Indoor 16 autos, 5 different strains, bubbleponics, all under 2000 watt HID

[jerry]

nice grow sarg!!!im thinking the brown spots were the result of fluctuating ph at the root zone.im new as well to autos but ive grown outdoors for many years and 9 years indoors.another thing to really watch close in dwc is water temp in your buckets seems from my dwc experience water temps of 67 were best!!!best of karma hopin my autos turn out as well as yours.keep it green!!!!!

a bit on dwc http://www.just4growers.com/stream/...eep-water-culture)-questions-and-answers.aspx

 

[Sergeant Stadanko]

Thanks, Jerry! My res temps have been around 73 with no more issues once the root mass hit the water hard. Once I reworked my ducting alls been well. They are still hammering water (almost a gallon a day) and pounding nutes (almost 300 a day) and PH is on a slow rise. Had all kinds of issues with my RO water so I switched back to tap water (150ppm with 7.0 PH) and they have flourished since then. Takes a lot more PH down then using RO, because of the buffers in the tap to keep the water stabilized, but my PH might rise .5 from 5.8 in three days. I'm thinking what little chlorine I leave in the tap water is combating any root rot because I have not had to add any H2O2 or Hydroguard and those roots are as white and big as Gary Buseys teeth!

Looks like I have a little bit of a iron deficiency now, but they are drinking so much water also and the intensity of the lights, they do have a bit of droop to the leaves but seem to be recovering once I adjusted my fans. Buds are literally doubling in size almost daily. I'll get pics up here later today or tomorrow to show the progress.

Thanks for the green karma!

 

[Sergeant Stadanko]

UPDATE:

After an observation after our last check of the reservoirs, trying to determine while they were drinking so much water, we noticed something. When we topped off the buckets (we had them measured out to be an inch below the net pots) and seen that because of root mass, the levels of water raised up about 2 inches, essentially drowning the plants. We dropped the levels down and guess what.....the are starting to stand back up and are drinking less water! PH is staying more stable, PPMS dropping more steadily (stopping nute burn), which means...less hastle! We found our niche. Some stunting has happened figuring this out. Also noticed what appeared to be bleaching of the leaves but couldnt figure out why. After thinking about it, heres the conclusion we xame up with.....When they were drinking that much water, it caused more of a gleam on the leaves because of extra water being retained in the leaves (like water droplets on the leaves turns that water spot into a mini magnifying glass when hit with light). And since the intensity of the lights being 2000 watt in such a small space, it caused the plant to use up more clorophyll and essentially, giving the top leaves a "bleached look". But, since we cut back on the water, it's reversing itself.

Hopefully anyone who comes across this post will help them diagnosis this in their hydro set up. Took awhile but we got it!

In the meantime, check em out!

 

[Sergeant Stadanko]

Ok.....

Just checked water levels, PH, PPMs, etc...Our big girls drank almost a gallon a day, perked clear the hell up, root balls got bigger, but.....
What water was in there dropped into the low 4 range of PH from 5.8. Kinda had me freaked for a sec. So, I added water back to my mark and checked the PH.....5.9! No PH up needed at all!

PPM wise, our big girls have eaten almost 1000 PPMs a piece.....IN 4 DAYS!!!!! Thought autos were supposed to be sensitive to nutes?

Adding nutes tomorrow to give me a 24 hour break, but 4 days ago we had them around 1200 (minus 150 for tap water) so we are going to shoot for 1500 (including PPMs from tap) and see how that goes.

All in all, I think we found our sweet spot!

All our others are a few weeks behind but no show of preflower yet (some are 2 weeks younger). Somehow, we've seemed to stave off the flowering automatic switch with the issues we've had. (gonna look into experimenting with stress and a longer veg because our heavy hitters are just starting to flower and look like photos).

 

[Sergeant Stadanko]

Who's ready for pics? Some amazing things have happened in the last few days

 

[Sergeant Stadanko]

Short of some stragglers due to late starts, here's are heavy hitters....

 

[jerry]

i myself think imo you are unsure how to find your sweet spot for feeding.long before a plant shows burn it tells you in the rez what your plants are looking for.when your rez gets low where you need to top it up, you read your ppm.if your ppm reading is higher than the ppm of your nutrient mix initially your plants are being over fed(using the h2o) so cut your ppm accordingly.in the reverse case if your rez before adding a top up is lower ppm than the top up ppm your nutrients need to be increased.im only trying to help you here if im wrong i stand corrected!!! great looking grow,rez temps and ppm are the things you battle in hydro if all else in your environment is 100%.good luck on this grow sarge and all that follow!!!!!!!

 

[Sergeant Stadanko]

i myself think imo you are unsure how to find your sweet spot for feeding.long before a plant shows burn it tells you in the rez what your plants are looking for.when your rez gets low where you need to top it up, you read your ppm.if your ppm reading is higher than the ppm of your nutrient mix initially your plants are being over fed(using the h2o) so cut your ppm accordingly.in the reverse case if your rez before adding a top up is lower ppm than the top up ppm your nutrients need to be increased.im only trying to help you here if im wrong i stand corrected!!! great looking grow,rez temps and ppm are the things you battle in hydro if all else in your environment is 100%.good luck on this grow sarge and all that follow!!!!!!!

Thanks, Jerry.

We've measured PPMs both ways. I check all prior to adding water to get an accurate reading and the PPMs are down before we add the water. Then, when we add water, it goes down even more because the soup is now diluted. Finding the sweet spot has been a cumbersome task as of late. Our smaller girls are dialed in, but the big girls are hard to track. We just wait till they are down to about 200 PPMs (tap water starts with 150), we change the res water (since they are already out of the bucket) and bump it up the PPMs again. Looks like by the time we find our "sweet spot", they will be ready for flushing

 

[Sergeant Stadanko]

A three leafed SODK that has mutated into some wild and rare phenomenon!

 

[Sergeant Stadanko]

Just curious if anyone is still following this thread? We got some new pics to throw up here!