A couple dwc ?s

So been watching some vids on dwc and....

So when you first "plant" your seedling in the bucket...the vids say to get the water level up to about 1/2" above the bottom of the net pot...then put it hydroton rocks, then place rooted clone/seedling and then surround it by more hydroton. But that leaves the roots about 3 or 4 or more inches above the water level... so how does the seedling/clone get fed? Do the rocks wick up to the roots?

And... once youre going and the bucket is full of roots...and you get some slight ph drift... and you want to correct it... how??

Drain some water and add more ph'd water and keep doing that (guessing) until you get what you want? Just drop some ph adjuster into the bucket? Just change out all the water in the bucket?

Sorry if they seem like stupid queations...but when you dont know you dont know...lol

Popping bubales coax the roots down

If you're doing multiple buckets you should look into rdwc if that's possible in your situation. From there you'll make all adjustments and res changes at the main res which is ideally in a different room in most cases.
Def more complicated and costly initially but requires less time/work in the end.
I've haven't worried about roots getting water since I started veg in a flood table, the roots are usually growing out the bottom of the netpot and being air/light pruned by the time I put them in rdwc.. Never had a problem with roots reaching the water before I started the flood table,. You can top feed them by hand or run a drip even until the roots have broken the netpot.or as long as you feel necessary

Agreed.

I just want to start cheap with one bucket to learn. Get the basics of managing a res, ph, ec and all the rest down with one bucket and then maybe switch the room to rdwc... or a table...
But first things first... learn to hydro. And i think 1 dwc bucket is the easiest way to go for now.

I use a 8 bucket RDWC setup but I also am running a couple of auto's downstairs in DWC buckets. When I start my seedlings, I place the rapid rooter in my Grodan cube and then use hydroton to fit it into the netlid. I just hand water the cube until it develops a decent root set that will reach into the solution. After the roots have submerged then it's business as usual. My system usually has a pH drop during the grow so I add a few cc's of pH UP, mix the solution in the bucket or res and retest-seems to be pretty standard. Good luck with your grow.