@AutoBobje First of all I am not offended by your challenge of my beliefs. It is after all how new ideas become practice. There is so much contradicting and just plain wrong information on the net. Much of what I propose is from personal observation in my 40 plus years of farming, gardening and growing vegatables and cutting flowers on my truck farm along with much research and study. When it comes to the foundation of my current thinking about specifically growing cannabis I am leaning heavily on Harley Smith and his science. I have taken his online Master Growers course. Much of what I recommend here is based in that course. The PH numbers I use are from actually growing and logging many plants at differing PH levels in DWC. I began to see lock-out problems in the plants whenever the The PH fell below 5.6 or above 6.3. in my system. Because the PH in a 5 gallon bucket (which only has about 2.75 gallons of solution when it is full of roots) can change so rapidly for many reasons I suggest the safe numbers at 5.7 to 6.3. The theoretical range has nothing to do with what actually works in the field.This will give peeps a little bit of a buffer zone and more time to keep them from ending up in a bad range. A plant is not going to die from short exposure out of this zone. I have killed an entire grow when a PH pen went bad and my PH ran 4.5 for a week. Keep in mind that I am speaking about what has actually worked for me. Not just research.
I do not grow DWC any longer because it is too hot here (109°F in my back yard yesterday) and I cannot keep the reservoirs cool enough without chilling equipment that I physically cannot fit in my allotted space. But these pictures are from when I did grow DWC.
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@x00m A little light getting into the reservoir is not a problem. What you do not want is so much light that you start to grow algae. Algae in and of itself is not bad or toxic, what it does is rob you of nutrients that can cause an imbalance and lead to lockouts. Once the plant is a couple of weeks old it will shade the net pot preventing light from getting into the reservoir that way. It turns out that the yellow lids on the containers I used let enough light through that I needed to add some Orca Film to restrict it when I used those reservoirs.
I apologize for hijacking your thread but I hope the information may be useful to you. It is important to realize there are many ways and theories about how to grow cannabis. Find what works for you.
