My growing experience in deep water culture.

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Mospeada

Mospeada

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IMG 20201102 161539

Here's my nutrient rack. From the top down I have my pH adjusters, phosphoric acid and potassium carbonate along with iron sulphate which I don't really use, next to that is the kelp extract which I use consistently.

Next shelf down is the chelators, fulvic and amino acids. The potasium silicate is here and I factor in its K content on the feed. The other amino acid L-tryptophan, is for early rooting but I don't really use it.

Below that I have my PK boosters. For P I use monoammonium phosphate(MAP) in early veg and rooting through to flower, factoring in it's N content. I switch over to monopotassium phosphate (MKP) after flipping for the added K. However, I will probably drop this and stick with MAP. I want to use potassium sulphate more which I don't start till about week 3 of flower because of all the K the plant gets from the potassium silicate and the MKP. I was concerned about the N in MAP for flower but with how I feed the micro I'm not too concerned anymore with overloading on N. the last thing on here is yucca extract sitting under the potash. I use that to help the minerals stay suspended in solution.

Lastly is the Micro and Bloom. I rely on the micro solely for the macro nutrients and Nitrogen but don't factor in its calcium content. I only use the Bloom when I'm too lazy to use salts, usually for the mother plants in a 1:1 ratio of micro to bloom.

For calmag I use calcium nitrate and magnesium sulphate.
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Mospeada

Mospeada

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Here's a breakdown of my feed. I keep it as consistent as I can. Still learning the right amounts for when the plants need above the norm during phases of growth i.e. more P in early veg/early flower. So far my ideal ppm range is around 400. I always shoot for this figure on the first feed then add the supplemental nutes later. Starting off I use filtered tap water that goes through a medium 25 micron filter for the heavy material and a fine 0.2 micron filter. The end result is a ppm of around 150 and pH of 7.2.
IMG 20201031 233601

Next up is the silica. I aim for between 80-100 ppm and factor the K in the feed. 85 ppm on this feed.
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The silica is extremely alkaline, I wonder if it's potassium carbonate they use as it's the main active ingredient in my pH up. Once added it immediately locks out the calcium that was in there.
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This is where I pH back down to 7 and add aminos to chelate onto the calcium to make it accessible again.
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Next up is the Micro which I aim for between 80-100 ppm. It usually drops the pH by half a point or more, which is why I pH'd back down to 7 after the silica. Once everything is in I'll pH down to 5.8. This feed it ended up at 90.
IMG 20201101 035128

Because of the potassium in the silicate I only add P in the form of monoammonium phosphate. For early rooting I aim for around 60ppm. It's currently at 41.
IMG 20201101 055435

After this I add the fulvic and kelp in a 5:2 ratio. I don't go by ppm as it barely registers. For the roughly 1000l system I added 500ml of fulvic acid and 200ml of kelp which is about 0.5ml/L and 0.2ml/L respectively. The last thing was yucca extract.
 
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Mospeada

Mospeada

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Main garden update. Day 21F. The plants should be stopping their stretch hopefully soon. Had to raise the lights on the Gelato's but the banners don't look like they have much stretch left. It still looks like they're a week behind but they'll definitely fatten up from here on out.
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Mospeada

Mospeada

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Day 5 of veg. Bit of a slow start compared to the previous grow. They weren't as well established at the root zone when I potted them. Waited till they showed signs of more root growth before a foliar of kelp. The roots have established themselves now so I should be able to push the lights harder which are at 33%.
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king_of_nothing

king_of_nothing

19
3
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.

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.
 
Milson

Milson

Milsonian
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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.
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.
 
Aqua Man

Aqua Man

26,480
638
All you need is hydro buddy and good quality salts. I haven't mixed my own in some time now. 2 members that come to mind are @cemchris and @BillFarthing they would know who has quality salts now. Been yrs since I bought any.
 
UK420Show

UK420Show

27
13
Hey man very very impressive set up. I myself am A dwc grower I have around 12 30L buckets. You must get some amazing growth with that much air in the water :) Great looking grow man I am not running RDWC as I like to move plants around and fine tune the nutes for each plant. :)
 
UK420Show

UK420Show

27
13
Ahhh yes I share your opinions. I have been using a powder based nutrients for my plants for around a year. I mix my own base a and b. It costs around 15 pence per Litre and has everything in needed for cannabis production under LED lights with higher concentrations of cal mag in both parts :) I wont bother buying brand names as from how I see it your spending all that money on just different combinations of the same ingredients being NPK and I mean each company claims to have the best blend. Why not mix your own and know exactly what's going in :) You save so much money and water in the process too as the high concentrates mean you can feed for longer and get more out of the water. Along with mixing that with DWC I can push my flushing time to just a week also. I wont knock people who buy the brands but there are smarter ways that cost alot less :)
 
king_of_nothing

king_of_nothing

19
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@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.
 
UK420Show

UK420Show

27
13
@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.

More than happy to help I myself would not be able to grow the way I do with any other types of nutrients I go through around 360 litres of water every 2 weeks or 1 in flower so imagine the amount of money it would be to use say something like advance nutrients. It's just undoable. Electricity is at its better place at the moment the way LED technology is progressing a simple relatively cheap mars hydro panel light is a very good purchase and if set up correctly at the correct height you can get some pretty impressive growth that along with over 10,000 hours of lifetime and low running temperatures. The real benefit is the running on the electricity my model the ts1000 draws a mere 150 watts from the wall and even my flower light only draws 300. though that is a quite expensive brand called GN telos 0010 to be specific :) Best of luck if you decide to give it ago and the brand of nutes I use is called Hydrocrop I buy it by the KG at a cost of around 30 pounds or 45 dollars for 2 kg of each base. Happy growing :)
 
king_of_nothing

king_of_nothing

19
3
Many thanks people. I am really happy with the outcome of posting my disillusion with nutrition solutions here.
For those who are interested, I am continuing this side track on finding el-cheapo solutions for commercial nutrition solutions on my own thread (here). And this actually seems to turn into a uber cheap scheme for DIY fertilizer schemes even though I am in the expensive euro zone.
 
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Mospeada

Mospeada

261
63
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.
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.
IMG 20201109 212135
 
Mospeada

Mospeada

261
63
Might as well do a garden up date starting with day 9 of veg. I just topped them several hours ago. The roots were strong and the main stalks were starting to fatten.
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king_of_nothing

king_of_nothing

19
3
@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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BillFarthing

BillFarthing

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@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.

If you veg for more than 3 weeks, you are going to need 3" pipe or risk clogging them with roots. The jury is out if trimming roots causes hermaphrodites.
 

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