DWC to Perpetual

firsttimeARE said:

Thats not bad for a 4x4 Jardin...100? Paid 240 for it 4 years ago.

The pipedreams not good. One better than the other.

For some reason the clones have curling growing tips. They were getting .9EC lowered to .7 to see if that does it...finally getting a feed drop.

Lengthy fuckers for sure.

My Blue OG from Dinafem is doing fabulous. Only 1.0EC. Imma have to scale back @ttystikk formula. My plants cant handle 1.4EC veg and 1.7EC flower.

at least not in bubble buckets.

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Scale back to whatever your ladies want. In my case they're getting plenty of light, heat and warm, relatively humid conditions. They're growing well.

I have GOT to take a few pics of this bubblegum that just finished. It's nothing but THICK bud spears. Ahhhh shit- y'all saw them dwarfing the two liter soda bottle the other day.

firsttimeARE said:

Thats not bad for a 4x4 Jardin...100? Paid 240 for it 4 years ago.

The pipedreams not good. One better than the other.

For some reason the clones have curling growing tips. They were getting .9EC lowered to .7 to see if that does it...finally getting a feed drop.

Lengthy fuckers for sure.

My Blue OG from Dinafem is doing fabulous. Only 1.0EC. Imma have to scale back @ttystikk formula. My plants cant handle 1.4EC veg and 1.7EC flower.

at least not in bubble buckets.

Click to expand...

Running 2.0 ec here, not on the pipe dream but the lucky charms and platinum gsc.
They seem to be handling it.

And no 100 bux isn't bad but I think SJ is over priced. I don't like the zippers.
The gorilla lite has windows which I really like, just pull back the flap that and peek inside without opening a thing, the roof extensions are nice too, up to 10 feet if you've got the room. Pricey at 3 bills a pop with 1 foot extensions but worth it.

The SJ i have have windows. Zipper windows.

ttystikk said:

Scale back to whatever your ladies want. In my case they're getting plenty of light, heat and warm, relatively humid conditions. They're growing well.

I have GOT to take a few pics of this bubblegum that just finished. It's nothing but THICK bud spears. Ahhhh shit- y'all saw them dwarfing the two liter soda bottle the other day.

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Just keep the same ratio though obviously.

Thats odd cause I noticed in the summer id get feed increases due to plants drinking so much water to keep cool. Now that my room is low 70s I can feed a lot more and get feed drops still. For instance a fully vegging plant now gets 1.1-1.2EC and 4 days later its at .8-.9EC. So maybe I can feed them a little higher.

When you measure nutrients used do you fill the res back to its starting point and measure or do you measure as it sits?

I have heard less powerful lights require less feeds, that true? I run t5ho in veg and 600w HPS in flower.

Lower temps and less light both lead to less feeding- and less growth. However, RH will change that in a hurry, because higher RH in warm conditions actually accelerates plant growth by allowing it to grow rather than spend its energy budget on transpiration.

I run my EC high, so I'm adding water back daily to reduce nutrient strength. I add a nutrient solution topup when my circulation pump starts sucking air. I do a complete nutrient solution change at beginning of bloom and at the end of the first month. I run an 8 week cycle. Some plants need a ninth week to finish, which they get while sitting in the finish zone waiting for the trimmers.

Transpiration is those wet patches on leaves you see when leaves had been touching and then you move the leaf and theres this wet patch underneath.

So daily you see EC rises and when you top up with water you see it drop below set point or is it usually back at the setpoint? I was under the impression to determine if youre over feeding or not to measure daily drops which had me all fucked up when I has getting rises in the summer at like 0.9EC but I was measuring the remaining solution not after a top up. Im thinking now that I should measure after a top up since plants dont always take in nutrients as they do water and some days you will get a rise that doesnt always equate to overfeed. So I started with 3 gal at 1.0EC and after a couple days I got 2 gal left at 1.1EC normally id think im overferting but say I top up the gallon thats missing and im now at 0.9EC that would mean the plant actually needs more?

If you top up with water everyday how does your res become low enough to suck in air?

I thought you did complete changeouts every 2 week?

Sorry for all the questions. Just trying to learn.

Transpiration is what the leaf does all day to draw more water and nutrients up the stem and to keep itself from burning to a crisp. You're seeing condensation- that's the OPPOSITE direction.

I check my water temperature, EC and pH, in that order. If the temperature is off I'll investigate. The temperature probe has to sit for a few minutes to match temp with the water, as EC measurements are corrected for temperature.

When EC is high, I add water to bring it back down to my desired strength. I only add nutes during changeouts or when I do a fifty gallon topup, which only happens when the waterpump starts sucking air.

Last, I check and balance pH.

What would condensation indicate? Ive seen it across all seasons. Dry cool and hot humid I get it.

So I should stop judging over and under feeding by nutrient drops and raises and just read leaves?

And you dont ever peak at pH before you add acidic nutes to compare with your last check to see what nutrients have been out of range?

I rarely check temp. I go in check pH and compare it with the day befores setpoint. Usually its 6.0/6.1pH after having set to 5.5/5.6 and usually the feed is down as well and I adjust the pH back down in range for an anticipated pH rise. I only ever adjust feed if it increased.

I do res changes when theres a gallon left.

Which sometimes the top roots get dry so maybe I should do water add backs and nutrient add backs.

firsttimeARE said:

What would condensation indicate? Ive seen it across all seasons. Dry cool and hot humid I get it.

So I should stop judging over and under feeding by nutrient drops and raises and just read leaves?

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Condensation indicates a possible lack of adequate air movement. Exactly where do you see it?

I judge my feeding based on the EC meter; If solution strength is high, add water. I don't ever seem to have a problem with nutrient levels dropping. As the solution is depleted, pH will start swinging wildly, and in my setup this is an excellent indicator that the plants want a changeout and a fresh batch of sauce.

Three ways to tell if your nutrient solution is becoming depleted;
1. Plant leaves. It's accurate, but IMO it's like diagnosing a patient... posthumously. It's kinda late!

2. PH swings. When your swing suddenly fluctuates- mine usually drops half a point in 24 hours or less. This tells you when the chemical balance is off. Fix it asap!

3. By the book; standard hydroponics texts suggest that in the absence of other indicators, it's time to change the nutes when you've added twice the volume of topup water as the original solution. Example, if you made twenty gallons of nutrient solution, it would be considered depleted after you'd topped it up with a total of forty gallons of water. I think the book is more concerned with saving nutrient costs while growing lettuce, so my rule of thumb is one to one and a half times. This is less critical in veg.

firsttimeARE said:

And you dont ever peak at pH before you add acidic nutes to compare with your last check to see what nutrients have been out of range?

I rarely check temp. I go in check pH and compare it with the day befores setpoint. Usually its 6.0/6.1pH after having set to 5.5/5.6 and usually the feed is down as well and I adjust the pH back down in range for an anticipated pH rise. I only ever adjust feed if it increased.

I do res changes when theres a gallon left.

Which sometimes the top roots get dry so maybe I should do water add backs and nutrient add backs.

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Your system and mine are quite different; since I do waterfalls, the overall water level is almost irrelevant. I absolutely do not care which nutes are acidic; I add them in their proper ratios or not at all. I check and adjust pH last after topping up. PH always rises as you add water, because you're diluting the solution. Do your res changes on the schedule related to water add backs as I suggested above.

So say after water add backs your at 1.4EC from your 1.7EC setpoint you should add nutes in the same ratio you put them in before? How would you know how much to add per gal to get to your target? Obviously you wouldnt add the full amount but a scalable fraction of it.

So if youre doing 1.5g/gal epsom 2g/gal mix and 2g/gal cano3 youd do maybe a fifth of that and add .3g/gal epsom .4g/gal mix and cano3?

I keep it a lot simpler than that. I load the system with 100 gallons of nutrient solution in the proper ratio. Then it runs, while I add water daily to keep EC from rising above my target of about 1.8-1.9. When the total amount of water drops to the point where the pump is sucking air, I do a nutrient topup of fifty gallons of nutrient solution in the proper ratio. I continue to add water daily to keep EC in range. In this way I don't need to add nutes very often. Halfway thru the cycle, I dump my nutes and start with a fresh batch, and continue the same cycle until a week before finish I don't do nutrient topups anymore, but keep bringing EC down about .1 a day or so until day 56.

Maybe you explained this but if you keep adding water add backs how does your system ever get to the point qhere you can add 50 gallons?

Or is it that when you do water add backs you arent fully filling up the system and over time your water level keeps getting lower since youre adding only enough to bring your feed down?

Do you use a flow meter to measure how much water is going into the system?

firsttimeARE said:

Maybe you explained this but if you keep adding water add backs how does your system ever get to the point qhere you can add 50 gallons?

Or is it that when you do water add backs you arent fully filling up the system and over time your water level keeps getting lower since youre adding only enough to bring your feed down?

Click to expand...

It is that.

firsttimeARE said:

Do you use a flow meter to measure how much water is going into the system?

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I ran a stopwatch and measured how long it took to fill a 5 gallon bucket. 25 seconds in my case, a very convenient 5 seconds per gallon. From there, I just multiply gallons needed by 5 and that's the number of seconds to run the hose.

Thats close enough I guess.

Flow meters worth their weight are pricey I was looking.

Resettable digis are like $150

New flower room.


Put in a waterline today and I was just in there and theres a drop of water every 5 seconds coming from one of the pipes in the middle.

I check and there is this tiny gouge in the cpvc thats letting a tiny bit of water out. Pretty pissed. Nothing a coupling won't fix. But that means I have to shut the water off again and drain it and cut, repair, wait an hour and turn the water back on. Fuck you home depot.

Veg room

Veg plants