New to DWC, (sort of), your adivce and help, please.

A friend dared me to try to grow without my Aerogardens and your DWC method seemed the easiest and most affordable. I couldn't get an email response from Stealth Hydro, who's system I liked the best and was willing to buy, so I figured I'd see what I could put together after watching their video.

I bought a ten gallon Sterlite storage tub for $5, about 25' of air line for about $4 and a 15+ gallon aquarium air pump and check valve for about $10 from Wal-Mart.

I bought a small fountain water pump from The Home Depot for about $15, a six port adjustable drip irrigation distributor head for about $6 and a 1/2" pipe thread to 1/2" hose barbed plastic adapter for about $1.50.

The auto parts store had grommets to seal off the air line and pump cord for about $7. (You have to buy an assortment).

I had some hose clamps and 1/2" drip irrigation hose to connect the pump to the distribution head but I ended up using some heavy duty tie-wraps I had instead of the hose clamps.

I bought a 12" air stone for about $3 and 6, (3 3/4"), net pots and white plastic covers for another $6 at Discount Hydroponics in Riverside.

I cut six holes in the lid, connected the drip distributor head to the baskets with airlines, filled it up with water and plugged it in. It bubbled and moved the water up to the baskets so I added 1/2 strength Technaflora seedling formula nutrients and six seedlings embedded in Hydroton. They appear to be doing well. The whole project took a couple of hours to build and it cost about $57.50 plus tax.

I've been growing my meds for five years with Aerogardens so I'm not totally unfamiliar with hydroponics but I haven't worked with a larger volume of nutes than 112 ounces. What I need to ask is:
1. How often do I need to check the pH? With my Aerogardens it was a daily ritual due to the small volume of nutes. Of course now I have six plants and only six gallons of nutes so it may well be same e same.
2. I bought a ppm meter but I never had to use one before with my Aerogardens because I'd just toss the nutes after a week. What should my ppms be? I've heard anywhere form 500 to 1,000 is okay.
3. How often do you toss the nutes, weekly, bi-monthly, monthly? One guy told me he only changes his nutes when the plants growing stages change; seedling, vegging and flowering. Another guy said he never changes them he just adds the different nutes for the different plant satages.

This is a whole new adventure for me and I'd appreciate any advice and help you'd be willing to offer.

1---I check my ph twice a day cause I change my frozen water bottle in my res so I am there so I check the ppm and ph and also top water off if needed.
2---Well depends on what brand nutes you are using. But start at 1/4 strength and work your way up based on numbers it tells you. But I always use less and havent had issues.
3---This you are going to get many different answers to. I personal change the res after the first 10 days than 10 days before the end for a flush. Unless I run into some kind of issue.

Hope this helps out

Haiz HSA. Sounds like you did the right thing with building your own. Nice description of the setup btw To try to answer some of your ?s I would definately check PH at least once a day. 5.5-6.2 is the sweet spot with 5.8 being the optimal. With PPMz...first couple of weeks or so from seed would be PH'd water. Once they get bigger they can handle more ofc. Every strain reacts a little differently to nutez so you're basically just trying to find a happy medium that all the ladiez can love at the same time, while still receiving what they NEED in order to thrive. I've been using the Technaflora line as well and I started off 1/4 strength after the first 2 weeks and then went up from there a little bit every week. 500ppmz during Veg seems good and 1000 is a decent # for Flower as well. You just have to account for the hardness/ppm value of your water as well, which is where the PPM meter kinda comes into play. They're pretty cheap and they can tell you ALOT about a plant as it grows. I'm pretty sure you know that cannabis does get pretty large usually lulz...so with that being said those 6 you have arent gonna take long to start crowding The rez changes are pretty much personal preference? Granted, the more changes you do the cleaner and more sterile your rez will be and whatnot BUT with every change comes the routine of emptying the rez, cleaning it out, adding nutez and PH'ing it out and putting it all back in without damaging your girlz I settled on rez changes every 2 weeks. Some do every week and some dont change at all so you're spot on that subject Nywho..hope this helped you out a bit. I'm still learning myself, but when the plants look different EVERY day thats kinda easy to get caught up in lulz. Happy growing!

Looks like ya have everything ya need.You will have to adjust and change the nutes often though but I'm sure ya already know this.I only have one piece of advice,Make a filter box for the air pump,youll be surprized @ how much foreign shit gets in through the air pump.Are ya starting a journal on this?

Thanks guys, and or gals. You've all given me some good ideas to think about. So far so good. I was hoping that with the bigger reservoir it wouldn't be as labor intensive as the Aerogardens were but, duh, now I have 6 plants in six gallons where I only had two plants in 112 ounces before so it's pretty much same e same.

Lesson #1 was sorely learned when I went 24 hours without checking the pH and three of my babies were already turning blonde at the tops. I composted those three and replaced them with stick from the nursery. I pH'd the water and now we're back on speaking terms. I put together a second unit and PPM's are 700 in one and 900 in the other. This morning's pH was 6.1 and I'm taking it back down to 5.8.

I see what you meant about the crap from the Jiffy plugs I started the seeds in. Next time maybe rock wool instead? I'm going to put a nylon over the pump to protect it but I'll have to cut holes in it for the vacuum cups that keep it on the floor.

Thanks again for your advice and guidance.

Those nute numbers are high. I don't go that strong until mid flower. I would run at 450 ish until they are 8" or so than bump it up to 600 - 650 tops. My plants grew a lot better and a lot faster when I knocked my nutes down.

You might want to consider adding a float valve and a feeder bucket to your reservoir. This will help maintain consistent water level and stable ph and ppm numbers. Otherwise you will need to be adding water twice a day here soon.

I like to use Rapid Rooters.

Bend Brewer: Thanks, I try that. HSA