Top Fed DWC - Slow Growth, Wrinkled Leafs & Limp Leafs

Hey everyone,

First time DWC here. I was wondering if this looked normal for a DWC. This blue cheese from Barney's farm. Using GH series nutrients. Two air stones and top fed. 600w VIPARSPECTRA LED light.

• My concern is that the growth is slower than expected. It has now been three full weeks and seems like they are behind what I expected. Topped three of the plants about a week ago.
• Two of the five plants have wrinkled leafs, looks like the skin on fingers after being in water for a long time.
• Then most of the leafs look somewhat limp. They don't look to perky. Is this just part of the DWC until the roots grow more? The yellow arrow indicates a good example.
• Lastly, is it necessary to keep the top fed on once the roots reach the water?

Thanks for any advice!

well fist you gonna need something like a bluelab guardian to monitor your water temp and ph and ppm the growth can be slowed for lots of reasons like water temp too low or too high idealy you want 5.6-6.3 ph and temp between 67-71f ppms try and keep em under 400 another major thing is air flow exhast and intake you want a gental breeze to jingle your leaves.to me it looks like your water temp is too high try putting frozen water bottle in res to drop temp. also you could be drowing them with the top feed try small drips maybe 6-8 times a day 3-5 min intervals hope this helps

Welcome, DT. I'm on my 3rd year of hydroponics. I run a 8 bucket RDWC system and it does take awhile for the plants to really ramp up. Keep top feeding until you get a mass of roots in solution-the plant can't get any water/nutes until they are submerged. Like BH has suggested, monitoring pH and ppm/Ec is vital to good growth. I'd follow his suggestions for temps and airflow.

Thank you both. Have been paying more attention to water temp and seems to help, plus a good evaporative humidifier.

You may be rotting your stems by top feeding to much>
If you have roots in the water/nutrients the top feeding is a waste of time,
I dont top feed at all in my rdwc system i just raise the water level so it touches the bottom of the net pot and make sure you have plently of bubbles popping on the surface as these will splash your net pots keeping you clay pebbles damp, this makes the roots search out the water and grow towards the nutrients.

By top feeding too much the roots don't search as hard as they don't need to because of the constant feeding from above.

if you have roots showing outside of your net pots i would stop top feeding and let them stems dry.
your plants should only be slow growing for 1 week.
I grow in a tent and the roots may take a week to show outside the pot but as soon as they do they go crazy, dwc is by far the fastest way to veg a plant IMO and i only ever veg for 4 weeks and still end up with decent yields of above 7 oz a plant.

Happy Growing