Mospeada
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Hey man thanks for the complement but just keep in mind I'm doing this in prohibition land. Which means no professional has stepped foot in my home. I pretty much have to do everything single thing myself. Just about to learn electrical so I can do my own wiring so if I don't come back Ive electrocuted myself lol.
In saying all that dwc is super fun and I'd welcome more people to try it. It's clean, it's no fuss and it's extremely low maintenance.
Right now Ive just finished setting up the main room again. Six pots four plants each, the system is around 1200 litres.
The last grow I just threw it all in and hoped for the best. This time round I'm actually going to put some effort into it.
I think you are right and yes, I would mix my own nutrients at that level because that is expensive (that is a big system for a beginner imo....I have to imagine you could do better at a bulk rate from anywhere). @Aqua Man has a lot of experience with nutrients. He could probably help you with learning to mix them yourself.Mospeada, thanks for the reply. Maybe you (and/or somebody else reading this) can help me clarify an potentially expensive issue with regards to nutritions.
Like I said before, I am modelling my own set up after yours. So I am thinking of two 1200 L (317 US G) RDWC installations for flowering. and one 700 L (185 US G) set up for vegetative. I got the airflow and waterflow and water temperature covered. So for my own system as starter I was thinking of using the General Hydroponics Flora trio to keep things simple and maybe later mix my own micro/macro solutions like you are doing. However if I am looking at GH's flora's suggested feeding schedule for recirculating systems (link here) you need in the order of 20 ml / Gallon of res of averaged nutrition solution a week. So that translate to (2*317+185) * 20ml /G ≈ 16.4L of nutrition product every week! In my own euro country, I can buy this stuff at about 17.50 euro a litre. So this would mean that I require roughly 290 euro's worth of nutrition every week. Which feels like a lot! Sure, I can try to buy this stuff in bulk overseas to get it more cheaper. But even if I could get it at half the price, it still feels very expensive.
I was hoping that somebody could either point me to my fallacy in understanding nutritional requirements in RDWC or acknowledge the correctness of my estimation and hopefully confirm that it is much MUCH cheaper to mix your own nutritions.
@UK420Show 15 pence per liter of nutrition solution.... That's a lot more doable.
I was seriously considering pulling the plug on this project because of the nutrition cost. With electricity and rent already being pretty steep, adding in additional cost of the same magnitude would be a killer for my ambitions. @BillFarhing thanks for the links... world of info. I am in the Eurozone for what it matters. So I have to see how to get my hands on the salts n stuff for this type of cooking if I am going down that path.
Honestly I guess the hell out of my feed lol. I've done charts and followed a strict method but these days I just play it by ear with that experience in mind. I can say though that I don't spend much on nutes. The main benefit of hydro is bypassing bacteria to get nutes straight into the plant (make sure to chelate your salts with humic/fulvic/aminos). I can only recommend using Micro for the macro nutrients as I haven't tried any alternatives. Over time I have worked out I can get away with feeding 0.6ml/L in Veg which will last at least two months in a 1000L system. Dropping down to a one off feed at the start of flower 0.3ml/L. After that I don't use the micro again till week 4 of flower at 0.1ml/L and stop using it thereafter. Then for PK I use salts which are pretty cheap. Monoammonium phosphate, monopotassium phosphate, potassium sulphate. Calcium nitrate and magnesium sulphate for cal/mag. I mainly go by ppm. So Micro 150-200, PK 100-150 then I usually go around 400-500 ppm of calmag. Depends how often you'll be changing your res. I learnt to cut down on res changes when I was still using a 140L system. These days I don't do them unless I mess up big time. I'm around day 24 on the initial feed still. I keep topping it up with plain filtered water when it drops too far but right now my ppm is sitting around 900.Mospeada, thanks for the reply. Maybe you (and/or somebody else reading this) can help me clarify an potentially expensive issue with regards to nutritions.
Like I said before, I am modelling my own set up after yours. So I am thinking of two 1200 L (317 US G) RDWC installations for flowering. and one 700 L (185 US G) set up for vegetative. I got the airflow and waterflow and water temperature covered. So for my own system as starter I was thinking of using the General Hydroponics Flora trio to keep things simple and maybe later mix my own micro/macro solutions like you are doing. However if I am looking at GH's flora's suggested feeding schedule for recirculating systems (link here) you need in the order of 20 ml / Gallon of res of averaged nutrition solution a week. So that translate to (2*317+185) * 20ml /G ≈ 16.4L of nutrition product every week! In my own euro country, I can buy this stuff at about 17.50 euro a litre. So this would mean that I require roughly 290 euro's worth of nutrition every week. Which feels like a lot! Sure, I can try to buy this stuff in bulk overseas to get it more cheaper. But even if I could get it at half the price, it still feels very expensive.
I was hoping that somebody could either point me to my fallacy in understanding nutritional requirements in RDWC or acknowledge the correctness of my estimation and hopefully confirm that it is much MUCH cheaper to mix your own nutritions.
@Mospeada What are your pipe diameters? I think I see many people using 1'' or even 1.5'' for pump-out-containers-in pipes and 3/4'' for containers-out-pump-in. I was thinking having everything 3/4'' but I just don't know. I am not a plumber and I have a hard time finding a good general resource on the net for deciding suitable pipes for arbitrary water installation safe for this one (here) which must be overkill compared to just some good experience based heuristics. Oh by the way I have my three danner 700 GPH coming in soon. They come with 1/2'' FPT pump-in and 1/2'' MPT pump-out which I find a bit small for any application of that capacity.
PS I was also thinking to maybe use flexibel pipes or even hoses for the connections including valves. For easy maintenance of containers or slightly rearranging the floor plan of the containers.
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