First Grow! Indoor RDWC Zkittlez

Looking real good. Nice setup.
What type of insulation are you using on your buckets? Looks like a peel and stick possibly?
Are you using any bennies or sterilizing products in your nutrient solution?
Smart move with the RO system. When I first dabbled in hydro with a DIY cloner using tap water, the alkalinity of my water was so high I was using a ton of PH down to compensate. The RO filter cured that. I was also battling algae even though I thought my cloner was light tight. I added a UV filter to the RO filter and no more algae or whatever it was growing in the cloner. I take comfort knowing my source water is sterile and free of any algae of pathogens.
 
Yeah the insulation is just some reflective stuff over some foam that sticks on. I actually just got some sheets of mylar to lay over the top and added some more hydroton because I had a teensy light leak. All good there now.

I use hydroguard, actually just started trying to track what I put into the system, should have done that from the start. Filling up with the RO system was nice, I feel better not starting from ~260 PPM, and I actually didn't need to add any PH down at all this time around. I may need to use PH UP on the next change, since I still had a little bit of the old stuff left in the system.

UV filter isn't a bad idea. I may add one inline before it hits the top off res.
 

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Day 16

I changed water yesterday with the new BRS RO filter. Also decided to switch to the lucas formula going forward instead of using the gh trio formula as it might be what was burning the 2nd plant, but I'm not really sure.

The first one seems to be doing well, the other is growing slower and has some burnt tips and discoloration.

Current water change method is:
Drain as much as I need for the top off res to empty out, then shut off the valve from the top off res.
Turn on valve from RO system and fill up top off res.
Add nutes. calmag then micro then bloom then hydroguard then PH if necessary diluted in a bit of water.
Drain old stuff about 98% of the way and pump new stuff in.
Fill top off res with however much I think they'll use for the week and repeat nutes.

I'm starting to ramp up the nutrients this week so I added a bit more micro/bloom to the rdwc system to bring it up to 360ppm, then I bumped up the top off res to 530ppm to slowly steer it up. We'll see how it goes I guess!
 

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Day 18

Just wanted to show off the crazy root growth in one day, and a couple snaps of the bigger one on the left.
 

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Day 20

#1 is looking great and showing lots of growth every day.
#2 is... growing, but not as fast, and the lighter patches have not gone away, in addition to some brown tips.

Does anyone know what this might be? Burn or deficiency? PH has been consistently in the 5.9-6.1 range, but I'm going to try keeping it a
bit lower.
 

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Day 25

Both plants are still growing, which is a plus I suppose. Plant #2 still not looking great, although I'm not sure how long it would take for a nutrient issue to correct itself, if that is indeed what it is. I'm pretty much at a loss for figuring out what the problem is there.

I fimmed #1 on Friday and for the hell of it decided to fim #2 today. If it kills it, it kills it.
 

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I re-calibrated my PH sensor again and the PH went from 5.7 to 5.5... I wonder if that was the problem. I haven't recalibrated it in about a week and a half.
 
Day 25

Both plants are still growing, which is a plus I suppose. Plant #2 still not looking great, although I'm not sure how long it would take for a nutrient issue to correct itself, if that is indeed what it is. I'm pretty much at a loss for figuring out what the problem is there.

I fimmed #1 on Friday and for the hell of it decided to fim #2 today. If it kills it, it kills it.
Those white strikes could be a pest look under the leaves with a loupe and good light. Do you have any flyers?

The one on the right looks like she has a nitrogen claw. I'd drop that PPM to about 200-250 ish and give her a break. I'd check my PPM daily to see if it was dropping. She wouldn't get more as long as the PPMs stayed the same or rose. At the point the PPM begin to drop I'd up it a little after 5-7 days of her continuing to drop the PPM.

I wouldn't worry about a pH of 5.5 much but I'd keep an eye on it.

I've grown in NFT rails not rDWC so let's see what @xtsho has to say.
 
Those white strikes could be a pest look under the leaves with a loupe and good light. Do you have any flyers?

The one on the right looks like she has a nitrogen claw. I'd drop that PPM to about 200-250 ish and give her a break. I'd check my PPM daily to see if it was dropping. She wouldn't get more as long as the PPMs stayed the same or rose. At the point the PPM begin to drop I'd up it a little after 5-7 days of her continuing to drop the PPM.

I wouldn't worry about a pH of 5.5 much but I'd keep an eye on it.

I've grown in NFT rails not rDWC so let's see what @xtsho has to say.

I don't have a loupe yet, just ordered one so I should be able to check tomorrow. Haven't seen any pests though by eye. The spots arent really white but yellow, and seem to have developed small holes in spots.

The discoloration started pretty early on in the seedling stage, with these additional symptoms getting worse later. I raised the ppm hoping that would help because I was running it pretty low. The ppm have started going down now too, but can't tell which plant is eating.
 
Haven't updated in a while..
Just flipped the lights to 12/12 on Monday, so here we are just at the beginning of flower.

Things were getting pretty bushy and crowded so I did another big defol and took off the lower branches that weren't getting light. Did my best to make way for as many of them as I could but some just didn't want to grow up.
 

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Haven't updated in a while..
Just flipped the lights to 12/12 on Monday, so here we are just at the beginning of flower.

Things were getting pretty bushy and crowded so I did another big defol and took off the lower branches that weren't getting light. Did my best to make way for as many of them as I could but some just didn't want to grow up.

Looking good :hump:
 
Day 11F

Did another big defol yesterday. Also a snap of my home assistant monitoring.
 

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Day 17F

Alright seriously can lefty stop with the stretching already?
 

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Day 21F

Hope this stretch ends soon...
 

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Day 22F

Did another big defoliation. Worried about humidity and getting bud rot or WPM, plus some of the lower stuff wasn't getting light at all and was starting to get wilty anyways.

Hoping I didn't go too far!
 

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Day 22F

Did another big defoliation. Worried about humidity and getting bud rot or WPM, plus some of the lower stuff wasn't getting light at all and was starting to get wilty anyways.

Hoping I didn't go too far!
They’re looking great! It’s a big haircut but plants in hydro are pretty tough that way. You’re 3 plus weeks in, still getting stretch? LEDs are no joke for light burn. It took me a few crops to realize that. 300 watt light right, you wide open? They look fine but if they get less than a foot it might be trouble. Watch out for burnt looking fans. SF used to sell their lights at a slightly lower wattage. My SF2000 had a meanwell elg240 driver on it but it was set to 198 watts at the plug max. Your light might be a bit under the max wattage the driver will give too but I‘m not familiar with that model.
 
They’re looking great! It’s a big haircut but plants in hydro are pretty tough that way. You’re 3 plus weeks in, still getting stretch? LEDs are no joke for light burn. It took me a few crops to realize that. 300 watt light right, you wide open? They look fine but if they get less than a foot it might be trouble. Watch out for burnt looking fans. SF used to sell their lights at a slightly lower wattage. My SF2000 had a meanwell elg240 driver on it but it was set to 198 watts at the plug max. Your light might be a bit under the max wattage the driver will give too but I‘m not familiar with that model.

I think the stretch finally stopped on lefty. Righty is a bit behind on stretch, but I think they should be within reasonable range. I can direct mount the light and raise it more if I need to.

There are actually 2 lights in there, both SE3000's rated at 300W, but from what I've seen they put out more like 280W at 100%. I started with one but realized it wouldn't cut it for flower so I added a second... I only have them running at about 60-65%, but yeah I have been watching for burn from the lights.
 

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