Growing in water

I'm considering growing hyrdroponically using only water as a medium.
I'm wondering if anyone else is familiar with this technique and can point out any common problems or testaments to the method.

One thing I'm curious about is how much do I need to aerate the water?
better said I guess would be is it possible to over-areate when using water as a medium?

 

I should clarify that I'm referring to the method where plants are grown in a tank of recirculating nutrient solution with roots constantly submerged. Recirculation of the solution and use of fish pumps with porous stone aerators would provide oxygen.

I'm not referring to a flow table of any kind.

 

The more the better NickelBag. Get a nice big airpump and turn it down if you have to.

 

What you are talking about is called Deep Water Culture (DWC) or the Bubbler method.
I consider it to be the easiest, cheapest hydro technic out there.
Here's a nice tutorial on it: http://www.cannabisculture.com/forums/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=hydro&Number=692048&fpart=&PHPSESSID=

Make sure you use black buckets, the larger the better. The black color will stop your nuts from getting light in the root area and get algea.

Most think you need a shitload of bubbles to keep the plant healthy but from my own experiences, this does not matter very much. So long as you keep the nuts oxygenated, all should be fine.
Try it yourself, a large uutput aqaurium pump isn't that expensive so you can try it at full blast and gradually slow it down to see if there are any effects. I think you'll soon find out that the pump can be set at the minimum setting without any noticeable effects on the plant.

 

Sweet, thanks Pepe

 

I assume you've grown in dirt before, no?
The bubbler is just about the best choise to start hydro style.
The draw back of bubblers is that you have to check and adjust the levels and temps of every single bubbler individually but there are ways around that too. Once you have familliarized yourself with a couple of buckets, you can combine them by connecting them all to a single central "controller" bucket. I haven't done this but I have only read about this. I recall that the system used only one bubble wand in the controller bucket while the others with the plants in them didn't have any bubbles to them but they all have to be recirculating constantly into the controller.

I'll find a link to this tutorial if that interests you, however, I think you should try a few buckets first before getting the full recirculating system IMHO.

 

Thanks Pepe, but that won't be needed.

I'm planning to do a DWC SOG, each plant in a 2L bottle with the top cut off (1.5L) all placed in one bubbling bucket.

Perhaps you can answer a Q though?
Is the expanded clay required, or is it only for supporting the plant?
I was considering using a styrofoam cover with holes cut out for the plants to grow through and reuse the cutout plugs with a notch to support the plants in the holes/bottles.

 

That might work, you could also use pool noodles sliced up.
This would be holding the plant in a manner similar to a aero set-up.
You can't go wrong with SOG, the best producer IMHO.
The only draw back is the large plant count, can be bad depending on legislations in your area.

 

I've seen bubbling buckets before where all the bucket systems were serialized, as you describe.
At the time, I just understood it as 'hydroponic' and is what I assumed hydroponics always was for many years
They had a room full of buckets all connected with tubes from one to the next, and finally to a reservoir which was connected to a pump and then to the first bucket.
Solution was pumped from the reservior into the first bucket, which would overflow into the second bucket, and so on, until the last bucket overflowed back into the reservoir.

There were no bubble wands at all in their setup.
Rethinking, I beleive the pump fed the reservoir, not the first bucket.
In any case, my understanding was that the water flow alone provided enough oxygen.

That setup is what gave me the idea for my plans.

 

does anyone here have a lot of experence doing the dwc method i m thinking about seting up a bucket and trying one plant this way it seems somewhat better than soil in ways and almost a type of boost for the indoor grower as aposed to just plain soil that could be messy but i guess the water could to but i used to have a few fish tanks in my day so i have most of the stuff just chillin around the house and the only thing i m worried about is the nut.'s and ph level how often should i test as well as how much the tests alone cost please help VERY INTRISTED

 

Wrong. E+F is the simplest method for hydro.

SOG in DWC is not the best choice imho. E&F trays, or if you understand the concepts well, NFT tubes are your best bets for SOG.

DWC and NFT buckets are more suited for growing trees. With E&F you can get lots of tiny plants close together, same with NFT tubes. Only, NFT will grow faster due to the mass aeration of the nute solution and constant feeding. You'd better have a backup water pump and back up air pump for this. Something goes wrong you need to fix it, right away. Leaves no room for mistake.

So E&F is the simplest, requiring the least amount of maintenance and biggest window for fuck up response.

NFT will get you *very* aggressive growth rates but you need to pay lots of attention to detail.

IDK though sounds like you already got your dwc plan try it out see how you like it but always think about experimenting to progress.

 

Why do you say DWC is more suited for big plants?

 

Not just DWC, the buckets I am talking about.



Because the buckets are circular, it's awkward to set up a good SOG in them. To each his own, it's def. possible, but you want to pack as many as you can close together, so square E&F tables NFT tubes or DWC even in square rubbermaid containers are more suited for SOG.

 

Why couldn't I use square containers for DWC?
Afterall, that's what I plan to do.
4 to 6 plants per 2.5Gal container.

Just because most people prefer the 5Gal black buckets, doesn't mean they are essential. The main reason they are preferred is because of their size, their availability, and they are lightproof.

With bubble buckets, I can spread them out, stack them up, etc. Each bucket is also isolated form the other buckets, meaning that if some clones get sick, it won't spread to the other clones as easily.

You can't do any of that with E&F or NFT. Well you can, but it's much less convenient.

DWC requires much less mechanical components in the setup. Mechanical stuff = broken stuff.
If I'm gonna go high-tech, I will try aeroponics.

 

You said bucket, so I told you the scoop on the buckets.

Someone's a little ripped lol

 

Well, that was my plan, based on my own ideas.
The bottles aren't needed though.

I just meant the bubble bucket, whatever container it would be.
I was actually planning to use a kitty litter tray with the 2L bottles.
More or less a modified E&F, where the water simply doesn't drain. It just recirculates and is oxygenated with bubbles.

I won't be doing that though. I don't think it would work, for all kinds of reasons, and proper DWC is much simpler.

The only thing I will need to buy now to keep growing is nutes and PH balance. The medium that is used is hydroton and is resuable indefinitely. Never has to be replaced, just rinse the salts off of it before a new grow. It's also PH neutral.

With DWC, I cut a clone, put it in the bubble bucket with plain water and let it grow. Pretty easy huh? Nothing special has to be done. No rooting medium or anything. Just give it the right lighting to encourage root growth, then switch them to veg after 7 to 10 days and start giving them food. No transplanting or fiddling with the plants whatsoever.

 

I don't entirely agree. For someone thinking about entiring the hydro realm, DWC is just about as easy as it gets. You get a bucket, you get a 10$ air pump and a 5 airstone and you grow.

While I mainly use E&F SOG style in hydroton, I don't think it is the simplest way for a first hydro grow, that requires a table for the medium, a reservoir for the nutes, a water pump, a timer for the pump, an air pump and an airstone.

While you could get away with no PPM or EC meter in a bubbler, you can hardly do without it if you are going to have any significant reservoir sizes as you would with E&F.

With a bubbler, you mix your nutes, you throw in an air stone and a cutting and you grow your shit, doesn't get any more complicated than that. You don't really need a PPM meter if you change your nutes every wek or so. No guessing E&F frequency, no setting up pumps and plumbing, no big worries about res temps, no needs for a medium and medium containers as the nutes are the medium with DWC.

That I agree with. I don't see a DWC SOG grow to be easy to set up or very efficient. True SOG is really about tiny plants all packed up in a small space while DWC is really for larger plants given they use such large containers.

I don't see his mix of E&F containers bathing in a DWC being very suscessful, however I am sure you will agree that we've all had to experiment a few ways before ending up on our current grow technique.

And Nickelbag, I agree with 2csarewild that if you want to grow SOG, you will really prefer an E&F table. That's what I do, a 4x4 table growing 80-90 plants under a 1K'er HPS and it's really the best way in my opinion. I can't vouch for NTF, I took E&F because it is low maintenance and you can let your grow be for a while once you have everything dialed in.

I also like DWC for my mums and for the cuttings.

 

Huh!
You might want to get your clone rootbound before setting it in your bucket. I don't know, I am no expert at many different ways, my way works for me, you might have to fiddle around before finding what works for you.
Iam not going to tell you what works and what doesn't, I am only going to tell you what works for me.

I have a mum in a DWC bucket, I use a net pot with hydroton in it to hold the plant but the roots bathe in the nutes below the net pot. Here's basically how I grow my mums: http://www.cannabisculture.com/forums/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=hydro&Number=692048&fpart=&PHPSESSID=
This is basically what I do but I disagree with a few points in the article.

From that mum, I take cuttings and I put tem in a home made DWC cloner, in there, the clones are without medium, they bathe directly in the RO water below. Once they have rooted, I VERY SLOWLY, VERY SLIGHTLY start to add nutes to the water. At this point, I keep my nutes at no more than 3-400 PPM and I gradually increase the dope.

Once the babies have well rooted and grown to about 5-6 inch tall, I transfer them to a 5 inch round net pot filled with hydroton.
I get 80 plants on a 4x4 table (9x9 plants with one less space for the plumbing). That table gets flooded for 25-30 minutes 3 times a day and twice at night. As soon as I transfer to the table, they get the 12/12 HPS, there is virtually no vegging period in my set-up. Unless you count the clone being fed nutes for a couple of weeks as a vegging period.
I don't train my plants other than offer some support when the buds get too heavy and I don't trim fan leaves .... what's the sense in getting as much light as possible with big ass bulbs and than go trim the leaves which are supposed to be receptors for that light?
The bitches grow to about 24-30 inch tall, mainly one bud on each plant, bud on a stick is what I call it!

And BAM! After two of your g-friend's tampons, you get 2 pounds of shit!

That is true SOG, there is also perpetual SOG, which I don't really like, more maintenance involved. But perp SOG is more suited for a smaller grow, a personnal stach, if you want a constant supply of weed.

 

And BTW Nickelbag, don't listen too much to us, what you want might work. No matter what you grow and how you grow it, there is always somebody who is going to tell you that it ain't going to work or it would work better some other way.
If you listen to us all, you gonna go crazy dewd!

 

Yea exactly that's why I don't try to push my own ideas too too hard. Pretty sound advice though.