New guys take on a DWC, with pics.

[PaulF]

hey biloyp-

Thanks for the encouragement! Please do post pics when you get started. For me a lot of this is a guessing game so it is always good to see others peoples arrangements.

Today makes two weeks on from my planting and things are going pretty good. I am implementing some big changes for next week though!

1: I ordered an el-cheapo E-Bay led panel. It supposedly is equivalent to a 250W hps but draws only 14 watts. It will help with the tremendous amount of electricity that the MH is currently drawing and do away with the annoying 60 cycle hum that is so prevalent in my house. Even being housed behind the TUFF-R, which admittedly does do a good job of muffling the hum, it is still annoying. So we will see if these LED panels actually work.

2: I ordered a 1500 Watt space heater to go in the grow room. I am thinking of putting the heater on the same timer the grow light is currently on. And I think keeping the room at a constant 75 degrees F during the light on cycle should be very easy to do for not much cost. The whole grow room is only 16 Sq Ft! An added benefit is that the space heater has a blower in it to help stir the air in there.

And I thought I would post up the pictures of week 0, week 1, and week 2. There is some definite growth happening but STILL no roots out the bottom of the pots! I can see a root system going in one of the pots but it has yet to acutally leave pot and extend down into the nutrients, although the bottoms of the pots are submerged so the roots are by default bathed in the solution. My tomato seedling have great second leaves and are getting rather spindly so I think they will be planted over the weekend. I can't wait.

Zero week. (Anyone who has been through USAF basic training will be familiar zero week. )



Week one.



And week two. Definite good growth since last week.

[biloyp]

1500 watt space heater @ 110 vac is about 12 amps. Just make sure your timer can handle that much current plus whatever else you have going through your timer. If you can run it off of 220v then the current draw will be about half that.

An led panel that draws 14 watts, to me that sounds like a lot for LED's. Are these the real bright ones cuz not all LED's are the same. But if they work for you then go for it. BUt now you have a space heater drawing a fair amount of current and LED lamps drawing a good amount. To me that is a lot of current. Just plz be careful of the heat buildup through your timer.

Your plants are looking pretty good. I was thinking about your cucs and how they will want to crawl up a little but definitely out. I used an old screen door or trellis to let them crawl on.

If I can get a bit of time between a bedroom renovation and work, I can't wait to get started on building my DWC and also propagating for outside planting as well.

Well keep up the good work and again plz be careful with the heat buildup.

P.S. Not sure what Zero week is but I am an retired Coastie and might it be similar to your last week in boot camp?

[PaulF]

Big changes for this week!

My electric bill showed up and the 400W metal halide light only increased my electric bill by $15.00. So I guess it wasn't all that bad. But sadly the light developed a very annoying habit of shutting off on its own anytime there was a power draw somewhere else in the house, i.e. fridge coming on, power tool being run, etc. etc. etc. I think it is an undercurrent issue. These lights really are designed to be run on 220 VAC not 110. So I guess I decided to redo my lighting at just the right time.

I did my first nutrient change. My tote had popped open on one side due to the water making it bow out. I left it like that for 3 days. It turns out 3 days is more than enough time for algae to start growing like mad! So I ended up draining the reservoir and spending about 20 minutes wiping every square inch of the interior that had green algae all over. I mixed fresh nutrient solution and bumped up the strength according to the General Hydroponics directions. It seems to be working awesome! I also secured the top of the tote with some clothespins, low tech, but it works.

My LED panel that I bought on E-Bay showed up. I was pretty underwhelmed. They claim it produces as much light as a 250W HPS bulb. I'm thinking probably not. Here is how it looked in the finished install. It just didn't seem to produce enough light to put it anywhere else. This was probably $33.00 thrown away but who knows, maybe it will work out great.



I decided I was going to need A LOT more light to replace the MH fixture. So I built a very low tech CFL fixture. I used a piece of 6" air duct style pipe I bought at Lowes. I put two bulb sockets in it. I bought 100W CFL bulbs, one in the 6500K range and one in the 3500K range. I thought it was a pretty clever way to cover the full spectrum of light to be honest! It only took about 20 minutes to put together and cost a bit under $30.00. Here are the parts sitting on my table.



And here is the finished light hanging in my grow room. It provides an astonishing amount of illumination! In the first picture you can clearly see the two different colored bulbs. Notice in both pics you can see my little ceramic space heater. This has helped out a lot I think. Also notice my seedlings sitting under the light. They are waiting to be transplanted.





And finally a grow update. I planted the tomatoes two days ago and they have shown growth already, I'm impressed! The cukes are really starting to roll now. I hope this keeps going this well!



To close out this weeks update I'll tell you that the flexible air stones I bought suck. They get clogged up with something, I'm not sure what and need to be wiped off every few days or they start putting out almost no air. I may just drop the air hose in the reservoir and let it bubble like that.

[GpsFrontier]

Sorry to hear the LED panel wasn't what was expected. They often tell you that they put out enough light to replace a specific wattage MH or HPS, but I have never herd anyone who has bought one agree. They always wind up needing to spend more money on lighting to compensate. I like the way you built your cfl lighting, although to be honest, I don't think that is going to be enough light output for much more than small seedlings. When using Florescent (cfl included), it isn't the the replacement wattage that matters, it's the actual wattage.

In other words you may have 2 cfl bulbs that replace 100 watt regular bulbs, but their actual wattage is probably something like 20 watts each. For a total of 40 watts. So in comparison if they were placed close enough to the plants (because with florescent the light intensity drops much quicker than with HID) they would be similar to a 40 watt MH bulb (not a 200 watt MH/HPS bulb). I have a brand new package of cfl's in front of me and they are 60 watt replacement bulbs, but use only 15 watts. So I would have something like an equivalent to a 30 watt MH. That wouldn't be able to grow much of anything other than to provide some light for seedlings.

I had a similar problem with with the first air stones/tubes I bought. They were the straight round ones that looked neat, but like yours they quickly clogged and I couldn't clean them out. So in the trash they went. Though I haven't had any problems or issues with the regular square stone ones. You really should use a air stone because it defuses large air bubbles into tiny ones. A bunch of tiny air bubbles is a lot better in a water culture system. There's a lot more surface area of air bubbles, and that's needed for the oxygen molecules to be absorbed by the water. I got mine at wal-mart in the pet supply's (next to the fish tanks), and ran about $1.60 each ($2.50 for the large ones). But they sell them any ware they sell pet supply's for fish.

[Twilly]

Was the MH bulb new? If not, the turning off issue was probably caused by the bulb going bad. New bulbs are around 30 bucks.

[ProZachJ]

Some LED manufactures make crazy claims about their product and it gives LEDs a bad reputation. Truth is you need about 360W of LED to effectively grow in a 4x4 area. Main advantages are the bushy growth and lack of heat.

[ProZachJ]

A lot of LED manufactures make outrageous claims about their lights. It puts LEDs in a bad light all together and it's a shame because used correctly you really can get great results from LEDs. A 45W panel is just bearly enough light to grow 1 pepper plant and actually get peppers. For a 4x4 grow space I have found 4 UFOs (360W) to be the ideal amount of lights. I have grown strawberries, cucubmers, cherry tomatoes, all sorts of peppers, and many more things with this setup.

[cedarswamp]

"But sadly the light developed a very annoying habit of shutting off on its own anytime there was a power draw somewhere else in the house"


Did that annoying habit show up about the same time the 1500 watt heater did? 1500 watt heater, 400 watt MH I think you're approaching the limit of safety on a 20 amp circuit. What else were you running on that circuit? Air pump, basement lights ect?


I'm a plumber not an electrician, but I"m pretty sure I'm right on this, please check with someone.

[PaulF]

Not a whole lot to report this week.

I am still slogging along with the crappy air snakes but I am planning on ordering some good air stones this week as well as some net pots and some rock wool so I can get my other DWC tub up and running. I don't think my growing medium or standard pots are the best choices.

But having said that, the growth these are now showing is amazing. I can't believe in one week how much they have changed. The LED and the two CFL's are apparently working exceptionally well. The space heater is probably contributing quite a bit as well.

The tomatoes are all showing good root systems out the bottoms of the pots and have easily doubled in size after a little over a week. The cukes are actually starting to overlap each other. It is awesome!

More to come next week when I swap out the nutrients again and move up to the aggressive growth stage with the GH nutrients. I don't know how it could get a whole lot more aggressive than it is right now but we will see!