First DWC grow

firsttimeARE said:

Thanks SG. Seems simple enough. I'm going to try it today...Is the bending down of node necessary? And the video, that plant was already topped, correct?

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Yes it was already topped once that's why it had two tops. You can do it multiple times on plants that are more stubborn to branch. Others if you top them too much they might actually become too branchy. And no, bending not required.

Day 48(tuesday) from germ: Topped them and changed out the res and they're all feeding at 1.0EC @ 5.8PH now

So I didn't get to check these monday due to unwanted aggro at the grow place. So I checked em yesterday to find the PH WAYYYYY OFF. It NEVER gets this high I wish I knew what was up, maybe it was the feed dropping?

Veneno - 7.0/.48EC/16C down from .75EC last week
Bubba 76 - 6.8/.68EC/16C down from .85EC last week
FCJ - 7.1/.48EC/16C down from .9EC last week

I'm guessing this drop in EC caused the PH to rise or do I got some kinda bacteria growing? I've never seen anything that high before and i'm kinda worried now.


Fruity Chronic Juice - Bushing out nicely, roots white enough I guess, wish they were like others, but whatever. Still no smell. Should I be trimming some of this out its really crowded in there.

These are my issue shots, dry leaves 2nd and 3rd picture, and these weird blemishes, the one in the 4th pic has been there since a seedling



Bubba 76 - Leaves are drooping a little, and since i changed the res they're drooping even more. This is an after shot below

You can see drooping a lot more.



Veneno - Looks like crap, leaves are HUGE though. Problem issues below. See the first picture where I topped, how come some plants(usually the troubled ones) shoot off these purplish lime green new growth.

I think the spots are calmag, the last 2 pictures are after shots, what had happened was when I was mixing it's feed I gave it 1.2EC accidentally, I emptied the bucket right away and redid it to .97EC. But I noticed those curling happening after.


Before - After
Sorry for such a lengthy post. Whatever you guys can help me with i'd appreciate.

Your plants look fine man, in my opinion you are way to hard on yourself. Showing a slight cal mag def on those lower leaves, but that being said the roots/ new growth all looks good. i dont think that high of ph can really mess with a plant unless left that way for several days.

Bigz2277 said:

Your plants look fine man, in my opinion you are way to hard on yourself. Showing a slight cal mag def on those lower leaves, but that being said the roots/ new growth all looks good. i dont think that high of ph can really mess with a plant unless left that way for several days.

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Yes I agree.. you also can't expect the plants to show you improvement pronto.. give them a few days at the minimum to see results sometimes a week. Also plant depending I mean sometimes they been through a lot and need more time to recover. They will though.

Hey man, PH raising like that is a good sign. It means your plants are consuming a ton of food and growing rapidly. This will continue into the stretch (first 14 days of 12/12 or so) but should stabilize after that depending on your flower nute line. This is where having 5 gal buckets becomes challenging tho, I usually don't want my ph above 6 for extended periods, so you will need to be Ph'ing a min of once a day, ideally twice.

Thanks guys...I'm slowly loosening my baby grip on the plants the more I see what they can handle. I aint going to lie it felt a bit odd snapping the growing tip off the plants yesterday. But i'm being a lot more rough with them and not treating them like a porcelain doll. I just wanna have perfect plants haha. And I realize this is irrational, lol.

I'm going to flower them soon before they get too big. The PE won't catch up in time without having the rest at 2ft. I have 3 other buckets and air pumps to support them for more moms. Probably going to get a WoS legends - Afghan Kush Special, DNA Genetics - Cataract Kush, and Barneys Farm - Violator Kush.

What are some things I should prepare my plants for the switch?

Was that you who said I should keep feeding veg nutes for first 2 weeks so they dont become N def. later on when I flower them?

I'll be using ionic bloom with ionic pk booster in week 3-5, right?

firsttimeARE said:

Thanks guys...I'm slowly loosening my baby grip on the plants the more I see what they can handle. I aint going to lie it felt a bit odd snapping the growing tip off the plants yesterday. But i'm being a lot more rough with them and not treating them like a porcelain doll. I just wanna have perfect plants haha. And I realize this is irrational, lol.

I'm going to flower them soon before they get too big. The PE won't catch up in time without having the rest at 2ft. I have 3 other buckets and air pumps to support them for more moms. Probably going to get a WoS legends - Afghan Kush Special, DNA Genetics - Cataract Kush, and Barneys Farm - Violator Kush.

What are some things I should prepare my plants for the switch?

Was that you who said I should keep feeding veg nutes for first 2 weeks so they dont become N def. later on when I flower them?

I'll be using ionic bloom with ionic pk booster in week 3-5, right?

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i would do it sooner rather than later. easier to work with the extra space then to run out. Also most bloom base nutes have N in them. 5 weeks of flower with going straight to sensi bloom a n b at 12/12

They're about a foot now, probably 10 inches on the veneno. I could safely get 5ft plants before it'd be too big for the room. I dont like the idea of plants that tall though i'm only doing overhead lighting with a 600w. This weekend i'm going to tape off the flower area and install a fan in the tent and close it up so no light leaks out. And flower shortly after by next week. The room reeks already. Its fabulous.

Veneno - 5.8/.95ec
FCJ - 5.2/.94ec
Bubba 76 - 4.7/.99ec

Now they dropped..iunno what that means

firsttimeARE said:

Veneno - 5.8/.95ec
FCJ - 5.2/.94ec
Bubba 76 - 4.7/.99ec

Now they dropped..iunno what that means

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Means you added to much or your meter needs calibration. Keep some drops around just to double check anytime you get a reading that your not expecting. Nice to know for sure.

Also with a 600 you don't want plants over 3ft. A 600 will only penetrate about 18-24" well.

Yeah that's the first thing I thought of so I calibrated it with 4.0 and 7.0 solutions and it was on point. It wasn't fresh it was from 5 days ago or so I just left it there to cal every day. But its been fine every day.

Could I say take a gallon of solution out and replace with a gallon of clean water? Or do I run the risk of messing with the ratios?

firsttimeARE said:

What are some things I should prepare my plants for the switch?

Was that you who said I should keep feeding veg nutes for first 2 weeks so they dont become N def. later on when I flower them?

I'll be using ionic bloom with ionic pk booster in week 3-5, right?

Click to expand...

Nothing to prepare really except make sure they are healthy and branched/shaped the way you want them.

And I said to use veg nutes for week 1 of flower. Switch to ionic bloom at week 2. And yeah I would use the boost at half str week 3, full week 4, and maybe an additional week then drop it off. You want highest PK during fastest bud growth, which tends to be weeks 3, 4, 5, and sometimes 6.

And yes u can take out solution and add water, but this will make your ec drop also.

Yeah this is what I want though since im feeding too high which is why the PH is dropping.

I just dont see how it was fine with the veneno, but the other 2 healthier looking and bigger plants can't handle 1EC.

I'm going to check again today before I lower the EC

firsttimeARE said:

Yeah this is what I want though since im feeding too high which is why the PH is dropping.

I just dont see how it was fine with the veneno, but the other 2 healthier looking and bigger plants can't handle 1EC.

I'm going to check again today before I lower the EC

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The ph is not raising from over feed. When you over feed they slow down drinking, growth ect... typically the EC will not move or continue to rise and the Ph stays rock solid. 2 things that cause Ph to rise...well 3 but it's not likely the last. Most likely it was caused by the plants consuming food, typically this causes the Ph to climb, faster growth = faster ph swing. The second possibility is lack of food (solution that has no buffer the ph will swing like crazy, you've already seen this when you started) and the third is a bacteria infection. Really doubting the third, esp with your growth rates, lack of smell ect. More then likely they are just hitting the explosion point of growth and your not used to how fast the Ph climbs. I would keep them around 1, correct the Ph and then wait a few days to see how they respond. but I wouldn't take the Ph climbing to mean you need to remove food. Infact you might need to add food, did the EC drop at all over the period while the Ph was climbing?

The EC is a better indicator of feeding, if it dropped then you know they are eating. If it raises you know they are transpiring more water then eating (or its evaporating).

firsttimeARE said:

Veneno - 5.8/.95ec
FCJ - 5.2/.94ec
Bubba 76 - 4.7/.99ec

Now they dropped..iunno what that means

Click to expand...

Someguy15 said:

Means you added to much or your meter needs calibration. Keep some drops around just to double check anytime you get a reading that your not expecting. Nice to know for sure.

Also with a 600 you don't want plants over 3ft. A 600 will only penetrate about 18-24" well.

Click to expand...

This is what I posted last night and I assumed you meant I added too much as in nutes.

So I wanted to lower their EC if this was causing the PH to spike down.

The PH was only high on tuesdays reading when I didn't check it for 2 days and they had a little bit of water left and nutes. I changed the res that day and the next day 2 plants had a low PH

firsttimeARE said:

This is what I posted last night and I assumed you meant I added too much as in nutes.

So I wanted to lower their EC if this was causing the PH to spike down.

The PH was only high on tuesdays reading when I didn't check it for 2 days and they had a little bit of water left and nutes. I changed the res that day and the next day 2 plants had a low PH

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No I meant it dropped because you added to much ph down. IE: you saw ph of 7, freaked, added a bunch to what measured 5.8, but maybe it wasn't mixed well? Then you come back and measure and its 4.5 or w/e. Sometimes when you measure right after adding it doesn't read properly. Only an assumption. If this didn't happen, then I really have no idea why its so high then so low. Just correct to ~1EC and ph 5.8. As long as swings stop it will not be a problem.

and didn't see this part "So I didn't get to check these monday" that was your problem, bigger plants in smaller buckets require more attention. My monster Blue mistic that yielded 6 ozs was the only plant under the 600w with a 2 gal rez. I had to add water/monitor twice a day to keep EC and Ph in check.

That sounds possible, I was in a rush. And didn't wait a long time, just measured till 5.8 and took it out after a few seconds of a steady number.

If it's like that again today i'll know for sure.

And yeah I knew not checking them was going to be bad since I saw them low on water Sunday and only added about 2 cups worth of tea. I figured itd be like 6.2 tops since before this explosion of growth they were only raising .1 not even a day.

Day 50 from seed:

Veneno - 5.7/.92/16C
Bubba 76 - 6.0/.98/16C
FCJ - 6.1/.94/16C
PE - 5.9/.27/16C

PHed to 5.8


Fruity Chronic Juice - Should I trim off these dying leaves on the bottom like the one in the first picture?


Bubba 76 - This one and the FCJ roots got darker. Roots smell fine, not rotten or anything. I keep feeling for slime and mushy roots but they're firm and not exactly clean feeling like new roots, but still not slimy.


Veneno - Roots are a tiny bit better looking than the others. That leaf curl is weird though.


Pineapple Express - 3 weeks from seed today, upped its feed to .4EC. Looks like it needed it. Stunted somehow again.


Group Shot

FCJ tallest at about a foot. Veneno at about 9 inches. Bubba about 10 inches.

Day 54 from seed: Wow this is taking a long time

Veneno - 5.8/.9EC/16C
FCJ - 6.1/.84EC/16C
B76 - 6.2/.82EC/16C


Fruity Chronic Juice - Side, root, and top shot

Fruity Chronic Juice - Should I trim some of these fan leaves on the top blocking all the light and trim the bottom nodes? Some of these side nodes are taller than the main top node. In the last picture you can see i'm pulling tops of side nodes through so they can get some light.


Bubba 76 - Not a lot of side node growth, last shot shows a short one. That area is just not getting ANY light because of the umbrella above. Should I chop some away?


Veneno - I'm also having to pull the side nodes out from underneath these giant fan leaves. One side growth is already taller than the top, but a lot of side growth is bent sideways because of the heavy fan leaves above.

I think they're doing good finally...I'm seeing not a lot of vertical growth. Veneno is almost 1ft finally. The other are about 14 inches.


Pineapple Express...Looking hungry, was feeding .26EC but I upped to .4 because it started to look like this. Finally spat out a root though. I think the cube was too dry, had the water level a bit too low, i'll get it eventually.


Group shot

Looks real clean. Nice work.