Please Help me with DWC

[bingotoad]

I have a homemade DWC system, made out of the blue storage totes. It has 6 plants in it. 4, 5inch Airstones, and 4 12inch airstone strips, which are all connected to a high output airpump. Also there is a water pump inside the tote to circulate the water. I have 2 of these, so 12 plants total.

I have not added ANY nutes to the water yet, the PH is 5.5-6.0, and ive been adding the correct amounts of H202.

I started 12 seeds last monday, so 10 days ago. I started them out in paper towels and moved them to "rapid rooter" spongers on wednesday(8 days ago) and I put them in the DWC setup. Since then the plants have grown, but not anywhere near as fast as a soil plant would have. They just now are getting their first 2 actual leaves. Could I being something wrong? Im considering going back to soil, this is my first time with DWC and its not working half as good as my soil plants were.

Any advice would help. If you have any, please comment. Thanks.

[tinytoon]

I have not added ANY nutes to the water yet, the PH is 5.5-6.0, and ive been adding the correct amounts of H202.

HUH?????
no nutes but using H2O2, why??? That and your amount of airstones might be a lil overkill. 4 5" airstones should be plenty to aerate the water and circulate it so the pump really isnt needed either.
How about a pic or 2 so we can see what you have going on.

[LOC NAR on probation]

Sounds like the spoungers are staying toooo wet and not getting enough air. As said pictures would say it all just guessing on that info.

A lot of questions ? with those airstones why pumps unless it's a drip system which it sounds like.

If this is your first time don't give up TUNE IN. All of us have to tune our systems in it's half the fun.

[bhicks]

Personally, I wouldn't start things in DWC, but that's just me, I'd switch things over to DWC once they are reasonably established. Beyond that, how many liters per hour is the air pump? and, to quote tinytoon "HUH?????
no nutes but using H2O2, why??? "

[khyberkitsune]

Old Rapid Rooters will cause slow growth. Check the batch date if you can find it. Anything more than three months old should be sent to the compost pile and replaced with fresh ones. What has happened is the hormone has broken down/expired.

[bingotoad]

Thanks for all the tips. I bought the rapid rooters like 9 months ago, so that could have been it. How should i start a seed for DWC, without rapid rooters?

[Weezard]

Thanks for all the tips. I bought the rapid rooters like 9 months ago, so that could have been it. How should i start a seed for DWC, without rapid rooters?

Go ahead and use your RRs.
Your problem is not germination, it's slow growth in DWC

Bhicks' advice is spot on.:thumbsup:
Start your plants in RR, or soil, or coco, whatever.
Just no put them into DWC until they are big enough to feed.

Soil, Sunshine mix, and most coco coir contain just enough nutrition to get a seedling started.
Plain water simply does not.

Then, when the 'lings are old enough, the proper DWC system uses hydroponic nutes and keeps a lower PH range than soil grows.
5.2 - 5.8 is good.

Be a good idea to spend some time browsing the archives here.:cool:
Save you a whole lot of time in the long run.:jointsmile:

Aloha,
Wee 'zard

[tinytoon]

I'm still real curious about the H2O2 though.

Hiya Loc, Khyber and Weezard

[LOC NAR on probation]

hey tinytoon I see your still hangin in there. I just cut some papaya and shutting it all down cause of noisy neighbours. There is a campaigne to stop meth labs here so if you smell your neighbour fart you should turn him in. LOL

Neighbours suck in every galaxy.

At least I got to keep the harvest.

[polishpollack]

I'd leave out the peroxide altogether. I know what people say, it's adds an O2 electron or something but it might reduce the bacteria too and you want that stuff to stick around.
As far as the Rooters go, you can geminate a seed in them. I have done so by dipping a cup into the water/fert mix in the bucket, replacing the lid with the seed in it, and pouring the water mix over the Rooter, keeping it wet. If you can do this several times a day (or at least enough to keep it wet), there's a good chance you can germinate just fine. You've just got to get a decent quality fert that will help you do this. I've said this many times in these forums and going to say it again - Dynagrow 7-9-5. Follow the instructions on the back but when germinating a seedling, only use about half a teaspoon per gallon. As the plant grows, start using a full teaspoon, but get a pH/ppm meter and start off around 600-700 ppm and increase slowly until your ppm is about 1100-1200 and preferably use only distilled water you buy at the store. Some good advice given in this thread. DWC will work but takes a little more managing and don't let your water temp get higher than 85 F or you can bacterial overgrowth problems causing the water to stink.

[bhicks]

When we do DWC, we start plants as clones in a home-made cloner similar to an ez-cloner, as soon as they show some root, we put them into 3" net pots with hydroton, and put the net pots into a setup that uses holes drilled into 4" irrigation tubes with sprayers (I can describe better if you're interested), once they are at least 6-8" and have the beginnings of a nice root ball, we move them to 'best plastics brand 27 gallon strong boxes' (they are black, quite sturdy and have a yellow lid - we get them at Home Depot), we drill usually 12 holes (3" round) in the lid of the strong box, fill with water to about 1/4"-1/2" below the bottom of the net pots, add veg nutes to between 1000-1400ppm, and run one 250 liter air pump for every 2 or 3 'strong boxes' with 4 or 5 airstones in each box, and we see about 1/2-1" per day of growth (we see better growth in the sprayer/ tube systems and only use DWC for mother plants that are going to get to be too tall to use in the sprayer/ tube systems). As the plants grow, we space them out more and fill in the empty holes with plastic beer cups to keep the light out.

We tried it with the $10-$20 air pumps and had problems, so we only use the bigger air pumps (the 250 liter one runs somewhere between $60-$85).