G13- Blueberry Gum- DWC Grow

[Darwin Riddle]

Hey RIU! I'm starting my first run at DWC. Any comments or suggestions are appreciated, as long as they are conveyed in a positive manner. There's no need for bickering or arguing.
Now down to bizniz! I'm running two individual DWC bubbler buckets, home-made with great craftsmanship. I'm going to veg them for awhile (4-6 weeks) under a bunch of cfls (1 300w, 1 150w, 4 100w equ.) of mixed kelvin. I'll be using General Hydroponics, Flora Nova Grow and Bloom for nutrients, in RO water. (Should I have micro as well?) ...umm...Oh and of course, the strain will be G13 labs, Blueberry Gum. The seedlings broke into the world 2 days ago, in peat pellets. I would have rather used rockwool but had none on hand.
I've been growing in soil for several years now but this is my first run with DWC so any helpful advice would be great karma for you!!

 

[strokinwarmblood]

Hey man, great to see you are growing this. I am doing the same right now. Mine is just a seedling. Check out my NL grow for pics. Also, I've subscribed to this thread

 

[raiderman]

i've never done dwc.i'll learn here i guess.keepem coming.

 

[Darwin Riddle]

Let's hope I don't kill the poor girls! lol so far, so good.... they look happy and healthy....but they also still have their cotyledons to feed off of. I'm still waiting on my ppm meter.

 

[Darwin Riddle]

What's up peeps! Things are going really well, except one plant is twice the size of the other...? It has been from the start. I added their first dose of nutes today. The larger plant has also shown her first root, below the net...no roots on the other yet. Do I just have a runt plant?...everything is exactly the same, for both buckets. Anyway hers's a few pics.

 

[raiderman]

looks good ,plants look healthy.

 

[Darwin Riddle]

How's it growin? I did my first res change today. The one plant was browning on the edges. I figured it was due to insufficient nutes so I changed out both buckets, and brought the nute lvl up closer to the amount recommended by G.H. and ph'd it. I'm still waiting on my ppm meter so that's all I could do. If anyone has anyone suggestions, please don't hesitate.

 

[jonb87]

Hey man how's it going. I just stumbled on this thread cuz i'm searching for other peoples' results on the Blueberry Gum. I'm on my first DWC as well and way ahead (day 40 or so of flower) so I'll be glad to try and post updates so you at least have an idea of what you can expect.

First though, I have some suggestions (kind suggestions, take them as you will):
System looks great. Thinking the burn on your leaves is likely due to over feeding. Ladies this small don't need nutrients.. probably not for another week or even longer. In fact, plants still in their seedling stage usually do best from using trace nutrients (calcium, mag, etc.) in your tapwater. Since you're using RO water, as I do, you will want to look into a bottle of CALMAGto use with your system. In any case, if your system is just plain RO water or you even use a tiny amount of nutrients right now, you won't really need to do any water changes. You should only start the weekly changes once there are enough nutes to build up in your system.

Your roots look healthy but they also look like they may have acquired some color already when ideally they should be nice and clear. What is the color of your water once the nutes are mixed? and you ph? and room temp? none of those should be an issue yet, i'm just nosey about your system.

In terms of your question about having a runt plant, i'll refer back to the plant being wayyyy too young. Once it really hits true vegetation it might turn into the monster.

Finally, your lighting--- you aren't using all those bulbs yet are you?? Plants that small won't even benefit from having one 100w equivalent CFL on them right now, and that's even overkill that can burn the plants. My veg cycle I started with 2 60w CFL until there were at least two sets of leaves then started using those 100w bulbs but all in all I doubt I ever used more than 5 100w through the entire veg and mine were over a foot tall before i flowered. Start small and once the ladies start putting on real growth then you'll wanna start adding more bulbs.

And raiderman, I'm a longtime soil grower and after making the conversion to hydro it's hard to look back. The difference in growth rate is phenomenal. However, DWC can be a buttload of work too so if you have the time and resources there are hydro setups that require much less maintenance with all the same payoff.
Hopefully you found these suggestions useful. Like I said I'm also on my first DWC cycle so these are just some of the tips and tricks i've picked up along the way. Feel free to hit me up with any questions and good luck on the grow!

 

[Darwin Riddle]

Well, I made the mistake of using tap water (I have well water), and the next morning...my res was cloudy, had white foam and smelled of dirty socks. I'm thinking root rot? So I immediately changed out both buckets with RO water and some H2O2. This was yesterday. I also realized that the bottom of the cabinet gets a bit warm so I moved the air pump out of the cabinet and set it on an ice pack...it seems to work well keeping the res temp at just about 68 deg. Before my temps were running at about 75 deg. which I knew was bad.
So now I'm not quite sure how to proceed. I've ordered aqua-shield, 35% H2O2, cal-mag and a bunch other stuff...none of which is here yet. I'm not even sure it is root rot...lol...but it sucks to have troubles so early. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I think I may add a second set of air stones to my buckets...but what else? I've heard horror stories about root rot! I'll throw some pics up in a few here.

 

[raiderman]

yea be careful with the h2o2,a little bit goes a long ways,,as far as water goes ,i dont know,that can give u some probs with the roots if its not ro or refillable ro water in early stages,could bring in prob for yu..i think i'd go get a few cheap jugs of drinkin water and use that till thier stronger and yure seedling nutes should speed it up... yea humidity would ruin me on hydro,water algaes up qick here and i have carpal-tunnel of the elbow and need surgery already,that water totin kill me,lol... with these pots i transplanted 2 weex ago and still need no water and grwin crazy,i have to stick to low maintenance mysef.i hope these 3 gallon airation pots would help divy up the diff in yield to hydro.we'll see.

 

[Darwin Riddle]

Here is what they look like today.

 

[raiderman]

i'd change my water out with jug drinkin water till thier stronger and seed nute.i mentioned jus now on the other page but dont know if u saw it.gd luk.

 

[raiderman]

but the plants themselves look norm...hell wat do i know,lol.

 

[Darwin Riddle]

I did change out the water with bottled RO water. I'm just not sure when to add more nutes. Right now it's just running the RO water and H2O2. I'm not sure if I leave it that way, for a day or 2, or what. I'm not even sure it's root rot but it doesn't smell nice so I'm assuming that's what I've got...plus the res turned cloudy and foamy overnight. This is all a bit of a pain but I know it's all part of the learning process...I'd rather have this issue early on, and find a solution rather than have it spring up 5 weeks into flower.

 

[raiderman]

there was a grower here that put about 20k in a gro op and had killer plants like a house full.halfway through flower of a 120 plants he ended up burning them all up with to much phosphorous in his flowering nutes. so if it does go south yu can come rite back not that much out of pocket and smarter.keep it up bro.rdr.

 

[jonb87]

hey dude i hope it wasnt me who scared you into thinking it was root rot... definitely not what i was going for. i think it's too early for root rot to really have developed, though those temps were, as you said, too high. i don't know how to explain your water situation since i don't know what's actually in your tap water, but i'm guessing that if you stick to RO you should be fine. And if it were truly root rot, you wouldn't see new clear white roots growing out since the rot would make them brown and yucky. Plants look fine to me but as I mentioned before, you really don't need to add nutes for another few days since these ladies are too small!!

You are correct, having issues like these are always a stress but it is MUCH better to have these issues in veg rather than flower. DWC is a little more maintenance than a basic soil grow (it's good to check your water ph 2-4 times per week) so once you get familiar with all the ins and outs your system will be running well in no time. Oh, and i dunno what pump you're using but from those first pics it looks like it's moving that water pretty well as is.

 

[jonb87]

PS tapwater can contain tons of random sediment buildup that can cause the funky smell. If you use tapwater you're supposed to let it sit for 24 hours first so that all of the chlorine gets dissolved. ALSO, pH of tapwater is often the result of the tapwater and your plumbing, while true RO water should always be a pH of 7... which you'd need to adjust to 5.7-5.9 anyway. good luck!

 

[Southtexasman87]

Yea be careful with the nutes I put a half of the quoted seedling amout and burnt my tips and remember less is more when it come to nutes u can always put a lil more but hard to take out

 

[Darwin Riddle]

Well, the only thing that made me think root rot was the smell...like dirty socks or a soggy sponge from the sink. It happened overnight too which was a bit disappointing. Jonb it definitely wasn't because you said root rot, I'm just thinking this because of the distinct smell that the res had...and the res water went cloudy with like a white foam around the edges of the bucket.

 

[jonb87]

Ah, well then no worries-it's definitely not root rot. As mentioned, the pump looks like it's giving those roots plenty of oxygen and the H2O2 obviously helps to oxygenate the water as well. When I used h2o2 I calculated out for my buckets... 11ml/gal 2-3x per week or 5.5ml/gal daily.

Also I just realized, you said you're using Gro and Bloom? Not trying to question you're methods but the Lucas formula is Micro and Bloom so i'm curious, have you had success with gro/bloom in soil? or whatever medium you've used previously?