EXPERTS IN 5 GAL BUCKETS DWC ONLY PLEASE!!

sirsmokealot710 said:

and yes, if you veg mother plants in DWC for months and months without a res change, given the proper nutes, the plants still leach off waste into the water, raising the ppm up to 2000-3000. i've done it for months and months with mother plants, they don't mind the high ppm because it is not nutes, it is waste. it's just garbage, unusable. if the ph is fine and i top off with nutes, they grow, regardless if the ppm is rising to 2500

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Ok, sounds like you got this.

need to figure out why you get deficiencies? if you know what deficiency, next is why.

pH wrong, ppms too high, not enough cal/mg?

rkymtnman said:

need to figure out why you get deficiencies? if you know what deficiency, next is why.

pH wrong, ppms too high, not enough cal/mg?

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this is two examples of some lucas 8/16 i did last winter with NO res changes. it was just as potent as my stuff i can sell to the dispensaries now, but i was embarrassed to sell this stuff due to no res change, i felt like you could see and taste it. the buds are darker than what i produce now. but you can see, i never let the water drop more than a gallon and i checked numbers religiously, before the addition of the water and after. i stopped doing that because i get better results with lucas and res changes every 3 gallons. but still i am deficient. its cal/mag issues.

i don't check ppm or ph anymore because my res changes were so frequent, i did at the beginning and nothing was ever off or needed to be corrected

i run 5 gal buckets and use general hydroponics maxi grow, maxi bloom. plants seem to love the nutes, never any deficiencies. i use grow for the first 2 weeks of bloom, week 3 i go half grow, half bloom, week 4-finish bloom only,,unless i see early yellowing then i add a bit of grow to top offs.. final week i flush,, buds taste great..

for the sake of helping others with my information, here is an update.

my strains are given 5ml GROW, MICRO, AND BLOOM in 3 gallons as their first reservoir from clone. this reservoir can last 20-22 days without a single deficiency, and only about 1 to 1.5 gallons will be drank in that time due to the small roots and plant size.

My 2nd reservoir MUST contain also 5ml of CAL MAG in addition to the 5ml grow, 5ml micro, and 5ml bloom, even during veg, or else i see slight spots and deficiencies after a week, all linked to the calcium and magnesium. the plants now drink more like a gallon a week. this reservoir was changed after ten days. the third reservoir is when they are basically full sized vegging plants, and the same, 5ml of all four (grow, micro, bloom, and cal-mag) was added. the cal-mag solved the deficiencies and allows the res to last a full 7 to 10 days at my very low strength formulas.

i am in flower now, and am using the lowest concentration of nutrients i have ever, but with the addition of calmag, and the results are perfect for now. i have not reached the week 4 flower deficiency time frame yet, so we will see.


THE 5ML IS FOR ONE GALLON, SO SINCE THREE GALLON RES IS THE TOTAL PER BUCKET, ITS 15ML OF EACH NUTRIENT PER BUCKET.

have you thought about trying lucas at 5/10 or 6/12 for vegging?

i've been using flora duo for the last 2 grows. really like it so far in lucas formula.

rkymtnman said:

have you thought about trying lucas at 5/10 or 6/12 for vegging?

i've been using flora duo for the last 2 grows. really like it so far in lucas formula.

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i did a whole round of lucas 5/10. i think i did NO res changes and that was the first time i started topping off with either water or nutes, depending on the ppm and ph. they turned out just as good as the lucas 8/16 round i did, both without res changes ever.

when i do lucas at 8/16 with res changes, the dispensaries will buy it. the res change is pretty crucial in flower to clean up those buds and not have them suck up crap. i learned that if you want medical quality, the res must be changed. it's actually easy as hell, just get a 15$ siphon pump at home depot and i use 3$ in D Cell batteries per 3 month grow.

i think in veg, you can stretch the res out over more than a week or two, as long as you look daily at the growth. but in flower, it is risky to go over 7-10 day mark without a complete change.

this round, i will max out the Bloom at 7.5ml per gal and micro at 5ml per gal, and the grow will finish at around 2.5ml per gallon. this is much weaker than lucas 8/16 and they are vegging flawlessly.

Alienwidow said:

None taken, i didnt say look at the plants. I said read the ppm meter to see what the plants eating out of the rez between fills.
Mix nutes, read. Fill. Wait one day. Open rez, read. Log, calculate ppm of top off water, add. Read. Repeat.
Theres no way youll end up with 2000 ppms if you dwc properly with your ppm meter.
Example. Heavy feeding in mid flower....
Target ppms are 1000 ppm, mix, add. Wait one day. Open rez, read. 840 ppm. Log, calculate ppm top off water -one gallon has been consumed and the plants have dropped the ppm to 840 therefore one gallon of water at 1200ppm should even out the other three gallons at 840 to an even 1000 again for you. Read, if yes good, if no fix it.
Thats how dwc and ppm meters work, like i said earlier. A formula won't tell you what the plant wants for dinner, a ppm meter will.
The reason you empty the rez and start new from time to time is that some elements arent consumed so they build up, get rid of those so the ppms can be the stuff ya want in there the plant will eat.

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Hello can you walk me thru the calculation of how you got to 1200 and one gallon please ? thanks

imgoingplaces said:

Hello can you walk me thru the calculation of how you got to 1200 and one gallon please ? thanks

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When topping off the rez its not really an exact science even if you have a sight tube on the side of the rez. Even with a sight tube the root mass grows so fast it will constantly be consuming more of the space for water. Thats where a good log book comes in

With a log book you can write what the rez was when you check it. What you mixed the refill water to, and then what it evened out at. So say were mid flower and target is 1000 ppm. You check and the ppm meter reads 900 and waters low. Fill your mixing bucket or external rez with water and start mixing. Now to bring it from 900 up to 1000 youll have to mix the water you want to add to over 1000 to average ppms to 1000 ppms. So if the water left in the plant rez was 1 gallon, and the water you had to add was also one gallon, then bringing the gallon you want to add up to 1100 should mix with the 900 already in there to even out at 1000. If you have one gallon of plant water at 900 and two gallons of fill water to add, youll have to mix lower because the fill water will have more control over the final ppms because theres twice as much of it. So it may have to be mixed at 1050 ppm instead of 1100 but it will still average out to 1000.

Now this works easy in theory. Unfortunately youll almost never have equal parts left as you want to add. So its more about logging numbers and just a feel for what your doing. A good way to get an aspect of consistency is to water at the same time every day. That way the water levels should be similar so youll be adding approximately the same amount of water. If your using a calibrated watering tool like a juice jug it will make logging easier. Then just read the plants rez ppms and mix the fill solution according to where you need to be to average the two to get the target.

The other variable is plant size and nutritional requirements. Plants nutrient uptake starts off very small and moves to pretty high over the life of the plant. Disregard the directions on the back of the bottles because they are usually wrong. Youll be better off gradually bringing the ppm up as the plant grows, and depending on how big your plant will get, youll need different ppms to keep it healthy. For example, some people will put four plants in one dwc bucket and do small plants with ten day veg times. These plants dont get very big so a max ppm of 750 may be all that is needed in peak flower. Some guys will grow one monster with a two month veg in a 27 gallon tote under a 1000 watt bulb, this plant may need 1200 ppm in peak flower because its five feet wide and five feet across.

So theres tricks to make calculations easier, (practice and grower tallent), but really theres no steadfast rule or chart to follow to make sure you hit that magic number. And sometimes youll need to add a little water if you end up too high. I usually leave a little room in there incase i have to water the solution down a bit and i usually would rather run low than too high. Too low usually isnt a problem, too high can burn the plants, so error on the side of caution if you can. Hope that helped ya. Cheers.

Alienwidow said:

When topping off the rez its not really an exact science even if you have a sight tube on the side of the rez. Even with a sight tube the root mass grows so fast it will constantly be consuming more of the space for water. Thats where a good log book comes in

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wow thank you so much

here is an update for anyone doing their research. i use google search and weed forums a lot, and hate when people have incomplete threads that i wanted to know the answers to, so here is my update. i'm at the beginning of week 6 tomorrow, and the cali-magic solved my issues completely.

i used the weakest formula ever this round, it maxed out at 5ml micro/7.5ml bloom, huge stalked plants, and i actually got minor leaf tip burn still, during one week i was busy tiling my kitchen, i neglected the top offs and they got down to half gallon a day or two. one of my strains did not need a res change for two weeks of flower, but i changed it anyways. those formula recommendations on the bottle are severely over strengthed, most likely so they can just make more money.

i'm going to always supplement my res with calcium now. also keep in mind i top off with non-ph adjusted water. my water from the tap is 8.1 to 8.3 and i wanted to use it that way for simplicity sake. another thing to note, the only plant that got some minor circular rust spots was the one under the 1000 watt light directly, all the others are closer to the 600s. i guess the intensity of my light should be reevaluated as well. this rusting was only on some larger upper fan leaves it seemed. i also did still got minor spotting on tiny ass fans on the bottom. what all this means? i don't know. i let my ph fluctuate a lot, i don't use RO, i don't adjust PH, i know i am making shortcuts. all in all, i believe plants need calcium in flower, even with tap water. i also do not have a single early browning pistol, and last rounds i would notice those around this time.