Second go at first grow in new UC system

My first attempt at growing in my new undercurrent system went from bad to worse rather quickly. I ended up getting root rot and no matter what I did nothing helped. Tried a compost tea, cleaning the system with h202, soaking roots in a mixture of nothing but water and h202 and finally returning the girls to an h202 treated solution. In the end every time new roots came in a couple days later they would turn brown. Ended up getting rid of the girls and sterilizing my system with chlorine and then flushing it twice.

Now I'm on to a new batch of clones and I'm ten days in. This time I listened to some of heisen's advice. Set the rockwool much higher in the hydroton and set the water level with bubbles instead of a measurement. So far so good even though they were kind of stuck after 5 days in. Now that they are ten days in all but 2 of 8 seem to be doing much better than the last run.

The first couple pics from day one to day 10, do you think the internodal length is good? The third photo are the roots of the same plant. The final photo is of my first attempt at FIMing, what do you think? The last photo is one of the two sad girls for which I can not figure out?

What is your PH and PPM?
So your running bennies now?

Bennies in the form of hydroguard but compost tea didn't work at all for me.

Room temp 75
Humidity 65
Water Temp 70
PH 5.7 to 6.0
PPM .5 scale is 380

in for the ride with cha

i just remembered: real growers recharge seems to help with problems like this. I had to use it twice a week though.

I always wondered what is considered tight internodal spacing? Right now with my happy girls I have about 8 nodes in a 4" space from the first to the last node. Unfortunately my unhappy girls only have 3 but are also half the size. Hopefully once they get going they'll catch up but I guess that's what topping is for.

Stupid question maybe, but you make sure to iso off your hands and tools before they touch your res water right?
Dump that HG in there every three days. I was at walmart today and noticed the concentrated rose and orchid food that was on sale had B.A. and several other bacteria in it.

I do watch off with antbacterial soap and hot water before touching anything inside the system.

Not a stupid question at all. In my last full grow I never did and had much better results than my first try on this new system and I kept them clean the whole time.

I try to not touch the water or anything contacting the water ever unless it's absolutely necessary.

HG every three days? That seems excessive? I thought it was at every change out or with every addition? I guess it can't hurt either way but I wonder if you can use to much?

Another awful thing I learned from some local pest research. The other day these swarms of bugs were flying around the tops the redwoods. I looked up local pests and I think they were bark bottles. The awful thing i found out when on the same page is spider mites are a huge issue around here. Makes sense now how I always get them in my grow room.

I notice them outside in the evergreen bushes here when I walk my kid to school. Little webs in the pine trees. I pointed them out and now she asks questions about spider mites lol.
The webs freaked me out so I just built these filters.
Whenever I need to trim or go in the tent, it's in my socks and boxers straight from the shower hahaha but I mean it is what it is.
Take off the socks before I go in and make sure I crank up the intake fan to reverse the pressure.
About the HG. Give it the 2ml/gal initially but keep giving it a "maintenance" dose every three days.
Half that or less if you can find a consistent dose that works so your not just dumping it in. Buy a gallon for 50 bucks. Its 50 bucks well spent and will last awhile. I tend to go heavy on the first dose because, why not. For me it has proven its worth. I hope it does for you too!
The only thing I can imagine happening from too much is PH tanks from excessive bacteria die-off but man, you would have to add the gallon probably, to get that effect.

Phosphorus? Magnesium? Nitrogen? Or some mix of each? Deficiency?

Two days on same plant. Looking good for growth?

What are your PPMs and PH?
Any kind of Cal/Mag?

So no one answered my deficiency question which I assumed was one or all that I mentioned and perhaps calcium as well. So I decided to go with my gut.

Full strength of my nutes is 900ppm and I was running 380 since everyone kept yelling, less is more. I upped my nutrient level 380 to 500 which is a little above 50% strength.

So know my environment is as such,

Temp 75-77
Humidity 75-50 only 50 for about 15 minutes total per hour when exhaust is on.
Ph 5.75
Ppm 380 but now 500 since two days ago.

For cal/mag I use Epsom salts at 5g per 5 gallons.

What nutes are you using?
380 is a lot still for those. I would be running 150 ppm calmag and 150 nutes and see what happens. mgso4 is good but you need calcium with it. I think it is something you use once or twice if you see what you can actually confirm is a mag def. It's got more sulfur than it does mg btw.

I have to have a water supply issue and I filter out chloramine and chlorine. This grow I have been so careful but yesterday I noticed my roots on my smaller clones started going down hill. No slime or even brown really but you can tell.

This grow I used Clorox and h2o2 to clean the entire system and then ran hydroguard at 66 to 68 degrees and got some sort of root issue again. I ended up doing a full drain and clean and refilled with as double dose of uc roots all the way up to the rockwool. Let sit sit for 6 hours ran another liter through the top of each net cup and drained to below the net cups.

From now on I'm just going to run a completely sterile system. I hope by running a sterile system it will help with possible water or environmental factors.

I was so careful that I really dont think it could be anything but the water or garage space. We live in a very pathogen strong area because of weather factors. Hot, cold, wet and dry all in one day. Your car can get mold if you dont for a month.

The small plants look a little better already which I assume is just from the fresh unadulterated, rechlorinated, water. Hopefully they'll be fine, it's really only the small ones I'm worried about. Probably the reason in the first place the little clones were susceptible to root issues, being small and having growth issues.

That's crazy you have been having such trouble. I helped a friend get his CC up and running and he decided to run a sterile system. He is using UC roots, which is hypochlorus acid. I always wondered about running pool shock aka calcium hypochlorite also. You should figure out what the max PPM for disinfection/safe for the plants of the stuff is and run it near there and see what happens.
Sorry the bennies route did not work for you. Have you cleaned your chiller btw? I noticed mine keeps about a 1/2 gal of funky water inside if I really dont rinse it out.

Everyone keeps telling me I'm not made for dwc but if you follow the accepted pattern it should work, right?

I mean shit I did everything I've been told to a tee by people who have proved to know what they speak of. It's easy to blame environmental factors but in my current situation, in my mind at least, I can't find another option?


I'm not running UC Roots, I just use that for known quantity, I'm using hth pool shock right now. Its measured out to the exact same strength as UC roots. From reading through people using it my current dose was 3 times the regular dose but you can go anywhere from 1 to 5 times safely, supposedly. I just decided I either need to save my plants or kill them.

After the first dose I plan on running a double dose which should come out to 1ppm of chlorine. Ofcourse these are all "internet" numbers so well have to wait and see. They came from a trusted source in terms of experience and quality grows

As for the cooler I ran about 5 gallons of clean chlorinated and h2o2'd water through it.

You will get it man, just keep after it. A thought...…
Have you spoken with anyone who grows in your area, to see if maybe they have run into the same problems? Maybe someone familiar with growing in the bay can give you some better advice on what to do, specific to your situation.

Sorry to hear about your troubles. Though I got lazy and also quite busy and didn't finish up my last grow journal (the ending and I will finish!). I went through some troubles so maybe take a read through mine and see if it can help you out. it went quite well in the end and I ended up with 1lb dry

I just started my second run going sterile this time, few days in. If something goes wrong I now have a solid Plan B.

kingtitan said:

Sorry to hear about your troubles. Though I got lazy and also quite busy and didn't finish up my last grow journal (the ending and I will finish!). I went through some troubles so maybe take a read through mine and see if it can help you out. it went quite well in the end and I ended up with 1lb dry

I just started my second run going sterile this time, few days in. If something goes wrong I now have a solid Plan B.

Click to expand...

Can you post a link? Not sure why but can't find it.

shawnery said:

After the first dose I plan on running a double dose which should come out to 1ppm of chlorine. Ofcourse these are all "internet" numbers so well have to wait and see. They came from a trusted source in terms of experience and quality grows

Click to expand...

not sure what formula you are using for pool shock, but 1ppm is pretty weak. i ran at 3ppm no problems

0.30 grams per 10 gallons water is 3ppm.