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Ola, I have made this diary in search of tips,help and advice from some of you pro's out there. I have recently purchase an Alfred's horticulture 10 pot versa grow hydroponic drip system and it should be here any day now. I only have a couple successful coco runs under my belt so between this system and my 2 dwc buckets I will be taking my first Crack at hydroponics. I will be using 10 sour blueberry cuttings from Humboldt. I have a few questions for starters
1. What temp should the water in the res be?
2. Should i shoot for a 5.8 ph like the dwc pales?
3. If the pots are only 1 gal will I still be able to have decent size units with a decent yield?
4. Which product is best to clean a res and how often ?
5. Do I set the pump/drip system up on a timer or should i just allow it to stay on all day/night constantly feeding from the drip spike or should I set intervals. If so what would the optimal time/intervals be?
These were a few of the more important questions that came to mind when it comes to receiving/ unboxing and setting up my new system. I hope someone can point me into the right direction
Is there anything that I could use to better secure the drip spike 1/4" tubing better to the actual drip spike itself ? They're okay but I feel they could be better..
Hi there!
No need to secure them since they sit well in the tubes. Just try not to touch/hit them, don’t make a funnel in the cube. They never secure them in industry setups because that’s extra job and it’s pretty unnecessary. Just place them well and let the tubes rest with no bending pressure on the spikes. Oh! And actually that’s better to insert them in the rockwool directly. You also may want to add extra spikes for better saturation later.
You probably already know this because your next grow you told me is from flora flex. But flora flex makes little green clips that are meant specifically for 1/4 tubing. These clip to the side of your pot
Not much going on this week. Keeping a close eye on PH. Planning to veg these 2 guys for some time. It's also my first try at hydroponics. Will top this week. Fairly unexciting at the moment.
Yes you’re gonna have some color stain from those nutes. Especially the micro..
I wouldn’t worry about much right now but keep an eye on that darker mass on the left root hanging part.
Plants looking real healthy tho. Maybe just a tiny bit of overfeeding but that’s ok as it’s gonna need those extra nutes in the next week or two as aggressive Veg growth begins
2 plants, same strain,nutes. 1 plant won't grow and 1 is taking right off.roots are easily breaking off to the touch of the stunted one.water changed yesterday with new food still no improvement or sign of. Is there anything I can do to possibly help. First dwc run ever.
First of all, you shouldn't be touching the roots if you haven't sterilized your hands.... Second, it looks like something has contaminated that bucket... third, you can't expect to see any change in one day... so we'll go from there...
I would do a couple of things here: first, I would do another bucket change and thoroughly clean the bucket with H2O2 before adding in new pH'd water. While the plant is out of the bucket, I would take it to the sink and spray the roots hard with the sprayer to dislodge as many dead roots as you can. Then I would take a gallon of pH'd water that has about 4tsp of H2O2 in it and thoroughly water all the clay pebbles and roots that are left to sterilize the pebbles of any contaminates that may be in there. Back to your bucket - Add 3tsp of H2O2 and 1tsp of RapidStart (General Hydroponics), and 1/4tsp each of FloraGrow, FloraMicro and FloraBloom. The only other thing I would consider is 1/4 tsp of calimagic or some calmag (they're pretty much all the same but calimagic is in the same nute line). The H2O2 will kill off any fungus or other contaminates, the RapidStart will get the roots going and the small doses of nutes will give the plant SOMETHING to eat while the roots try to repair themselves.
One thing you need to resist when growing in DWC (and I know it's hard!) is looking at the roots. That bucket needs to be completely lightproof all the time. The one thing I'm NOT seeing in your bucket is a hole in the top through which you add water/nutes which suggests to me that you take the lid off frequently - probably daily? My buckets did not have that access hole either so I drilled one in each and cover it with duct tape... when I need to add water/nutes, the duct tape is lifted just enough to quickly add what I need and then is sealed right back up. I might have to do 3 or 4 bucket changes throughout a grow and that is the only time the lid is ever removed.... and every bucket change includes cleaning it with H2O2 and then adding those 3tsp into the fresh water along with any nutes.
Don't give up on this lady even if she doesn't promise to be a great grow... I think you'll be able to get something out of her and you will learn a lot by trying to get her back in shape... and I don't see why you can't get her back in shape! She won't keep up with the other one but that's ok... she's a photoperiod, yes? That means you've got all the time in the world with her..
As for the nutes... go really easy on her for a little bit... no more than 1tsp each of the Flora series... resist the urge to check on the roots, too - you'll know when they're getting better because the plant will start to grow stronger... and you can go from there. Oh yeah - when you have that netpot off the bucket for the bucket clean/change, drill a 1" hole in the top of it and cover it with duct tape (either grey or black)... and then only open that hole up to add nutes. If you don't have a drainage hole at the bottom where you can extract water to check EC and pH, you can get a cheapo transfer pump (hand pump) like this one... https://smile.amazon.com/CWDRDX-Manual-Siphon-Liquid-Transfer/dp/B0BSBGWQKQ/
Good luck...
Versa grow hydro drip system is finally starting to work out. Managed to get everything under control. All new growth is healthy so next few days should be the tell tail sign. 5 moby dicks on the right,then 3 purple trainwrecks and 2 glueberry og on the left in the back there. Both dwc cheese plants are alive and well at this point. Gets a bit cooler in the evenings when my 5x5 lights are out. Plan to veg these guys for another month or so. Will update mid week with some more photos
Is there anything i can do if root rot becomes a problem or is the plant just toast at that point ?? I think I'm okay now but just worried for the future as my res is hovering 24/25C.
You could do applications of h202. I'm not sure how much per gallon and how often (probably daily), you'd have to search that up. But it will add oxygen to the water and kill just about all bacteria (beneficial or bad).
You could also use a preventative, like hydroguard, slf-100, vodoo juice or some other bacillus bacteria product. Those products are designed to out compete the pythium so root rot doesn't happen.
Root rot isn't a grow ender, but if you get it and you don't fix the temp issue, it will probably be difficult to manage.
Couple more weeks of veg minimum. Added 40ml of microbial mass to the res 2 days ago so hopefully going to see some explosive growth. Feeding for 6-7 minutes every 2 hours now. Topped the healthier taller plants and added some LST clips throughout without stressing or breaking anything. This is my first time using this setup so I'm really hoping everything goes smoothly and i get a decent little return off these guys 🤞
This week a little more went on then previous. I took 8 purple train wrecks from the 5x5 flower tent and moved them to a smaller ac infinity tent I had setup under my electric sky v3. In doing this I made some wiggle room to pop this hydro system inside of the flower to flip. The 10 plants have some decent structure all but 1 and they would be a fair bit bigger in size if I hadn't topped the shit out of them and bent the hell out of all the arms! So today marks day 1 of flower. Once they stretch out a bit ill remove the 3 gallon pots from underneath and it will finish the remainder of its life in this tent here. I've increased feeds to every 1h and 50mins for about 8 minutes at a time of running water. 4 air stones keep the reservoir well oxygenated. I did my first water change in 3-4 weeks and noticed roots all dangling down into the reservoir solution through the drain hole underneath each pot. Hopefully this is a good thing and I noticed some explosive growth. Fingers crossed. I've added liquid koolbloom to the res now as well. There is roughly 38L of water holding in the res at all times with room for much more. Around flower day 11/12 I will give them a good pick and prune and open them all up.
If you have any tips/advice please feel free to help out as I am learning as I go with this one. Thanks for stopping by , cheers.
Nothing exciting going on here. Added about 10ml of 12% h202 to roughly 36L of water.never used it before so wasn't sure how much or what to expect.all seems to be fine. Today I'm a week into flower, see ya next week hopefully have some hedgehogs for ya to look at
Nothing to report.16 days into flower today, all is well. Plants are consuming about 3 gallons of water every 6-7 days. Had to clean out the middles which was a jungle so that was a chore. Will be buying a 2x4 gorilla tent for this guy next run as I like the setup but it's a pain in the ass to work with when stuffed in a 5x5 with a bunch of other big units. Also next run I will just top them and let them go because having plants growing into each other due to lst is a pain in my ass sincerely.
About day 24 flower, hadn't changed the water in about 3+ weeks, opened up the res couple days back and found some small white larva swimming around fast in small pools. Needless to say I drained the whole res and added fresh ph'd water 6.5 gallons with 80ml of 12% h202. Next morning I added my food.that evening I had seen a couple small single larva squirming around so I added another 3 gallons of water and 90ml of h202. Been golden since , or so it seems. Plants themselves are fairly large and to be honest. I'm just letting them go, this was a learning curve for me and next run I'll approach this growing system differently. Overall I am pleased. We shall see how the rest goes! Until next time friends ✌️
Unfortunately I could not get rid of the bugs i had contracted. When I would open the lid to the res i would see small white larva swimming around. My own fault for not paying better attention and not changing the water for 4 weeks. I emptied the res changed the water with 6 gallons of pure water ph to 6. Also added roughly 80ml of 12% h202. Ran that all night thinking it would kill any pests or bacteria. Added my food the next day no sign of bug life. 2 days passes I check the res. Small tiny little white larva smaller then the first time but still there shooting around in the water. Added another 100ml of h202 and 2 gallons of water basically hoping for the best at this point. Couple more days pass and I took down the rest of the coco plants in the tent and I had a chance to take a closer look into my res and the versagrow plants. The larva had started to develope a little bit, most appeared to be a tad bigger then when I previously seen them and now it seems they are starting to grow arms and legs and I could clearly see them swimming around. Probably a couple thousand total. I then noticed they were starting to come out of the water and crawl up the sides of the res. I have 70 Planted clones that had just rooted and been placed in solo cups with coco and I did not want to risk their livelihood with whatever these bugs/larva were. It was too big of a risk to continue this run with these plants and not knowing what these bugs were or could potentially be so without a doubt Unfortunately I had to tear down the plants , get all the pots and clay etc outside of the house to the patio and gave my res and entire Versa grow a very thorough cleaning. As well as the surrounding environment and tent that I had the system in. The reward was just simply not worth the risk with the fact I had 70 rooted babies that were planted less then 24 hours before. Next time I'll be sure to be more ontop of waterchanges and sterilization practices. This is 100% human error on my part and for that I am paying the price. The plants were about 4 weeks old and some seem to have a fair bit of developed flower on them which I will grind up and blast for some wax.
Better luck next time. Thanks for stopping by
Billyandbarb
