Hotdog's First DWC

Hello everyone hotdogski reporting for duty... I've been a lurker for a while now its about time I started posting. So here it goes my first DWC grow!

I've always tried to grow in soil and Ebb without much luck really.
So keeping my fingers crossed on this one.

Setup for 6 plants (plannin on doing SCROG this time) :
15 Gal container
Fox Farm Trio Formula
Epson
Keeping H020 handy
Random Airstone
Expanded clay and rockwool cubes as media
Cheap walmart O2 pump


Started from random seeds that I had laying around and vegging under CFLs while I wait for my 600w hps and MH to come in.

Will post a few pictures in a bit.

The 2 bigger plants I transplanted from soil, I decided that I was going to try DWC when I had already planted them so they suffered a bit of a shock but they are doing nicely now. These pictures were taken 3/18/14

Pictures taken a week later. Shocked plants showing a little improvement. Plus the elusive Celery just chilling while my other seeds germ haha

These were taken today, the plants that were in soil previously are really taking off, they are really liking their bubbles D: so are the new seedlings . And the elusive celery is still there just chilling

Hps 600 arrived, with an apollo ballast from ebay just hoping the are decent. So far the bulb and the ballast have been behaving great.
Ph 5.5
ppm 1300
~90-100 F
Started seeing some discoloration spots on a few of the leaves, looked like mag def lowered ph first and then week added some epson salts and now the problem is gone. I also heat shocked the hell out of everything in there. I fried my best plant and it lost a few leaves but its getting back up,
CFLs were damn cool compared to this thing,
Whats up with plant in pic 4? bad genetics or what? never seen anything like that.
RIP Celery 2014 - 2014

Just opened the lid to check the ph and ppm. I noticed a lot of sediment in my air line and on the sides of the container, is this normal? or should i flush?

Screen is on, since i only have 13 inches more to raise my light I decided to go ahead and put the screen to start training the mutant plant. Its a lot earlier for my smaller ones but they will have to catch up tallest plant is about 13 inches.
I dont think ill top this one yet since i have a lot more space to the right to fill up, I think ill do that later.

Question its about time for the next feed, but my ppm has been at 1300 since my last feed. Does that mean stuff is accumulating in my res?
Should I change the water in the res?

Sorry I havent posted in a while guys, been busy with finals and figured veggin' isn't as fun, had a few problems like, one plant died because of stem rot. I messed up and moved the fan up and air wasn't getting to the stem. Anyway the rest 3 are doing great, they have filled almost half of my screen, im hoping that in a few weeks I can switch my lights.

Flushed once when I encountered the stem rot, to try and prevent it from spreading. I added epson and treated all 3 with h2o2
I topped 2 of them and semi/super-cropped the right-most plant, ill also be lollipop-ping all of them once Im about to enter flower.

Screen is almost full, just a few more days to switch my light

Ran into some def issues you can read about it here:

https://www.rollitup.org/t/does-this-look-like-n-deficiency-to-you.827205/#post-10471437

3 days into flower, I was left with two plants so I let them have a few extra days of veg to fill up my screen. So far so good, the plant on the left already showed sex waiting on the one on the right, but so far it isn't looking good i think its gonna be a guy :*(

hotdogski said:

.......but so far it isn't looking good i think its gonna be a guy :*(

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That's why I didn't run a SCROG last time.... not worth ripping a plant out that already filled my screen.... I'll stick around... I'm going to be making the switch to hydro soon too, my experience with soil is great... that Apollo should serve you well, I've had 1 time when my bulb didn't fire but I power cycled and it was fine.
BTW IMHO that screen is WAY too low... just MHO though....

FrozenChozen said:

That's why I didn't run a SCROG last time.... not worth ripping a plant out that already filled my screen.... I'll stick around... I'm going to be making the switch to hydro soon too, my experience with soil is great... that Apollo should serve you well, I've had 1 time when my bulb didn't fire but I power cycled and it was fine.
BTW IMHO that screen is WAY too low... just MHO though....

Click to expand...

Yea thats what i get for running random seeds, in the future ill try to stick with clones, But In the past i've had horrible experiences with soil, i just can't never seem to get it right. I actually switched from soil to hydro in the middle of 2 plants that i started off with. They were about to die and as soon as i put them in my DWC they sprung up. The screen 12" from the res and I was actually thinking that I had it too high? how high should I setup the screen?

I would probably have it (the screen) another 6-10 inches up as

hotdogski said:

........i only have 13 inches more to raise my light........

Click to expand...

With your (or any) grow light you start to exponentially lose lumens at about 12" from the light source (inverse square law).... I would expect to see colas maybe 6-12" long depending on strain... and that puts them within about the 18" range which should be just peachy, but if you got a cool tube goin and a decent fan you might be able to get the light 10-12" from the tops.... just a thought

hotdogski said:

Question its about time for the next feed, but my ppm has been at 1300 since my last feed. Does that mean stuff is accumulating in my res?

Click to expand...

either that or maybe its not using very much

hotdogski said:

Should I change the water in the res?

Click to expand...

IMHO Yes, at bare minimum every 7-10 days

Yea the hood is meant to be air cooled but right now I don't have anything blowing through it. Insufficient funds. And the thing is that I don't have much vertical room as it is. I've actually reached my max height. Just hoping they don't stretch too much more. Otherwise ill have to maybe turn the wattage down a bit. Right now just hoping that my biggest plant doesn't turn out a male. It's showing hairs but it's also showing some ball-looking growth.

Made a little video for you guys.
Turns out that the 2nd plant might be a girl or at best a hermy

Made another video Things running good

3rd Week


Ran out of flora micro, just ordered some more to finish this cycle up

Week 6


Lost one plant due to salt buildup. I couldn't figure out what was wrong with it until i chopped it down and saw the clogged stems :*( R.I.P.

Week 7

Week 8
Should I start flushing now? What do you think?