I couldnt find the big DWC threads started by Chris and SteelCity. How do I find old threads? Anyway, my question is how many DWC buckets can I reasonably maintain and keep up? What are some prohibiting factors? I've got 3 buckets going now: 1 3gal and 2 5gal. It seems so easy just to do the res change each week. It's fast and sweet.
fill er up! I personally made the switch from 25 soil plants to get a LB, to 4 r/dwc trees to get a LB
dwc i am switching over to rdwc as well...but i first am going to just dwc for a grow then to rdwc....i am glad to hear it is easy to just change out the buckets once a week...i have 9 in my closet grow of 5' X 7'. there is some room for maybe 3more but i want to see how this goes first... how long have you been using dwc? i ask because when you say it is easy to change out once a week that makes me think i will like dwc...thinking when you have rdwc you still have to clean everthing once a week right?.. but chris said that the diff in amount of herb between dwc and rdwc was substantial... also wanted to konw if you have any problems with water temp...suppose to get no highter than 71 or so..mine is running about 75f...i dropped a bottle of ice water into the container and that helped but not for long... thanks in advance for the answers and good luck with the grow..keep us posted... ncmaineacasssit:
Im gonna try the move to RDWC some day. But first I need to make sure I can get regular DWC and be productive with it. Then perhaps I'll upgrade to something like recirculating. Oh yeah...how do I find past threads?
If you know the user (eg CC's RDWC, etc), click on their profile, then threads started by, and you might have to dig a little, but you should be able to find their grow threads.... GTWT
Did you find them? Rdwc is definitely the way to go. It isn't that much more complex by an means it costs a little more to set up but after that it actually makes things easier. In dwc you have to monitor/clean each container individually. In a Rdwc setup the res is where the whole deal goes down. To drain my system all I do is change my output hose on the pump in the res to a hose that leads to the floor drain instead of out to the plants. Once emptied I fill the res with a hose to a full marker on the inside wall of the res I made which is 3/4" below the net pots in the buckets. I add my nutes to the res and check my ph at the res. I can check my ph and do a drain and fill anytime since the res is outside the grow area I don't disturb the plants. On keeping your water temp low I don't have many problems since my res sits on a concrete floor which I would guess is a few degrees below ambient temp which is about 65F down there. 2 or 3 frozen 2 liter bottles during the dead heat of summer but the room is Ac'd so again it doesn't really get that warm...Steelcity
spray painting all your buckets and tubing white will help drop the temps a little bit too. it absorbs less heat from light hitting it. I've ran DWC a lot. it's a lot easier to maintain constant temps if you have a separate res well away from the lights, since that means most of the water in the system is going to be constantly slightly cooled. balances out being constantly slightly warmed under the lights. It's not a 1 to 1 ratio, but it helps.
last question ,,,yah right i have things cooking pretty good now...i have my babies in a cloning machine and the dwc is ready to go...i put all the buckets out and put water in them made sure ph was between 5.5 and 5.8....i got one of those 8 connection water pumps and another one from wally world and fired them all up...i will put chemicals in tomorrow....very very week... now my seedlings babies are about 2 weeks old....they are in 2" pots in the cloner...and i have 8" net pots over the 5 gallon buckets...with hydroten in them.(took forever to clean the hydroten...) my question is what method do you use to transfer from cloning machine to five gallon pots...???? can i keep them in the little pots and just put them in the larger ones...??? i guess i just take they hydroten out of the large pots..put the plant in and then carefully put the hydroten around the plant...is that it????? thanks for the help.... woops one more thing...i have my first mh 1k light...my room is 5' by 7' approx....i have the light centered over the 9 buckets...is this enough light??? and when i switch over to hps....will 1k be enough do you think? i have a 600 watter to go along with that....and of course it is (when complete in a couple of days) vented to my attic for heat.....1k mh is a hot motha.... thanks again...
I answered the transfer question in another thread. In reading your post I will tell you to not do what you did. Don't PH the water first just use straight water and put the plants in. The next day add your nutes as per total water amount in system by the useless recipe. So the cycle goes put plants in add water let run overnight the next day add nutes as per the recipe. The day after that check the ph it should be right around 6 if it's still high say 6.3 and you have 32 gals total I would add about 3.5-5ml of PH down. The day after that check your ph again it should be right about 6. If you mixed the nutes too weak over the next few days the ph will drift upwards going back towards the 6+ range, if it is too strong the salt content will buildup as the plants take what they want and leave the rest behind your ph will start to drop. Much below 5.5 will start to take the plant out of the range of optimum consumption of nutes as outlined in the sticky by the Chief. Here is the link directly if you aren't familiar. http://www.angelfire.com/cantina/fourtwenty/articles/profiles.htm IF you follow the recipe to a T the ph will prolly sit at 6 till it's time to Drain n Fill the next week. IF you need to manipulate the formula just change the water amount. AS far as the lights are concerned I have about the same space I run 2 1kwr's if I had it to do over again I would do 3 or 4 600w. Which I may do anyways. The 1kwr's are no joke and will bleach or cook a plant if you aren't careful. I hope this helps...Steelcity
