To irrigate!...Or not to irrigate!....That IS the question....

Hi there! :jointsmile:

Got into an intellectual fight with my bro the other day over when it is time to stop watering the rockwool cube in the DWC bucket. I was under the impression that you water the cube, avoiding the stem and thus root rot and other nasty thing, until the roots pop out the netpot....(rockwool is in net pot, surrounded by hydroton). He countered with the fact that if i wanted the roots to grow,...which I am trying to accomplish so I can get the roots to the bottom of the bucket for bubbleation (:rastasmoke: yea, i made that one up), then i should stop watering the babes, which are about, meh, 5 days old. This seems right to me, since roots stretch for water...but i thought i had read differently on here somewhere. Any help is greatly appreciated!!!!!

:jointsmile::rasta::rastasmoke::hippy:

Also, do I need to keep watering the rockwool once the roots reach the resevoir? If so, how much root mass need to be in the resevoir before i stop watering?

This was my problem. I couldn't get the roots to grow until I lowered the water level so the roots could look for water. Don't water the cube or the rocks, I don't believe it would be beneficial because it won't need to search for the water it needs when it's in the cube already. Drop the reservoir level and let 'em crawl. Hope this helped and correct me if I'm wrong. Good luck on your grow

Quote:

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Originally Posted by paperchaser825

Hi there! :jointsmile:

Got into an intellectual fight with my bro the other day over when it is time to stop watering the rockwool cube in the DWC bucket. I was under the impression that you water the cube, avoiding the stem and thus root rot and other nasty thing, until the roots pop out the netpot....(rockwool is in net pot, surrounded by hydroton). He countered with the fact that if i wanted the roots to grow,...which I am trying to accomplish so I can get the roots to the bottom of the bucket for bubbleation (:rastasmoke: yea, i made that one up), then i should stop watering the babes, which are about, meh, 5 days old. This seems right to me, since roots stretch for water...but i thought i had read differently on here somewhere. Any help is greatly appreciated!!!!!

:jointsmile::rasta::rastasmoke::hippy:

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hey dude, it was you that was right, you should continue to top-feed until
you see roots protruding from the bottom of your pots, then stop.
when you top-feed, the liquid carries oxygen down through the rockwool and
hydroton and across the roots which helps with growth and the roots will
naturally reach down for the res.

btw, your res isn't supposed to be touching your pots so if it is, lower it.


put some pics up so we can see, we like pictures man, we need pics, lol

Indeed...at the moment i am without a digital camera....the reason my res is at the bottom of the net pot was because i saw in the faq on this site that the water should be "The nutrient solution should be kept at a level of 1" above the bottom of the net basket when a new plant/clone has been introduced to the bubbler."

:hippy:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by paperchaser825

Indeed...at the moment i am without a digital camera....the reason my res is at the bottom of the net pot was because i saw in the faq on this site that the water should be "The nutrient solution should be kept at a level of 1" above the bottom of the net basket when a new plant/clone has been introduced to the bubbler."

:hippy:

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i hope you didn't take me too seriously, i was kiddin' around about the pics, lol

as to the level of your res, i was only guessing, and, with top-feeding, you don't
need the res so high
actually, top-feeding is better than just over-filling your res because your
roots will get more oxy from top-feeding than from an over-full res.

you may want to consider a cheap camera some time soon also because, if
you run into problems, it's much easier to diagnose when we can see what
the problem looks like


either way, good luck, if i can help, i will