First hydro grow, DWC, CFL for Veg & 600 Watt HPS for flower

My first hydro grow.
Decided to go DWC
PH is 5.8
I plan on doing about 4 tubs DWC with 6-8 plants per tub.


PIC 1: 4x 23 watt cfls 6500k, 2x 43watt CFL 2700k (178 watt total)
7 plants started, one bag seed, 2 unknown high times store seeds, 2 unknown seeds from a friend and 2 clones.

PIC 2: I have 2 clones (both bottom right) and the rest started from seeds. DWC and CFL's (200 watt total) .
I did not have net pots when I set up this first DWC, I used normal plant pots with holes in the bottom, started in soil on top of about 3" of pebbles.

PIC3: They seem to be doing fine/ lots of root growth.

PIC 4: I have a grow closet with 600 watt HPS for flowering.
This was my first grow, (please ignore my girlfriends dying sunflowers in the background, lol)

Pictured are 3 small plants in soil, I used LST and started on just a couple CFL's slowly adding more, started flowering with about 100 watts ended with 200 watts for the first month then purchased a 600 watt HPS system last week. These plants wont yeild much, it was my first grow with quite a few stress factors, although it looks like pretty good bud. Another 2-3 weeks for those.

PIC 5: I am using General Hydroponics for nutrients. 1/4 strength of each right now until the plants are a little bigger.

PIC 6: I have 2 tubs like this with 6 positions for plants with the proper rock wool/net pots, I will be adding those new seedlings soon.

PIC 7: I have seeds germinating in rockwool in tupperware with a heat mat. Purchased from www.vancouverseedbank.ca received in 2 days!

Tooth pics marked with color to distinguish individual strains.

6 "indoor mix", 2 nirvana "short rider feminized", and 4 Cash crop ken "Nuken" non fem which is a cross of KISH and God bud. These will be going DWC as soon as they show roots in 1" cubes going into 3.5" netpots with 3" rockwool cubes.

PIC 8: Close up of one of my soil plants.

My questions:

Should I add 2 more positions in the new DWC for a total of 8 plants? or would that be too much of a clusterf**k of roots?

I have a bit of spotting on a few plants, could this be nutrient burn?

When should I top? or should I even top with this setup?

Let me know your thoughts!
Love this site!

Hi Weedeez,
Thanks for the rep. I'ts been a blast setting it up and growing this year.
Looks like you got yourself a cool project. If you would like my opinion I would say six max, actually I would go five. Top yes, once you get 4 sets or if clone 5 nodes your good. do each plant once, wait a week or so then flower. They will do fine under a 600W. Spotting, its hard to say but the most common problem in hydro is mag def. Get some Cal-mag and you should be fine.

By the way, those roots look a little dingy, maybe add some more air stones to the water.

cruzer101 said:

Hi Weedeez,
Thanks for the rep. I'ts been a blast setting it up and growing this year.
Looks like you got yourself a cool project. If you would like my opinion I would say six max, actually I would go five. Top yes, once you get 4 sets or if clone 5 nodes your good. do each plant once, wait a week or so then flower. They will do fine under a 600W. Spotting, its hard to say but the most common problem in hydro is mag def. Get some Cal-mag and you should be fine.

By the way, those roots look a little dingy, maybe add some more air stones to the water.

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Thanks for the info!

I will top those plants soon, they seem to be doing okay.

Today I harvested my 3 soil plants that were LST, I got 76 g total from all 3 wet, hope to get 20-30 g dry not bad considering I had them under 200 watt total of CFL's until 4 weeks into flower. I then received my 600watt HPS lighting, they seemed to beef up a bit under that. It smells really good, I am not sure of the strains, one smells fruity and the other a skunky dank smell. I have them hanging in a box, forgot to take pic of that.

I put the new plants in the closet under the 600watt Metal halide, I hope to see more rapid growth under this light vs the cfls. I have the ballast turned down to 75% so its really running 450 watts, this should be good enough, right?

I also removed the pots 2 days ago. I had them in soil on top of 3inch of pebbles. I soaked all the soil off and put them in net pots, the plants didn't seem to shock too bad, I notice the growth has slowed a bit.

I changed the nutes today, mild strength mix:
In 5 gallons of water i added 4 tsp of grow, 3 tsp of Micro and 3 tsp of bloom, I hope this raised the Mg level to solve that leaf spotting I had (you can see that in the pics).

I also added a 8 spot tub for the new seedlings, later on ill prob split them up so there's like 4-6 per tub for the space.

Roots have a bit of debris still left in them, I really didn't wanna tear the roots up in case of shock to the plants.
They look yellowish probably because they were in soil previously, all the new growth in the water seems to be a nice white.
Right now I have a fan circulating air, and a small inline fan with ducting for when it gets really hot or smelly to pump the air out of the closet. I have a home-made inline carbon filter which helped during my soil plants flowering.

Thanks for your input, do you think my nutes seem okay?
I really want healthy fast growing plants, I'm feeling they are gonna bounce back nicely after the shock and Mg deficiency.

These are about 2 weeks old now from seed, the 2 clones are bottom right corner and next above that, leafs really thin and she had a mg problem I think.

Your thoughts and input are appreciated!

I can tell ya what I found that works, As far as nutrient strength goes I start seed at 300ppm and clones at about 600 ppm.
Generally throughout the grow I stay at 1/2 strength. the only weeks I go full strength are week one and week six of flower.

I get the most out of my nutrients by keeping the ph at 5.8 in veg and 6.2 in flower.
Always flush hydro for a week with plain or r/o water before harvesting to remove excess nutrients.

Plants recovered nicely from the Magnesium deficiency, growth is good and seems rapid, especially those 3 in the back. Gonna top them today.


PIC 3: Why are the leaves curling, is this a bad thing?

Yea, you have a little too much heat at the top of the canopy.
Raise your light and check your humidity, its probably low.

Here is a cool chart I found here.





I figure the sun is 10,000 lumens a sq. foot so a 600W lamp would need to be 20 inches away to equal the sun.

Here is another chart I found while lookin for this one.
PH and nutrients.

Thanks for the charts, really interesting stuff specially the lumen chart, I wish I could get my lights closer, if only I had a cool tube.

Plants are doing great, especially the clone and the other 2 bag seed. I had to split them up, putting the 3 larger plants in the single tub, with 3 or 4 clones in there which I may move soon because the foliage is taking over. I don't know what I will do with the other 9 seedlings I have, somehow I will make room, probably will have to veg these early.

Heres an updated pic.

Awesome.
You got a happy garden now.
Ha! Nine more? I hope you got another closet.

I suppose you could go 12/12 now and cut a bunch of 2" holes in the front tub, get some small net pots.

Moving to a new place and soon so I'll have more room to work with. I plan on taking 2 clones per week and eventually have a harvest every week.

Here's some updated pics, I have a couple clones that have rooted.

Also received my PPM TDS meter yesterday. All tubs range from 1100-1400 ppm.

nice man seems like you know what your doing
im doing the same thing and im happy i can look on your forum for info/advice

how far do you have your small res water from bottom of the 3' pot?

I received a 600 watt Dual spectrum bulb today. (A dual spectrum bulb includes both Metal halide and High pressure sodium in one bulb. ) After my MH bulb burned out I decided to buy a dual spectrum, the plants been on HPS while I waited for the bulb to arrive.

I already noticed after one day the plants were reaching up for the light, with the HPS it didn't seem to do much reaching, although growth was still quite good.
(PIC 3)

I also have all PPMs at 1500 roughly. Im getting low on nutes, gonna have to order the 4 liter bottles very soon. 1 liter should get me close to the end of this grow, I hope.

Took another 7 clones ( PIC 5) one from each of the plants. I really need to sex these soon... fingers crossed the largest plant isn't a male!

I took a pic of my 2 largest plants, showing the stem, they are getting so big, so fast. Its incredible I'm blown away by the speed of Hydro growing.

I topped the middle upper plant (in pic), it has 5 main branches, Im after taking 3 bottom clones from this. I hope to get 4 main colas, or 5, whatever. This is the only plant I topped. (PIC 6)

I'm hoping to put most of these in flower in about a week or 2.
-Does anyone have an idea what I might yield out of that largest plant ?

There are 7 Plants total here, 2 on the left, 3 in the middle, and 2 on the right. 2 of these plants are clones from a mother in my past soil grow which yielded a astonishing 20 grams LoL. I really hope to get at least 2 oz per plant once I'm done, maybe a qp off the biggest ? What do you think?

blaznboi said:

how far do you have your small res water from bottom of the 3' pot?

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In the tiny res tubs, I pour about 2 gallons of water in there, which is about an inch above the indented line in the Rubbermaid tub. The bottoms of the net pots sit roughly 1" above the water, the bubble stone in the tub spackles water on the bottoms of the net pots, works quite well. One thing I notice though is I have to top the water up every 2-4 days, bigger the plant the more water they drink. These small tubs seem pretty good for tight spaces, one of those tubs is stacked on top of my 5 gallon res, I just need more room, gonna look like a SOG (sea of green) in there very soon the entire closet will be a wall of green.. Moving soon though, hope to expand the project.

blaznboi said:

nice man seems like you know what your doing
im doing the same thing and im happy i can look on your forum for info/advice

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Very good, its been a learning process for me! Been doing a lot of research, eventually you will get a feel for it. Do you plan on creating a journal of your grow? Id like to check it out and offer advice whenever you need

There ya go,

Looking good. I'm just wondering about what size they will reach if you wait two more weeks till flowering. I had mine about the size you have yours now when I began flowering, and I was glad that three of the six plants turned male/hermie because otherwise I would not have any space in the closet. Good luck!

myselfship said:

Looking good. I'm just wondering about what size they will reach if you wait two more weeks till flowering. I had mine about the size you have yours now when I began flowering, and I was glad that three of the six plants turned male/hermie because otherwise I would not have any space in the closet. Good luck!

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How much did you yield from those 3?

So, I took my 3 largest and placed them in closet for veg, put them in separate 2 gal tubs with a transition flower nutrient mix. This is day 4 of flower under 600 watt HPS now, largest plant about 3 feet tall. These are doing quite well, look healthy.

I have all my clones and the other 4 plants under 24hr cfls (approx 250Watts) , vegging until the plants get bigger, then ill throw them under the 600 watt.

Heres pics of my grow to date (dec 2) i just got some rapid rooter plugs (the soil plugs) and gonna keep using those to root my clones, I was told its better than rock wool. So far my one clone in that plug, 1 week old is looking healthy, no sign of roots yet. I have them placed under the canopy for indirect light, I hear they root faster when there's low light.



You will see a pic of my topped plant as well, with 4 main branches (well actually 5 but ones a little small) this plant is doing well I just need it about twice the size and she will be ready for flower.

Pic of my PH meter and PPM meter as well (just recently got them) The PPM meter was about 20 bucks and the PH meter was about 35 from eBay. Now I can see better what im doing here!

I'm experiencing another MG deficiency in the cfl veg tub... i added more bloom nutrients cuz its higher in MG, hopefully they recover fully. (very minor so far)


Let me know what you think.

I think you are running out of space but you can see that.
Yea plants look fine, I wouldnt worry about the lower leaf, just your plant using stored nutrients that's why you leave some down there. Once the leaf is 50% yellow I cut it off. At that point it is of no use to the plant. You mentioned you added more bloom nutrients cuz its high in MG, well its high in other things too. Keep an eye on them the next couple days, watch the tips of the leaf. If they burn back off and flush.

Still at the same place, didnt you say you were going to have more space?

cruzer101 said:

I think you are running out of space but you can see that.
Yea plants look fine, I wouldnt worry about the lower leaf, just your plant using stored nutrients that's why you leave some down there. Once the leaf is 50% yellow I cut it off. At that point it is of no use to the plant. You mentioned you added more bloom nutrients cuz its high in MG, well its high in other things too. Keep an eye on them the next couple days, watch the tips of the leaf. If they burn back off and flush.

Still at the same place, didnt you say you were going to have more space?

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Yeah man hopefully before xmas, my gf and I are just waiting on the Bank processing to go through for the mortgage.

No leaf burn yet, I have some Superthrive on the way I hope that helps, I really should get cal-mag soon.

I ordered a roll of Mylar film, some 2 inch netpots (for more clones), and 4L of general hydroponics nutrients, 1 of each.

Im gonna order another light after xmas, prob a 400 watt, we'll see.

also I had a youtube vid up but I took it down, kinda afraid ill get caught through IP or something lol.