Over watering with a circulating drip system?

[flyinhighaj]

Is it possible to over water and water log a plant in a 5 gallon circulating drip system? It's my third grow in this system and my 1st problem with (all symptoms pointing to) a over watering / water logged dropping leaves.
I previously ran the system 24/7 and had no problems. The current plant was transplanted, looked good for awhile, then developed dropping leaves on 24/7. For the past week, watering it twice a day for 30 minutes and sill dropping.
Any other possible problems?

flyinhighaj Reviewed by flyinhighaj on 03-12-2011. Over watering with a circulating drip system? Is it possible to over water and water log a plant in a 5 gallon circulating drip system? It's my third grow in this system and my 1st problem with (all symptoms pointing to) a over watering / water logged dropping leaves. I previously ran the system 24/7 and had no problems. The current plant was transplanted, looked good for awhile, then developed dropping leaves on 24/7. For the past week, watering it twice a day for 30 minutes and sill dropping. Any other possible problems? Rating: 5

[ZZTops]

The roots are in rockwool & hydrotron. They are not through the top bucket & into the reservoir at this point. The temp in the res & ph is good and balanced at 6.0. It is a recirculating drip system.

This might sound odd...

I'm thinking the Hydroton needs to be hit 15mins every 3 hours...

So less water more often is my advice...

[flyinhighaj]

The temp in the Rez is between 68-71 degrees F. I have airstones in the Rez for 02. The plant is MK. I just added Hygrozyme to the formula.

[tinytoon]

/agree ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

in therory they will get the same amount of water but spread out over a period of time.

[tinytoon]

You say temp is good but what is it?? also you do have air in your rez yes??

[flyinhighaj]

The roots are in rockwool & hydrotron. They are not through the top bucket & into the reservoir at this point. The temp in the res & ph is good and balanced at 6.0. It is a recirculating drip system.

[Max Blast]

I have to agree with ZZ on this one. I ran a similar setup to yours starting with the small rockwool cubes for clone and then put it in a 2" or 3" netpot with more rockwool shredded and put in the netpot to fill out the remaining space. I assume you are doing the same but using the hydrotron for fill.

I used a single line drip of just one 1/8" open end tube at the top of the small rockwool cube.(30gph pump) Believe it or not I had the best results watering just 1 minute twice a day.(lights on) The rockwool holds the water and also draws in air as the water passes through. As the roots grow down from the netpot the water drips from the netpot down the roots keeping them moist but not drenched or soaking wet. The hydrotron acts differently from rockwool/pearlite in that it does not hold the water as well and sometimes demands more watering as a result. If you have any rockwool/pearlite involved you will want to use less watering time and only a few times a day (3 or 4 max). Reduce the watering time and frequency to a maximum of 3 to 5 minutes 2 to 3 times a day or maybe even less. The plant will tell you if you need more in plenty of time to change the schedule. Keep in mind that the plant wants less watering in veg than it does in flowering in part because it is usually a bigger plant when in the flowering phase. Some say to only water when the lights are on to help keep the humidity down. The lights help burn off some of the moisture.

BTW keep your airstone setup as is.

[tinytoon]

I used to do the RW thing but thanks to Daddy and a few others it is a waste of cash. When roots come out of the rapid rooter, in to the tron it goes. I just started putting mine into 16oz tumbler cups and doing a small E&F to get the roots growing good in the tron then I put them into their final home.

[Daddynobucks]

But why use rockwool cubes? Why not just put rooter plugs, or splayed roots directly into hydroton 1/2" pellets?
I don't get it:wtf:

Daddy

[keylime]

How big are the plants? The reason I'm saying this I had problems when I first transplanted "just rooted" clones in rockwool cubes into hydroton. I had a lot of problems and very slow growth until AFTER they come out of the rockwool, then they grow like lightning. You didn't say how big your rockwool cubes are.... My fix at the time was to remove much of the rockwool so that they would have less problems of penetrating thru it, since the rockwool was always wet.

keylime