What’s up gentlemens? I am still very new to growing and especially growing with DWC, it was recommended I start this way although I know scotty would disagree. I’ve crammed a lot of research in the last year but i’m still stumped I think. For the first time I had a disaster using this pretty solid grow method called DWC, assuming you have a lot of technology or a lot of time, it works for me. So for the first time a plant mid bloom essentially looks like it was a little over-watered at first, drooping leaves near bottom( even though the roots are submerged),which is confusing. So ive been growing this MacDawg cut since veg in the same reservoir and everything was going well until mid bloom. I noticed the roots continued to grow quite healthfully the entire time (no signs of root rot), but after a week or two of the plant looking a little stunted, even though pH, EC, VPD were perfect, the leaves started to wilt to death. So I think i know the problem, IM JUST WONDERING if anyone else has experienced this? My common sense would say the plant requires more oxygen as the buds grow and develop. and in a 15 gallon reservoir one 6″ air stone was not enough to support the full bloom cycle. I also did a bottom trim of some popcorn buds around the same time it went down. Lack of oxygen and trim stress cause a meltdown? Thank you if you read this story.
Where’s a picture of the roots. It’s always the roots. Whether inside the giant root ball or on a side that doesn’t get good water flow. They can just fall out overnight. Very big downside to dwc. Roots get bigger water capacity is lowered and often cutoff from fresh oxygenated water. The roots will even smother the airstone clog pumps you name it, it will happen.
I actually thought i did include a pic of the roots. must have messed up, Ill try adding now. The roots looks essentially as white as could be from my perspective.
JustCoolin is on point imo.
I don’t know a large amount about DWC, having never run it. I haven’t run it due to the complex nature compared to soil / coco, but mainly because things can go from good to over in as little as a few hours. This would devastate me. I’ve stuck with the soil / coco because you often have time to catch and then correct a mistake before the entire crop takes a nose dive. On the flip side, if you can master this method, everything else should be pretty easy comparatively.
Thanks man I appreciate, i cant give up on it just yet.
I used to run dutch buckets using straight perlite, in a recirculating res. I never had any failures like you’re showing, but I ran an aquarium water cooler set at 65 degrees F. PH was sometimes difficult to keep on track. If everything you can test is testing good, then it’s time to question your testing. Get a second PH meter so you can compare the two instruments for accuracy. I use Bluelab Guardian Monitors. Good luck with it. 😀
thanks, Ive been a ph maniac. I use a saltwater aquarium moniter and its pretty accurate. Warm temps and not enough added oxygen probably messed me up good.
Sorry for your loss, that plant is fucked.
SOOOO many things can go wrong in hydro… which is why we dont usually recommend it for newer growers.
Lack of oxygen in the water is a possibility, but water temp issues and related pathogens are much more likely. Running DWC you have to monitor not just the air temp, you also have to keep really close eye on your water temp. When the water gets too warm, things start going wrong very quickly. This is why people who are serious about DWC usually end up running a water chiller of some sort, (which adds even more complication and failure points to the system).
I HIGHLY recommend switching to some coco or another grow style that will be much more forgiving. Coco can be treated somewhat similar to hydro, but having some actual media to buffer things is going to make things waaaaayyy easier for you. You wont have to worry about water temp and your grow will be much less sensitive to Ph and nutritional swings. Your life will be noticeably easier growing with coco.
Also in coco, plants generally don’t just UP AND DIE. Plants drying up and dying rapidly like the one in your photo is 100% a hydro thing that almost NEVER happens in other grow styles unless you REALLY fuck up badly and neglect your plants. With other grow styles even if you fuck up a bit you can still usually limp your way to harvest and get some decent bud.
Thanks for your response. I actually experiment with coco and some soil. I agree with you, but I might try this DWC again from what ive learned and try again for now.
Yup. Looks like oxygen deprivation and if you had droopy leaves early on….its almost guaranteed. How many cfm is your air pump and do you have it above the water line in your plant bucket?
I’m no pro, fir sure, so take what I say with a grain of broscience salt. Ive been very happy with my results but I grow autoflowers in rdwc only and I’m also only on my fourth grow so…..
Sorry. I didnt mean to say “in” your plant bucket. Meant to say, is your pump sitting higher than the water level that is in your bucket? This can kill the output of the pump if you’re right on the edge of being under powered.
i appreciate your response. I think ive got a good idea of what went wrong.
Firstly, sorry for your loss she looks like she woulda been great!
1 6’ air stone is no where near enough. I run RDWC on a commercial scale (Did until a week or so ago) as well as in my house for my personal grow. I always have a waterfall system for incoming nutrients as well as multiple large air pumps (Commercial 100$ plus) to oxygenate the res (depending on size 2 or more), the buckets (2 each), with added lines in case of root growth that grows over the original air stones.
That being said. I think it was SOUP (Sorry if I am wrong) who said temps, that is a bingo. Temps are HUGE in RDWC. You have to make sure to spend $$$ on the water cooler system (I use a 1/10 HP at home for 6 8 gals and a 25 gal res and it works perfect. In our commercial space we have a system that goes underground naturally cooling my water to 62) having warm water temps can lead to the plant having EVEN MORE trouble absorbing with the small amount of oxygen in the water. Imagine a molecule expanding and subtracting in size due to temperature (Think of how your doors act when the temp drops or raises) warm water makes for less available oxygen in the root zone that is ultimately usable by the plant. So the low oxygenation becomes even lower leading to plant necrosis due to its inability to uptake any nutrients.
I love hydro. I always will grow hydro. I also grow in soil with different nutes but my heart will always be where I started…… hydro. Hydro is unforgiving and will very easily turn on a dime and leave you fucked, but when it goes RIGHT! It goes HELLA RIGHT!
Don’t get discouraged bro bro. It happens to the best, if you were in my neck of the woods I’d say come grab a couple of these Jelly Rancher seedlings and start again.
(I think what I wrote is correct science wise but I’ve had 2 hours of sleep since I had to clear the plants (184) out of their system in our commercial building or risk being out of compliance. Please Chad or SOUP or someone correct the mistakes if I’m off)
In closing, she looks amazing structure wise so you kick ass at what you do bro! Don’t get discouraged and keep growing!
Thanks bud! everyone has been great. I love the hydro too…and Ive seen it’s potential, i had dumb luck my first couple DWC grows, and I believe I just pushed it a little to hard, and my $35 amazon air pump just wasnt strong enough especially as the roots got bigger and bigger. I can’t give up now, checking ph and evaporation ect is a pain but If I add more oxygen I think I got the hang of it. Thanks for the offer on the Jolly Ranchers I hope they’re nice.
The plants look like the caught a freeze…but also drowned. A 6in bubbler in each reservoir should be plenty. Just curious, did you leave a decent air gap between the water line and the netted cup? Anyway, what’s the game plan now? Harvesting early? Pitching them? Why not try pulling one that doesn’t look as dead, spray the rootball with diluted hydrogen peroxide and then pop it in soil….see if you can resurrect it? You can harvest the dead looking ones but some of those greener ones look like they will bounce back. After all the plant is a weed…sometimes they enjoy a little abuse. If it does come back, taking it to the brink of death and then bringing it back might cause it to overcompensate.
hey, I agree it looks like it could have caught a freeze. I have a heater on a thermostat and it didn’t get below 67F the entire grow. This is one entire plant, so IDK if one 6″ bubbler was enough. I did add 3ml of peroxide per litre of water in the reservoir, it seemed like I was too late for anything. And because of the 24/7 dripper, I think there wasn’t much of an airgap if any, so I noticed right where the roots squeeze out of the bottom of the net pot, the roots were a little dark brown and they broke apart easier than normal as if it was water logged. The flowers are barely pronounced so I’ll just trim them off and save for infused olive oil. Thanks for your response. I’m going to make sure there’s a definite air gap between mesh pot and water level and add more water/ bubble agitation around the roots in the future.
Sorry, but I forgot I didn’t mention a HUGE THING IN MY DESCRIPTION and that is that I set up a small water pump with a drip line coming out of the reservoir and ran water 24/7 down the main stalk, I thought top feeding it and keeping the net pot with hydro balls wet might be beneficial. I did this about 20 days into Bloom, and ironically at that time the flowers started to look stunted compared to my other females in the room(individual reservoirs), same conditions just smaller plants with less root mass. so I feel a lack of oxygen and the stupid drip line just stressed it beyond return.. Thanks again.
A few things, some related to your post some just some tips:
Square reservoirs are not great and geometry is very important in hydroponics. Water hates turning corners so often times, it just wont unless its in a pressurized system. Possibly your root mass got large enough you trapped water in the corners, and no aeration was getting to it so you incubated some root rotting fungus. Aeration in the corners is necessary in square containers. I would recommend a circular reservoir because water likes spreading in circles. Convection currents are more efficient in a circular container.
More aeration is not always the answer. Bubbling a shit ton of pure oxygen through water is great, bubbling our atmospheric gasses through water can change the pH as the water takes on dissolved gasses. Kratky Hydroponics uses no aeration, its very challenging if you aren’t growing lettuce, but it definitely works.
Don’t use tablespoon or teaspoon measuring units, use metric. Measuring units based on tea and table spoons are dangerous because the amount is abstract. What eventually happens is you’ll use a tablespoon when you need to use a teaspoon and how were you supposed to know, you don’t take tea in victorian england. Its 2021 everyone stop measuring with spoon units.
Don’t chain hydroponics systems together, sure run some nutrient lines and drain lines so you aren’t doing a bucket relay for the rest of your life, but don’t chain them together. If your whole family ate straight out of one bowl you’d be sick a lot more too.
Most Hydroponic water temps stop being an issue if you stop using HPS etc style bulbs. If you’re doing hydroponics inside a greenhouse, then water temps are something to worry about. If its in your house, and you’re comfortable, so are the plants. The last thing to change temperature in any normal environment is a large volume of water.
Hydroponically grown plants are not as fragile as people claim. I took a plant to almost white from just using water and then hit it with a 1.5 strength nutrient solution to try to shock it…in seven days it was indistinguishable from the plants next to it. Ive let mold overtake root balls in dry reservoirs…fill it up and drown the mold…plant didn’t give a shit.
Also soil plants being more forgiving is off in my opinion as well. Soil plants will survive almost anything in a superficial sense. They will look like a plant and smell like a plant and then because some tiny imbalance exists when they go to produce all the imbalances show up at once and you end up with tumble weed buds. Hydroponics won’t waste your time. It being alive means its growing with supernatural vigor. It being dead means an error in your understanding of plant biology (which would have appeared in a soil grow as well) told you its time to test your knowledge.
I thought all you organic soil growers knew you were doing it the hard way.
Thanks for your response bud! I think you definitely nailed the problem. (Of course) my root ball was growing in the corner of the bin from myself having to tip the reservoir over to do a water change every 2 weeks. That’s good to know about the corners. Looking back on it I should have noticed there was essentially no top reservoir water disturbance for weeks before it finally shut down. this will never happen again!