1000 watts Rdwc 4x4

This is a work in progress. Flipped some plants in the tent today so starting a grow journal.

Here is the 4x4 so far:

Growlab 4' x 4' tent
Basic 1000w light setup, noname magnetic ballast, sunmaster hps bulb
Reservoir is external, made of doubled up 45 gallon rubbermaid totes. Res itself holds 25 - 30 gallons, about 15 gallons in the buckets for a total of 40gal max in the system.
Six buckets each with 10" net pot, a 1/2" intake, 2x 1" drains, and a 1/2" bottom drain with valve (for flushing).
Three 550gph submersible pumps running 1/2" line, two buckets per pump.
4" PVC drain pipe on three sides of the tent. 1" holes spaced 3" apart down each length.

Water fills each bucket to about 7.5" deep. Net pots sit about an inch and a half above that.

Net pots are 75% hydroton from the bottom up, the rest coco crouton/coir brick combo stuff. Plants are in small rockwool cubes to start.

No fans in yet, no air filters yet. Light is currently sharing a fan with a nearby cabinet. Need to add airstones or similar, hook up a drip system, and clean up / rework the intake lines.

No meters in the res yet. Will be taking samples in a cup to test with the tri-meter in the adjacent grow cab.

Six brave SFV OG girls have volunteered for this dangerous off-road mission. They are a good six-ish weeks old by now and about 6" tall. They are looking good despite being the battleground for an aphid infestation over the last few weeks. They've been on a steady diet of Azamax for about two weeks, and the crawlers are still in there. The situation is much, much better and should be manageable if we're careful. If not, we pull em, so might as well give it a shot and take a few clones in the process.

Temp in the 4x4 is right around 79f during the day, dropping to low 70s with lights off. Humidity in the room tends to be just perfect at 40%. Lights run 6pm to 6am.

The plants have been under this light now for about a week and are all just now getting roots down into the sauce. They are a bit behind after all the bug destruction, which included a brutal repotting with a 50% survival rate.

Considering suspending a scrog screen from the tent frame. Maybe next cycle.

Nutrients are currently AN Sensi Grow with Liquid Karma and a bunch of Hygrozyme. And a shitton of azamax and sns 203 and new hydroton runoff. Can't believe the plants are the least bit happy drinking this crap. It looks like runoff from mixing concrete and smells like a day spa. We'll flush in the next day or two and give them something nice. May or may not stick with Sensi. I am just a personal grower so with 50 gallons of sauce to deal with now I may switch to something substantially cheaper.

So there ya go, and here we go. Comments etc welcome. Updates may be sporadic as I really don't have time to nicely manage multiple grow journals.

And sorry for lack of caps sometimes.

FLOWER DAY 1

Flushed (Pain in the ass. Must build flush manifold asap.)
Refill system with 40 gal Straight Out The Hose LA tap water. Did not let it air out. Aware that chlorine will kill the beneficials I'm adding tonight. Don't care, doing it anyway.

Add the following:
Sensi A & B 175ml
B-52 210ml
Hygrozyme - none - refill tomorrow
VermiTtea 400ml
Great White powder 2tsp
Companion 35ml
Cal/Mag 250ml
Protekt (Silicate) 175ml

PH down from 7.0 to 6.0

and I spit in it, so there's a little bit of me in every toke.

PH 6.0, 800 PPM

Ahahahahahaha you spit in it.

Technaflora! Technaflora! Technaflora! It's only 35 bucks for everything! Lol, when I saw in the pictures that it didn't have any set up for simple flushing I almost teared up. Looks like you learned before I could say anything though. Fucking terrible, right? What a bunch of stress. You better strengthen up those stems before they start to flower, SFV gets HEAVY.

I'm starting to give up on a lot of the beneficial stuff and am thinking of going to tap as well. See how that works. Living fertilizer is expensive. Tap doesn't always kill it though, but it is often a sales point on a R/O filter.

But I am mad-jealous of your tent dude. I want a fucking tent. I'm sick of building everything... Although everything I build is totally sweet.

yeah I knew it would be a pain in the ass but this was on limited funding, so sacrifices had to be made. It's not that bad flushing each one, just a bitch to get to the two in the back because the tent is right up against wall on two sides. Also would be easier if I had used 1/2" hose clamps on the flush "stub" lines, so that they dont try to pull off when i pull off the flush hose. No problem though. Will make this better with a couple bucks when next flush is required.

Oh you just wait til you see these stems in a couple of weeks.

I used the Sensi not only because I have full bottles, but because I want to see how things behave in this recirculating environment under similar sauce and plant conditions. Specifically, working theory on my other grow is that there are too many plants in the drink making PH adjustment a bitch. If that's the case, then we have the same number of plants in the tent, same nutrients, same strain .. well nevermind that, but you see what I mean.

Another note, I am not hooking drippers up in this tent, at least not this cycle. I don't have the pots covered becase I seem to be drenching it with sns 203 every other day, so i want it drying out as best as possible. Roots are already kicking ass so, maybe next time. Fine without it this run.

Drippers are only necessary until the roots hit the drink. After that, most experienced growers shut them off. I've also heard that this encourages ropey roots, which is bad. I think I may have originally heard that keeping your water level low creates ropey roots, but I don't remember.

Also, a note about the crazy pH stuff. and the ropey roots reminded me of this. My last SFV was grown in maybe 1-2 gal's of water, max!, sometimes as little as 1/2-3/4 gal of water, and there were never any pH problems, and I got a fantastic harvest, even with warm water, and light stress. It got Technaflora or House & Garden, depending on whether me, or my grow partner at the time feed it. He used Technaflora, I suggested it to him after seeing the most incredible DWC mini grow I had ever seen done with it, I saw it here on rollitup.

Quick update -

bugs were still in major effect. noticed that the pot entirely full of hydroton couldn't show any bugs. thinking that the bugs are coco specific, i used a shop vac to suck up all the coco and i've replaced it with hydroton. no coco left in the tent. We'll see how the bugs are in a couple of days. My guess is that they are going to be gone, but we'll see.

growth is sick. as soon as those roots touch the dwc it's pedal to the metal. took some clones last night, topped one of them, didn't need to mess with the others, just gonna let them ride.

ph 6.2, ppm 850, res probably around 80f.

loving the low maintenance in this setup. need a chiller in there and a few other bits and we'll really be in bidness.

found bugs in the hydroton pot not 30 minutes after removing all the coco. hypothesis failed!

Pic from flower day 4



and wtf is this bug? never wanted to see the ass of a bug so much in my life.

View attachment 1575167View attachment 1575166

I have no fucking idea what kind of bug that is. Can you give me a size reference? It's white, but it doesn't look like a white fly. It is more shaped like an aphid, but I'm not certain. Is it winged? Can you take a picture next time under a magnifying glass?

I'm pretty certain you can find a list of local insects that bother grass and plants at your local gardening center or agricultural center. It's all in the Grow Bible.

so i took the two oddball plants, the ones not in buckets, cloned them off and dissected the rockwool and roots. not one single bug, nothing. no eggs, no larvae, not a thing at all anywhere on any roots. everything absolutely and positively textbook.

the tiny ones are maybe .25mm if that. very tiny, very easy to miss if they aren't in numbers. i could see several of these wandering the hydroton in the pot as i was checking through the rockwool cubes. not a one of them on the roots or rockwool. i have seen the tiny crawlers on the surface of the rockwool before where it sure looked like they were hanging out. this is the very same plant i dissected to find nothing.

the one in the pic above is the largest i've seen. glad she came out for a photo op. that ledge of the bucket is about 1/3rd of an inch, something like 1/8th of an inch long.

agreed it sure looks like an aphid. but if they aren't eating roots, and they aren't on the plant, what's there for an aphid to do here, especially in such numbers? only other thing besides the plant to eat here would be bits of algae or fungus, which is usually gnat territory. or the moisture i guess. really reaching here.

i keep thinking they have to be on the roots, but every time i look, and i mean really dissect and dig and magnify, i find absolutely nothing wrong. i was really expecting to see at least larvae of something squirming around since that was seen in the coco croutons, but nope. no sign of anything even having been there.

very nice grow

PH 6.0, 1200 PPM, res temp probably around 78-80f

Everything going nicely. No root problems, haven't seen any flying bugs. The tiny critters still abound in the hydroton around the rockwool, but daily checking of the roots in the drink show zero signs of any bugs or any problems. Matter of fact, the roots are looking pearly white despite really hot res temps. If these are root aphids, they are hiding completely in the medium somehow. And not causing any stunded growth. Hrm ..

The yieldmaster hood keeps that 1000w light putting out significantly less heat than my 600w in a cooltube. The plants in the tent are able to grow right up at the light, vs the cool tube where plants can't get within 8 - 10" without heat stress. We'll see if this holds up once I sort the ventilation out properly, but so far, that tent is doing a very nice job of staying at a good temp despite fluctuations in the room.

These girls are ready to suck down some Big Bud, need to go restock the stuff asap. Fresh out.

heading into Week 3:

add back 6gal straight out the tap
Add 120ml each sensi bloom a & b
add 10ml companion
add 2 tsp great white
add 120ml sensizyme
add a dangerous dribble of molasses, just a bit.
gives me ph 5.7, 1350ppm
add 70ml protekt
ph really doesn't want to be over 5.8. fine by me.

pulled light up another 1"

one plant is definitely stunted compared to the others. can find no reason for it, mystery bug population identical to the others, roots look great. No doubt about it though, it's growing much slower than the others. Going to just let it roll, see what happens. Everything is budding nicely, and in this regard the "runt" is on par with the rest of em, so no real worries other than inquiring minds want to know.

plants are all up in each others business now so may need to shop a big leaf here and there. fan leaves are already the size of my hand so all looks well. if anything my pots should be spaced a little further apart but ah well. will be fine. if moisture becomes an issue i'll add fans blowing from below, which solved this problem in my cabinet grow.

keeping a very close eye on a few spots of potential root rot. if anything gets worse i'll probably switch to zone in the drink instead of any benes. would rather not do this so hoping it will not be needed. probably a fantasy though, with res temp around 78f we are certainly on the highway to the danger zone. chiller plz.



more shots of mystery bug. this is the one that found its way through or over the tanglefoot yesterday.

Dude those things look great. This set up will definitely give you a return on your input, no doubt in my mind. 3 SFV's can yield a half pound no problem. Those bugs look almost ant or termite like. I think I'm going to do a mini 3x3 400w grow with 3 plants in a recirculating DWC like you have going on. But I'm going to use a smaller water pump and air stone to cut back on temps, I don't think I can afford to buy a chiller at the moment. I might just keep an external reservior and throw frozen water bottles in it.

I might use 600w. I've never been able to keep roots as white as you have in DWC with those kinds of temperatures.

very nice looks amazing indeed

don't cut back on the water pump, go bigger! when i can afford it, i will completely redo these buckets so that the super high pressure water pump is blasting water from the bottom of the bucket, pushing the level up to the drain holes near the top. this way the buckets can gravity drain back to the res without sacrificing 16" of vertical space. you could probably even do a ghetto version of this by using the pumps to draw sauce out of the buckets back into the res. no matter how it's done, i can't stand the wasted space of buckets sitting on empty buckets. i want the buckets just sitting on the ground, as buckets ought to.

also and probably obviously, this really needs intake and drain manifolds. going to try ordering some plastic pieces meant for spa piping, see how that works out.

tight work man!

1000w light + 12amp AC = $220 per month in electricity.
ow!

Added 350ml big bud liquid & 4 cups of VermiT. Topped off with 5 gallons tap, and it could have used a gallon or two more. Ppm was at 1600 before top off.

ph 5.7, 1400 ppm, res temp 80 - 85f.

sorry for crap pic quality. lousy camera.

Res temps r a little too hot