2 x (5' x 5') grow rooms [hydro, organic, perpetual]

Hi Friends,

First post, long time reader. I'm usually over at the growery.org but I wanted to expand my platform for suggestions.

I've had a couple grows before. The first was just 1 plant under a 150w HPS - the second was 3 plants under a 400w HPS which came out nicely. However, both were soil grows and done under an extreme budget. Now I have more disposable income and would like to try a hand at hydro. I really like the look of the drip feed system but can be swayed to try something else. I need my system to be easy to transfer from veg room to flower room.

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I want to have two 5'x5' rooms side by side. I'm going to make them with 2x4's and black/white poly sheeting.
In the mother/veg room I'll run my 2'x4' T5 light over a drip system with rockwool medium - all this will be inside a large tray like in the "I Grow Chronic!" video.

I am hung up on how to run my Flower room. I do not really like the way he does it in that video. It is a large plastic tray full of those expanded clay balls.

Here's the clip from the video I'm talking about (at the part I'm referencing 1h09m20s):
Am I wrong in thinking this is a bad set up? I would like to have as many plants as possible for my 5x5 room and I feel that them sharing a medium like this would cause root problems or not allow me to grow as much.

Any suggestions for how I should go about my flower room hydro set up? Keeping in mind that all my plants will begin life as drip system in rockwool (or coco coir - I've heard that that is better, but I think it might be more troublesome?)


As always friends - thank you!

bump

Ok so there is soooo many ways you could configure your flower rooms. I have used hydroton (little clay balls) in the past and ya it works and is reusable but sucks to clean and is kinda pricey. I would ditch Rockwool all together and run pots filled with perlite. I run two 4x8 trays in flower (16 plants total) with 15 gal pots filled with chunky perlite and run top feed. The joy of perlite is its fairly cheap, light and just toss it at the end.

Of all the ways to grow hydro I believe flood and drain to be one of the easiest and most reliable ways to grow hydro. I love top feed because the root zone is highly aerated. I would not fill the tray in any of these suggestions just use pots filled with whatever medium of your choice.

One thing to keep in mind with going on to hydro is K.I.S.S method just keep up on the water and the plants will do good. The more you keep all conditions in check the more you will be rewarded in the end.

Thank you for the response! Nice looking plants. I want to run 1, 4x4 tray. Definitely going to use buckets. Maybe go with ebb/flow - everyone who uses it says it's very reliable, which is my style.

If I may ask, why do you prefer the perlite over coco coir? You're the first person I've seen using perlite this way.

Thank again,
C.W.