Changing water or not

Grow Mediums Hydroponics
1

Hello, I like to ask the community for help with a decision I have to make about changing the water in my dwc buckets. I have 3 buckets that I’m using for plants. I am growing 6 in total 3 in soil, and 3 in buckets one 5 gal, 2, 3 gallons. I started the flowering cycle 05/05/2023. I started using dwc because of a fungus nat infection in one of my pots. No matter what I tried it would not go away. That’s when I decided to go ahead and try dwc. The plant with the problem was not growing very well, but she was still in hanging in there. It was about 4 weeks old at the time of the transplant from soil to the expanded Clay Pebbles and water until the day I changed the water! She started to droop. Then the leaves started to turn yellow and curl up and drop off. I did some research and found out that I wasn’t checking my waters ph correctly, I didn’t calibrate my meter correctly among other things. Well to get to the point, I am afraid to do a complete water change, because of what happened before. All of the plants are doing very well right now. I’ll attach photos. I have read about people that did not

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change their dwc water the hole grow, only topping off when needed. Any andall advice welcome.

The strain is White Label seed company Purple Bud.

2 Likes
2

PH and temps of the nutrient mix in the buckets will need to be checked daily or every other day. The larger plant and roots look great, the smaller plant not so well. She might recover but will take some veg time before flipping the light to start the flower cycle. What nutrients are you using? Feed at 800-1000 PPMS or an EC of 1.6-2.0 and PH at 5.8 :love_you_gesture:

3 Likes
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Thanks for your quick response. I should have stated that the photos at the bottom are the same plant at after the first complete water change and the top 2 are the same plant now, I haven’t changed the water once since the first time.

4

I am using General hydroponics, flora grow, micro, and flora bloon. The ppm have been averaging around, the low 200’s to the mid 300’s. I check the ec values but I don’t know how to calculate that, but the numbers I get are usually range from the mid 500’s to upper 600’s, and the ph’s around 4.3-/5.7. I check them everyday. She is starting to flower.

5

I grow RDWC, some thoughts:

  1. That seems low (PPMs), but I use EC nowadays, and keep my EC~=1.7-2.1.
  2. pH seems too low. I keep mine at 5.9-6.1.
  3. I have a chiller set at 66F, tent gets into the upper 80s.
  4. I change water every few weeks, have auto-top-off (so nutes get diluted over time) and add nute concentrate periodically to keep EC up.
6

Yeah ppm seem low and for hydroponics you want to be 5.8ph anything below 5.5 is bad and anything higher then 6.3 is not good either.