Coffee Can DWC

I made a dwc system out of a coffee can (the inside is painted so it wont rust) and was wondering how big a plant could get in that thing before having to transplant to soil. And would I be able to transplant to soil once it outgrows the dwc?

pioneersa8800 said:

I made a dwc system out of a coffee can (the inside is painted so it wont rust) and was wondering how big a plant could get in that thing before having to transplant to soil. And would I be able to transplant to soil once it outgrows the dwc?

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Just use a $4.98 5 gallon bucket with a lid, cut a hole out for your net pot and remove the hassles later when trying to nest a huge root base into soil and hoping it takes properly.

It's going to be very hard to control the ph with such a small res.

screw that coffee can bro, you should just go to walmart and buy a 18gal container for 10 bucks, temps will be easier to control, ph, and water won't run out as quick, plus you are going to need room for the roots to grow

bobbyboy34 said:

screw that coffee can bro, you should just go to walmart and buy a 18gal container for 10 bucks, temps will be easier to control, ph, and water won't run out as quick, plus you are going to need room for the roots to grow

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Another good suggestion.. When they start drinking water they'll drink gallons a day. I use only 31 gallon containers for everything and a healthy group of plants will suck that down with the quickness.

indeed, especially if your ambient temps are low to mid 80s

I've been using coffee can DWC rigs for a couple months now and the work exactly, perfect for what i wanted them for, but they are very small and require much attention because there is not much nutrients. Look at my grow and you'll see some recent shots.

I would NEVER us something so small to grow a producing plant in, but for my cloning techniques, they work great.

Keep the 1 quart setup for cloning later, but get a 5 gallon bucket for 5 bucks (cost less than coffee... lol). At the least, get something that can hold whatever you are going to use to hold your medium/plants so you will not have to transplant later.

Ok, I shit canned the metal coffee can and made a plastic one. The problem with getting a 5 gallon bucket is we only have river water and what we drink out of is one of those blue things that you go get refilled at the store that only holds about 5 gallons. So I just need some time to think about how to get the water I need for the 5 gallon bucket. Do you think I could grow in the coffee container until I figure out how to get enough water for the 5 gallon, and how much time would that give me to figure it out? Unless I can just use the river water but its not drinkable so I'd assume it wont work for the plants. By the way I would probably start budding at 1 foot and I've only got 2 seeds that have popped so it'll just be a small grow.

pioneersa8800 said:

Ok, I shit canned the metal coffee can and made a plastic one. The problem with getting a 5 gallon bucket is we only have river water and what we drink out of is one of those blue things that you go get refilled at the store that only holds about 5 gallons. So I just need some time to think about how to get the water I need for the 5 gallon bucket. Do you think I could grow in the coffee container until I figure out how to get enough water for the 5 gallon, and how much time would that give me to figure it out? Unless I can just use the river water but its not drinkable so I'd assume it wont work for the plants. By the way I would probably start budding at 1 foot and I've only got 2 seeds that have popped so it'll just be a small grow.

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I could also just stack two of the plastic coffee cans and connect them to double the amount of root space. If i did that would I still run out of room even for a small plant?

I believe you could do your entire grow in a coffee can, but everything is dependent on size and amount just like anything living. You could keep your plant alive in there indefinitely but you will have to stay on top of fluctuations with levels of all the elements required, but it would not be hard at all.

Basics:
Keep an air-gap. It seems that plants in DWC need about an inch of air between the bottom of plant and nutriend level. If you keep too much of the plant under water, it will drown (I believe). My neighbor was doing that to a few of his gurls and couldn't figure out what was wrong, so he kept flushing and raising and lowering nute levels. We talked about the air-gap and he tried it. Everytime I see him now he goes on about how well his plants are doing. Before the air-gap, they were all just barely alive.

Keep PH in range. It seems that PH below 5.2 will not allow the plant to form itself properly and PH above 5.8 will discolor the leafs, both being bad. Keep your PH between these numbers. A trick I have used is to dilute my PH up/down chemicals so that when I administer them via the syringe I use, I don't add too much like I did the first few times i used the chemicals. I would add too much PH down and then added some PH up to bring it back into range. WRONG!!!

Keep the bubbles flowing... I wouldn't start stacking stuff, it willjust get knocked over and cause a mess, or leak and damage some gear. Try to keep it simple. Although I am DIY'ing almost all of my stuff, I will either buy professional gear or build properly it myself. I wish I knew somebody who had a nice engineering shop I could use.

Thanks for the info. Sounds like it'll work if I get some ph down and ph up. Other than that I'm good to go. But there is one problem, I germinated some seeds enough to get the root popping out of the shell about a few millimeters and it's been 2 weeks after placing them in the rockwool that I had pre soaked and they still havent sprouted up. But there is a crack in the rockwool that you can pull open to get a look at the tap root and it still looks alive. Any ideas?

I am not good with rockwool yet, but I think keeping the cubes "splotchy" wet is the best description I have read and that seems to work for me. I think I have a tendancy to keep the cubes too moist, which is as bad as being too dry.

To me, "Splotchy" is what the cubes are after you swing them in your hand to get the water out of them, like laundry just about finished in the spin cycle, damp but not wet. Splotchy has been the best for me thus far, but again, I am not good with rockwool yet. My new tactic is to grow my roots in a coffee-can bubbler until they are an inch or two, then transplant into sliced open rockwool cube with roots out of the bottom already.

I just slip the paper/plastic wrapper off the rockwool cube, slit one side, spread the cube a little, insert clone with root dangling, then close and wrap. You'll be saying "ShamWow!!!" everytime... (I just saw that commercial, -again...)

Are you keeping rockwool moist? is it in darkness or in the open light? what temperature? What is the Ph of the water you are using? are you using any plant food? All of those things are factors that need to be considered and I couldn't begin to guess until that information is given.

If the root seems brownish, then you might have it too wet.
If the root seems dry or withered or scraggly, then you might have it too dry.

search these threads for germinating, and you will find the information you will need to create an ideal environment for your sprouts.

The only reason i could see for using a coffee can as your res is for starting seedlings, kinda the same way soil growers start in solo cups...

K I ended up throwing those seeds away and starting 4 new ones. 2 are in peat pots with some miracle grow soil and the other 2 are in rockwool. It still seems to be taking a long time to sprout. Do you think this would happen if the seeds were old because they're a couple years old.

buy a couple of the blue bottles of water...get like six...when you are down to the last two go refill the old bottles and bring em back home

Plenty of free 5 gallon buckets out back of many food joints. Just wash it out good with a very light bleach solution and your off....FOR FREE.

TomGreenThumb said:

Plenty of free 5 gallon buckets out back of many food joints. Just wash it out good with a very light bleach solution and your off....FOR FREE.

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Hey I got two plants started in the coffee can, check out my 130 watt dwc thread

TomGreenThumb said:

Plenty of free 5 gallon buckets out back of many food joints. Just wash it out good with a very light bleach solution and your off....FOR FREE.

Click to expand...

Hey I got two plants going in the plastic coffee container. Check out my 130 watt cfl dwc thread