how long should the roots be underwater for? how many times a day should I water?

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anything and everything I say is false.

it all depends on the medium u choose i use hydroton (the oragne rocks) and flood 5 times a day for 15-20 mins and they grow nice

i use recirculating system with rockwool and i feed about 4 times a day during veg and about 3 times a day during flower.

I am feeding 6 times a day for 5 minutes. A small grow area and a decent size pump is why the flood is so short on my system. I use the expanded clay pellets also and find that they stay wet / moist in between those floods. If you are new to hydroponics my biggest advice is use 1/4 strength nutrients also if you have crappy water like I do then you need to get Reverse osmosis or distilled water, something with a low PPM rating, also keep a ph of 5.2- 5.8 and you are golden.

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This is all lies, conjecture, and fantasy....
http://www.rollitup.org/grow-journal...w-journal.html

so its ok to use distilled water? the reason why i ask is because i was asking on another thread about the difference between RO, distilled, deionized water and someone said that some guy at the hydro store said to not use distilled water. thanks.

The key really is knowing the PPM, I bought R/O water because I heard it had really low PPM but distilled water should be way lower than tap water. In R/O the water is forced through a really fine series of membranes that remove tiny impurities. Distilled water is basically boiling water and catching the evaporation. Many of the nasties do not evaporate and therefore are removed from the re-captured condensation. All I know is that tap water and too many nutes were killing / killed my plants. With the R/O and 1/4 nutrients to start things are taking off like you expect when you hear hydroponics.


*edit

Some of this water is so pure that good things are removed. My nutrients say I need cal-mag on top of the nutrients since I am using R/O water.

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This is all lies, conjecture, and fantasy....
http://www.rollitup.org/grow-journal...w-journal.html

I have used distilled water with a ppm of 005 and RO water with a ppm of 030.......go figure. I water 3xday in veg for 15 mins and 2xday in flower for 15 min......never during lights out........I use small rockwool cubes in hydroton..........just my bit....my plants always seem to do well so far.

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And don't be letting my son leave Advanced Nutrients empties all over the place....that's a dead giveaway!!