First Grow, DWC NightOwl Heartbreaker

Your plants look lovely. Sorry to hear about your rez change issues - I know first-hand it can be a pain when you ScrOG with DWC. I'm currently using a battery powered transfer pump that works really well - I haven't had significant issues with it sucking up roots; it's a stick styled pump and as long as I get it situated so it's sitting at the bottom of the bucket all is good. All the best with the rest of your grow 👍

Happy Flowering @MyWeedAccount

Ace grow to you

Great job man 🙌🏻 thanks for sharing 🙏🏻 enjoy 💚🌱

Looks awesome your doing a real good job

Nice job on the camlocks. A couple of quick thoughts: I use NPT to barbed connections on my RDWC drain lines. Maybe an NPT to barbed fitting would help. I'm sure the brewing industry may have something if type b to barbed fitting is available. Then you could just run your drain hose to a shower or sink drain. Another thought about sealing any leaks, check out Aquaseal which a flexible premium silicone product. You can grab a big tube of it off ebay for about 20 bucks and is commonly used for marine and fishing applications. PPM: It was hard to tell from the wording if they were eating 500pms a week or staying at 500pm. If PPMs stay the same and the water is dropping, I'd say they are eating and drinking at the same rate which is ideal. Mine are eating 100pms per day and I am now trying to increase nutrients until they level out and eat/drink at same rate. Regarding humidity: I'd take your dehumidifier from outside the tent and put it inside the tent if you have room. Then I'd suggest an Inkbird humidity controller and hook your humidifier and dehumidifier up to the controller and set the value you want. Keep your exhaust fan on a constant low setting. Another way is to bring up the temp during which squashes the humidity or bring in cooler dry air from outside the temp using an AC in the room your tent resides. The trick is to tune your room to work in balance with what you need in the tent. I have a few minutes available atm so I'll elaborate on humidity and what works for me. I just switched out my equipment for flowering a few days ago and here is what works for me as I have multiple tents in one room. My room is 40% RH and 68f because I have an AC running in the room which is also cooling my RDWC reservoir outside the tent. A couple of days ago, I added a dehumidifier to the tent and I added an active intake fan to the tent to bring that cool dry air into the tent from the room on a low constant setting. Lights on: The tent sits at 77F if I leave the exhaust fan on a low setting but can dial in higher temps if I run the exhaust fan intermittently. The heat is produced solely by the lights. The Inkbird controller mainly runs the humidifier during the day to hit my 60% RH I've set for preflower because I'm constantly pulling in my 40% RH from the room on low setting. As I get later into flower and want to drop the RH and temp more, I'll just adjust the Inkbird controller and turn my exhaust fan and intake up a bit more. Lights off (7am to 11am): When lights go out, the plants transpire heavily as the temp drops. Lights off temp would go down to 64f without any heat source which is too much of a temperature swing IMHO. The dehumidifier provides some minor heating and dehumidification during lights out to keep in line with the 50% RH I set on Inkbird controller and a constant low exhaust puts the tent at solid 71F temp with exhaust fan and intake fan on a low setting. If I didn't use an AC outside the tent, my intake air would probably exceed 60% creating an endless cycle of dehumidification. Happy growing!

Congrats on the bountiful, frosty harvest 👊

Couldn't post to your reply to my accidentally deleted message. So I'll add here: PH Meter: I still say calibrate weekly instead of monthly. It is your most important measuring equipment and I couldn't believe my 6.2 reading was actually a 6.6 value after two weeks of use. Light: I've turned up my light more aggressively. I have a singleT5 hanging over each plant for blue spectrum and my HLG 300 v2 RSpec is cranked to 50% as of yesterday (Day 10) at 30" with no signs of curling yet. My goal is to have it 100% by week 3. Then I can start dropping the light 1 inch at a time until they say its enough. My theory is more light, more nutrient uptake. Enzymes: Lots of products. I chose to use the Flying Skull Z9 (Canada) Z7 (USA). It is a two-part solution. Enzyme and bio-safe cleaner which doesn't affect beneficial bacteria but helps keep buckets clean. It will create bubbles for first 12-16 hours, but is minimal by next day as it reduces, salts and other grime. Air: I'm using square EZ store buckets. I have the stone connected to a pump that is dialed down sitting under net pot. The other two stones in my bucket are off to the side of the net pot. to keep oxygen in the root zone but not saturating the net pot. I can see your point, round buckets would be more difficult to add more air without saturating Rapid Rooter. My net pots are the 8" current culture ones which have a riser in the middle which helps keep the RR from becoming to wet. I'm considering going with neoprene collars next round. LST: I would start LST in a few days after they perk back up - nice and gentle, then bend a bit more in a day or two after the first tie down if needed. My Night Owls typically start throwing pistils around day 30-35 so I'd start soon before they stretch. Happy to hear your plants are recovering. Cheers!

If the tap root is poking out, I suggest getting it in the net pot on one layer of pebbles now. You can even poke the root through one of the holes. Then control your air pump so the bubbles are just misting the net pot but not saturating the rapid rooter. I'm also into my first RDWC run with Night Owl. Check out my Milk & Qookies diary, I had the roots hitting the water 5 days sooner than the first try with just a few changes. Saw your Reddit post and following your grow. Good luck on your first DWC!

Looks amazing! Well done 👏🏻

Awesome frosty grow 👌👌

Awesome job!!!!!!!

Thanks for sharing this growmie 🙏🏻💚 enjoy! 🙌🏻

Nice buds ! Happy Growing ! 😊💪

Happy growing mate 😊

Thanks for reply. Not sure, but my comment was accidentially removed. I'll re-post here for reference. ---------------------------------- I ran into similar problems on week 4 as well. Drooping, which then turned to yellowing and then root issues. I tried different PH ranges from 5.8-6.0 and 6.1-6.3 along with upping nutrients and other tactics. I saved them but ended up moving them to soil and starting over in RDWC because I figured, after two weeks of stunted growth the effort wasn't going to pay off with autos because the first few weeks are so important before they start to flower at about day 30. My plants were much smaller than I had anticipated for being 30 days in. No regrets, I learned a lot. I anticipated problems would likely happen. I also sterilized, and rebuilt my system with some design changes which will solve some of the issues that led to the plant deficiencies. I'm already into week two on my second try and everything is going much better this round. Some things I learned on my first try which may help you diagnose: 1. Keep water level exactly level. If it fluctuates, the air roots can drown and simulate overwatering, the wilting. 2. Calibrate PH monitor/pen. BlueLab suggests calibrating the Guardian monthly, when I checked I was 4 points off. Calibrating weekly with water changes now. 3. More Air. I became convinced the root zone needed more oxygen, even with a waterfall. I'm now running 3 stones in each bucket now across two pumps so I have redundancy in case one pump fails. Additionally, I dial down the air pump attached to the stone under the net pot to avoid over-saturating the rapid rooter, but leave the other stones in bucket full throttle. 4. Push the nutrients to find the limit, maybe 5ml at a time - I go for some slight tip burn on first set of leaves, I was totally underfeeding on my first try. 5. Boost LED light dimmer more aggressively. Full strength at 30" by week 3. More light results in more nutrient uptake. 6. Add an enzyme product to work WITH Hydroguard. Enzymes work with beneficials and break down any dead plant matter and loose roots floating around. 7. PPE: Sanitizing hands regularly and wearing latex gloves when messing with any water and net/pot contact. 8. I've added shields over the net pots to ensure I don't have any additional light leaks. My clay is chunky and the bag consists of about 10% round marble-sized balls. I used black bristol board with a square hole and slit. 9. Add hydroguard/beneficials/enzymes every TWO days. Beneficial bacteria only lasts about 48 hours and peak population is at 24hours from adding to system. When running a live system, You will always have bad bacteria in there, the trick is to keep adding an army of good bacteria to keep the bad bacteria outnumbered. If the temps go past 72F, I add an extra dose just as a protective measure. Adding too much won't hurt the plant's health. 10. Stop messing with them... which I'm doing more on my second try now that I can know and can visualize what's happening underneath the net pot. I had just moved this tent to a new room with new venting, so I had a lot of environmental conditions to dial in the first round. Adhering to VPD using leaf temp as best I can. I agree with @ORGANOMAN 20/4 or 18/6 light cycle is definitely necessary. The dark hour is when the plant works on the root system, underneath and undergoes other changes. Additionally, it allows the water solution to cool down. My night cycle, takes the solution back to 66f each morning. Dropping the ambient air temperature even a few degrees during night cycle is so important in regards to leaf temp and the changes they undergo internally as well. Hoping you solve the issue! I want you to succeed! Good luck!

Good luck on your 1st DWC run!