DWC LED 600W Starting from Seed :)

OG_Dreams said:

Thanks man, I didn't even think about doing this even though I knew the rates changed, for some reason I didn't connect the dots I'll have to dig the bill up tomorrow

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I've heard (but someone please validate or refute!) that to switch from day to night you need to go 24 hours of dark before the first new light cycle.

So I decided to start my nutes completely over. I don't think I was applying enough for fear of over fert, and I read not to add nutes before 3rd set of leaves but I believe this really relates to a soil or some other medium grow rather than a true DWC with no real base nutes already in the medium. So from now on I think I will be adding nutes once the first true leaves show up and steadily increase the nute strength from there. Hopefully I can get these girls caught up to speed

I did a lot reading on the Lucas formula and saw many other growers had success with it even with it being rather old. Basically for the flora series you add 8ml/gal of FloraMicro and 16ml/gal FloraBloom and that's it. If your strain needs more/less nutes just add/subtract your ml as long as both are to a 1:2 ratio

I used the Lucas formula for the seedling with a 4ml/gal and 8ml/gal mix, 15ml SM90, 450ml 3% h2o2, and 40ml Clonex. She really seems to be loving it and has seen a lot of growth in just a day with the new conditions.

I used the Lucas formula on this girl as well but at 8:16ml/gal, everything else the same except no Clonex. There are multiple root shoots coming out of the bottom (although there are some very tiny brown spots on the roots, and they don't look slimy, so idk) and the top growth is going great as well, this girl really turned around with the correct nutes and light placement.

Every 6-8 hours when I go in there I can literally see they have gotten bigger or some sign of growth, really satisfying especially when the beginning of the grow was going so slow because of my own mistakes.

Keep growing on!

I'm new to nutes too. I will have to find this online chart you speak of but in the meantime I figure, their bottle has strengths on it for "optimal" ... growth? or sales? Therefore I'm going to go easier than they tell me to be safe. Do you just have it in the bucket or in any water you might pour on the rocks? I'm guessing bucket...

OG_Dreams said:

I believe this really relates to a soil or some other medium grow rather than a true DWC with no real base nutes already in the medium.

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Good point - I'd have probably under-fed them at the DWC stage but I'm sure soil has some nutes already and I'm not clear on how to test soil (obviously water is easy lol).

staticzero said:

I'm new to nutes too. I will have to find this online chart you speak of but in the meantime I figure, their bottle has strengths on it for "optimal" ... growth? or sales? Therefore I'm going to go easier than they tell me to be safe. Do you just have it in the bucket or in any water you might pour on the rocks? I'm guessing bucket...

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This is the Lucas Formula website ( http://lucasformula.com ), it has a few different growing supplements they use and they go over the medium as well. I'm using the Flora Series so I use 8:16ml/gal.

General Hydroponics Flora Series has their own chart you can use, (although I have heard that you should still use 50% of what they recommend) I don't think I read in your journal of what nutes you're using, but this website that GH has all system types and what they recommend, I found it helpful.

http://generalhydroponics.com/feedcharts

staticzero said:

Good point - I'd have probably under-fed them at the DWC stage but I'm sure soil has some nutes already and I'm not clear on how to test soil (obviously water is easy lol).

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Yea I think almost all soils have "some" nutrients in them, and I believe the cotyledons also supply the seedlings with what they need at the beginning as well.

Long time no posts! Sorry guys but it was going kind of slow for awhile and just needed to do me and get my growing dialed in for these girls.

So I'm going to stick with the Lucas formula for now, so far it has been working great with both plants and both have seen lots of growth. I also moved the light down to 24" from 36", and got my RH up a little bit.

I originally wanted to mainline this one but the nodes are packed right on top of one another. Might just try to scrog for my first time, to get myself used to lsting these strain.
This is the second girl (both are black jack) this seed was germed 1.5 weeks after the other one and is catching up quick.

Still think I should top once or twice with scrogging, or any other form of lst?? (other than feeding through screen)

Hopefully posts will be more frequent now that the plants grow 25-50% a day; it's crazy! I wish I could start another seed and pop him right in there and get three plants going

Until next time guys, thanks for growing with me

Hey man, great to see the lovely growth now, they are looking nice and healthy!!
If you want to scrog, I'd top at least twice. I usually keep topping until a week before the flip so I get lots of heads!!

Bad news to report, I topped and trimmed some undergrowth on the bigger of the two and the next day red spots started forming the progressively got bigger and turned to white/brown spots on leaves. Is this a cal/mag deficiency? Also seems to be drooping a bit although this is DWC and the water level is lower than the pot


Any help would be great, I don't want to come home tomorrow to a dead plant

OG_Dreams said:

Bad news to report, I topped and trimmed some undergrowth on the bigger of the two and the next day red spots started forming the progressively got bigger and turned to white/brown spots on leaves. Is this a cal/mag deficiency? Also seems to be drooping a bit although this is DWC and the water level is lower than the pot
View attachment 3703713
View attachment 3703714
Any help would be great, I don't want to come home tomorrow to a dead plant

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Yes it's cal mAG defiency just buy some Epsom salt and do a foliar spray

LED grown plants are known to require more cal/mag. I believe it's because the light wavelengths are more targeted towards photosynthesis and magnesium is the molecule that links the nitrogen molecules in chlorophyll a, just like iron does in human blood. It is the root of transport for nitrogen.

It's been awhile since my last post, at first because things were going great and didn't have much time and now lately because my babes are dying.

So what I believe happened was that I had my water temps too high and that led to some brown slime to occur which I didn't act fast enough upon so it turned into full blown root rot. To try and get rid of it I used H2O2, and sm90, while this worked for maybe 8-12 hours it wasn't solving the issue.
My local grow store recommended to do a 1:10 Bleach:water mix. I was a little skeptical of using bleach but it ended up clearing out one of the plants root rot (hopefully, this was as of yesterday) Once I pulled the plant out of the bleach:water mix I thoroughly rinsed her off and placed her in a nutrient solution that I also had added some beneficial bacteria to the night before. I was hoping with clearing out 95% of the infection with the bleach, the beneficial microbes would be able to take out the other 5% since I let them accumulate in the res for 24hours.

For the second plant I ran out of bleach so I used H202 and sm90 in high doses, after the roots and net pot soak in the solution for awhile I plan on doing the same with this girl by putting her in a new bucket with beneficial bacteria already propagating the res.

I'm hoping this will clear out my root rot/slime problem I have going right now, it really sucks cause they were getting real big and I had started to mainline one and lst the other. Well I'll post in a couple days with how they're looking. Thanks for the support!
This was before the rot.

And after the rot, they were actually even bigger than both these pics, I had pruned a lot of undergrowth before the rot set in

Sorry, just reading your journal for the first time. Skipped a lot of it because I'm mostly interested in the amount of time it's taking to bring the sativa strain to harvest. But, couldn't help but read your last post about the root rot issue. I thought I'd offer an insight to cooling the water that is relatively cheap. Have you heard of a peltier device. You can build a small one for about $50 which would be more than sufficient to cool a 5 gallon bucket. Here is a Youtube

OG_Dreams said:

It's been awhile since my last post, at first because things were going great and didn't have much time and now lately because my babes are dying.

So what I believe happened was that I had my water temps too high and that led to some brown slime to occur which I didn't act fast enough upon so it turned into full blown root rot. To try and get rid of it I used H2O2, and sm90, while this worked for maybe 8-12 hours it wasn't solving the issue.
My local grow store recommended to do a 1:10 Bleach:water mix. I was a little skeptical of using bleach but it ended up clearing out one of the plants root rot (hopefully, this was as of yesterday) Once I pulled the plant out of the bleach:water mix I thoroughly rinsed her off and placed her in a nutrient solution that I also had added some beneficial bacteria to the night before. I was hoping with clearing out 95% of the infection with the bleach, the beneficial microbes would be able to take out the other 5% since I let them accumulate in the res for 24hours.

For the second plant I ran out of bleach so I used H202 and sm90 in high doses, after the roots and net pot soak in the solution for awhile I plan on doing the same with this girl by putting her in a new bucket with beneficial bacteria already propagating the res.

I'm hoping this will clear out my root rot/slime problem I have going right now, it really sucks cause they were getting real big and I had started to mainline one and lst the other. Well I'll post in a couple days with how they're looking. Thanks for the support!
View attachment 3718031 View attachment 3718032 This was before the rot.

View attachment 3718033 View attachment 3718034 And after the rot, they were actually even bigger than both these pics, I had pruned a lot of undergrowth before the rot set in

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So sorry to hear about the root rot man, that sucks hey hope you can get them back somehow!!

Boomhour said:

Sorry, just reading your journal for the first time. Skipped a lot of it because I'm mostly interested in the amount of time it's taking to bring the sativa strain to harvest. But, couldn't help but read your last post about the root rot issue. I thought I'd offer an insight to cooling the water that is relatively cheap. Have you heard of a peltier device. You can build a small one for about $50 which would be more than sufficient to cool a 5 gallon bucket. Here is a Youtube

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I was actually looking at something very similar, cause right now I'm just throwing frozen water bottles in there from time to time and that's a pita. I would like to start moving towards a RDWC and keeping the res outside of the grow room and having an iceprobe ($100 on Amazon) on the control res.

eastcoastmo said:

So sorry to hear about the root rot man, that sucks hey hope you can get them back somehow!!

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Well it's definitely a learning experience and I can tell you I won't be making the same mistake! I'm hoping the bennies (The Guano Company) that I have added to my res and root zone will help to combat the infection. I also ordered some Hydroguard after reading a lot of stories on treating root rot with it and it being successful.

OG_Dreams said:

Well it's definitely a learning experience and I can tell you I won't be making the same mistake! I'm hoping the bennies (The Guano Company) that I have added to my res and root zone will help to combat the infection. I also ordered some Hydroguard after reading a lot of stories on treating root rot with it and it being successful.

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Good work man, as long as you can cool the res down, the treatments will work well. Best of luck mate

Okay guys, so I managed to salvaged one of the plants. I put one plant in a 1:10 solution of bleach:water, while this cleared the roots of everything and stained them white, I feel like they absorbed too much of the bleach in the leaves and stems which led to the foliage rotting away. That one unfortunately did not make it. The plant that survived I used h2o2 and water and eventually added some watermax. After that I rinsed her off and placed in a solution of just water and hydroguard and let it sit for 12 hours. Then added slightly less than my normal nute amount, more hydroguard and called it good. The next day I could already see a change for the better, I'll post some before and after pics when I get home.

Keeping the dream alive

Wow so lots to report. I've completely reworked my system, 1 plant thriving, 2 more seedlings started, and took some clones today!

So to start from my last post, the one girl that survived has made a full recovery and is growing rapidly, roots are white and stretching deep into the bucket now, foliage is bushing out and looking green Really happy that she turned around and started getting better.

Before recovery:

After recovery:

My original plan was to mainline this girl and I still wanted to especially since she was growing so vigorously. It made me a little nervous to do but the root growth was good so I think I'll be alright.

I've topped to where I'll have 8 colas and will leave it at that. Now that everything has been lsted, topped and trimmed away, I'll just sit back and watch her grow.

I started 2 more seedlings (blackjack) and have already transferred them to my new system, was hoping to take a clone from the main plant and place it in my fourth container and let them all veg out at the same time. I'm currently waiting for the clones to root and pick the one with the best root mass.


So I'm now running a RDWC system, (4) 5-gallon buckets leading to a 18-gallon reservoir. Letting my main plant veg with the seedlings, running the Lucas formula at half dosage in the res, it will slow down my main plants growth and let the seedlings catch up so I can flower them at the same time hopefully. Don't have the funds to invest in a water chiller at the moment so will continue to throw water bottles in the res, so far I haven't had any issues except for the annoyance of having to do it a few times a day.

Well I think I'm back on track now and it's hopefully smooth sailing from here, happy growing!

Excellent news mate, glad it's all working for you now! The survivor is looking great, nice and dark