It's Finally Happening

The kit arrives tomorrow.

2x4 gorilla tent with 400w MH for veg, 600w HPS for flower baslast has inline fan for temp control and a 16 site superponic tote. DWC and top feeding. Bought the package off of a popular growcabinet/growtent website.

I have experience with soil and I'm excited to jump into DWC. My plans are to have 4 or 5 plants in the 16 site tub. I've got General Hydroponics flora series and I'm ready to go.

I'll be sure to update soon.

I also just dialed in my dwc method. Shooting for a massive single cola technique. New to the game as well. Running AN at the moment for nutes. Also have a gorilla its amazing. Running one 1000 hps at the moment but planning to switch to 3 600 hps in the near future. Will be anticipating your update. Need to learn how to do it like the pros I do lol. Best of luck!

hey mate welcome to DWC
if you're not so sure about the nutes in your system in the sense of quantity,i'd recommend checking out Lucas Formula,it only includes 2 of the 3 part flora series,micro and bloom,which makes it very simple,and it is proven to work really well in hydro culture systems.you cak read more about it in the link,cheers.

Thanks guys! So the tents up, light and ducting are ran. Still trying to work out how I want to mount the filter fan and ducting. I don't need it right now so it can wait. Gonna pop the seeds in rockwool cubes tonight!

EJ255 said:

Thanks guys! So the tents up, light and ducting are ran. Still trying to work out how I want to mount the filter fan and ducting. I don't need it right now so it can wait. Gonna pop the seeds in rockwool cubes tonight!

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Right on man can't wait for the updates. Best of luck!

EJ255 said:

Thanks guys! So the tents up, light and ducting are ran. Still trying to work out how I want to mount the filter fan and ducting. I don't need it right now so it can wait. Gonna pop the seeds in rockwool cubes tonight!

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make sure you soften them rock wool cubes right nice,squash in a lil when suaking,they're pretty tough sometimes for roots to get though :S

Anton Cherniavski said:

make sure you soften them rock wool cubes right nice,squash in a lil when suaking,they're pretty tough sometimes for roots to get though :S

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Thanks for the reply. They do seem a little stiff.... I didn't give them a squeeze. I'm wondering if I would have been better off starting them in my tried and true method. A wet paper towel in a ziplock in my drawer. I'll give them a gentle working now.

I start the seeds in little rock wool cubes trimmed to fit in my AeroGarden, and I make a clear and easy route for the taproot with a pencil then fluff the RW with a needle a little in the channel so it gently holds the seed.

So after killing the first four seedlings due to me not being prepared, I can say that I am off and running on my second attempt. Five Incredible Bulks on their second nodes. Roots and growth exploding with every passing day. I'm following the Lucas method as mentioned above after picking up a RO filter.

Where?

I'm sorry, where what? The Lucas Formula was linked in Antons post. I picked up the RO filter from Amazon. Those are the only "where" answers I can give lol.

Also, I'm anticipating resevoir temps being too high. So I saw a small inline pump and small computer radiators on Amazon. I'm gonna take advantage of winter and stick the radiator outside. Or maybe in a cooler with ice water and run more than one radiators and pump. I have heard that pumps might increase temps, but I like this one because it's inline and isn't sitting in the resevoir.

EJ255 said:

I'm sorry, where what? The Lucas Formula was linked in Antons post. I picked up the RO filter from Amazon. Those are the only "where" answers I can give lol.

Also, I'm anticipating resevoir temps being too high. So I saw a small inline pump and small computer radiators on Amazon. I'm gonna take advantage of winter and stick the radiator outside. Or maybe in a cooler with ice water and run more than one radiators and pump. I have heard that pumps might increase temps, but I like this one because it's inline and isn't sitting in the resevoir.

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not sure of your rez size, but check craigslist for chillers. I picked one up for $80 awhile back, works great

These warm outside temps are really messing with my plan!! C'mon, it's November! I'm really not satisfied with my resevoir temps and I don't have the patience for frozen water bottles so I have a chiller and external controller arriving on Monday. One less thing to worry about. I also picked up another fan speed controller so I can better dial in my temp and humidity.

So I set up my Co2 system last night. I immediately messed up my res Ph by not moving the airpump outside the tent.... That was really dumb of me and everything has since been corrected.

What should I try to keep my canopy temps at with Co2? I've heard like 85*F-90*F. I ask because right now I try to keep it at 80*-83*. I would be able to do a higher temp considering I picked up the external cooler. If I continue doing this I suppose I should pick up a Co2 PPM meter.

Also picked up an auto topoff system. I have a 5g bucket outside the tent with RO water with nutes added. I'm going with adding nutes back in instead of just RO water to try to increase my yield. I'm currently running ~410ppm in a ~12 gallon resevoir with Ph at 5.8

The growth has been incredible over 8 days! I turned the lights on last Thursday night and this morning I'm on my third node. Gonna be topping sometime this week maybe!

I'm using RO water for this. I'm going to do a water change and am wondering if it would be okay to flushe the pumps and clean the resevoir with just tap water. My tap PPM is around 120.

EJ255 said:

I'm using RO water for this. I'm going to do a water change and am wondering if it would be okay to flushe the pumps and clean the resevoir with just tap water. My tap PPM is around 120.

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I've personally never put non ro water in my system, but I don't really see why not. When I need to get every drop out of my system, after it's pumped out, I'll use a shop vac to get any remaining water out of the individual buckets, but I have not done that for awhile cause the plants are huge and the roots take up all the volume of the bucket right now.

Things are going great! I abandoned the Co2. I wasn't comfortable using it in a living area.. What ever, I had all the pieces already from my fishtank jungles so I didn't spend anything to give it a try.. The chiller has been keeping everything in check. The plants have so much root mass when I lift up the lid a tiny bit the top off system kicks in lol.

For anyone looking at top off systems for a small setup, this has been working great for me: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00AR1A7ZU?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o06_s00 reasonably priced at $96.
I just put them into flower two days ago and did another complete res change with nutrients. I'm incredibly satisfied with the Micro and Bloom solution.

When I open the tent I'm greeted with an image I've been dreaming of for some time now. It's a solid rectangle of green

I had used gh flora series for my first two grows but have recently learned that you can use ONLY gh flora nova bloom. It's virtually the lucas formula, so much easier than having to open those 3 different bottles!

Where did I learn that you can just use flora nova bloom with awesome results: https://www.rollitup.org/t/pineapple-express-g13-labs-seed-to-harvest.344359/

EJ255 said:

Things are going great! I abandoned the Co2. I wasn't comfortable using it in a living area.. What ever, I had all the pieces already from my fishtank jungles so I didn't spend anything to give it a try.. The chiller has been keeping everything in check. The plants have so much root mass when I lift up the lid a tiny bit the top off system kicks in lol.

For anyone looking at top off systems for a small setup, this has been working great for me: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00AR1A7ZU?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o06_s00 reasonably priced at $96.
I just put them into flower two days ago and did another complete res change with nutrients. I'm incredibly satisfied with the Micro and Bloom solution.

When I open the tent I'm greeted with an image I've been dreaming of for some time now. It's a solid rectangle of green

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I'm all about the rectangle of green. This was from a couple weeks ago in the 4x8. I have a nice 2x4 for veg. I also use Lucas formula, kinda. My system is a little different, but they don't like much more than 1.2 ec I've discovered. My first run, I did the 8/16 with micro and bloom. Ec was coming out to 1.8, which was too high for my system. I just use micro, bloom, calmag, hydroguard. Working well so far, post a pic of that green rectangle sometime.

Awesome guys, thanks for the responses! I can't complain about having to open two bottles for this. I once carried 30 full size bags of soil through the woods. In the rain. At night into the morning setting up a guerilla grow. That a tree fell on

That pic looks great Blackforest, I'll be sure to snap a photo. I'm still very much a noob when it comes to PPM/Ec, but my last res change my PPM was 1100. Dwindled down to 200 over a week or more. The change I just did I put it back to the same PPM. I read that might be a little high, but they're alive and well!

Also, am I crazy for using a 600HPS in a 2x4x7 Tent? I can only pull this off during the winter. But I'm averaging 74* in the tent with lights on. I achieve that temp by only using the one fan with the carbon filter sucking air from the very top of the tent. I don't even run the cooling fan for the light. The room temp during lights on is ~63*. I'm actually excited to have the ability to drop the temps so low in the tent. I want to see if some coloring comes out.