Hydroponic Help Please

Hello Im running a RDWC in a 4x4 tent, 4 five gallon buckets. My PH is 6.3 most of the time mostly due to me using advance nutrients Macro Micro Bloom series it auto adjust the ph to around that most the time. My water temp is 65, my room temp is 75 and my RH is 55%. Using a spider farm SF4000 LED.

The reason for my post today is a had a couple of questions. I’m at 21 days seedling my ppm is at 150. My girls are looking pretty good and I want to start veg. I don’t know what to do with the water do I drain it all out refill and do full week 1 veg or do I keep the water already in it and add nutrients? if I do add nutrients do I add what it says for week 1 veg? Wouldn’t that put my ppm thru the roof? If I change the water wouldn’t that put to much stress on my little girls they just got roots into the water from the net pots. What should I do? One more thing is 21 days to young to start veg?

Sorry for the writing if hard to understand never was my strong point. Hope you have a great day and happy growing.

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This :point_up_2:

Everything else looks good. Once the plant is mature maintain a PPM of 1,000.

I can’t comment on water change frequency. Dudes like @Myfriendis410 can help here. I’m not a hydro grower.

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Thank you so much for your time first all. May I ask what you mean by mature like in vegetive state you use 1000 pm? even in week 1 of veg your at 1k ppm?

because to be honest i fell like they are a little under feed no


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Change out your res weekly or you will run into all sorts of stuff you don’t want.

Also Hydro guard is your friend.

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Check your PPM’s, and then feed accordingly. Most I think top off, instead doing a whole change.

Welcome to the forum @maverick702

I’ll tag @peachfuzz @Myfriendis410 @MidwestGuy

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I run 800 for the first couple weeks then jump to 1k-1100 until flower. Reading the ppms daily will tell you if you need more or if you need to back off the nutes.
Of course every plant is different and every grower has their own methods.

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You can do a complete rez change without issues: the plant will be fine. Maintain 1 1/2 to 2" air space below net pot and make sure plenty of air is going to the liquid.

Growers do both: change rez regularly or top up to maintain. You certainly can do that and I have done both. It’s best to monitor the TDS of the main rez and you can adjust with either a concentrated solution to bring the TDS up or water to bring it down. The larger the rez the longer it will maintain PH. Be careful as a lot of growers have reported issues with the PH perfect line. You may have to manually adjust PH for your plants.

Your light is enough to veg plants but insufficient to flower out properly. I would double the light before flower.

You can start veg nutes the moment your plants’ roots have reached the nutrient solution.

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So Iv been using hydro guard since day 1 and if I may you take plants out and clean the buckets or just drain what water you can from drain valve and refill?

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Take each plant out and use a spare bucket to store while draining the old reservoir. You can do those one at a time and if you feel you need to do more, you can run straight water through the system for an hour before draining and refilling.

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and thats once a week?

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Monitor the TDS of the rez and if it falls significantly then plan on a rez change. I did mine every two weeks IIRC. @peachfuzz runs one rez for veg then resets it for flower. If solution is clear and not ‘stinky’ you can just refresh as needed.

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I don’t run dwc so not sure about that. I’ve always got an extra couple jugs of water and nutrients after my reservoir change so I can add either throughout the week as they drink. When I do my reservoir change I clean it out every time. That’s just me though. Like I said before I don’t run dwc. I run more of a flood table style of hydro. Biggest thing with hydro to me is keeping your reservoir clean and keeping you nutrient solution at the correct temperature.

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My systems hold 18 gallons of water when topped off and that leaves a 2 inch air gap from bottom of net cup …
I run plants for 3 weeks and then i dump system and start with new water and freash nutrients and water…
1 st week all the goodies and in between i top up with water as needed…
Week 2 gets just base nutrients and topped up throughout the week with good water…
Week 3 gets the same base nutrients and top up with good water throughout the week and now at the end of 3 weeks i dump and start freash with base nutrients and all of the other goodies that i add …
Hope that helps a little… :+1:
:v: :sunglasses:

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It looks like 300 ppm to 500 ppm would be a good start to vegg , so you can see how they respond…
And i usually never have to go any higher then 750 ppm in vegg and throughtout the vegg cycle…
And 950 ppm to 1200 ppm max in flower for me…
But usually run around 1100 ppm in flower… :+1:
:v: :sunglasses:

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Thank all of you for your time and advice I greatly appreciate it. So my plan is to change every 2 weeks or if i notice something funny with the water. raise the ppms since all 4 have roots in the water. A question for @Myfriendis410 you said my light isn’t good for flowering to double up do you mean 2 lights because that won’t fit or buy a bigger light? It says it’s a 800 hps equivalent did it lie to me lol. Sorry for the delay as well I was locked out first day on site sent to many messages.

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Yeah, just one of the inflated claims being made. You really want between 150 and 200 watts of quality LED’s. Not the “equivalent to” number.

Thank you I’m going to add a supplemental light. If you don’t mind me asking how do my plants look? What’s going on with the bottom leaves? So since I feed them what would be the first signs of over nutrients to look out for? Sorry so many questions.

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Burned tips is the first sign of too many nutrients. Then clawing if nutrient burn continues at high doses.

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A little update so i raised the ppms to 400. Two days ago each day ppm went down its at 330 now. The only thing is my leafs are not looking as good a will put pictures. If anyone can tall me whats going on?


Not sure if you can see but looks like brown spots are forming.