100% organic DWC tent grow

Good Morning Everyone!
Did a rez change yesterday. Organics kind of have me on the fence, nutrient solution seems OK until you stir it and all kinds of black gunk appears. I believe it was on the bottom of the rez. But, my plants seem to be doing just fine. So far I have 3 amazing Grapefruits, 2 decent super Lemon Haze and 2 really good Vanilla Kush.

I want to start LST and tie them over but I remember reading somewhere that you wait until the 5th node? Unfortunately I am on a time table and promised some patients medicine at the start of November, so I'm only going to veg out another week.

I'm going to set up my flowering chamber with my 1000w Quantum ballast and maybe turn it down to 600watt and veg them for a few days under that. Is it possible to dim just any HPS bulb? And what is a good height to start the light at?

I upped my nutes a littls so I'm running:
7.5mL Advanced Nutrients Mother Earth Super Tea Grow
5mL Roots Organics Trinity Catalyst
2mL Humboldt Roots
6mL Hygrozyme

along with my Calc and Mag supplements for my R/O water

PPMs are at 360-370, but I know my TDS meter isn 't picking up all the organics.

1st shot are of my 4 grapefruits (bottom right and middle) and 2 smaller Vanilla Kush on the top.

2nd shot is of my 4 Super Lemon Haze on the left and middle with 2 more Vanilla Kush on the right

The last 2 are of my Grapefruits. These are about 1 Node ahead of the others as far as growth, they are also showing lots of leaves opening at the nodes. I'm very excited for these. I hope the rest will pick up when i put them under the bigger bulb.

The first two pictures are of my better Super Lemon Haze plants. 1 looks very squat and Indica dominant while the other is taller with thinner leaves and looks sativa dominant. I love sativa Dominant bud, but I'm not going to keep her as a mom unless she finishes in 10 weeks or less.

The last picture is of one of my Vanilla Kush. These all seem short and stout and very Indica dominant with dark green, fat leaves.

What happened to these plants? Almost a month and no updates :(

Quote:

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Originally Posted by shibbysurfrider

My TDS meter is all but useless with organics. Barely registers any PPM change.

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that's because TDS stand for Total Dissolved Solids, aka salts, hence the Parts Per Million reading it gives you. these are the dissolved solids that reside in your water, or the salts that deliver the elements your plants need. organics aren't salt based. organics contain carbon-based foods that the mircrobes in your soil eat and in turn give your plants the elements they need.


-shake

Sorry everyone who was following and helping with this thread. Let's just say that I'm a novice grower who jumped in over his head. Organics in a DWC are NOT EASY!!!
Work got super busy so I was away most of the day and my pH was going haywire. I did a little research and Humboldt Roots is supposedly Roots Excellurator with a different label. RE says specifically NOT to use it in an aerated rez... My Roots looked so nasty and the smell was horrible. By week 3 of flower my poor plants were barely growing or showing buds so I made the switch to synthetics.I am now running AN Sensi Bloom, Dutch Master Zone, cal mag + and AN Big Bud powder. My plants exploded and are coming along nicely. I think they re a week or 2 behind in flowering bc of the fail with organics.
I learned a LOT with this organic DWC attempt. My ph would rise 1.0-1.5 a day!!!! I was literally dumping in pH down. My rez would stay all brown/green and i had horrible algae that no organic remedies worked on. My TDS levels were climbing daily, and honestly, i'm surprised my plants grew at all.

I don't want anyone to do lose faith in organics due to my experience. I am not an expert and my plants definitely suffered from lack of attention. I Believe sterile synthetics are the way to go with rez based hydro systems. I have a few clones of lemon kush and cotton candy kush side by side 2 of each in hydro with chem nutes vs. 2 of each in coco with the organic nutes. I want to compare the taste/growth/yield.
Once again, I apologize for not updating. And thanks to everyone who was folloowing. I will post pictures of how far they've come along when the lights go on in a couple hours.

ADIOS!!!!

Hello everyone,
So due to issues stated above I am no longer 100% organic and this thread is kinda bunk. My ladies have been coming along nicely and i feel I am a few weeks away from harvesting my Grapefruit! One is super all and has buds all alon the main stem. Another is shorter with about 7 shoots at the bottom with 4-7'' long buds on each along with a good looking main cola. I have one giant grapefruit that looks behind in terms of budding. and one runt thats at abt the same stage as the giant.

I am 7.5 weeks into a (supposedly) 8 week strain but bc I stressed the crap out of them by trying to use organics in DWC and panic LST 4 weeks into flower because the growth exploded and I ran out of head room. The Grapefruit are holding up remarkebly well. 2 are really rewarding me and the other 2 are doing OK. I am going to give them nutes for another week and a half (8 weeks total of nutes, 1 week flush possibly longer). I DO NOT want to harvest prematurely and waste all of my efforst.

And here are the pictures! How much to you think I will yield off the big cola? I am just curious. My original goal was an oz per plant, but I am a noob and made a TON of mistakes. I think the stout plant with lots of bottom colas will yield pretty well. They smell amazing when touched! Kind of like strawberry soda mixed with melted cherry ring pop. If you get what i'm saying...

that is a 15'' ruler for scale. I found I can get dry ice cheap and had styrofoam coolers laying around that keep a couple pounds frozen during lights on, slowly bathing my plants in co2. The bud development has really taken off. They are swelling very fast. I am crossing my fingers for an OZ a plant with grapefruit. definitely the best looking and smelling (so far) strain I got going. All trichs appear clear still, but my hads are not steady and my 60-100x scope makes it VERY hard to get a good look (think earthquake).

My Vanilla Kush started producing huge calyxes and is throwing out white hairs. It only started about 6 weeks into flower about a week after i switched to Sensi Bloom and ditched the organics. I hope I am not 6 weeks behind in flowering.... My super lemon haze have a lot of white hairs but bud formation is minimal. They smell like sugar flavored pinesol when touched. I hope they stay lemony!

I dont know if its just me.... but your plants look like they have a LONG ways to go. they calyxes are not swollen at all...id let those girls go atleast another 4 or 5 weeks.

How do you like DWC? my first experience with DWC didnt go to well but i didnt give up on hydro i just switched systems and now i grow with Ebb-n-Flow table and find it MUCH ezer.

hey! thanks for stopping by. yes... they do look like they have a long way to go...

As for the DWC, I love it with my Advanced Nutrients Sensi Bloom, CalMag+, AN Big Bud and Dutch Master Zone. My poor plants are behind because I decided to use organic nutrients. Even though the labels say "safe for hydroponics'', my pH went crazy, root gunk everywhere and overall nastiness. Once I switched to synthetics my growth took off, pH stays normal and all my root zone problems have gone.

Each of those totes holds about 10 gallons of water. It is a BITCH to get the water out (i use a milk jug with the top cut off and bucket it out). Wish I would have had the ingenuity to build a rack system with drains.

I am currently doing a synthetic nutrient DWC grow side by side with a 100% coco grow with clones I obtained at a dispensary. I have 2 clones of each strain in DWC and in Coco. My DWC plants are about a third bigger than the coco plants and look amazing! I can't wait to compare yield and smokes!

when you say your pH was out of wack while using organics are you sure it was the nutes? and not something else...like dirty hydrotron or rockwool? iv noticed that if i use a new bag of hydrotron and i dont soak/rinse/soak/rinse a shit load of times my pH is crazy unstable for the first month or so of the grow (Same can be said with Rockwool)

The thing i didnt rly like about DWC was i could never leave for a few days of vacation. my pH wasnt stable enough where i trusted it to leave for a few days. with ebb-n-flow i fell VRY comfortable leaving the house for a few days.

P.S. for the record i am NOT a fan of organics ether! i just think its better to think with a open mind and not write off anything based on 1 try

Ok well i'm not 100% sure it was the nutes.... BUT my pH problems went away as soon as I switched to sterile sunthetics. I use Dutch Master Zone and couldnt be happier.

My pH rarely drifts more than .2 in a day. Usually it doesnt change at all.

I feel you on the vacation thing. I have to turn on an A/C when my light kicks on and since it's a digital A/C so a normal timer doesn't work and I cant put it on it's own timer for more than 1 day at a time. Big pain.

And as to organics, I'm using my full line up on some plants in smart pots with coco. I want to see the difference in taste, yield, growth etc. I'm running 4 cotton candy Kush and 4 lemon kush with 2 of each in DWC with synthetics and 2 of each in coco running the organics.

I think my pH problem was due to Humboldt roots. It looks and smells exactly like H&G Roots Excellerator which clearly states on the bottle to NOT use in an aerated hydroponic system and only drain to waste. I mean even the bottles look exactly alike just with different labels. When i refer to my pH problem it was raising 1.5 points a day!!! I was dumping pH down capfuls at a time. I went through a whole bottle of Earth Juice pH down in less than a month. And my rez aren't big at all...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by shibbysurfrider

I feel you on the vacation thing. I have to turn on an A/C when my light kicks on and since it's a digital A/C so a normal timer doesn't work and I cant put it on it's own timer for more than 1 day at a time. Big pain.

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I dont know how tight you are for cash but one thing i think ALOT of people over-look is climate controls. you can get a simple Tempstat Heating/Cooling controller that will monitor the temperature and if it rises or falls 3 degrees beyond the setpoint, the unit will turn on heating or cooling equipment. (it works just like the thermostat in your house)

....now if only they had a relatively cheap pH control that would add pH up or pH down depending on what the pH is at.

Are you still using Earth juice natural pH? I found MUCH better results with good ol General Hydroponics pH control products. like you said before with earth juice i was pouring CAP-FULLS of pH down in to get the pH right, with GH pH down i only needed a TSP. worth (and thats for big pH swings)

Are you using anything like HYGROZYME or Hydroguard in your systems to keep everything clean and fight off root rot or any other problems that may occur?

As far as the thermostat. My A/C is digital, so a simple timer that just turns power on or off to the unit doesn't really work for me. Since the unit sits OUTside my tent, the thermostat on the unit doesnt really help bc it can be 75F in my room, but 90F in my tent!!! My Yield Master II reflector's glass heats up a lot. I have to have a flan blowing directly on it. The other sides of the reflector don't even get warm. I have a 765cfm 8'' inline sucking air through a carbon filter and the reflector. With my A/C running my tent is always under 80 at the plant tops (because of noobness I let the stretch to about a foot or less from my light!

I'm thinking about co2 now b/c I wouldnt have to run the a/c for 12 hours everyday. It will make it cheaper power bill wise, take advantage of the high temps and give me better growth rates. I've been using dry ice lately and have seen amazing results. My veg plants under T5's are growing an inch a day. I have to LST atleast twice a week, very excited for those...

I did buy a bottle of hygrozyme. IMO once you have severe root problems, there's not much in the way of organics that can save you. But once again, I think my problem lies with the Humboldt Roots. I dont think it's made for DWC. I still have the Earth Juice Natural pH up. My bottle is almost full still. I do use it infrequently when I accidently add too much GH pH down. Seems to work fine for me. When it runs out I'm going to switch to liquid pH though. Mixes a lot faster and is easier to measure.

since I use synthetics in my DWC now, I use Dutch Master Zone. It does the trick, one of my Cotton Candy Kush started showing a little root/rot bc the rez temps are mid-upper 70s and I added DM Zone at recommended strength for problems and it cleared up within 2 days. I now use DM Zone for every rez change. No problems since.

I really like DM b/c their products are reasonably priced (half of AN) and they tell you NOT to use additives with their products. I like not having to buy 20+ additives to have the 'perfect' harvest. My next nute purchase will be the DM Gold line when my Sensi Grow + Bloom runout. The DM nutes are literally HALF the price of Advanced Nutrients. And the gold line specifically states not to use bloom boosters bc their product is so strong. We will see, hopefully I'll save some money.

Here are my grapefruit. Unfortunately I had to chop the Super Lemon Haze and Vanilla Kush because i was out of room. 6 plants in a 14 gallon tote does not work. I saved all the little buds and i'm going to make edibles. I also saved a mom of SLH and VK and put them in coco for later cloning. Everything looks pretty yellow due to the HPS, but the buds on the left two are swelling like crazy while the other two are still throwing lots of hairs. It's going to be a while til these come down. I just hope they don't take up the whole tent...
1st picture: my newly arranged flower tent

2nd picture: the stout one with tons of side shoots. I'm pretty sure this is going to be my Mommy if the buds keep swelling like they are. The plant behind it is nice too. entire stem covered in buds for almost 2ft!

3rd picture: all of the grapefruits. 2 on right are taking a while. the one in the back is a giant beast that I want to top, but am afraid of hermies...