DWC improving yields

Hi all ive been growing in my modded waterfarm inside a small bedroom unit for a while now and im always looking to improve the single unit because i havent got space to do RDWC yet. I basically drilled more holes in net pot for roots to grow through and added air stone as standard, the waterfarm has 10Lpm of air fed to it running the dripper ring and an airstone, whilst i also have a water pump outside the unit dragging water from the level indicator tube upto the top of the waterfarm watering onto the pebbles and back through into the res to increase root agitation and keep nutes moving more rapidly through the bucket while increasing DO possibly with added waterfall effect through pebbles.

The unit works well and im pleased with all the mods i have made so far have saved time and increased yields, however somthing remains that still bugs me, when i drain nutrients and the plants get air baths they love it, they have growth spurts and stand up even more taught than when running in the system, i take advantage of this by using a waterpump to manually drain and air bath 2 times a day wether the nutrients need adjusting or not, this can improve yields in my experience by 20% and can also speed up the plants finish by weeks to a crop. ive been sort of looking to improve the system to make the growth spurts stop when the air baths occur, thinking that if i can achieve this it means the system must be running better.

I was hoping by modding the system i could get the plants sufficient oxygen whilst saturated in the water so they wouldnt buzz so much from the air baths but it doesnt seem to be the case, they still love the air baths indicating a need for oxygen throughout the day in the current system as it stands. Ive been thinking if i could find a way to auto air bath the system is going to be a quick fix sort of way to meet the plants demands for oxygen in this curent system and further improve yields while saving time on crop and manual work.

Does anybody have any thoughts or ideas as to how i might want to do this? anybody done the same? these air baths are here to be taken advantage of and we need a way to do it, either that or make the air baths redundant by improving the systems function, id be interested to know if you still get growth spurts from the air baths in a RDWC system with plenty of DO afrom movement and waterfall effects, etc.

Your thoughts?

LST and TOP or scrog if your room allows it. I just top and low stress train. You can search either two methods.

I mean improvements to the system not grow principles to increase yield, thanks anyways. i was thinking more like at least looking at a way to achieve auto air baths 4-5 times a day. or possibly a cause as to why the plants are oxygen deprived in the system and a way to maybe correct it. Thanks

Ya like Flood and Drain?... LOL. If you have the right size pot for your plant the water level should lower mid way down the root mass allowing air to replace water in 24-48 hour period then refill repeat. It's not rocket science oh ya let me give you a sarcastic wink too...

Sorry you seem to be over sensetive for some reason, it was meant to be a smile.. LOL. No one said it was rocket science, however developing a mixture of DWC and flood and drain system that can fit my space and work safely isnt easy either, sorry to have bothered you, ill let you carry on spreading your wealth of missinformation over the forums 24/7 the way you do. Yeh, ive been lurking for a while so i know who's who

LOL trolls, gotta love them especially the ones trying to save face.

Peace trolly.

Save face lol, interesting you say that. not all of us are sad enough to care about what people think of us on a forums mate, speakin of trolls wanna get off my thread dude? thnx

Boxu if you've been lurking why havnt you been to my thead =)

Put up a bridge and a small fire below with some turkey legs for bait!

I am considering a flood and drain DWC combo myself. I am going to use 3 gallon buckets for medium and 5 gallon buckets for res's. I was going to go water farm, but heard about clogging problems with the rings. So a flood would soak the medium and exchange the nutrients in one shot, leaving a small puddle for the roots. As for more dissolved O2, I use 8" air stones. It works, coupled to my 88 litre/min air pump. Also, with a small puddle, the air stone doesn't need a large volume of air, either. All theory of course, except the air stones, which you seem to have as well. I would encourage you to build a one site prototype and compare it. After all, it's just a clone.

If you could find a way to cool you water that would give you an increase of DO in the cooler water. Frozen water bottles will do the trick.

woodsmaneh! said:

If you could find a way to cool you water that would give you an increase of DO in the cooler water. Frozen water bottles will do the trick.

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Been there yup, tie em up too so you can get at them quickly in your res.

Bbc you just have this way with people rofl.

firsttimeARE said:

Bbc you just have this way with people rofl.

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LOL... sorry I trend to be short and too the point, and very common sense approach to things. I am not here to make friends, I am hear to learn and wade through the morons posting erroneous or bogus information. I work from home, so I am lonely most the time until wife, kids come home so the entertainment value is worth staying. So that being said, I will be friends with anyone but I will also be the first to tell them they are a "@*!&@ moron too" my values are the same in life, I will let you know how I feel.

I do have a lot of cool friends here, the ones that I piss off have some mindless friends that join in their "troll" attacks with them mindless following. Sad part if they too slow down and read the posts they would maybe rethink their stance, then again maybe not

Stop the drip from the top. It is unnecessary and possibly detrimental. The roots are sitting in water and the waterfall effect is unnecessary in a dwc with sufficient air pump and airstones. At that point water temperature is the limiting factor on DO. Your plant may love its airbath because its being soaked where it wants dry roots up top.

This is something I was doing all along and never really thought of any benefit from it but can tell you the way to achieve it is with an ebb and grow controller bucket and a separate res. I ran 2-3 large igloo coolers this way, I only drained back to the main res every two hours for 15 minutes, this time could be adjusted in 15 minute intervals. The reason I mixed back to the main res wasn't to give the roots air (I pump plenty in) but it was to mix all the nutrient back to one common res where the remainder of the water was chilled and would cool (not that it needed too much since I do use igloo coolers).

Thanks for the reply guys, shiva ive run the farm with just drip ring on and with no drip ring, this added waterfall effect top feeding im doing now is a new test to see if heath robinsons suspicion of root ball agitation and plant metabolism are linked, ive only been doing it for 3 weeks in flower but it seems to help rather than flood the plant, ive got much longer fatter colas this time around, ill be doing further tests to this theory but it does seem to speed plants metabolism.

Ive tried both 15c water and 19c water temps and the system still seems inneficient at supplying oxygen (still buzz from baths) allthough they grow much quicker in warmer juice from my experience. so i dont believe adding more air or DO will do anything.

DBkick id love to see your old system if you could post up a little drawing, it sounds like its just where im headed in the next few months, ill be changing to cool box's myself soon, ive heared a theory that thesesmall containers end up smothering the rootball and inhibiting DO rich water to penetrate deep into the root ball, thats why i think the air baths are always a treat to the plants in this system, i was hoping by getting larger cool box's to use the root balls will have more space and maybe increased yield would hint that my suspicions might be right.

Im looking to improve the current system like i said before so that the air baths dont lead to a growth spurt but until then id like to automate the baths like you did in your system Dbkick, it'll be a quick fix until i can get my head around whats causing the oxygen deprivation.

My problem is my space because i have children but id be interested to see the other hybrid dwc/Fndrain system that 1 poster spoke of, sorry cant go back to look at names lol, i need to see how it works and how it might be able to fit in my space.

Thanks again for the replies, ill definently be trying one or both systems if i can get a better idea of how they work, i like using my waterfarms so i figure if im going to be using them for a while i may aswell try and tweak the system, oh yeh before i forget i have also thought about speeding up the flow of the juice in the single units even further thinking this may be what im lacking to penetrate the root ball with oxygen rich water, just another quicker easier test to do because the next step to test this theory was intended to be bigger res by buying cool boxes but i havent found boxes quite the right size to fit my space with a review that i like, also the DIY required to mod the boxes and my space, so it seemed easier just to buy a stronger water pump, rambling now. Thanks again guys.

Vumar said:

Boxu if you've been lurking why havnt you been to my thead =)

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Ive just had a quick scan, which thread do i want to be looking in? thanks again

afrawfraw said:

I am considering a flood and drain DWC combo myself. I am going to use 3 gallon buckets for medium and 5 gallon buckets for res's. I was going to go water farm, but heard about clogging problems with the rings. So a flood would soak the medium and exchange the nutrients in one shot, leaving a small puddle for the roots. As for more dissolved O2, I use 8" air stones. It works, coupled to my 88 litre/min air pump. Also, with a small puddle, the air stone doesn't need a large volume of air, either. All theory of course, except the air stones, which you seem to have as well. I would encourage you to build a one site prototype and compare it. After all, it's just a clone.

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Afrawfraw i have thought about the same sort of system, what medium did you have in mind? i was thinking of using clay pebbles and flooding for 20 min intervals with a 5 minute drain, i see the logic behind your idea the shallow water so that water and nutrients are still available to the plant at all times like in DWC, the only problems i thought about with this type of system is that your still not getting a full drain. or your losing constant access to water and nutrients, what do you think?

Dbkick so when you said you didnt see a gain to the drains in your system (think thats what you meant), do you suspect it might be because of the size of your ice boxes and roots not getting cramped in the first place? or did you always run the system with the auto draining so you didnt have a comparison grow? are you saying you didnt see a growth spurt or the plants didnt stand taught when you drained? how about when you refreshed the nutrients? did they like it then?

It seems everyone talks of growth spurts when they change over nutrients so i suspect everyone experiences this in their systems but look towards the fresh nutrients as the culprit however i think its unrealistic my nutes go in 1.6ec and come out 1.6ec when i refresh the nutes, i doubt the plants use all of any 1 of the single nutrients in the water, i believe the growth spurt is more likely due to the oxygen being dragged down into the bucket, deep into the cramped root ball, i think this is why RDWC works well with good flow, its dragging DO rich water right through the rootball, all of it.

Funny how i hear the same thing all the time, these big air pumps just arent cutting it for getting DO into the water on a level that fullfills the roots need for oxygen, everyone says the same thing.. ''my air pumps get plenty of air in'' followed or proceeded by ''They love their air baths & nute change''

My point is i dont think they like the nute change at all, i think no one that does DWC takes water out at an EC of 0 so to think that is the cause is just a presumtion and not a clever one at that, i think its the air bath that they like, and everyone says their plants love it in these systems, and that includes growers with stupid big air pumps.

So all im doing is looking to improve the system and i believe i have, my system seems to flower much faster and roots seem much healthier because of the manual drains, ive been looking into these EBB brain buckets and im thinking of buying one however before spending £300 i want to be sure it is what i need to succefully drain my waterfarm/waterfarms and refill it/them after a short period of time automatically, id appreciate any info about how one of these buckets could achieve this for me? Thanks