My growing experience in deep water culture.

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Mospeada

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This diary will be a bit all over the place and will be heavily edited after I dump all the info I want in here. I'm currently on my fifth grow. Started off with single dwc buckets before getting serious by combining it into a system. I've only grown in hydro and don't know any other way. My current goal is to harvest the current room I grow in every five weeks. I've always been focused on yield as the strains I'm growing are good enough in Green Gelato and Bruce Banger. Also I've only been growing for less than a year and I'm still going through trial and error along with continuous upgrading so looking into strains is a bit too much.

The system is a 6 pot, 375 gallon recirculating deep water culture. It is water cooled at 18c with a 1/2hp chiller and a 3000L/hr pump. Six air stones with a 82L/min air pump. The 8 Gelato's are under 1200 watts 3k with 660nm while the 16 Banner's are under 2600 watts 3.5k. room temps sit between 20c - 24c and humidity between 50-60.

In regards to nutrients I use Green planet Micro for nitrogen and the macro nutrients. For PK I use monoammonium phosphate, monopotassium phosphate, potassium sulphate and I factor in the PK from my pH down which is phosphoric acid and the K from potassium silicate. I use calcium nitrate and magnesium sulphate for my cal/mag.

Non essential additives is what I've studied up on and use the most. These include silica, kelp extracts, humic/fulvic acid, amino acids, yucca extract, b vitamins, Chitosan and triacotanol.

Here's my grow room as of today. It's on day 25 of flower.
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Technically this was the first plant I ever harvested back in October of last year. It was originally going to be a Bruce Banger mother plant but I didn't have the set-up for it so just flowered her under my original ebay lights that output 80 watt each. This was my first glimpse at a strain that was really sticky.
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At the same time I was chopping that bush down in October I just finished building my first recirculating system. It was 8 5 gallon buckets with another 5 gal bucket as the res. The main reason for this upgrade was so I could try out water cooling. Haven't looked back since. I put 4 Banners on the left and 4 Gelatos on the right.
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420ReBeLGrower

420ReBeLGrower

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I thought you wanted to dry your budz in total darkness? I have mine sitting on a string in my bathroom(52%rh, 71F) in the dark because of this.
Can I keep them in my grow tent?!?! I am still flowering some other plants that have another week left or so. Would much rather leave it in there so ce it has the exhaust fan and charcoal filter!
 
Mospeada

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I thought you wanted to dry your budz in total darkness? I have mine sitting on a string in my bathroom(52%rh, 71F) in the dark because of this.
Can I keep them in my grow tent?!?! I am still flowering some other plants that have another week left or so. Would much rather leave it in there so ce it has the exhaust fan and charcoal filter!
Nah I used panda plastic to partition the tent. I thought the heat may have been an issue but it was pretty insulated from it with the exhaust still going on the Banners.
 
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The second grow began in January and was harvested in March, they were only given a couple of weeks in veg. The only addition to the setup was adding insulation to the buckets with cheap adhesive foam.

This grow I looked into topping and netting.
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My third grow was more of the same. Started in early March and harvested in May. I found out after the harvest my timers were really out of whack. I had lights on scheduled for random days. The plants didn't hermie all the way but I did find quite a few undeveloped seeds.
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The third grow that ended in May was the last time I grew in the original eight pot system. It was at this time I was working on converting the whole room into a grow room. I was burnt out by now and dragged my feet on the project until late July. In that time I seeded a new banner mom but just vegged two Gelato clones for the current crop. However, due to negligence I almost let them die. Ended up flowering them as well because I didn't have the space during the upgrade to keep them around. My current crop probably would be looking a lot better today if I wasn't so sloppy with the mom's and took better clones.
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The fourth grow was the first time I started foliar feeding. Especially with kelp extracts. I ended up losing the banner because I used a solution that had some in it in week 3 of flower. It stopped the flowers from forming and turned the pistils brown. The Gelato's had to come down early as I was setting up the main room and needed the space.

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Now that I've brushed through my four previous grows in DWC, I get get onto the fun stuff which is my current project. The conversion was a lot easier than I expected. Probably because I just threw it altogether in the space of a week without thinking too much into it. The clones started off fine for this current grow but I let them sit in the Cloner for too long and did a fair bit of damage to the roots on transplant.
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Ever since I've switched to an air cloner I've had trouble getting clones to root. Maybe I just wasn't being patient enough but I also think I over complicated the process. I lost a couple of batches and it wasn't till week 2 of flower that I got clones that showed signs of rooting three days ago. Up until now they had just been on filtered water along with the original cloning gel. As soon as root bumps showed up I moved them into a kelp/fulvic bath.
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There were a few that had good roots going already.
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The next day they responded really well to the bath. It was the first time I've tried this.
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No parts that were dipped in the gel rooted, if anything it looks like dead material. However, new roots showed up within the pucks on most clones.
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As of today the clones that were off to a good start are now flying. The ones that were just starting are only a day behind by the looks.
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It's a promising sign and I'm eager to see when the lateral root growth will begin.
 
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The current grow is going well and showing promising signs too.
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The Gelato's are the biggest plants I've grown so far being just on five foot.
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The Banner are only three and a half foot but the stacking on them is good and they're already putting on the triches, this strain ends up super sticky too.
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Last edited:
Milson

Milson

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Small bedroom about 9f x 10f. I'm in the process of converting the other room which is about 10 x 10.
Gosh that feels like so much space to me lol. How many plants you thinking to grow?
 
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Gosh that feels like so much space to me lol. How many plants you thinking to grow?
I'm sticking with 24. Throughout my whole grow experience I've never put a lot of time into the veg side. Mainly cause I didn't have the space to veg out out plants so even though I'm utilising another room it won't actually add to the amount of plants I have. I should be able to cycle better and may even work it so I harvest the flower room every six weeks if I flower for two weeks in the veg room.
 

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