I had to cut both plants in my first DWC. There are many things that could have gone wrong and in order to learn I would love to hear your opinions.
So basically I have always grown in my balcony with good results. I have seaview in the Mexican Pacific. I get really strong sunlight but the only problem is that because of the building's position I get 12 hours of DIRECT sunlight from August to September, then 10 hours from October to December, then 6 hours from January to March and then I don't get direct sunlight until August.
So far, I have been purposely limiting the growth of photoperiodic plants and still get good yields. This year, I will use big smart pots and let them grow as much as they can.
Autos, on the other hand, grow the contrary of dense and bushy. Some people have commented that they look like experiencing light deprivation, which to me, indicates that autos prefer long times of direct light and don't care so much for intensity, because intensity-wise this sunlight is strong.
Anyways, another factor I was struggling with was heat. This place experiences a lot of heat, in fact, temps were so high that DWC was not possible until the October to March when hours of sun were very limited. And I had to use fans getting heat out of the reservoirs.
With that being said, I was getting max reservoir temps of 77F in October - November, and Max 72F from December to March.
For that reason, I was using Southern AG GFF (similar to hydroguard though not readily tested). Did it work? All I can say is that I was growing 2 Cinderella 99 plants. One pheno grew strong and bushy. It was perfectly healthy. The other one experienced deficiencies since the beginning, this was probably due to high PPM as I was struggling to find the right fertilizing dose. Who knows, but it showed signs of stress and deficiencies early on, then its roots became brown, although I don't know if it was a sign of rot, since roots were not slimy. (Any input on this appreciated) Anyways, this pheno was lanky, small, and not bushy at all.
Then, right when they began flowering, disaster struck: root aphids, mainly in the weaker pheno. It took me a while to realize they were on the roots. I followed a desperate advice of putting the rootball in another reservoir with soapy water for 30 minutes in order to kill the aphids. When I took the root ball out, roots were brown as they had been almost since the beginning but I don't recall thinking there could have been possible root rot. The treatment with soapy water seemed to kill most aphids and it caused a bit of stress on the plant, nothing too bad, so I decided to do the same with the strong pheno that was just beginning to have root aphids.
Anyways, the root ball on this pheno was white and nice. After the soapy water treatment the plant immediately began showing sins of massive stress, and after a week it showed very mild recovery. It looked less stressed when sun went down.
It is important to mention that I cleaned the reservoirs and added new fertilizers and I avoided adding the Southern AG GFF as I thought bacteria would die from left over soap and because I also added H2O2 3% only once after filling the reservoirs with new waters and ferts.
in about 5 days I started noticing the water from the former strong pheno was looking dirty and had small pieces of root floating around everywhere. So I decided to do another water +ferts change when the plant was showing mild signs of recovery. The plant only became worse after that. My dining table is just next to it so everyday I was feeling miserable just by looking at it until one day, when I was high, being such a sensible person as I am, I could swear the plant was begging me to cut it as it was suffering, so next day I was planning to, and I lifted the lid to take it out and noticed how the whole root ball just broke on its own and fell into the reservoir. I noticed the roots were silimey and brown this time. I was like WTF? then I proceded to cut the plant. Then I inspected the weaker pheno and upon lifting the lid, same thing happened: the roots just broke on their own and they were brown and slimey. It was root rot.
Now, as you can see, at least the strong pheno was fine until the arrival of root aphids and the whole treatment. Why did the roots rot? was it a combination of the stress from the root aphids plus the soapy water treatment plus the abscense of Southern AG GFF? could it have been avoided if I hadn't suspened its use after the treatment?
Anyways, the experience of having a DWC was crap: noisy pumps, cables everywhere, dealing with sensible roots, and everything was very artificial in nature, I don't know but my plants growing in pots with soil had always been happy from beginning to end.
So basically I have always grown in my balcony with good results. I have seaview in the Mexican Pacific. I get really strong sunlight but the only problem is that because of the building's position I get 12 hours of DIRECT sunlight from August to September, then 10 hours from October to December, then 6 hours from January to March and then I don't get direct sunlight until August.
So far, I have been purposely limiting the growth of photoperiodic plants and still get good yields. This year, I will use big smart pots and let them grow as much as they can.
Autos, on the other hand, grow the contrary of dense and bushy. Some people have commented that they look like experiencing light deprivation, which to me, indicates that autos prefer long times of direct light and don't care so much for intensity, because intensity-wise this sunlight is strong.
Anyways, another factor I was struggling with was heat. This place experiences a lot of heat, in fact, temps were so high that DWC was not possible until the October to March when hours of sun were very limited. And I had to use fans getting heat out of the reservoirs.
With that being said, I was getting max reservoir temps of 77F in October - November, and Max 72F from December to March.
For that reason, I was using Southern AG GFF (similar to hydroguard though not readily tested). Did it work? All I can say is that I was growing 2 Cinderella 99 plants. One pheno grew strong and bushy. It was perfectly healthy. The other one experienced deficiencies since the beginning, this was probably due to high PPM as I was struggling to find the right fertilizing dose. Who knows, but it showed signs of stress and deficiencies early on, then its roots became brown, although I don't know if it was a sign of rot, since roots were not slimy. (Any input on this appreciated) Anyways, this pheno was lanky, small, and not bushy at all.
Then, right when they began flowering, disaster struck: root aphids, mainly in the weaker pheno. It took me a while to realize they were on the roots. I followed a desperate advice of putting the rootball in another reservoir with soapy water for 30 minutes in order to kill the aphids. When I took the root ball out, roots were brown as they had been almost since the beginning but I don't recall thinking there could have been possible root rot. The treatment with soapy water seemed to kill most aphids and it caused a bit of stress on the plant, nothing too bad, so I decided to do the same with the strong pheno that was just beginning to have root aphids.
Anyways, the root ball on this pheno was white and nice. After the soapy water treatment the plant immediately began showing sins of massive stress, and after a week it showed very mild recovery. It looked less stressed when sun went down.
It is important to mention that I cleaned the reservoirs and added new fertilizers and I avoided adding the Southern AG GFF as I thought bacteria would die from left over soap and because I also added H2O2 3% only once after filling the reservoirs with new waters and ferts.
in about 5 days I started noticing the water from the former strong pheno was looking dirty and had small pieces of root floating around everywhere. So I decided to do another water +ferts change when the plant was showing mild signs of recovery. The plant only became worse after that. My dining table is just next to it so everyday I was feeling miserable just by looking at it until one day, when I was high, being such a sensible person as I am, I could swear the plant was begging me to cut it as it was suffering, so next day I was planning to, and I lifted the lid to take it out and noticed how the whole root ball just broke on its own and fell into the reservoir. I noticed the roots were silimey and brown this time. I was like WTF? then I proceded to cut the plant. Then I inspected the weaker pheno and upon lifting the lid, same thing happened: the roots just broke on their own and they were brown and slimey. It was root rot.
Now, as you can see, at least the strong pheno was fine until the arrival of root aphids and the whole treatment. Why did the roots rot? was it a combination of the stress from the root aphids plus the soapy water treatment plus the abscense of Southern AG GFF? could it have been avoided if I hadn't suspened its use after the treatment?
Anyways, the experience of having a DWC was crap: noisy pumps, cables everywhere, dealing with sensible roots, and everything was very artificial in nature, I don't know but my plants growing in pots with soil had always been happy from beginning to end.
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