This requires a perfect combination of water level and air pressure. If the bubbles pop too high then the water splashes up and keeps the rock wool cube soaked which you don’t want. That will rot out the roots. Try to have the bubbles reach the bottom 1-2” of the basket and your roots will grow through the pebbles in search of water. Eventually your roots will make it down to the reservoir where all the magic starts to happen. Don’t pull the cube out of the pebbles to check on it. Leave it in there and let those roots grow. Stay on top of your ph. Calibrate your ph meter often and double check your ph with strips. Use little to no nutes for the first while, and introduce them slowly. This plant can survive with just the minerals in your water for weeks, so adding too much nutrient is easy to do. Start with 1/6 recommended dose and work up from there. TDS meter is also a valuable tool as it’ll help you find the limit of what your plant can handle. Changing your res water is important and cleaning the reservoir is also helpful. You have to decide if you’re going to run a sterile system or not. If so H2O2 can be used when cleaning. I’d suggest not running a sterile system as it seems unnatural to me. Let the beneficial microbes thrive and do the work for you. Voodoo Juice helps introduce those bennies. You can top your plant but I wouldn’t suggest pruning until later on once you’re certain the plant is healthy and can handle it. LST will help you control the canopy for maximum light efficiency. The biggest issues I experienced with DWC was high reservoir temp, nute burn, and big PH fluctuations. This usually resulted in brown roots, burnt leaves and lower yield. Often I would switch to a sterile system to control the root rot from killing my plant. Having nice healthy white roots is tough to achieve for the entire duration of your grow. I switched from DWC to an organic no-till soil setup. Cost to set up are much less, the quality and size of my buds increased, and most importantly I can walk away from my plants for days without worrying about anything! There’s no doubt DWC (if done correctly) will result in faster growth, but for me the stress and time was not worth it. Good luck and let me know if you have any questions! Sent from my iPhone using Grasscity Forum
Thank you!! so much for the amazing detailed feed back. I really want to try organic soil grow at some point, but I guess the youtube vids I was watching sold me DWC too well lol. At this rate I can only hope for the best that they were right about DWC being friendly to mistakes. Though after reading your post, it's got me now a bit on the not worry, but "pay atention" side. The way I had planned it, and if there's a flaw please correct me as I like to learn more. I was going to let the seeds hang out long enough till the roots break through the cube at any visible point. I purchase a small bottle of RapidStart. Based on the video instructions I'm to wait till I see the roots, and then introduce it to the plant for a bit before taking her to the bucket. I currently don't have a res as my plan was to fill the buckets with the water and nutrients, and top through out the week with PH balanced water until the end of the week. Where my plan was to since I purchase enough buckets. Prep another 2 with the water and fresh nutrients and do a full bucket swap. Allowing me to clean and prep the 2 I just removed for the following week swap. I was advised by multiple videos of being cautious feeding nutrients into a DWC setup. As the plants have the nutrient 24/7 it can quickly lead to nutrient burn. Some youtubers were suggesting to us 1/2 of the amount suggested per gallon. I definitely see what you mean about how quickly it can go south. I picked up some stuff to help the chances of the plants survive "My Noobness" if you will. A small WallGreens humidifier, and a humidifier and temp monitor. Something about making sure that temps are between 75-85 for LED grow lights. Since I didn't have any to monitor figure get one. So far Chloe and Margarete are doing amazing. and my temps are holding at 84. I wanna say thank you again for the very well detail feedback you provided.
I wanted to show a quick updated. I'm attaching a few images to show how the plants are doing, and to show the Humidifier and monitor working. I took the dome off for a sec to spray the inside with water and took a quick pic to show the progress.
Don’t be scared about DWC. It requires good work ethic and a willingness to learn - both of which you appear to have. You seem like a handy person looking at your homemade grow space so you’ll be fine. This plant is extremely hard to kill, so there’s no doubt you’ll get a smokable harvest! Rapid Start is just for clones I’m pretty sure, but since you already have the bottle it can’t hurt to use. I built an insulated box around my pails which helped keep my res temps low. I piped in cold air from outside to feed this insulated box which kept my water at 15 Celsius and my grow room at 25 Celsius. This 10 degree temperature differential is tough to achieve without a water cooler, but I didn’t want to spend that kind of money so I built this instead. It was a 2x4 box insulated and then I put a layer of poly around it. Then I stapled reflective bubble wrap on the outside. I used a cheap wired thermometer to watch my water temp at all times. I also used a Wyze camera to check my thermometers and hygrometers anywhere anytime. This $40 camera was very handy and helped with peace of mind while I was at work. I also used a piece of plastic as a lid to my net pot. This kept the rock wool secure in the clay pebbles, but more importantly it blocked any light from getting into the res. Light will create pythium which is bad for your roots. I’d suggest SLOWLY increasing your nutrient concentration till you see a negative reaction from your plants. Then back off maybe 20% from that concentration and let mother nature take care of the rest. Basically if keep your plants warm, your water cool, your humidity high, and your ph around 5.8 you’ll have explosive growth on that plant. Sent from my iPhone using Grasscity Forum
I can't tell you how much of a peace of mind these responses have provided. Originally I did that mistake and installed the pump inside the tent. Later on I caught a video that was advising about the dangers of doing so, and in that warning I moved the air pump outside of the tent. Currently sitting between the tent and the wall surrounding the tent in the shower. I think I got lucky that I had built the tent in the shower, cause I think the ceramic tiles are keeping the air cool in the small pocket between the wall and around tent. That's a sick idea! thank you! Creating a cool box to place the air pump into, and this way it would deliver colder air to the water... I went online after reading your recent reply to confirm if the RapidStart root Enhancer case use was. I went back to confirm the label on the bottle, and re-find the original that saved me from using it too soon. Cause when I got it, the guy a the store sold it to me as a something to promote root growth. Technically it is, but not in the sense I think he was selling it to me. I believe something like this would be great for tomorrow, since I haven't feed water to the cubes since the day before yesterday. I was gonna wait till the seedler dried a bit more, and if I saw roots ("Which I think I am already, I didn't touch the cubes them self's. Just lifted the separating clear plastic tray from the green and looked under and placed back."). The guys in the video was explaining by allowing more hair to grow on the root. They would be able to take more advantage of the nutrients provided, allowing the plants to not get easily nutrient burned. <- Btw this is the theory I think I understood behind this. I'm attaching some new imagines of the girls from today.
So yesterday I was practicing "Leaving the plants alone". I stopped by in the morning took a quick look, everything looking Gucci and just needed to top the res for the humidifier. I have 0 I idea what happen, or how it happen. Yesterday night I stop by. But the Rockwool cube super dried and 1 of the plants nearly died. I ran and quickly removed the dome all together, and poor a bit of the water I was holding on the cub and prayed for the night. The plant looks like it's coming back. Been trying to stop by a bit more often to pinch the cube on the side to feel for moistness moving forward. Pictures are from the damage and the recovery. I'm not sure if the temps of the house went up, and I didn't account and some how the temp in the room shoot up. I hadn't happen before even with me playing with the house heater. Gonna find some diy way to keep an eye on temps from outside of the room. I'm sure I can diy that, since that's on my side of the field. As for how often I should water the cubes, I'm gonna have come up with schedule for me to check and water that I can stick too. To avoid another incident.
Note: Been keeping the dome off since, hope I made the right choice with that. Figure It wasn't needed by now could be wrong though lol.
You can remove the dome as long as your humidifier can keep up. I would suggest the bubbleponics solution. Put the cubes in the net pots sitting on top of the clay pebbles. Use pebbles all around the cube to secure it in place. I try to make the top of the cube flush with the top of the net pot, then I make a plastic lid for the net pot to block light and keep the cube secure till the roots take hold of the pebbles. With the net pot in the bucket with air pump going, have the bubbles pop in a way that the moisture reaches about halfway up the net pot. See picture for what this looks like. The benefit of this method is it keeps the roots humid enough where they won’t dry out. Also, the clay pebbles below the cube are all wet, so once the roots start growing out of the cube they take off through the pebbles drinking up the moisture. You have to get your reservoirs going soon anyways, so why not get them going now and have them benefit your little seedlings in the meantime. Bubbleponics transitions smoothly into DWC so for me this method always just made sense. Sent from my iPhone using Grasscity Forum
Hey!, If you feel that it's time, then it's time. I'm gonna start washing the Clay pellets in a bit and get them ready to transplant the cubes tonight. I wanted to make sure I asked a few questions, to make sure I have no doubts on the process. I've watched a couple of videos on moving the Rockwool cube to the netpod, that they put enough pebbles down that the water or he bubbles aren't visible. If that's the case does one water the cube one last time or something, to prevent the cube from going dry the way it just did for me? I have the humidifier going on Med now, as I need to buy one with a bigger res to hold longer. It's emptying to quick. How often should a rockwool cube be checked for dryness, as based on my mistake recently. Should humidity in the cube be checked daily? I've yet to determine how my temps got so high that the cube dried or it could have been I miss calculated my last feeding and passed it by a day. Yours truly... The Student. lol
I would say fill your pails with water and get the air pump going on max setting. Now put your net pot in and add or remove water until the bubbles are reaching about halfway up the net pot and/or about 1-2” below the bottom of where the rockwool cube is going to sit. This is the water level you want to maintain so mark it somehow. Now fill the net pot with your clay pebbles and rock wool cube. Have the top of your cube just below the top of the net pot. Put a little plastic or cardboard lid on if you want, to secure the cube and to block light from reaching the reservoir. As for the cube moisture... what I did was soak it then let it dry out almost completely before soaking it again. I can’t remember the frequency but maybe every 2nd day or something? Keep that routine till you can see your roots poking through the bottom of the net pot. Once that happens you don’t have to soak the rock wool cube anymore. Sent from my iPhone using Grasscity Forum
I was able to move the plants from the dome to the buckets. After cleaning the buckets with hot water, and a small towel. Filled up the buckets with roughly 7gal of water, and PH leveled the buckets. 5.8 - 5.9 and 5.9 - 6.0 were the ranges for each bucket. The recommended amount for the Rapid Start Root Enhancer is a tea spoon = 4.9 ml for 5gal. So I used 3ml for 7 to dilute it a bit. SF-2000 light was raised to meet the 2ft requirements distance to the buckets, and the light is currently running 24/7 at 70%. Switched Humidifier for one with a bigger tank so I didn't have to keep running in there. I've been managing to keep the temps between 77-84 with the once in a blue hitting 88. I rinsed the Clay Pellets, and started to fill the net pod till the water line was covered, and then placed more till the bubbles were barely visible attempted to follow the guide lines I was provided as best as I could. Then placed enough pellets to cover the cube and the net pod. I placed a bit more water from the seedling res I had on the cubes, as I was planning on not watering them for the rest of the day yesterday and today. I still need to make something to place over the pellets as recommended to help cover the light, but I hope I placed enough to hold me down for now.
Checking on the girls this morning. Yesterday I checked and the they were starting to turn a bit on the yellow side, so I lowered the light strength from 70 to 60%. As for my understanding it could have been 1 of 2 things 1 of them being the light. Also early in the afternoon yesterday I poor 20ml each of water to refresh the cube to compensate the high temps in the room. Temps in the room have reached as high as 88 at times. So I'll pick up a better heater to help me keep them in range of 75-85. I stopped by and took some shoots. It looks like my fake diy humidity spreader is working.
Keep them hydrated until those roots wiggle their way through the wet clay pebbles. Maintaining the proper water level in your pails is critical in this stage. Have that water level just below the rockwool cubes, so those tiny roots have something to drink. Once the roots are longer, water level becomes less important. Try to run lower temps. 88F is too high , especially when mixed with the light spectrum that might be too intense. Have a fan blowing between your plants and lights to move that heat intensity away. 81F is ok temps but I’d try to stay in the 70’s if I was you. It shoot for high humidity in the seedling stage. If your equipment can’t keep 65-70% humidity then consider getting different equipment or maybe use poly to seal up your make shift grow tent a little better. That will hold in the humidity. Your setup looks great you must be excited about this adventure!! Sent from my iPhone using Grasscity Forum
Wise one... I the student have been waiting for you arrival.. lol. I agree the 88F was way to high in the room, and since then been doing my best to keep it more managed. Also agree about the light spectrum, which has led me to lower it some more. I fear the Refletix material I picked up from Home Depo has been working too well. Just adjusted the fans again after reading this, to see if their new positions allow better airflow. The new humidity hack seems to be helping more the vapor from the humidifier allowing my humidity to get higher. Considering re-installing the small one I had to help maintain as sometime depending on the temps it flux's pretty hard. I'm super excited It's my first grow of any plant ever, and it's pretty exciting even if we weren't happy that it's cannabis. Just pretty dope the concept of dwc and using rockwool instead of soil... Just loving it. I picked up a book on Hydroponics for beginners. Before I leave off a few questions, and I'm uploading today's pics. 1- Is it time for me to open the bucket, since I haven't since I closed it? 2-Should I start feeding actual nutrients, as the plants are only currently running on ph balanced and some Rapid Start to help the roots? Will most of these answers be based on how the roots are currently doing? meaning if they are still small or not long enough hold off a bit longer kinda thing. ...Appreciate you and your patience with me.
Almost forgot, it gets a little brighter when I bring the makeshift door down. Which is more of the same reflectix material.
I’d open those buckets daily to see what’s going on. Check for root growth, root health, brown sludge, root rot, etc. You should wait a little longer before adding nutrients for a couple reasons. I’ve read that the cotyledons (small rounded leaves at the very bottom) have enough food to support the plant for a while. Till they die off I suppose? So right now they are feeding your plant. Also, if you’re using tap water then you have nutrients in your water. Look up “water quality” for your city and review recent test results. My city water has TDS of almost 400 which is higher than average. This includes calcium, magnesium, potassium, etc. So technically I could grow plants with tap water for weeks before the plants get big enough to require bottled nutrients. A TDS meter would be a wise investment, and then you can find a bunch of online threads that suggest what TDS levels to maintain at each stage of plant growth. If you are using RO water or distilled water then you may want to consider adding a tiny amount of nutrients. Like 1/6 or 1/8 of the recommended dosage on the nutrient company’s feed charts. Again, the TDS meter would help ensure you don’t burn your plants. Nute burn at this fragile stage would be detrimental Sent from my iPhone using Grasscity Forum