When to start the flowering stage in hydro DWC

How long do you all keep your plants in the veg stage before you start the light change to flowering? How big are your plants? What is a good sign mine are ready for flowering? I dont want to rush it but I am anxious.

Also, I would like your input on nutes. i have just seedlings...they are doing well, but my nutes are low enough they dont even register on my EC meter. I am so worried about giving them too much. Thoughts? Suggestions?

Thanks!

Hey man this is my first dwc grow and I vegged for just under 4 weeks and were 9 to 12 inches tall. Now I'm wishing I vegged earlier my girls have more than doubled in size. now my Biggest girl is over a meter tall and ran out of Head room.
So if you are limited with height I wouldn't veg more than 3 weeks.
With regards to nutes I followed the canna guide from memory from seedling I was running 350ppm and they did fine. So dont stress if your ec is hardly reading.
Just start low 200-300ppm then in veg take them to about 600-800ppm my girls loved it.
They didn't really appreciate more than 1000ppm in flower so now I keep them between 600-800 and she is looking great.

i do 5 gallon dwc buckets under a 1k hid lamp. i usually veg about 6 weeks or until the plants are about 24" i do allot of topping, bending, supercropping. also figure about 50% stretch. i usually shoot for about 3-4 oz of dried buds per plant with this set up. i use ionic grow, bloom and boost. very ph stable in dwc. add a little cal mag, protekt silica as ph up and thats really all ya need for a grow

A lot of your question is also strain dependant. For me though I'm in the three week range. Beyond that, without trimming, it gets out of control quick. By week three they should be WELL over 24 inches if left untouched... Careful!

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When to flower depends on plants health, room available in flower area to grow out and how big of a light you have.

A stronger light can penetrate deeper, so a taller plant can be more beneficial whereas a weaker light and a tall plant is just a waste of plant and time as light is only going to get so far down the plant, ya know?

And the last point I want to make is its heavily strain dependent. I've had strains, even phenos of same strain, that have less than doubled where its siblings have more than doubled. I've had a strain triple in size.

Expect 2-3 times the size and plan accordingly.

Any signs of Pre-Flowers at the nodes between the stems and branches? Pre-Flowers are generally considered THE sign that your plant is sexually mature enough to flower.

There is no magical number. Some grow shitload of small plants and veg them for a month or so. SOme go for few bigger plants and veg them for 2 or more months. When they show preflowers, they are ready to be flowered whenever you want. You must figure out how big you need your plants to be for your particular setup.