Titan RDWC | 60 Gallon | 6 Sites| MegaCrop

Hey guys! I have decided to move from my traditional Soilless ProMix/Sunshine Mix #4 medium to a pure hydroponic grow. I settled on doing a RDWC after watching DIY builds and growth performance. I also wanted to be in more control as I am a very techy kinds of person.

My system was designed and inspired by @JSB99 and from watching a ton of other build styles on YouTube and forum threads.

My initial start of the system lead to some major problems with a pathogen outlined in this thread https://www.rollitup.org/t/first-time-6-site-rdwc-60-gallon-problems.958705/

I am gathering my documentation for this Journal so far, I have been running around like a headless chicken chasing the issue so stay tuned for more details!

Alright here we go!

A little about me. I have been growing on and off since 2007 and had always used organic nutrients in a soilless peat medium. I have been wanting to try a full hydro method for some time but haven't had the time to try it out. After seeing all the nice stuff happening with DWC I ran into RDWC builds! This kinda stuff excites me! I am also a 25+ year aquarium hobbyist and this felt just like that but replace the fish and corals with plants!.

My setup starts in a small basement room that shares a wall with the furnace room. Within that room I have my Mars Hydro grow tent setup. Its an odd measurement of 9.3' x 4.8' x 6.5' but it was only $5 more than the 8x4x6.5 so I went with that lol.

This is my second run in this tent, my first one did not go so well due to using seeds by Canuk Seeds, I have only grown a few Jordan of the Isles genetics that I maintained moms for 4 years but I think the age of the plants were causing a lot of hermies so I flowered them out some years ago. Please avoid CANUK they are not worth the time and money. You can search my postings about this if you have the time =).

I did a little review (positive) on the tent here https://www.rollitup.org/t/which-grow-tent-brands-to-avoid.953369/#post-13910332. dont mind the measurements on this pic, mine was different at the time


Right now I am only utilizing half the tent for Cannabis. the other half is for my filter, working room, veggies/other plants. I am using a CanFilter CAN50 rated for 420CFM.


For ventilation I am using a 6" Fusion Breath inline fan 460CFM. $99 from growlights.ca. I put in some electrical tape on the filter flange and then pushed in the fan to create a gasket seal. This needs to be 100% as this is the only point of odor failure in this setup.


Inside the tent I am using 2 digital tower fans, one on the floor (rotating) and one hanging from the tent horizontal. These fans are great and can be found at costco Feb-July for $50. I have been buying 1 or 2 for the last few years as they are a great deal. They have several speed settings and also settings for night time AND natural wind cycles.


From the fan I have 6" duct running to a Maverick Sun air cooled hood.

My ducting then exits the hood and tent, down the outside of the tent and then out to the main area of the basement. Lots of bends so no light can get in from the other side.


For the fresh air intake I am not using the rectangle mesh vents, instead I will be using left over 6" duct with a few bends and a floss filter on it. I have a sqare hole cut out for fresh air intake into the room itself from the cool furnace room. I will run my plumbing etc. through here as well.


Powering the lighting is a Phantom II 1000w Digital Smart Ballast. I am using USHIO HiLux Gro 1000w Metal Halide for veg and Hortilux 1000w HPS for flowering.

All of my electrical feeds to the furnace room neatly through a small hole


Bottom of the same side where the vent hole/RDWC plumbing goes through.


The other side of the wall where I have my electrical on a makeshift shelf. I am using a couple of digital 7 day timers. they have a little backup battery so all the settings stay even if power is out. I am also using a VARIAC to control my inline fan to reduce noise and to tune down the CFM to below 420CFM rating for the carbon filter. I will use anywhere from 65-85volts of the 120v the fan would pull without it.

The electrical box is about 4 feet from this shelf so I ran a short 20amp wire to a an outlet box here, i used its own dedicated 20amp breaker. easy peasy stuff if you know what you are doing.

This run I started with 3x Humboldt Seed Bubba's Gift and 3x G13 Labs Pineapple Express. 1 of the Bubbas was not doing good and 2 of the PE were not doing so well. I germinated my last 2 PE and then 1x DinaFem Blue Cheese as I had no more Bubbas. So at this moment I have 3 plants a couple weeks ahead then the other 3.

I germinated by giving them a shake in a roll of sand paper then dropped them into plastic shot glasses with PH 5.5 spring water. when they cracked I dropped them into Rapid Rooters soaked in PH 5.5 spring water with a tiny bit of Botanicare Liquid Karma. When I see any roots they get transfered to a 3" netpot which I put broken up hydroton (Used a hammer to tap to crack them up).


I setup a 5 gallon bucket with a small pump, manifold and a sprayer to grow some roots out while I was busy planning and building the RDWC system.


The sprayer spins and fractions off the side of the pail creating spray and mixing with air. roots were coming fast! Here is a little video

I did cover the outside of the bucket with poly and also the top to minimize light getting in.

The RDWC

While looking around for containers for my build, my local Lowes stores were getting rid of these 12 gallon strong box totes in the clearance section. A few of them didn't have lids and since I was buying all they had the manager gave sold them to me for $3 a piece. I was stoked I didn't end up going with the 4 gallon square pails that were a ton more. best of all the lids were black and light proof!

I went shopping for parts for DIY bulkheads but when it all added up the cost savings vs actual bulkheads was not worth it. I had settled on doing the plumbing with 1.5 inch PVC pipe and checked out my local hydro store. He was out of stock on bulkheads but he did have 1.5 inch Uniseals that he insisted would work for what I was trying to achieve, he let me have 2 of them to try out.

I drilled my holes according to a google search on Uniseal hole saw guide on two buckets and connected with a 10 inch PVC pipe. I prepped the pipe ends with sand paper and gave it a nice smooth bevel. I used Sunlight dish soap (I tried Dawn and it didn't work as well) to lube up the pipe and it went in no problem, trick was to go in at angles and wobble while pushing.

I filled up the connected totes for a 24 hour test. I also cut out the lids with a 6" hole saw from amazon.


I was amazed how well the Uniseals are working. I went back and bought all of his stock and he gave me a nice discount and they came out to $4 a piece, nice!

Very nice setup
Good job on the build, I’m watching for sure.

Subbed nice job bud

Good work

I drilled out the rest of the totes, used some pieces of zip ties to create a little jig so all my holes were at the same spots. I used 8 inch lengths of pipe for the rest of them as I felt the 10 was a bit too long.

Connecting them together started to become challenging. luckily I had my wife and a friend help me push these, A LOT of elbow grease, I am starting to feel old... the Uniseals are mostly a one way deal, if you push the pipe too hard and over shoot its best to push it through all the way and start over to avoid damaging the seal.

I am going to be using 12" air stones powered by a 70L/min commercial air pump I bought from Amazon.


I put a tee connector between the back totes and the front totes. The back tee has an adapter to go from 1.5inch PVC to 3/4 black Irrigation pipe which follows the white PVC (gravity flow back) out of the tent then 10.5 feet to the furnace room where my 27 gallon control tote is on the cold concrete. I am using a Danner Mag Drive 9.5 950gph pump with a ball valve to turn it down a bit as I noticed the back totes where the pump pulls from (black pipe) was lower than the rest of the totes.


I made a little area with cinder blocks and some tile I had laying around to help sound proof the air pump a bit. I dropped a little fan to help cool the air pump housing. I connected a vinyl pipe I had laying around that I use to use for watering pots to the intake of the pump, its probably 8 feet long. Instantly the pump was 80% quieter. I dropped the tube in a roll of carpet that was there already LOL. just a slight hum now.

I ran 20 foot of black vinyl tube (3.60 for 10 foot at Lowes) from this air pump all the way to the tent where the chrome 8 port manifold that came with the pump is mounted. Air temp was a non issue with this setup. The little tube that comes with the pump made the manifold HOT and air pumping out was also hot so this is why I chose to run it far away, gives the air time to cool. Manifold 20 feet away is cool to the touch and air is not heated as well.

I ditched the check valves later(showin in video), I found them restricting air so Instead I mounted my manifold higher than the totes so there was no chance of flow back if the pump is off for what ever reason.



Test run of the system

I gave the black lids a quick light coat of white paint for plastics.I just wanted the relective properties, the lids were light proof already being black.

The white will help with res heat too good job

Cold$moke said:

The white will help with res heat too good job

Click to expand...

Thanks man, welcome aboard all!

This will be a sweet one for sure

With everything running smooth I drained and filled the system with 2ppm RO water +a small dose of H2O2 Hydrogen Peroxide and GH CalMagic to bring the ppm to 150.

For nutrients I am using @GreenleafNutrients Mega Crop. I was reading some really good things about them and as a surprise I had won the 22lb bag during a contest in November in their contest thread.

I dosed my system to bring the total ppm to 350 for the small plants/seedlings. This would be the first nutrients they have received. I am also using the free grow software in this thread https://www.rollitup.org/t/free-grow-software.345468/. been using it to track my grows and nutrient supplies for the last few grows and it works great for me cause I smoke too much...

I adjusted the water level so there was a bit of water in the bottom of the net pots with lots of air bubbling coming through. I put down a layer of Hydroton and then placed my 3" net pots on top of that and filled it in with more hydroton.

Less than 2 days I had roots popping out the net pot and going for the water! super fast growth

I had no idea what my temps were going to be so I had planned to use some bennies if I had to, initially I was going to run this system sterile. In the last 5 years a lot or most of the bacterial/fungal stuff was banned so I had a real hard time trying to find Hydroguard or anything like that. I found some info on Southern AG Garden Friendly Fungicide and how Hydroguard was the exact same stuff but SAG was 98% concentrate vs Hydroguard 0.3%. I was able to get a small bottle from ebay (expensive). I read up on what people were dosing and came up with 3ML to dose my 60 gallon system.

This is when my system went south. within 6 hours my water smelled like pond water, badly. I noticed brown slime building on pipe ends and on the air stones and also my thermometer probe. All the plants were looking droopy so I took a look at the roots which were covered in clear/light brown slime. things just got worse by the hour and they were showing deficiencies like cal/mg or phosphorus.


over the next week I chased this issue non stop trying different ways to get rid of the slime, I must had done 5 or more complete drains/sanitize with bleach. There was no way to get rid of the monster growing within the net pot and it kept spreading and required water changes within a few days. Root and plant growth had been halted and every time I did a system flush I also had to wash the pots in the sink to push out slime, lost roots too.

If you want more info on this, take a look at the first post where I have a link.

I found a really good thread over at ICMAG that stopped the slime in its tracks. Nothing fancy needed from the recipes posted. Just a bucket with water, airstone, molasses and my wifes stocking filled with a couple cups of Earthworm Castings hanging over the bubbles. 36 hours later I strained anything that may have came out of the stocking and dosed my system by pouring 3 cups of the brew through each net pot. The rest of the tea went into milk jugs and into the fridge. I am still dosing 3 cups per day to the system just as a precaution. I threw in a filter sponge to have a place for the bennies to live (kinda like an aquarium).

Things cleared up within a day and by day 3 all the slime was gone, even the stuff snotting and globbing out of the bottom of the pots. I have lost about 2-3 weeks of growth due to this mishap but they are on accelerated growth now. This is where hydro growth and recovery outshine other mediums. I would have scrapped the plants in soil less due to the recovery time.

I ordered an 8oz bottle of Great White by plant success as it was one of the ingredients in the EWC tea but as I researched and compared stuff I learned how GOOD great white was!


My Great White came in yesterday so I mixed up 1 gal water and dosed the net pots and directly sprayed the root masses as well. I added 1 scoop diluted in water to the system.

Here are the roots 10 hours after EWC brew. slime is going away but some still hanging on.


Here they are Feb 22nd. Growing like they are weeds. more growth in 2 days than I got in the last 2 weeks


I also have been waiting for the 3 bigger ones to get healthy for a topping so I did that also, this will give the other 3 late germinations to catch up. I took the cuttings and put some rooting hormone on them after prepping them and stuck them in rapid rooters I had been soaking in the rez water.



I have not used a trellis net before so I ordered one from amazon and I am wanting to fill this whole canopy up. Tips on doing this much appreciated. not sure what height I should be putting the netting etc. im a noob at this type of training.

Stay tuned for root porn when the lights come on tonight.

Just an update on system parameters. I ditched my RO unit and am using my tap water now. I have not had to adjust PH at all unlike RO water which I was adjusting 2 times a day.
I initially set it at 5.67 and it is at 5.72 last night. I use my water filter that I use to fill my hot tub, gets that chlorine out.


Tap water
PH 8.3
210ppm
200-250 calcium (according to my hot tub strips)
Alkalinity 80 (hot tub strips)
Free Chlorine 1-2ppm (hot tub strips)

RDWC System

PH: 5.72
Nutrient: GreenleafNutrients Mega Crop 300ppm
Total Solution: 470ppm (started at 520 7 days ago)
Water Temps: 63f-67f by end of 18 hour light cycle. Outside temps change the concrete temps and then also the res temp. Have not seen it go past 69 yet but I expect that to change as the weather warms up.
Room Temp: lights on 23c, 25c under hottest hot spot.
RH: at around 35% lights on and 50% lights off with my cool mist humidifier.
Wind: Nice varying breeze throughout the tent.
Lights: Dropping it down from 3ft slowly over the last few days/ at about 20 inches now.

As to filling up your canopy
You just have to play the waiting game

Looking good.

Roots. They all look like wigs haha

Trying out this sprayer in the reservoir. What do you guys think? I couldn't find my rotary tool so I tried this in the meantime.