DWC adding nutes question

If I want to up my nutes can I pull a gallon out of my res and add nutes and readd it to the res? Or should I remove a gallon and replace it with a fresh gallon and just double the nutes?

How many gallons is the rest.

What's the ppm now and what's the target.

Unless you just like making things harder change the nutes when you change the res. you can calculate whats there and what you need to add but ya just change nutrients level when changing res. Like in my DWC I changed the res every Saturday and would adjust my nutrients then.

I just top up the rez then check ppm and add small amounts of nutes to get the ppm to where I want it. Changing every week like they tell you to is a waste of good nutes. I change once after the stretch and sometimes don't change for the whole grow. Seems to make no difference to the plants.

Blindly following directions is something I never do and after 40+ DWC grows with lots of experimentation over 16 years weekly changes just makes the nute makers richer. Especially when the plants are small and barely eating anything you just toss perfectly good nutes out with weekly changes.

If you are using tap water you should change the rez each time you have added back as much water as your system holds so the minerals in your tap water don't get too concentrated and cause problems. I only ever use RO or distilled water and never have to worry about pH or mineral salts from the tap water screwing me up.

@OldMedUser i'm to lazy for all that and the nutes are not that expensive. (not to me anyways very small grower and it's a past time not were my money comes from) But then again my lazyness is probably why I recently moved from DWC to Drain to waist in COCO. I have found myself sitting in my grow room now just staring at my plants as I don't have anything to do lol.

Morth said:

@OldMedUser i'm to lazy for all that and the nutes are not that expensive. (not to me anyways very small grower and it's a past time not were my money comes from) But then again my lazyness is probably why I recently moved from DWC to Drain to waist in COCO. I have found myself sitting in my grow room now just staring at my plants as I don't have anything to do lol.

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Don't ya love automation.

@Cx2H liking it so far only been 4 days since I spazed out and switched everything to COCO big switch from DWC so not sure what to do with myself... Used to get up early adjust PH then pray for the 12 hours i'm away each day during the week that it wouldn't drift to much then spend the night mucking with it. Now I get up spend a few minutes looking at my plants and same when I get home as there really isn't anything for me to do lol. Have been checking ph daily but has only moved like .02 or so. And thanks for the Canazime tip plants seem to be loving it. Thankfully I was already getting ready to switch and had everything I needed already so when I spazed it was easy. Rinsing the orange algae/root rot or whatever off with chlorinated water from the tap probably wasn't the best idea but in that moment is seems like a great idea! Thankfully doesn't seem like the plants cared. Now if I can just keep the mold gnats away I will be golden

Morth said:

@Cx2H liking it so far only been 4 days since I spazed out and switched everything to COCO big switch from DWC so not sure what to do with myself... Used to get up early adjust PH then pray for the 12 hours i'm away each day during the week that it wouldn't drift to much then spend the night mucking with it. Now I get up spend a few minutes looking at my plants and same when I get home as there really isn't anything for me to do lol. Have been checking ph daily but has only moved like .02 or so. And thanks for the Canazime tip plants seem to be loving it. Thankfully I was already getting ready to switch and had everything I needed already so when I spazed it was easy. Rinsing the orange algae/root rot or whatever off with chlorinated water from the tap probably wasn't the best idea but in that moment is seems like a great idea! Thankfully doesn't seem like the plants cared. Now if I can just keep the mold gnats away I will be golden

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You were doing DWC wrong then. Sometimes I wouldn't even go down to the grow room for 3 days just to top up and leave. Now that I use the pH perfect nutes I haven't checked pH for over 2 years. They work great in soil/soilless too.

I'm still deciding on what kind of hydro I'm going to setup for a perpetual garden. I miss the bigger yields.

@OldMedUser not sure if I was doing anything wrong or was just a string of bad luck but whatever it was i'm over it and moved on lol. Have seen many noobs do great in DWC and have amazing results same with experienced growers. I have a black thumb if anything and if it can go wrong it generally does with me as far as growing goes. Plus side of that is i know how to fix allot of problems lol

It's not for everyone that's for sure. I basically figured out how to do it on my own back in '01 and it's always been a lot easier for me than growing in dirt.

I'm planning on giving organics another go tho. Likely outside this spring using some of the tons of compost we have out by the chicken coop.

@OldMedUser Think I did to much over loved my system and in the process removed all the good bacteria/algae and when something bad came along it was heaven and it exploded. Ultimately working on going medical then commercial so DWC isn't exactly the direction I see in my future even if I was the best at it. And I defiantly wasn't that great at it, given nothing ever died in my system. For me personally Dripper system using coco and drain to waist removes so many of the issues with hydro but you still have allot of the advantages. And i'm not saying anything bad about DWC just wasn't working out for me personally.

Good luck with organics if I had the room I would defiantly give it a go have allot of respect for the no till guys they do some amazing stuff and their soil is more alive than the plants coming out of it. Have you looked at sip containers? Pedros growroom uses them with amazing results all organic grows in soil inside! Here is an example system sure there are better ones http://albopepper.com/sips.php

OldMedUser said:

I just top up the rez then check ppm and add small amounts of nutes to get the ppm to where I want it. Changing every week like they tell you to is a waste of good nutes. I change once after the stretch and sometimes don't change for the whole grow. Seems to make no difference to the plants.

Blindly following directions is something I never do and after 40+ DWC grows with lots of experimentation over 16 years weekly changes just makes the nute makers richer. Especially when the plants are small and barely eating anything you just toss perfectly good nutes out with weekly changes.

If you are using tap water you should change the rez each time you have added back as much water as your system holds so the minerals in your tap water don't get too concentrated and cause problems. I only ever use RO or distilled water and never have to worry about pH or mineral salts from the tap water screwing me up.

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I am running tap so I guess I'll have to change the Rez next week. But this time around I just topped off with a gallon of new water with nutes and then pulled water out of the Rez, added nutes and poured it back in until I got the ppm I wanted. It's a 18g Rez with 14g. I just figured there's plenty of nutes and water in there for 3 small plants.