Alright, I’m going to get started with the topping in a bit. If you want to tag along, come say hi!
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I see on the live feed DWC blue dream is tilting her leaves praying to the lights. 
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I love it when they do that! haha. But you were 100% right–even though the DWC has less foliage overall, the plant is taller and the leaves are larger than anything in soil. Awesome to see!
Here’s one week of root growth:
Last sunday
Today
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If I were offer a suggestion - drill holes at top of your bucket run the airlines through there, guaranteed no pinching with lid or kinking up.
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Admittedly have been lazy on that front. I’ve got a piece of foam preventing kinks at the moment, but I do need to drill some holes soon.
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Plan for the future drill three holes - you’ll be able to have two or three stones per bucket. These current gals started with 2 stones each until I had a vacancy but no room - added a third stone to each bucket. 
More air bubbles the better.
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Here’s a little time lapse that shows how resilient these plants can be. This seedling started with a single cotyledon. I think the other may have gotten stuck in the seed casing or something and rotted away immediately. The second cotyledon yellowed and died before the first set of true leaves even came in. Early on, I was about to throw this one away to save space in the tent but I figured I’d let it try to survive since it was one of the feminized seeds.
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I’ve seen a few anomalies like that, she’ll probably be a monster
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Ironically, after I talk about resiliency, I end up messing up some of the plants. haha
Yesterday, I noticed my humidifier was a little over aggressive and the vapor nozzle was pointed too closely towards my Blue Dream in the DWC. It ended up pretty droopy, with heavy leaves as if it were overwatered. (Which it essentially was.) Today, I noticed in the morning that the Blue Dream had slightly recovered, but not entirely. I also noticed a few other plants were looking droopy, and I felt the leaves on one of the plants and it seemed like they were heavy rather than dry, so I assumed they had been overwatered a bit and that the humidity was too high. I decided to drop the humidifier down a bit and let my RH drop to 40%ish throughout the day with the thought that, since I had overwatered, I should try to dry out the environment a bit.
A few minutes ago, I noticed one of the Mojave Green was looking even worse than it did at the beginning of the day, so I took it out to look, and 4 of the fan leaves were droopy and crispy. I realized that the plants were actually underwatered–not overwatered. I had not only neglected to water them again thinking they were overwatered, but I also let the RH drop today. Wrong diagnosis, wrong fix!
Now, I’ve upped the humidity again and gave the plants some water. I had to remove the 4 fan leaves from one of the plants, so we’ll see how that one recovers. My DWC plants is recovered 100% and seemingly responding well to the topping.
At least I’m learning!
All the lighter sections are completely crispy.
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Live and learn, glad you were double checking but yeah it’s sometimes hard to avoid the occasional f*ckup. I’ve found to avoid direct humidification make sure fan is oscillating and blowing the moisture around
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Good call–my oscillating fan is up a bit higher at the moment, but my intake fan keeps air moving near the bottom of the tent.
The plants are perking back up nicely today! Still dialing in how much/when to water. (Another reason I prefer DWC so far.)
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Just watch that DWC pH I check mine 3x a day usually. 
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I’ve found if it needs adjustment but not water I use hand pump to take a gallon out then I pH stirring in well then add back.
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You’ve definitely got the water/pH/nutrients management down to a science!
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3 times. Damn I’m there overkill. 5, 6 times haha. I have a problem 
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You guys have inspired me to be more neurotic about the pH. lol
Here are some pics of the Blue Dream (Ignore the war-torn Mojave Green in the back–see my previous post about underwatering. haha) :
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It’s been a while since my last update, but I didn’t take any pictures this morning, so I’m going to post some words now and some pictures later.
I’ve been slowly getting my nutrients, environmental factors, and watering dialed in. I had been underwatering the soil plants, and have since corrected that and they’re responding really well. All the new growth is coming in with good color, and I’m not seeing any deficiencies in the leaves or stems. Originally, I was given some guidance that the Fox Farm soil would be good for weeks without adding additional nutrients, but that ended up not being the case. In my situation, I was seeing purple stems that indicated phosphorus deficiency (from what I read), and that has cleared up since I started feeding the soil plants. No signs of nutrient burn yet either, so I’m hoping they’re getting about what they need.
In terms of my DWC plant, it is quickly becoming an advertisement for hydroponics over soil. I’m really impressed with how this plant is almost double the size of anything I have growing in soil, and I haven’t had to worry about over- or under-watering. I did a little defoliating today, since it was getting hard to manage, or even to get a clear view of the stem.
That said, it hasn’t been without issue. First, I messed up my nutrient conversions and was only giving about 75% of what I should have been. Ended up seeing some purple stems and some light discoloration on the larger fan leaves. I corrected that and the new growth is looking much better. In addition to the nutrient mix up, I also added some Great White to the reservoir. I’ve heard a lot of good things about it, but when I added it, it was very murky in the water and ended up leaving a lot of dark brown sediment all over the roots. It looked like root rot, so that was a scare. Today when I changed the water in the reservoir, I rinsed off the roots and they still seem fairly white, albeit a little stained from my nutrients. I didn’t add the Great White this time, and I want to see if the issue returns or can be attributed to the murkiness of the Great White. I’d be surprised if I started getting root rot so suddenly after my temperatures have been cooler than they had been during the first few weeks of my grow.
I’ve also switched to a 12/12 light schedule today. An additional mistake to add to my list is that I didn’t really plan out my full grow schedule when I started. I’m going to travel at the end of the year, so I need to finish up this grow before late December. Flipping today will give me about 60 days of flowering time. I don’t expect this will actually be enough, but I’m trying to avoid having to get a baby sitter for the plants while I’m out of state. Not ideal, but again, I’m learning a huge amount during this grow, and it has already paid off in that regard, in my mind. Season 2 is going to be all hydro!
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Dont worry too much about the purple stems. It can be genetic, it can be nute deficiency, typically magnesium. Either way, its easily fixed.
Regarding your time scale…60 days is highly unlikely. Let me tag in @Hellraiser. I remember him talking about speeding up a harvest by changing the light cycle to longer dark time or something like that. I cant remember exactly what it was so I’ll let him give him the information on that.
Other than that, sounds like your getting dialed in. Great work, look forward to seeing the photos
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Blue Dream at 60 days flowering is gonna be tough, ILGM lists it as a 9 week flowering strain and it could easily go 10 weeks being a 80% sativa. Could try to shave some time off by going 11/13 instead of 12/12 and in mid flowering, take it down even more to 10/14 to try to get them as mature as possible before the chop, then you still got to dry them, which will take another week.
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