Hello! First attempt at hydro.

Hey, I'm Dan. Been growing with mixed results for about 4 years. Kinda suck at it, but typically end up with something worth smoking. Ended up with a bad batch of soil a couple of months ago that ended up killing off 12 seedlings before I finally admitted defeat. Made these top-feed hydro buckets a few years ago but never had the balls to give it a try. Well, apparently desperation helps a lot - so here I am. Feel free to chime in and let me know what you think of the impending shit show in my tent. Just flipped them to 12/12 two days ago. Honestly didn't think I'd even get this far. Both photoperiods,1 plant is White Widow (Seedsman), the other is Blue Dream (Garden of Green).

Guess I'll just list what I have to work with:
-Tap water, public, 140ppm, pH 8.5+. Distilled white vinegar for pH control. GH reagent solution for testing.
-5 gallon buckets with GH Farm kit top-feed setup. 285GPH air pump. 1 air stone in each bucket to keep things agitated and oxygenated.
-480watt Kingbrite QB knockoff, 3500K with UV & IR.
-Medium is hydroton. Using DG Pro-Tekt, Foliage Pro, Mag Pro and some Southern Ag Garden Friends Bio Fungicide in place of Hydroguard.
-Did res changes the day I flipped them, ppm was 900. Per bucket I used: 3mL Pro-Tekt, 15mL Foliage Pro, 5mL Mag Pro, 1tsp Epsom salt, 1mL Fungicide. Can't really think of anything more to say, so here are some current pics.

I'm not a hydro guy, it the plants look good, I probably wanted more roots before flipping but the plants look good!

Thanks. All things considered, I thought the plants do look pretty decent, at least by my standards. My little soil debacle kinda messed things up and my personal stash has dwindled big time, so I kinda just need to get'er done to just have SOMETHING to harvest ASAFP. The roots have actually made a bit of a comeback, compared to how they looked last week. I got that Southern Ag stuff and within maybe 4 days they looked less slimy and seem to be rallying. But yeah, have to imagine a more impressive root mass would be a huge help.

Always want to know if it is too dirty thing to use hydro instead of pot?

Doner_stoner_ said:

Always want to know if it is too dirty thing to use hydro instead of pot?

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Way less dirty.
Just water

How do my roots look? I don't have an eye for this kinda stuff since it's my first shot. Not sure just how white they're supposed to be and how good/bad mine actually are. They seemed noticeably whiter before I decided to give MegaCrop a try 2 weeks ago. Aside from clogging up my drip ring, it seems to have possibly stained the roots a bit. I stopped using it after a few days and switched back to Dyna-Gro. Plants are about 1 month old.

Ugh. So throughout the entire veg cycle, I was getting constant upward pH drift. Not huge jumps, probably in the area of .5 - 1 at a time. Now, like 5 days into flower, the opposite is happening. PH is dropping by about 1.0 around every 8 hours or so. Also noticed that my ppm is managing to go UP. Plants and roots 'look' great and are noticeably growing, but this can't be good. Did some reading that suggests nutrient PPM may be too high, causing a lockout and for nutrients to leach back into the solution? Weird, because as of yesterday it was ~ 750ppm before drifting up to around 800; but I was at 800ppm at the end of veg right before I did res changes and flipped the plants. Guess it's time for another round of res changes and lowering the ppm a bit?

I don’t know about your tap water but mine is awful for hydro
Only way I could make it work was R/o water filter
But I would be concerned trying to use vinegar for ph lowering as its prone to swings and so is hard well water

Most of the few wells around here are contaminated with Uranium, so I'm on public water. I use Seachem Prime to neutralize the chloramine/chlorine. It comes out of the tap at 8.5pH + and around 140ppm. Up until now, I've grown exclusively in soil and haven't bothered with pH for a couple of years, so I don't have any pH Down around anymore. Gonna have to invest in some when I have some more $$ to play with. Just mixed up a fresh batch of solution to 700ppm and switched out the buckets. This is the first time pH has swung down, which made me curious enough to try to look into it and notice ppm going up. Guess I'll see how it acts now. Since getting that Bio Ag fungicide, my roots have been looking much better and growing a lot, so it doesn't seem like it would be any issue with bacteria or root rot.

1 full week after flip. Plants seem to be doing really well, as far as I can tell. Few tops were starting to shoot upward a bit, so I pinched them and bent them over to let the lower stuff catch up a bit.

Fangthane said:

Most of the few wells around here are contaminated with Uranium, so I'm on public water. I use Seachem Prime to neutralize the chloramine/chlorine. It comes out of the tap at 8.5pH + and around 140ppm. Up until now, I've grown exclusively in soil and haven't bothered with pH for a couple of years, so I don't have any pH Down around anymore. Gonna have to invest in some when I have some more $$ to play with. Just mixed up a fresh batch of solution to 700ppm and switched out the buckets. This is the first time pH has swung down, which made me curious enough to try to look into it and notice ppm going up. Guess I'll see how it acts now. Since getting that Bio Ag fungicide, my roots have been looking much better and growing a lot, so it doesn't seem like it would be any issue with bacteria or root rot.

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I grew a bit in AZ
Worst place to grow outdoor and yes the water sucks

Herb & Suds said:

I grew a bit in AZ
Worst place to grow outdoor and yes the water sucks

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Sucks that AZ legalized cultivation, but not outdoors. Would love to give it a try, but despite living in an area with laughably low population density, we have any one of four different law enforcement agencies rolling up and down my road at any given time. The scumfucks habitually go like 10 MPH, desperate to see anything that would give them a reason to fuck with people.

I would suggest dropping the 2 plants and net pot lids into the biggest\lowest profile plastic storage bin you can find. Cut 2 holes in the lid and plop them right down in.

That way you have one res to deal with, that holds 10+ times the capacity, keeping the nutrient solution more stable overall.

Your going to have crazy fluctuations (making the above chart pointless IMO), and have to change the res multiple times a day in those 5 gallon buckets from here on out, as they get bigger and drink way more.

Any major changes like that just aren't really an option. If I decide I like hydro enough to actually plan out a setup a bit and give it a real try, I'll probably just plumb the buckets together and have a large tote outside the tent for the main res. For right now, just gonna run with what I got until the wheels fall off if that's how it's going to go.

After res changes yesterday, pH has been holding at 6, water level has dropped noticeably and ppm has dropped by ~50 so far since last night. Multiple res changes a day? Sounds kinda ridiculous. You seem to be seeing disaster in a situation where the plants appear to be doing reasonably well. I'd go as far as once a week if I do keep getting major fluctuations, but I'd bail on this experiment long before I'd do it every day.

It does seem that way. They look great though, and probably already have you somewhat convinced. I see a future with big harvest ( i see a trellis net in the backround) & good vibes, and you building an awesome new RDWC someday soon!

The trellis was there for the soil grow that fell apart just before I ended up deciding to try hydro. Not sure how to do a net setup without creating a huge hassle when it comes to res changes, so I'm not even going to try using it this time around. I'm not really convinced of anything. I'm wayyy too realistic about my lack of skill and general bad luck to ever assume I'm just gonna nail it. At the same time, though, I don't wanna assume I've already completely fucked it up either. At least not until the plants start seriously going south. A sad commentary on my typical grows, but these plants are looking better than my plants often do at this stage. About half the time, my plants tend to start yellowing at the bottom within a couple of weeks after flipping.

Anyone have any opinions on switching nutrient regiment: Dyna Gro Foliage Pro, Pro-Tekt and Mag Pro vs MegaCrop? If I'm gonna end up having to do frequent res changes, I doubt I have enough of the Dyna Gro to last all the way through. Got like 10 pounds of MegaCrop, though. I'd used it for maybe a week earlier in veg, but it seemed to wanna stay a 7+ pH and I hated having to use all the vinegar necessary to get it below 6. Aside from the minor hassle of having it clog my drip rings every couple days, the plants didn't seem to mind it. Thinking I'll use MC as the base and a bit of the DG Bloom or DG Mag Pro to supplement for flowering. Thoughts?

Alrighty. So, 3 full weeks into flowering. So far, so good. The Blue Dream has shot up considerably in the past couple of weeks, a good 8" higher than the White Widow. Decided to go with a mixture of MegaCrop and Dyna Gro to see if I could get pH to stabilize. Seems to have worked, since the pH has been settling in right at 7 before adjusting. Been doing weekly res changes, bumping up to 1000ppm with today's change. Got a new 600 gph air pump last week, which seems like it may be slightly overkill. Since upgrading, tent humidity has soared up to 70%+. Would it create a problem to just cut air completely off during lights-out, to cut down on the humidity the bubbling and dripping are creating?

Today, I'm 8 weeks post-flip. The little White Widow shrub has continued to bulk up; the Blue Dream is starting to fill out a bit. Guessing the WW has 2-3 more weeks to go. At this rate, it's looking like Blue Dream is gonna go a good 14 weeks or so. Today is res change day, so I'm gonna keep on blasting BD with 1000+ PPM, but gonna drop WW feed down to about 750 PPM for this week and gonna half that again for next week to give a mini-flush before chop. No one bothers to answer my questions, but I'll ask anyway: Any thoughts on my estimate of how long they have left?