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Deep Water Culture (DWC) · Hydroponics Daily

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  Welcome back to the Hydroponics Daily. Today's topic is deep water culture.
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  This is a form of hydroponics that involves a lot of water in a big tank and
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  your plants sit in the tank in little holders and they root into just the water,
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  the fertigation solution directly and they're completely submerged in that solution
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  which means that there's got to be a lot of air in that water,
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  dissolved in that water otherwise those roots are going to rot and die.
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  So plants don't like having their feet in water just
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  like you don't like having your feet in water except when your feet
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  are in water you have blood flowing oxygen to
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  your toes as plants don't they don't have a recirculatory system
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  that can take oxygen down to their roots so you need an air pump maybe
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  an air stone in there always pumping in fresh oxygenated air so you keep that
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  water nice and aerated and it's a very highly it's a highly productive system
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  it's the it's probably the original hydroponic system that was developed in probably the 1920s,
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  1930s and commercialised in the 70s.
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  You'll see this is a popular one in North America, lots of floating beds in
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  almost like swimming pool sized, Olympic swimming pool sized tanks in greenhouses.
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  This is a closed deep water culture system.
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  In the diagram here where you would find a sort of an indoor home somebody's hobby or side hustle.
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  If you had a commercial system it would be in what's called
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  an rwd rdwc which
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  is a recirculating so just like an
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  nft you would have a pipe taking some of the
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  water solution off all the time
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  and then going into a nutrient tank and adding new nutrients in
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  adjusting the ph and then pump circulating that
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  back in so that'd be a recirculating dwc and
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  you can get some really fancy kits this is
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  the one if you if you're a tech head and you love engineering
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  then dwc is your dream because you
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  can get some really fancy recirculating systems with vortexes running
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  the water around alien systems that they're they're one.
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  Of the brands that make all these that's quite a few though engineers tend
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  to be drawn to hydroponics because.
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  They can design their own systems and now with
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  3d printing you could probably 3d print your own dwc system
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  it's it's it's a
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  it's it's a popular one it's also
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  the one with the most issues so because you've
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  got so much water you've got the ability for scum and algae
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  to get in there the aeration can mess up the nutrients
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  and if it's running too fast then
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  some of the nutrients the ph can rise quite highly in
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  a DWC if you're not looking at it and it's the one with gold
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  leaf if I'm completely honest it's the one that has the most
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  issues now there are people using gold leaf or liquid gold as
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  it's known in the UK really well and
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  they love it and then there are other people who struggle with it and that's normally due
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  to the air pump being on for too long so you don't have to have that air
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  pump running continuously you can have it running for 10
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  minutes every hour or something like that and it doesn't have to be on full power
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  so that's that's normally where the issues come is
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  around this air pump and how long it's on for i've never
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  used dwc i would love to use dwc i'd like
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  to try it yeah if anyone's out there who makes dwc systems
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  and is watching send me one it's the other issue
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  with dwc is the noise so that those air pumps are very noisy and combine that
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  with your your inlets your air inlet fans and your recirculatory fans this whole
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  system can get very noisy air pumps just tend to vibrate so you don't make a
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  sound so much they make a vibration.
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  And so if you place that you're on a first floor or
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  not on the ground floor then they can the
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  lights have just gone off uh you can be they
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  can they can make a vibration that you can't hear in the
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  grow room but the people below you
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  say what the hell is that noise you know that that's you know so and that's
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  something to consider especially if you don't want the people below you to know
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  that you're growing hydroponically so hydroponics daily today's subject was
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  dwc if you've used it if you've got any other thoughts comments criticisms drop
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  us a comment on social media or send us an email thank you very much.