Pros....Cons.... of DWC

Dabsy805 said:

I was wanting to run biobizz in a dwc and I just saw your advice. Why would you advise against organic? Not testing you just wondering why

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I like to keep anything alive out of my systems... Living things and organics create bigger problems then they are worth imo. If you wanna go organic stick to soil or set up an aquaponic system. Now before anyone cuts my head off for saying that I'm sure some people swear differently (like the people who work at my local grow shop) but I still have yet to find someone with something that was quality come out of an organic dwc setup. If someone has I'd like to see. I'm not saying it's not possible I just haven't seen it yet personally.

Junk said:

If you want a killer DWC recipe pm @Stumpy420 I use GH for water, NFTG for soil. The line for "organic" in my opinion is so arbitrary that it's not worth worrying about. Unless that is your whole deal, to produce organic product.

But I've had organic, non organic, soil, hydro, coco, led, CFL, HID....

What nutrients you use will have the least impact in your product vs 1. Light 2. Temperature 3. Co2 4. Humidity 5. Nutes.

I might be wrong on #4, I'm not positive, but the rest, I'm positive I have correct from a study done on cannabis.

If you are not worried about your Co2 levels, worrying about your nutes is useless in my opinion. Just get something that works.

Stumpy's works.

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I'm gonna have to beg to differ on this. All my circle of grower friends all have similar rooms equipment wise. The one thing that makes all the difference is the nutrients. So much I have patients that refuse my buddy's gh/heavy 16 combo he's trying to do over there. I use a basic refined recipe of hg Aqua flakes and it always comes out to be that fire. My other dude does canna and that shits fire. My other guy does heavy 16 in dirt and hydro and its fire. The two people I know that refuse to switch off gh though lol... Yeah I'll take that shit on front that way I always have the return option lol I'm not buying none of that shit.

QuarterbackMo said:

I like to keep anything alive out of my systems... Living things and organics create bigger problems then they are worth imo. If you wanna go organic stick to soil or set up an aquaponic system. Now before anyone cuts my head off for saying that I'm sure some people swear differently (like the people who work at my local grow shop) but I still have yet to find someone with something that was quality come out of an organic dwc setup. If someone has I'd like to see. I'm not saying it's not possible I just haven't seen it yet personally.

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I appreciate the heads up and have been asking around and hearing the same advice. I truly appreciate the heads up and explanations

Definitely that's why we are here.

Pros: Explosive growth and monster yield, easy to maintain, very clean
Cons: More parts and things to go wrong, leaks, no buffer if something like a pump or chiller fails or power goes out, need water chillers, need reverse osmosis filtration if you don't have well water.

One guy mentioned consistency as a con but IMO as long as you run the right plant number you won't have consistency issues if all other things are in order. We figured out that running the lids with 4 sites per lid "in the 13 gallon XXL like he mentioned" instead single site per lid took care of any runt issues and made every harvest very consistent. All of that back breaking work hauling enough dirt every cycle to support 80k watts worth of lights is for the birds.

Hello i am just building a new rdwc and am doing 18 gavita 6/750de over 4 ft x 32 ft with 12 ft ceilings. I am wondering how many plants and size of container you suggest. I was planing on 4 per light. what are your thoughts? thanks in advance

Maybe I'm reading this wrong. But you are planning to put 18 of those.lights in a space 4 foot by 32 foot? Is this a typo or am I missing something?

truebluezzzz said:

Hello to all. Ive been a reader here for some time and I have a question about DWC.

I have reading up on deep water culture and I wanted to get some real-world feedback from those of you who use it, and even those who dont.

So what have you found to be pros and cons of DWC.
Maintenance
Yield
Cost
Root problems

Thanks fellow farmers....... :bookworm:

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My first foray into hydro was 3+ decades ago with a simple F & D. It worked fantastic, but my wife at the time would not replace the nutes while I was out of town on business for a week, every other week, but the plants were amazing in size. Alas, I never got to harvest them.

Fast forward to~ 4 years ago I bought a pre-made DWC set up. I quickly learned what a PITA it is as the nutes require frequent monitoring and replacement. The plant have to be lifted out-no bueno

However, I do use it (shallow water) on a smaller scale for vegging and cloning

Best, by far, is F & D

Old thread and quite the bitch fest glad I only read first page I'm sure it went on and on lol. Pet me just put my 2 cents in here. First time I grew was in a top feed hydro bucket system & did well for a beginner however I would not recommend it for beginners. It can be done but one must educate themselves which is the key to success with any system. Soil is the easiest most forgiving way to learn the basics of how to grow. Get a few grows under your belt in soil meanwhile reading and learning the differences and pros and cons that hydro systems have to offer. Be it RDWC or DWC or any forms of hydro. All have their benefits & they all work if you put in the time to learn them and manage them correctly. When I made the jump to a full on OMMP farm & took on the task of supplying meds every month to 15 patients my main goal was to grow consistent quality bud so I started with what I was comphortable with which was soil. Did very well for over a year and decided to make the switch to RDWC with 2-18 site undercurrent systems. That being said a lot came with that. Although I knew I could perform well in a UC its still a learning curve and when you learn it it pays period! Went from 10-12 lbs. per room in soil to 20lbs. In my first UC run. But it will humble you & you can Not be complacent with it. Daily checks are routine and must be done to keep watch for temp swings, Ph swings, nutrient uptake, list goes on and on but really only takes 1/2 hr. Or so per room daily. But then you need to factor in water changes and system cleaning and all that comes with a DWC or RDWC system. I know 3 different I-502 growers in WA. With tier 3 grows killing it in the UC system. So bottom line for me is RDWC is the bees knees as pros far outweigh cons. Do your homework and take the plunge but be prepared for issues as many will arise. From cracked chiller manifolds to power outages to Root Aphids. It is not a cake walk but I've found it to be a great and far superior way of producing weight which is what every grower wants in spite of what they might say. Just my 02..

I've ran dwc a few times. It's great if you run fewer plants an bigger buckets, but if you try running 12 different buckets it can be a real pita! Daily you'll have to check ph, check water levels and add h2o. Then in the summer if your room gets past 72-75°, you'll get root rot and run into problems with your root zone. Those are the cons.
The pros are you have the ability to run several strains and able to feed them differently if wanted. Amazing explosive growth in veg. ( I vegged for 3 weeks in the pic, way too long imo and I trim my girls up drastically before I flip the lights) you'll get some nice tight Fat nugs in flower.

I'll run dwc again but never in the spring summer. It's just to difficult to control water temps on several independent buckets.

Agree on the DWC with the heat issues. That's why I opted for the UC. I'm running two 18 site rooms with 12k double ended bulbs. The rooms are sealed with c02 enrichment & 5ton of AC per room. The water is chilled in both systems by a Surna chiller with two cool coils per room. It's really a top notch system with little maintenance required when it's dialed in. When the plants are week 6-7 in flower they drink almost 20gal. A day and eat over 100ppm. So yea you really got to be on top of things as they happen really fast.

I can see the ultimate benefits of the UC setup just can't spend the money yet. Some of those setups have quite the price tag last time I looked.

Sounds like quite the room!
Definitely learned a hard lesson on how important water temps are on that run. Still didn't turn out to bad for my first run in 4-5years. Went a few years without gardening cuz of the girlfriend. Workin on the 2nd run now in a flood n drain, much easier to control water temps lol.

Yea the UC is way overpriced. Got mine used so saved a lot. Flood & drain is a great option too.

It’s funny re reading this thread all these years later and seeing all the foolishness that was being spread at the time lol.

I still stand by everything I said in here all these years later. Imagine going into a grow store in 2020 telling them you’re growing more then one plant in a stand-alone 5 gallon bucket dwc setup they would probably be looking at you like something is wrong with you.