First Time Grow, looking to do it right.

[Mostlymooses]

It is an experience thing too honestly. You will get more used to little details like this the more you do it.

 

[workngrow]

It is an experience thing too honestly. You will get more used to little details like this the more you do it.

Yea no doubt. It's been an at times fun and at times annoying process to undertake. It would have been much less annoying to just buy a pre-built DWC setup and just walk away from it but much less learning so opting to craft the system has really put my head in some arenas that I would not have otherwise dabbled in for this. It results in a much fuller understanding in whats going on.

 

[Aqua Man]

Thanks a bunch, the lean direction they are showing is after they've been moved a bit. I re-centered them on the light and raised them up a bit to be closer after checking how close some of the other folks here have them. Damn near just a couple inches away, tested the heat, didn't seem too bad so ill leave them overnight and check tomorrow. Plus its shining through the plastic container for the prop kit so light heat is a bit lessened I would imagine.

The bucket holes are 2'' off the floor, after really tightening the bulkheads the leaking stopped entirely. With that bend and stretch after filling containers up to test it just need to ensure they are spun on max tightness. Hole size is good, slight rubbing of the plastic on the threads when fitting it on and it sits flush when its maximum tightness.

The latest dilemma I am working through is just pump strength for the 1'' drains going into each site. The Active Aqua 550gal just wasnt enough. Works well for the 15 gallon setup, 2 sites 4 plants but I am thinking I probably need something between 2500-5000 gal/hr to really get the water circulating well. One of those Vivosun pumps at around 5000gal/hr is like 120 bucks, not too bad. Just don't want to go overboard, need a solid flow through the 1'' vinyl but im not trying to pressure wash the roots either, haha. A gentle waterfall sound.

The way they rate these pumps is either kind of bullshit or I am missing the mark in how to spec them per volume of water. Some quick resourcing online suggests to just get a pump thats able to handle the res volume in gallons but it really doesnt have enough umph to cycle into all 4 sites, 8 total drains. I dont want to have to wait hours to cycle a nutrient or PH change from the res to each site and back again. To make sure the system can distribute quickly and evenly.

So minimum of 4x per hr changeover 10x is what I shoot for and more well not needed and to violent can damage roots. That's the volume of actual water of the sites. Not including the res. That's plenty for a 4 site system to ensure nutrient and o2 levels remain stable.

You also need to account for head pressure also. I didn't really look at the system design but there is a big difference if a pump is pushing or pulling.

2" is a nice sized return and should serve you well.

What's you plans on aeration?

 

[workngrow]

So minimum of 4x per hr changeover 10x is what I shoot for and more well not needed and to violent can damage roots. That's the volume of actual water of the sites. Not including the res. That's plenty for a 4 site system to ensure nutrient and o2 levels remain stable.

You also need to account for head pressure also. I didn't really look at the system design but there is a big difference if a pump is pushing or pulling.

2" is a nice sized return and should serve you well.

What's you plans on aeration?

I am using 3'' return. For air I picked up an air pump and tubing, stones, etc. with enough line to at least get the air pump out of the tent. Was reading about guys throwing the pump in the tent and just infusing their water with hot air, rising water temps. For this reason is the same reason why I went with an in-line pump instead of submersible. Which should also help keep the water temp stable. So it will naturally raise and lower with the environment temps and not because a piece of equipment is running hot.

Aiming to control temp in the entire 10x12 room vs. just control the environment in the tent. Picking up this environment controller power strip I found, real basic but it should sense env changes and at least run relatively automated. This way I can probably bail on the tent eventually, expand by a few more plants later on.

So 10x changeover per hour at roughly 60 gallons is at least 600 gph. Total to the rim size is 75 but it obviously wont be that full most of the time.

The pump is in-line pulling from the res with a 1'' drain fitting and basically pushing up 4-6'' to a 90 degree elbow to the tent, then another 90 to the center of the tent. After that it branches off into Ts and Elbows until it reaches the pair of drains in each plant site. It just seems that the pump cant fill the 1'' tubing with enough water to make the journey.

I figured something thats 550 should do the trick but the outflow in the drains was weak. At each turn im guessing the power of the waterflow deprecates. Not to mention the effort to suck and push the water as an in-line.

This is the flow with a 550gph active aqua pump in 3 5 gallon bins. The flow to me seems relatively safe. Angling for this type of movement with 5 15 gallon bins.

I shifted main priority to getting the veg system setup because thats in a critical path in the timeline at this point considering I've got plants already 10 days into germ/seedling. Need to get a few missing fittings for the larger system and some more drains I pulled off to quickly assemble the small one. Ill upload what that looks like when its fully assembled here in a few days.

 

[Aqua Man]

I am using 3'' return. For air I picked up an air pump and tubing, stones, etc. with enough line to at least get the air pump out of the tent. Was reading about guys throwing the pump in the tent and just infusing their water with hot air, rising water temps. For this reason is the same reason why I went with an in-line pump instead of submersible. Which should also help keep the water temp stable. So it will naturally raise and lower with the environment temps and not because a piece of equipment is running hot.

Aiming to control temp in the entire 10x12 room vs. just control the environment in the tent. Picking up this environment controller power strip I found, real basic but it should sense env changes and at least run relatively automated. This way I can probably bail on the tent eventually, expand by a few more plants later on.

So 10x changeover per hour at roughly 60 gallons is at least 600 gph. Total to the rim size is 75 but it obviously wont be that full most of the time.

The pump is in-line pulling from the res with a 1'' drain fitting and basically pushing up 4-6'' to a 90 degree elbow to the tent, then another 90 to the center of the tent. After that it branches off into Ts and Elbows until it reaches the pair of drains in each plant site. It just seems that the pump cant fill the 1'' tubing with enough water to make the journey.

I figured something thats 550 should do the trick but the outflow in the drains was weak. At each turn im guessing the power of the waterflow deprecates. Not to mention the effort to suck and push the water as an in-line.

This is the flow with a 550gph active aqua pump in 3 5 gallon bins. The flow to me seems relatively safe. Angling for this type of movement with 5 15 gallon bins.

I shifted main priority to getting the veg system setup because thats in a critical path in the timeline at this point considering I've got plants already 10 days into germ/seedling. Need to get a few missing fittings for the larger system and some more drains I pulled off to quickly assemble the small one. Ill upload what that looks like when its fully assembled here in a few days.

Oh I can help ya get some stuff sorted here or atleast present options. Just on lunch and running to get food then I'll go through that last post and toss out some ideas if ya like.

#1 thought is change the pump to pull. If possible bit look when I get back

 

[workngrow]

Oh I can help ya get some stuff sorted here or atleast present options. Just on lunch and running to get food then I'll go through that last post and toss out some ideas if ya like.

#1 thought is change the pump to pull. If possible bit look when I get back

No worries I'll take whatever feedback at this point before I start getting wild on ordering more parts. I dont have any other avenues for feedback or tuning other than what is found online and aggregating that information while its proven useful can also be wildly misleading. Setting this up overall wasnt as overwhelming as originally thought but now im down to some pretty specific things to finalize everything.

 

[workngrow]

When I assembled the 2 site 5 gallon setup and had it run it was like ahhh finally. Something feels complete, lol.

 

[Aqua Man]

I am using 3'' return. For air I picked up an air pump and tubing, stones, etc. with enough line to at least get the air pump out of the tent. Was reading about guys throwing the pump in the tent and just infusing their water with hot air, rising water temps. For this reason is the same reason why I went with an in-line pump instead of submersible. Which should also help keep the water temp stable. So it will naturally raise and lower with the environment temps and not because a piece of equipment is running hot.

Aiming to control temp in the entire 10x12 room vs. just control the environment in the tent. Picking up this environment controller power strip I found, real basic but it should sense env changes and at least run relatively automated. This way I can probably bail on the tent eventually, expand by a few more plants later on.

So 10x changeover per hour at roughly 60 gallons is at least 600 gph. Total to the rim size is 75 but it obviously wont be that full most of the time.

The pump is in-line pulling from the res with a 1'' drain fitting and basically pushing up 4-6'' to a 90 degree elbow to the tent, then another 90 to the center of the tent. After that it branches off into Ts and Elbows until it reaches the pair of drains in each plant site. It just seems that the pump cant fill the 1'' tubing with enough water to make the journey.

I figured something thats 550 should do the trick but the outflow in the drains was weak. At each turn im guessing the power of the waterflow deprecates. Not to mention the effort to suck and push the water as an in-line.

This is the flow with a 550gph active aqua pump in 3 5 gallon bins. The flow to me seems relatively safe. Angling for this type of movement with 5 15 gallon bins.

I shifted main priority to getting the veg system setup because thats in a critical path in the timeline at this point considering I've got plants already 10 days into germ/seedling. Need to get a few missing fittings for the larger system and some more drains I pulled off to quickly assemble the small one. Ill upload what that looks like when its fully assembled here in a few days.

Ok you got the pump setup ideally... you have minimal pushing. The only thing you can do to make a minor improvement is move the pump closer to the sites bit imho not work the hassle unless you want to.

The reason being you want the infeed to the pump from the bottom like you have. Water weighs 8.3 lb per gal if I remember right. So all the water from the res is creating pressure to ease the workload on the pump.

With 1' PVC you can go up to about 900gph with that type of pump so your covered there. 600gph will be plenty. I even think the pump you have will work fine looking at the video. But to help even the flow to multiple sites it may be worth stepping down to 1/2 from 1 right at each site to get a small amount of back pressure. Can always add to the slip side of the bulk fitting after.

Air stones should be match to the pump. If you got the 4x2 cylinder stones about 10lpm per stone is ideal.

I like to run res temls around 72f you will see faster growth than the 68f and lower ppl always talk about. I won't get onto the DO levels and root rot ppl claim it causes but that BS.

Since doing this before I assume you are running either live or sterile.

All I'm all if it's like that system it looks good to me.

 

[chemistry]

I'd go enzymes for your first DWC, it's more forgiving than strerile if you make a mistake.

 

[Aqua Man]

I'd go enzymes for your first DWC, it's more forgiving than strerile if you make a mistake.

+1

 

[workngrow]

Ok you got the pump setup ideally... you have minimal pushing. The only thing you can do to make a minor improvement is move the pump closer to the sites bit imho not work the hassle unless you want to.

The reason being you want the infeed to the pump from the bottom like you have. Water weighs 8.3 lb per gal if I remember right. So all the water from the res is creating pressure to ease the workload on the pump.

With 1' PVC you can go up to about 900gph with that type of pump so your covered there. 600gph will be plenty. I even think the pump you have will work fine looking at the video. But to help even the flow to multiple sites it may be worth stepping down to 1/2 from 1 right at each site to get a small amount of back pressure. Can always add to the slip side of the bulk fitting after.

Air stones should be match to the pump. If you got the 4x2 cylinder stones about 10lpm per stone is ideal.

I like to run res temls around 72f you will see faster growth than the 68f and lower ppl always talk about. I won't get onto the DO levels and root rot ppl claim it causes but that BS.

Since doing this before I assume you are running either live or sterile.

All I'm all if it's like that system it looks good to me.

Yea ill be using hydroguard since it seems to be the most popular. Is there any real net difference between the 2 from a yield/potency perspective?

The plan at this point is to just step the pump up to 1k gph and add a valve so if the water flow becomes too much I can just choke the valve a bit to control it. Barbed ball valves fairly cheap and already had them purchased for just this purpose. .

Adding one would also mean if I have to swap the pump I don't have to empty the entire system to service it. Just close the valve from the res and change the pump.

Once you take the active aqua pump and use it inline you are basically giving up any pump control over the water flow so I had to have a plan for that.

Since I already have the tubing mostly ran it would just be cheaper to buy a stronger pump than to downsize all the tubing and fitting. Things get expensive when you add them all up. Finding the right fittings and tubing in the right quantities and size was quite a task. Just not sure if I want to relive that again yet. Haha.

 

[Aqua Man]

Yea ill be using hydroguard since it seems to be the most popular. Is there any real net difference between the 2 from a yield/potency perspective?

The plan at this point is to just step the pump up to 1k gph and add a valve so if the water flow becomes too much I can just choke the valve a bit to control it. Barbed ball valves fairly cheap and already had them purchased for just this purpose. .

Adding one would also mean if I have to swap the pump I don't have to empty the entire system to service it. Just close the valve from the res and change the pump.

Once you take the active aqua pump and use it inline you are basically giving up any pump control over the water flow so I had to have a plan for that.

Since I already have the tubing mostly ran it would just be cheaper to buy a stronger pump than to downsize all the tubing and fitting. Things get expensive when you add them all up. Finding the right fittings and tubing in the right quantities and size was quite a task. Just not sure if I want to relive that again yet. Haha.

Nope not unless it leads to a decline in plant health.

Plan sounds good bro

 

[workngrow]

Nope not unless it leads to a decline in plant health.

Plan sounds good bro

So slight dilemma but I think I caught it soon enough. Plant basically drooped. Rockwool got dry. Through the drooping I guess the pressure from the top of the plant on the long stem snapped it. Almost like it supercropped itself. While they've been small I've been basically just hitting the rockwool with a cap full of nute water a day to keep it moist with a bit of standing water in the prop kit under them but I guess lesson learned as they progress water intake has spiked a bit just seemingly got dry incredibly quick. No major environmental changes just seems that I've got to just up the water for the 2 larger ones. Roots starting to show so we are about ready to transplant to small setup and veg.

I dont think based on what I've read that it's something to be concerned about but I grabbed a stick and some twist ties and made a loose loop around the plant and turned it sideways to gently straighten the plant stem where the snap happened.

For larger plants I've seen people use tape but for a small tiny plant the tape seemed a bit heavy duty.

 

[workngrow]

I can see why people use the grodan blocks. This rockwool just sucks and doesn't provide much structural support so next round changing.

 

[ImpulsiveGrower]

So slight dilemma but I think I caught it soon enough. Plant basically drooped. Rockwool got dry. Through the drooping I guess the pressure from the top of the plant on the long stem snapped it. Almost like it supercropped itself. While they've been small I've been basically just hitting the rockwool with a cap full of nute water a day to keep it moist with a bit of standing water in the prop kit under them but I guess lesson learned as they progress water intake has spiked a bit just seemingly got dry incredibly quick. No major environmental changes just seems that I've got to just up the water for the 2 larger ones. Roots starting to show so we are about ready to transplant to small setup and veg.

I dont think based on what I've read that it's something to be concerned about but I grabbed a stick and some twist ties and made a loose loop around the plant and turned it sideways to gently straighten the plant stem where the snap happened.

For larger plants I've seen people use tape but for a small tiny plant the tape seemed a bit heavy duty.

How old are those plants? Looks like they are stretching like crazy! Ya I’m a new indoor grower so I decided to keep it simple and just use organic living soil and water when dry. It’s more forgiving for beginners as well. These are a tad behind due to not having enough light at first and slight overwatering but I got it dialed in now. These were at day 22 I believe. Growth has exploded since switching the light. Looking forward to seeing the progress!

 

[workngrow]

How old are those plants? Looks like they are stretching like crazy! Ya I’m a new indoor grower so I decided to keep it simple and just use organic living soil and water when dry. It’s more forgiving for beginners as well. These are a tad behind do to not having enough light at first and slight overwatering but I got it dialed in now. These were at day 22 I believe. Growth has exploded since switching the light.

Yea the stretch I think was lack of light intensity/closeness so it resulted in them stretching. The long ones are about 2 to 3 weeks.

They need to be moved into the dwc setup with the new light but the damn light stand is a few more days out so I'm just trying to hang on until it gets here. I might just transplant them sooner then just set the prop kit dome/light over it. So they can get the structure support from the pebble medium and not the tiny rockwool cubes.

For next round I won't be using the prop kit light. I'll be switching to a 2 to 4 tube flourescent instead of 1

 

[Aqua Man]

Yup time to put em in the system.

 

[workngrow]

Yup time to put em in the system.

The resilience of the plants pretty impressive. Just watching the guy over an hour or two and with the snapped stem and lack of water being corrected hes already trying to stand himself up. Really kicking myself I usually check the rockwool a few times a day but slight slip yesterday.

 

[Aqua Man]

The resilience of the plants pretty impressive. Just watching the guy over an hour or two and with the snapped stem and lack of water being corrected hes already trying to stand himself up. Really kicking myself I usually check the rockwool a few times a day but slight slip yesterday.

Yep I know all to well.

Video of clone recovering from underwatering

Ok in one thread I posted I was going to do a video of how fast plants recover from underwatering. In hopes that new growers see how easy it is for a plant to recover from underwatering when compared to over watering. I have some toss away clones sitting about and wanted to show how fast they...

www.thcfarmer.com

 

[workngrow]

@Aqua Man

Still kind of finalizing but veg setup is up and running. Kept the seedling/baby nutes being used for now in the system to keep things consistent with what they were using. Any tds adjustments moving forward are going to be jacks. So over time ween them off the seedling stuff and then they'll be 100pct on jacks. Right now ph is around 6 and tds is around 600.

The one that got dehydrated still recovering. There's some traces of vibrant green coming back but it's a slow recovery process. The stem had to heal first.. Guessing through the course of that the plant suffered all kinds of deficiencies at the top.

Have the small one in there just in case and will just swap that one in for the bad one if it doesn't recover over the next week or 2.