DWC water smells

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bobbjoedope

Member
Ok, this is my first dwc experience. My seedling has one set of true leaves so far and I noticed one lone root finally hit the water. It's been about a week since the bean popped.

It's in hydroton and I changed the res twice already (3 gallons in a 5gal bucket). I'm just using my tap water and phing to 6.0.

it takes about 3 days. I'll lift the lid and it smells like raw sewage. This happened twice so far.

Also, the ph seems to be going up about a point per day. Yesterday i phed to 6.0 and today it was 6.8.

Any ideas?
 
Mr. Mohaskey

Mr. Mohaskey

Well-Known Member
Look up Sterile rez and chlorine. Pool Shock is your friend. There is a link around here often sited and is good. $2200 clear rez for....

Some will pipe up with the link. Hopefully

Edit: pool shock for NaCl
 
B

bobbjoedope

Member
I keep a 7 gallon water jug filled in my basement. Sometimes it'll sit for a week or so and it does not smell. If it is a problem with my water, wouldn't stagnant water laying around in jugs in my basement smell?
 
Billy the Mountain

Billy the Mountain

Well-Known Member
bobbjoedope said:
I keep a 7 gallon water jug filled in my basement. Sometimes it'll sit for a week or so and it does not smell. If it is a problem with my water, wouldn't stagnant water laying around in jugs in my basement smell?
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Are you using anything organic in your dwc setup? That's a big no-no.
There shouldn't be a any smell using proper hydro nutes.
 
B

bobbjoedope

Member
Mr. Mohaskey said:
Look up Sterile rez and chlorine. Pool Shock is your friend. There is a link around here often sited and is good. $2200 clear rez for....

Some will pipe up with the link. Hopefully

Edit: pool shock for NaCl
Click to expand...
What's the difference between using this and hydroguard/SAG?
 
B

bobbjoedope

Member
Billy the Mountain said:
What are you using to lower the pH?

Try aerating your bucket of tap and see what happens. There's only a few variables in play.
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General Hydroponics. When I was swapping the res last night the tube that leads to the drip ring felt slimy. I removed the drip ring and replaced the 2 air stones and lines with new ones.

I'm using the vivosun dwc kit. It came with those small round stones. I'm using 2 of them with a tetra 3.5 watt air pump.
 
driver77

driver77

Well-Known Member
There are 2 ways to go about it...sterile or beneficial bacteria. The above mentioned thread has excellent advice on sterile. I run Hydroguard but I have an aquarium chiller on my rez and keep temps 65 to 69f.
If you have bad smells you have a bad bacterial infection and choices are to clean and shock it or clean thoroughly and start again with beneficial bacteria. Either way you have to kill what's in there and start fresh with either Hydroguard(or something like it) or a sterile solution.
 
B

bobbjoedope

Member
driver77 said:
There are 2 ways to go about it...sterile or beneficial bacteria. The above mentioned thread has excellent advice on sterile. I run Hydroguard but I have an aquarium chiller on my rez and keep temps 65 to 69f.
If you have bad smells you have a bad bacterial infection and choices are to clean and shock it or clean thoroughly and start again with beneficial bacteria. Either way you have to kill what's in there and start fresh with either Hydroguard(or something like it) or a sterile solution.
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Makes sense. Thank you! Does any of this change if I'm using synthetic nutes, like Master blend?
 
Mr. Mohaskey

Mr. Mohaskey

Well-Known Member
bobbjoedope said:
What's the difference between using this and hydroguard/SAG?
Click to expand...
I don't have a chiller so I run sterile, don't really worry about rez Temps. 1 less headache, IMO, and cost to buy a chiller or build one compared to sterile is not worth the money for any gains that may or may not be observable. Again, my opinion. We all do it differently with great results, and some with less than great lol.
 
B

bobbjoedope

Member
Can someone please let me know what the ingredients I should look for in the pool shock? I went to Ace and almost bought salt shock. ‍♂
 
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