Hydro setup

[Aqua Man]

Wouldn't start Hydro without a decent PH,TDS/PPM/EC meter. The ability to control water temps, hydro nutrients (not organic). PH up/down usually only down is needed but up is good to have on hand. Air pump and stone. A local water report to understand if you have anything to be concerned about like high calcium that can cause the lockout of other nutrients and cause deficiencies and the need for a lot of PH down. Also will reflect if you want hard water nutrients or regular and if you possibly need an R/O unit. These are just the major things. It's definitely a different beast than dirt but can be very rewarding if you get it right.

I personally would not even bother trying the kratky method on a plant like cannabis.

If i were to recommend 1 additive it would be hydrogaurd.

 

[OldMedUser]

My question is that too much water? and I guess I should have washed my clay pebbles too.

Water level should be at least an inch below the bottom of the net pot. If it's bubbling up the top it's way too high.

I've only done 50 or so DWC grows in RubberMaid tubs since '01 but that's the way I do them. I have done half of those without ever changing the water but use AN pH Perfect nutes and RO water only. Weekly changes are for suckers with lots of cash to buy more nutes. lol

Rinsing the hydroton balls before use is a good idea but the 'rust' from them is used as a soil nutrient so shouldn't hurt anything in hydro. Just lays on the bottom giving up micro-nutes to the plants.

Good luck!

 

[OldMedUser]

You will love the power of hydroponics, once you go hydro you won´t go back....

I'm not so sure about that. I failed bad with organics almost 20 years ago but never stopped reading and learning so recently got some plants going strictly organic and liking what I see. Just ProMix HP with sheep and steer manure and earthworm castings fed with molasses and seaweed ferts. Got nute burn going on but not bad and the plants are growing really well in the 2L pots now. Hindu Kush, Dutch Kush and Ayahuasca Purple. Rooted clones from a buddy. Lots of added myco and molasses seems to be the way to go too.

I've grown almost nothing but sativa dominants in DWC or soilless with hydro nutes the last two decades with great results but am more interested in hi-CBD indica leaning strains now. Constant learning has me going toward organics now for truly medicinal outputs. Making my own STS from scratch and producing fem seed is another side of the equation.

Hundreds of plants and thousands of hours of research is the way to learn. Experimenting with odd ways teaches a lot too and makes it fun. The worst part of growing decent pot is all that damn trimming you got to do at the end. Everything else is fun. lol

 

[OldMedUser]

Oh yeah. My little garden on 4/20.

Dutch Kush on the left, Ayahuasca Purple in the middle with the Hindu Kush on the right. Revegging AK47 in the back with some Island Sweet Skunk x DJ Short's Blueberry and Sebring's Revenge Hi-CBD sprouts in the seedling pot. All under a 400W Philips CMH HID light in the spare bedroom. RH is very low so I got some nute burn going on but overall growth has been great. Just water for the next round.

 

[OldMedUser]

Wouldn't start Hydro without a decent PH,TDS/PPM/EC meter. The ability to control water temps, hydro nutrients (not organic). PH up/down usually only down is needed but up is good to have on hand. Air pump and stone. A local water report to understand if you have anything to be concerned about like high calcium that can cause the lockout of other nutrients and cause deficiencies and the need for a lot of PH down. Also will reflect if you want hard water nutrients or regular and if you possibly need an R/O unit. These are just the major things. It's definitely a different beast than dirt but can be very rewarding if you get it right.

I personally would not even bother trying the kratky method on a plant like cannabis.

If i were to recommend 1 additive it would be hydrogaurd.

Some good advice there my friend.

I'm a sterile type hydro grower and used to use peroxide twice weekly to maintain my plants before I made a chiiler out of an old water cooler. No prob keeping temps at 65-68F and never needed peroxide again and never had root rot either.

After years of reading about hydroguard etc it seems like it either doesn't really work all that good or if used as a last ditch attempt to recover from root rot fails badly.

I figure if you want to go DWC/hydro go sterile or go back to dirt. I've only had root rot in 2 of 50 DWC grows and saved them both with copious doses of 35% food grade peroxide. Up to 10ml/L daily compared to 0.5ml/L twice/week.

 

[budman111]

Oh yeah. My little garden on 4/20.

Dutch Kush on the left, Ayahuasca Purple in the middle with the Hindu Kush on the right. Revegging AK47 in the back with some Island Sweet Skunk x DJ Short's Blueberry and Sebring's Revenge Hi-CBD sprouts in the seedling pot. All under a 400W Philips CMH HID light in the spare bedroom. RH is very low so I got some nute burn going on but overall growth has been great. Just water for the next round.

View attachment 4321035

They dont look like the healthiest of plants at all mate. Advanced Nutients most likely culprit.

I'm not so sure about that. .... DWC .

I have heard DWC is better than regular hydro, I''m stuck in my 20 year NFT habit though lol

 

[Mellow old School]

NFT is good, but in my experience budman111 you dont need to change the reservoir every week...

 

[budman111]

NFT is good, but in my experience budman111 you dont need to change the reservoir every week...

Yea, I heard somewhere before that you dont need to change weekly but with nutes being so cheap I do It anyhow, how often do you change the res mate?

 

[DustyDuke]

Some good advice there my friend.

I'm a sterile type hydro grower and used to use peroxide twice weekly to maintain my plants before I made a chiiler out of an old water cooler. No prob keeping temps at 65-68F and never needed peroxide again and never had root rot either.

After years of reading about hydroguard etc it seems like it either doesn't really work all that good or if used as a last ditch attempt to recover from root rot fails badly.

I figure if you want to go DWC/hydro go sterile or go back to dirt. I've only had root rot in 2 of 50 DWC grows and saved them both with copious doses of 35% food grade peroxide. Up to 10ml/L daily compared to 0.5ml/L twice/week.

View attachment 4321039

That’s some pristine root system you got yourself there.

 

[Mellow old School]

Once a month with GHE nutrients, so 3-4 times depending on veg. period with seeds, plus once 10 days before harvest, either to flush them or use Ripen, which I havent used for some years now, am thinking about trying it again...

 

[budman111]

use Ripen,.

I Tried Ripen just once years ago at recommended dosage and it pretty much ruined a crop as it left a 'coating' taste almost metallic in the mouth with every puff and Ripen got instantly binned.

 

[OldMedUser]

They dont look like the healthiest of plants at all mate. Advanced Nutients most likely culprit.

None of them has had any hydro nutes. Like most you comment before getting to the root of the issue. I only got them as rooted clones a while ago and they are so much better now. I've used AN for almost 20 years and grew my first buds from bagseeds in 1978. you probably weren't even a twinkle in you daddy's eye back then.

I failed bad with organics almost 20 years ago but never stopped reading and learning so recently got some plants going strictly organic and liking what I see. Just ProMix HP with sheep and steer manure and earthworm castings fed with molasses and seaweed ferts. Got nute burn going on but not bad and the plants are growing really well in the 2L pots now. Hindu Kush, Dutch Kush and Ayahuasca Purple. Rooted clones from a buddy. Lots of added myco and molasses seems to be the way to go too.

I have heard DWC is better than regular hydro, I''m stuck in my 20 year NFT habit though lol

Whatever floats yer boat is good with me man!

I've never bitched about what anyone uses to grow but if I think they are on a bad path I'll try to steer them in the right direction. AN isn't for everyone but I met Big Mike in a bar in Abbotsford, BC when he was first starting up the company and played a few rounds of 8-ball with him and the guys he was doing it with.

His mood and vision at that time was true to what he did for years after. Bitched about GH using crap base minerals and denouncing pot growers who they knew were the basis of their fortunes. Said how he was using nothing but pure salts and pointed out a couple guys sitting at his table as PHDs. Swore to advertise his nutes as made for cannabis and that got him nothing but grief from GH and their ilk selling to the same customers but not wanting anyone to know.

I don't push AN onto anyone but I do offer my results after near 20 years of using them and others in side-by-side grows. Just the 3-part base nutes. Cost me $124 for a gallon of each at a hydro sore in Kelowna, BC about 2 years ago. Forget what the same cost me back in '02 but probably the same. $80 for a 500g tub of Big Bud powder and $35 for a liter of Rhino Skin. That's 5 years at least if I use nothing but AN to grow with but as said I'm headed organic so it'll take longer to use them up. Any old CalMag will do and Epsom Salts are cheap like borscht. lol

While I was all into DWC, starting back in '01, I got into AN. No pH Perfect back then and I was very reluctant to use it. I had my pattern working well using the older version. Top up every 3 days with RO. Wait an hour or more then test pH and PPM and adjust as needed. Even in the early days I could see no sense in tossing out perfectly good nutes every week when the clones/plants were small and barely using any of them.

I got into just adding a bit of the nutes in the ratio needed/used and putting in a few drops of conc. sulfuric acid to knock the pH back down to 5.5 or so. It would gradually rise to around 6.3 after 3 days. After a while I knew what they needed and barely checked things at all.

Finally got to running a side-by-side dou-tub grow with Afghani Kush plants where one got 2 changes and the other got none from clone to crop. No real difference and if anything the unchanged one did a bit better. I have a link to the grow at a different site if you want it.

One of my main goals over the years is to grow as much pot as easy as possible. I'm Scottish, cheap, broke, old and lazy as hell. Using the pH perfect nutes in a system that just had an air pump to make it work and now didn't even need pH testing was damn near nirvana! I learned to read my plants and barely checked ppm anymore. If someone sold nutes that grew colas that didn't need trimming I'd be all over those!

This stuff isn't rocket science and way too much is made about it. I helped mom in the garden as a kid but never could keep a house plant alive but totally rocked growing pot in DWC. Mom also taught me how to cook and chem was my best class in school so after dropping out in grade 11 in '71 I went back to tech school in '87 and after 3 years earned a diploma in environmental chemistry. 2 years credit for uni but enough for me. 2 little kids and a bitchy woman at home needed my attention more. She took off a year later but forgot the kids. I was kind of busy with them for the next decade.

Was probably more than needed but I'm a bit buzzed and a little drunk. A month ago I got the news that my MRI showed I had no prostate cancer and my high PSA meant nothing really. Waiting 6 months to get that done was a little unnerving to say the least. Didn't drink then. Last week the wife went to the doc to get the results from her CAT scan. Liver cancer. Needed a drink tonight. Lots of AK47 to wash it down with too!

It just went 4:20!

 

[OldMedUser]

I screwed up that last post so hit the 'expand' to read it all.

Happy post 4/20 all!

 

[snoeman032]

An inch gap between the bottom of the basket and the surface of the solution.

Gotcha

 

[snoeman032]

I have these: one is a ph pen and the other tds/ ec and tells temp. I’m unsung distilled water. I have a air stone and air pump too

Some good advice there my friend.

I'm a sterile type hydro grower and used to use peroxide twice weekly to maintain my plants before I made a chiiler out of an old water cooler. No prob keeping temps at 65-68F and never needed peroxide again and never had root rot either.

After years of reading about hydroguard etc it seems like it either doesn't really work all that good or if used as a last ditch attempt to recover from root rot fails badly.

I figure if you want to go DWC/hydro go sterile or go back to dirt. I've only had root rot in 2 of 50 DWC grows and saved them both with copious doses of 35% food grade peroxide. Up to 10ml/L daily compared to 0.5ml/L twice/week.

View attachment 4321039

 

[snoeman032]

My only thing is keeping the temps within 62/65f how the hell do you do that?

 

[snoeman032]

Wouldn't start Hydro without a decent PH,TDS/PPM/EC meter. The ability to control water temps, hydro nutrients (not organic). PH up/down usually only down is needed but up is good to have on hand. Air pump and stone. A local water report to understand if you have anything to be concerned about like high calcium that can cause the lockout of other nutrients and cause deficiencies and the need for a lot of PH down. Also will reflect if you want hard water nutrients or regular and if you possibly need an R/O unit. These are just the major things. It's definitely a different beast than dirt but can be very rewarding if you get it right.

I personally would not even bother trying the kratky method on a plant like cannabis.

If i were to recommend 1 additive it would be hydrogaurd.

Is there a certain size air pump that’s best? I have one cheap one that’s like 5-15 gallon and I have a big one thats 30-60 gallon, is the big one too big? Or which one should I do ?

 

[Aqua Man]

I have these: one is a ph pen and the other tds/ ec and tells temp. I’m unsung distilled water. I have a air stone and air pump too

If you are using distilled you will need to reconstitute it. But you may not have to even use it. Google your local water report. Your local water likely contains adequate cal-mag and micro nutrients. So if you go 100% distilled you will need to add cal-mag and micro's like iron, manganese etc. Prob the best option if you have hard water is to mix it with R/O and not fully replace it (in my opinion).

My only thing is keeping the temps within 62/65f how the hell do you do that?

I run at 68F you may need to buy a chiller to achieve this.

Some good advice there my friend.

I'm a sterile type hydro grower and used to use peroxide twice weekly to maintain my plants before I made a chiiler out of an old water cooler. No prob keeping temps at 65-68F and never needed peroxide again and never had root rot either.

After years of reading about hydroguard etc it seems like it either doesn't really work all that good or if used as a last ditch attempt to recover from root rot fails badly.

I figure if you want to go DWC/hydro go sterile or go back to dirt. I've only had root rot in 2 of 50 DWC grows and saved them both with copious doses of 35% food grade peroxide. Up to 10ml/L daily compared to 0.5ml/L twice/week.

View attachment 4321039

Great looking roots!!! Yeah some prefer sterile, I prefer to go with a bacteria but the 2 methods should not be mixed. There are reasons why some don't have success. I come from an aquatic background and have a lot of experience using beneficial bacteria to aid in growing aquatic plants. They are easily kept happy but can easily be killed off if you don't understand them. I mean personally i think the directions for hydrogaurd are made for marketing purposes and the culture of water changes in DWC would have to change in order to see more success. When you change out all the water at once you are destroying the environment and often killing off the beneficial bacteria then you need to re introduce them (aka buy more product) I think we are going to start seeing more and more use as hydro growers learn about it but I won't go on about it. 65-68F would definitely be a big reason for your success.

Bottom line if it works don't change it and you obviously are quite successful with what your doing.

 

[Aqua Man]

Is there a certain size air pump that’s best? I have one cheap one that’s like 5-15 gallon and I have a big one thats 30-60 gallon, is the big one too big? Or which one should I do ?

Your not actually putting increased levels of DO into the water you are simply replenishing. The gas exchange happens at the surface from agitation so as long as you are getting decent surface agitation you are good to go. Most ppl think small bubbles will dissolve more O2 in the water as they rise. This is not true O2 is very hard to dissolve into water in relation to other gasses like Co2 so until some O2 is depleted your not likely to be adding much if any to the water. The reason smaller bubbles provide more gas exchange is the amount of surface agitation they provide. They are also gentler on the root systems. Either will be adequate but cooler water will provide a larger buffer to be honest the difference in water temp and size of air stone would probably have more impact as long as you have enough volume to run the airstone effectively.

 

[snoeman032]

Your not actually putting increased levels of DO into the water you are simply replenishing. The gas exchange happens at the surface from agitation so as long as you are getting decent surface agitation you are good to go. Most ppl think small bubbles will dissolve more O2 in the water as they rise. This is not true O2 is very hard to dissolve into water in relation to other gasses like Co2 so until some O2 is depleted your not likely to be adding much if any to the water. The reason smaller bubbles provide more gas exchange is the amount of surface agitation they provide. They are also gentler on the root systems. Either will be adequate but cooler water will provide a larger buffer to be honest the difference in water temp and size of air stone would probably have more impact as long as you have enough volume to run the airstone effectively.

So would the smaller pump keep the water cooler or warmer?