My first DWC setup. Stealth closet style. Pics! Nirvana Blackberry/others

WOOHOO! roots in the water on 3 pots!!!! the most mature one still hasnt even shown her second set of true leaves, yet her root is a good 4 inches in the water! feeling VERY good about this, im not even using anything but distilled and r/o water at this point!

All of the remaining seeds have poked their head up this evening, all should be open and absorbing light by tomorrow.

As exciting as this is, i am disappointed that i must leave my babies in the morning. For the next 5 days they will be relatively on their own. I am positive that these thriving little suckers will do just fine though. Ph has barely been a problem, ive had to ph down ever so slightly twice since i filled the rez. I plan to pre-lower it to closer to 5 before i leave, since i am using drops to test and cant get much more accurate than around 5.5. My girlfriend will be in town, and able to monitor that to some degree, but her knowledge is limited. Hopefully the picture updates she sends me will be enough to let me raise from afar. Like i said, im not terribly worried. these babies have been doing nothing but thrive, and all ive really done is watch.

We will have to see how things continue to go, but so far i am SOLD on dwc. Loving everything about it

Wish i had some pics for you guys, but that will have to wait for tomorrow.

Im still away from my babies, but girlfriend keeps me updated. They are all doing great. Im sad that i will have to sacrifice a couple of them, but it simply is the most sensible thing to do. Its for the good of the grow. If i allow the three blackberries to thrive on their own, i will have a much easier time with this grow. Lighting will be much simpler for several reasons, not to mention the nutrients will be easier to manage, and i will not have to worry about males. It makes more sense for me to grow in cycles anyway, so ill simply take clones from the mommas before i flower them, and keep a purely female cycle going that way.

Also, i plan to start nutes when i get back. The roots are getting huge on a couple of em.

Much better update tomorrow

peace and love!

Been several days since ive had a chance to update. Busy work week, not to mention trouble struck my garden. Not sure what the hell is going on, i fear pythium. which will mean i will be starting over from bagseed in no time if thats what these poor babies have

Basically, i came home to find all 5 plants doing great. ph was perfect, water temps were below 65, everything checked out great. roots were HUGE!!! i decided since all plants were thriving that i would keep the feminized seeds by themselves, and remove the two bagseed i had in there. Their taproots were already almost a foot out of the bottom of the net pot.

The plants continued to be doing well, so i decided to add some nutes. I also found some floaties in the water so figured a full rez change was best. Started out with again a mix of distilled and r/o water. Then added roughly 1/4 strength grow nutes. ph'd and let it roll. I knew this was earlier than they needed nutes, but i didnt think it would hurt them at that strenght. Maybe i was wrong.

The next day. one plant looked great, the oldest one had shown significant signs of stunted growth, and seemed to be curling down. I was a bit worried so i checked the roots, sure enough their seemed to be a couple of brownish spots, mostly near the base of the net pot. This is where i got the pythium scare. I let it go for another day and then it got worse.

The one plant continued to thrive, maybe not quite as vigorously as before, however. The oldest one curled WAY more. to a very worrysome degree. Her stem stayed green, but a few tiny dark spots appeared on her first leaves. The last plant, seemed very stunted, smaller than the other two by a fair margin, and the leaves were almost bent in a twisting motion. I checked all the roots, spots of brown now appeared on ALL plants. Hopeful this was a VERY early stage of the rot, or perhaps just some weird staining from the nutes (unlikely to me) i decided to treat rather than immediately start over.

I used hydrogen peroxide solutions that i allowed to sit out for a good 30 min to an hour. A very strong one to dip the roots in quickly to try and remove the dead root tissue, and then a slightly weaker one to then mix into the rez. I dont know how the root rot would have occured, my rez temps were below 60 for most of the time after i got home. Sometimes as low as 55, which with the two medium airstones, i would expect that 6 gal of water to be absorbing plenty of oxygen.

Next day obvious signs of illness struck, but only on old leaves. The poking emergence of only the 2nd set of leaves looked healthy in all 3 plants. The old leaves all became spotted with some sort of nutrient deficiency, or nute burn. I really have no idea, and have looked at many references. I removed a couple gallons of water, and replaced it with fresh distilled water. hoping that a weaker rez might be what they need.

Today, two days since the partial change, i dont know what to think. the issue with the older leaves got drastically worse one day, and now seems to have completely stopped spreading at least. New leaf sets are fully emerged and mostly look fantastic. Weird curling that looks like overwatering on the oldest one, but the other two look great. Even the new stem growth looks great. Im confused as hell, so i check the roots. All three are darker!. Not to mention their roots have hardly grown since i first noticed the spots.

Anyway, any advice is greatly appreciated. Am i worrying about nothing with the root color? a couple roots on one even shrivled up. should i ease off the nutes completely? or should i just plain start over?

here are some pics. leaf problem is easy to see, the roots will be nearly impossible at this compressed resolution, maybe you can see a little browning.