Water Change vs Top Up Question

Use a reservoir with a drain valve, and fill lines at the top of the buckets, drain in the bottom of the buckets.
Use a pump to keep water flowing fast.
Change anytime you need too

 

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I can’t help because I do the same with my 5 gallon buckets and plan on making a reservoir.
I’m hanging out to find out if I can quit wit the water changes

 

That’s what I was doing on my last grow, they were drinking so much I was just topping off with ph’d water til the next change. I don’t know if it was right or not but it worked and got me through for a couple days

 

Something like this will greatly improve your DWC life.
Reservoir changes in a matter of minutes without moving the plant vessel.

A lid access hole might be needed to get this into a bucket.

Installing a float valve in each plant vessel, and then connecting them to an external reservoir greatly reduces work load.
Another labor saving device is to mix up a gallon of concentrated fertilizer, and then use it to dose plants.
I typically mix up about 2400 ppm gallons (EC=4.8).
One cup will supply (2400 ppm)/16 = 150 ppm.
When added to 3 gallons of water, one cup would increase ppm by 50.

 

When they drink over 50 to 70% of the original amount of water, then you change water.
Pain in the ass if it's not automated, but question is do you want the max from the plant? If so just do it. Yeah it's work but I'd rather get rewarded in 3 months as to have to pay 150 --250 a oz.

 

This article might help with some ideas:

How to Build a Two-Bucket DWC System • High Times

Before I went with soil I was going to build this, it’s a 2 bucket, 1 plant system that makes checking ph, feeding and adding water easier. So it seemed to me anyways lol.

 

Exactly what I’ve been looking into.thank you

 

A better, simpler idea is to use a single, larger reservoir.
Those two 5 gallon buckets probably hold 6 gallons total.

Something like a Rubbermaid Brute 14 gallon reservoir can hold 7-9 gallons without much construction, and is short enough that the chances of growing into the lights is reduced.

Even better is to use a large reservoir for a plant, instal a float valve in that reservoir, then hook it up to a large volume external storage tank. Such a system can be left alone for a week once a baseline of reservoir behavior has been established.

Such a system would be about the same difficulty to build as the HighTimes system, and would perform the function of having a large amount of fluid available even better.

 

BUTT (cheeks) he would still have to go through the issue of lifting the lid with the plant in it when he needed to check, or really do anything in the reservoir. The two bucket system eliminates the need for that.

YES- it’s more work and some might say wasted space.

YES- it might not hold a ton of water, but that could be relative where you put the joining tube between the buckets.

YES- you can adopt the 2 unit system with the bigger 12-18 gal totes and get more water overall.

Now I may have misread your post, but I still personally think having a 2 unit system is helpful for those that don’t want to lift the top with the plant in it and still be able to maintain a relatively easy reservoir system.

But I’ve never grown in either, or with hydro in general before, so take my words with a grain of salt. Pun intended lol

 

Many (most?) Deep Water Culture setups come with a liquid level indicator tube and a filling hole to avoid having to lift plants.

Large reservoirs will yield greater stability, but are harder to change out.
One solution to this is to never change them completely.
Clorox daily, plus emptying out a bit of reservoir fluid daily for testing allows no reservoir changes.

At the moment I'm testing some 8 usable gallon fluid reservoirs with an opening that allows reaching/adjusting the float valves, and adding/supbtacting liquid after seeing liquid level from the indicator tube.

Then the float valve is connected to a second bucket that contains several days worth of fertilizer solution.

Even a DWC setup without a liquid level indicator or fill hole can be adapted by drilling a fill hole, and covering it with anything. A fuel transfer pump can then be used. Liquid level can be deduced by sticking something into the fill hole, and seeing how much of it gets wet. I've sometimes used wooden rulers for this.

 

Yes there is a way around reservoir changes, but it is controversial.

I have done several successful grow without ever changing out the reservoirs, even once. I learned about this by seeing others post about it.
But they were big reservoirs, about 7-8 gallons per plant, and remained stable.

I had recently tried smaller reservoirs, about 2.5 gallons per plant, because my autos were getting too big.

After surviving these smaller reservoirs and all their weekly changes, I've gone back to bigger reservoirs without changing them out. I'll solve the "autos getting too big problem" by growing only 1 or 2 plants per tent.
Clorox keeps the bad microbes away (2 drops per gallon per day).
Emptying out about 1/4 gallon daily (which is about 3% for me) for testing injects some fresh fertilizer, and helps keep elemental ratios in check.

 

I just filled a spare bucket and then just dropped the airline and net pot on it.