Unicorn Glitter RDWC

Don_Solo So, Sundays have traditionally been my start day when counting weeks and Sunday nights is when I do res changes. For this diary, I'm thinking Mondays will be my start day for the new week, but will be mostly focused on what work went in the previous weekend. Why I am I typing this out? I have no idea. All this is just for my reference, anyway. I loaded a new photo from Saturday night to start this week's entry. I know, complete anarchy. I'll try to remember to grab one tonight. Spoiler alert.... they've grown. On Saturday, I mixed up a new, stronger nutrient solution for the seedlings. It's about 3/4 strength, which is the second line on the bag's feed chart. Also, Sat morning I removed the humidity dome completely and just kept an eye on them throughout the day. Didn't seem to phase them in the least. Last night I went to see Atmosphere at First Ave, so no work in the garden. Not that there's much to do right now, just waiting for these seedlings to grow a bit more before I put them in the RDWC system. About two weeks ago, I cleaned out the RDWC system from the last grow. I rinsed everything down and drained the system. Vacuumed the tent, wiped down the walls. I then filled the system with water, added Run Clean at 4 ml/gal, and bleach at 1/3c / 2gal. I let that run for 24hrs, drained it and refilled with plain water with 2ml/gal Run Clean. I let that run for another 24hrs, then I drained and used a shop vac to suck ALL the water out of the lines, PVC tubing, and buckets. Then I let it sit and dry out. I'm not sure when I'm putting my new seedlings in the system, but, I need to have it ready when I decide it's time. I've filled the system with 16 gal of water, with 2ml/gal Run Clean and 0.2 ml/gal bleach. Set up an aquarium heater in the reservoir. With the heater on, res water temp ranges from 64° to 68°. Without it, the room/water temp is around 55°. I'll add nutrients to it in the next couple days. Normally, when the plants are established in the system, I run 15 gal of solution. That gives me a 1.25" air gap between the bottom of the net and the water. With new starts, the water level needs to be a little higher to insure the clay rocks are getting saturated with solution. 16 gal puts the air gap at ~.5" That's all for this update. Thanks for reading. Thursday, 2.5.26 Update. On Tuesday I added full strength nutes to the water circulating in the system. And 10ml Orca for beneficial bacteria. CropSalt recommends using their RunClean product to prevent scale build up. And, it can be used as a pH down when mixing up a new solution. When I was using GH Flora, typically I'd need to use about 60ml of pH Down to hit 6.0 after adding nutes. With the RunClean, I started with 25ml, to see how the solution reacted. It moved the needle, but not a ton. Went from 7.22 to 6.83. So I thought it was safe to go full send and added 35ml more. Big mistake. It dropped to 3.46. I WAY over shot it. Added 10ml pH Up a couple times over the next 30 min to get it to 5.26. I'm used to seeing pH rise just a bit over time, so, I let it sit for a couple days. Thursday evening I selected the two strongest looking seedlings and planted them in the RDWC system. The solution pH had leveled out to 5.8. Water temp is 64° with the aid of an aquarium heater in the reservoir. Air temp in the lung room is around 55° day and night this time of year. RH is 46.9%. In the the tent, with the light on level 4 (250ppfd for these little guys), I'm sitting at 64.1°, 43.8% humidity, and VPD is 1.14kPa. Exhaust fan at level 2. I just now upped the exhaust to 4, might help to bring that VPD down a bit. Lights on an 18/6 schedule. They'll 'sleep' during the afternoon, from 1pm to 7pm. Thanks for reading.

Don_Solo Well, here it is, after midnight on Wednesday 2.11.26 and I'm just now doing the weekly update. I've been playing a lot of ARC Raiders. It's been occupying most of my free time. Incredible game, it can be such a anxiety bomb. Anyway, on with the update. Last we met, I had just introduced the Chosen Two into the tent and RDWC system. In all honesty, I hate this part of the grow. I don't think I've ever had a nice smooth transition into the system. The seedlings always just look like hell for a week or two. Once the roots reach the water, things turn around quickly and everything takes off. But, at this stage, I'm seeing the biggest leaves dry and curl at the edges. The new growth looks good, which is what I'm most concerned about. I thinks it's a VPD issue, mostly. I've added humidity in past grows at this point and it's helped, but I can't do it effectively with my set up. And there is no budget for buying better equipment to better control the environment. The other issue I've seen time and time again at this stage is biofilm. I drained and refilled the system on Sunday night. The seedlings had only been in there since Thursday, but, Sunday night is when I want my weekly solution change to be on the schedule. And, I botched the pH on that first mix so bad, having to use both pH down and pH up, I thought it would be better to give them a fresh batch. As soon as I opened the tent Sunday night, I could smell the water was a little off. Looking in the res., I could see a thin biofilm was starting. So yeah, res. change it is. Let's get that stinky water out of there. I should point out that I'm using Orca Liquid Mycorrhizae at .5 ml/gal. I've used HydroGuard in the past with the same results. My hypothesis is that during this stage, since there's no big root structure for the beneficial bacteria to live in, adding this stuff at this stage does nothing. But I add it, anyway. Once the roots hit the water it's game on. I've had zero biofilm and stank using bene's once the roots are more established. So, res. change on Sunday, now it's Wednesday and when I checked them tonight the stank was back. Biofilm and bubbles in the res. The pH and EC are holding steady, so, I'm not going to sweat it for now. New growth still looks good. Also, both plants now have roots showing through the net pot. As long as the roots keep growing and stay white, the new growth looks healthy, and the pH and EC stay stable, I'm holding the coarse. That's all for now. Thanks for reading. Sat 2.14.26 Update: The solution condition has improved, slightly, less smell, no foam, but can still see a light sheen to the surface of the water in the res. pH and EC remain stable, or at least nominal. pH rose a little (up to 6.08) so I gave it a shot of pH Down. It was at pH 5.81 and EC 2.83 last night. For those of you that think 2.83 is too high, well, I'm just following the CropSalt Feed Chart and my water starts at .63 or more for EC and 8.40 pH, so there's plenty of pH down in there as well. I'm seeing some ok growth up top and better growth down below. Trimmed some of the dead/dry parts off the big leaves. The roots have started to reach the water, both have at least one or two roots long enough to reach. They are getting primed for takeoff. And, as expected, when the roots hit the water, the solution seems to clear up.

Don_Solo Oh Hi, didn't see you there. Here's my Veg week 3 update, writing it on Tuesday evening. Here we go, starting to see good daily growth. Sunday night I did a res change. I got a paddle mixer for my drill which made mixing up a new batch of nutrients a little easier, but, these dry nutes are a bit of pain to mix. It takes time to get all of the Veg A dissolved in the water before adding the Veg B. I'm thinking about mixing up a bunch of A and B concentrate to have on hand, to make mixing up a new nutrient solution easier. But that involves getting some stock tanks and maybe a couple wave generators to keep the stock tanks mixed. I don't know, I'll probably let it ride and just mix dry nutes every week. We'll see. But so far I like the simplicity of only having 2 base nutrients, plus RunClean and Orca. For this res change, I used 20ml total of RunClean, then used GH pH Down to get to my desired pH. CropSalt says one can use as much RunClean as necessary to adjust pH (RunClean is acidic), but I had just gotten a new gallon of GH pH Down at the end of the last grow and I can better predict how much to add to get the pH where I want it. So that's the plan for pH adjustments for this grow: I'll add 20ml of RunClean to the new nute mix, and finish pH adjustment with GH pH Down. So, fresh solution on Sunday. I also turned the light up to 80%. I'm getting 515ppfd at the top leaves. Late Monday night when I was checking pH/EC, I noticed the stank smell again and sure enough, there was a very light biofilm and foam in the reservoir. pH/EC stable, plant and roots look good, staying the course. On my check at 7pm tonight, smell was gone, foam was almost gone and I could just barely see a light biofilm. I'm telling ya, more roots = less biofilm issues for me. I'll be topping these two a couple times. I'm a fan of the manifold method and will be doing that again. Mine never turn out as symmetrical as I see other growers' do, but it really helps to keep a nice flat canopy in flower. I'll be taking my first (and I feel like the most drastic) cut probably this week/week end. OK then. TTFN. Happy Tuesday