new to ebb and flow

papaganda

papaganda

Member
I've been a soil gardner for the past 4 years, but will be switching to a flood/drain system. every one i know grows soil so asking friends for help is out of the question. looking for some advice. here we go..

i'll be running a 1000w in a 4x8 tent, with a 4x4 table. i currently use gh nova nutes. thinking of running with 6"net pots with hydroton, prob 60 in the table, growing stumps. just visited a hydro shop that has opened down the street and saw the rock wool shreds they had in a bubble system, which looked pretty cool. just not sure if its the best way to go. hydroton seems to be the best option due to the roots getting the most oxygen? IDK?

what are the pros and cons of hydroton? also not really sure about how often to fill the table, how much is too much?
finished building my aero cloner, have it full, will post pics if it actually works. clones have been cut for 5 days now....fingers crossed.
 
BlazedUp4Life

BlazedUp4Life

New Member
Hey Papaganda...from what I've read about the flood/drain cycles, every 3 hours is a good rule of thumb. But never have the plants flooded for more than 15 minutes. So for example, just set your pump on a timer to run for 10 minutes every 3 hours(during light-on hours) and you should be good. And wash all the dust off the hydroton 1st, of course. It has great wicking abilities for the roots of your girls. Hope this helps, and always keep learning, as I am.8)
 
S

Steve1967

Well-Known Member
I run my cycles every 3 hours which includes lights off period and it takes 2 minutes to flood in buckets and a bit quicker to drain.
You should be flooding your table till it reaches about half way up your cube then set the timer to off.
As for clay pebbles keep them in the bag and using a large flat bladed screwdriver puncture some holes around the bottom half of the bag connect a hose and place the end in the top of the bag turn on the tap and let it run for an hour shaking the bag occasionally.
 
papaganda

papaganda

Member
BlazedUp4Life said:
Hey Papaganda...from what I've read about the flood/drain cycles, every 3 hours is a good rule of thumb. But never have the plants flooded for more than 15 minutes. So for example, just set your pump on a timer to run for 10 minutes every 3 hours(during light-on hours) and you should be good. And wash all the dust off the hydroton 1st, of course. It has great wicking abilities for the roots of your girls. Hope this helps, and always keep learning, as I am.8)
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thanks for the reply! I've been doing a lot of reading, and the more i do.....the better i feel. just nervous about switching from soil, but excited about the journey ahead! I've read a lot of different opinions about flood cycles and will prob be flooding every three hours w/ lights on. just picked up the divider for my tent from my friend so i now have two rooms! My aero cloner that i built seems to be working, just a little slower than i hoped. i have 1 root and lots of bumps. its only been 9 days, and changed the water in my res on day8. i feel good about everything so far. ill post some pics as soon as there is something to see.
thanks again to everyone for the advice.

anyone doing sog?
 
Lighterfighter

Lighterfighter

Well-Known Member
Hey man if your running soil, I'd just suggest coco, unless you've already got the tron. I've done both with flood trays. I've done alot and a little in hydroton. 4x4 should hold no more then 5 or 6 nice bushes for best yield imo. You fold em over or super crop or fim ect to increase the amount of colas. The cocoa is best because root mass is more sturdy and you can hand water on e a day. The hight limitations of the table are its main issue. That's why people use it for sog or in my recommended case scrog.
 
Lighterfighter

Lighterfighter

Well-Known Member
Depends on how your whole perpetual is set up or if your not running perpetual then bigger is best. Really comes down to height space and lighting for what is best. what's the limitations? What you got so far?
 
papaganda

papaganda

Member
i am running 1000w light over a 3x3 tray i picked up from a friend, i thought it was going to be a 4x4. no big deal. wanting to do a sog, no real height restraints. I've been doing bigger plants with my soil grows, but I'm wanting to get rid of the veg time. also to give me something new to try. i have been doing some poking around, looking at DWC SCROG grows with 1 plant,and would like to give it a shot next. the table was free and the cost was minimal to switch over, and doing a flood table seems, to me, to be a good place to start. i have 26 cuttings down, so i should have some good clones to choose from. its tangerine, which is a strain that I've been growing for the last year or so. i think it will respond well to SOG due to the tight node spacing of the cut. I'm looking at running 6"pots. i just cleaned the hell out of the table last night, prob going to give it another pass as i want everything to be clean! i'm going to replace all hoses, and detail all components. coco is an option if the hydroton does not work out.

really thankful for the input, open to all suggestions.
 
C

clayawesome

Well-Known Member
id consider filling the entire table with hydroton rather than 6'' pots. with 60 plants and no veg you probably wont need to rotate plants and they'd gain more benefit from the added root space. It also reduces flood and drain time. only downer is the added hydroton to sterilize (or buy) each run
 
D

Dirty Harry

Well-Known Member
clayawesome said:
id consider filling the entire table with hydroton rather than 6'' pots. with 60 plants and no veg you probably wont need to rotate plants and they'd gain more benefit from the added root space. It also reduces flood and drain time. only downer is the added hydroton to sterilize (or buy) each run
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I can foods, so I have a 24 quart pressure cooker. It works great to sterilize hydroton. I put about three inches of water in it, fill with wet rinsed hydroton to a few inches from the top, and cook it for an hour under 15lbs of pressure. I then let it cool on its own and you then have autoclave sterile hydroton. Any small stringy roots seems to end up on the top so you can pick it out. Be careful if you rinse in the bath tub as it is hard on the enamel. Five gallon buckets with holes in the bottom make great rinsing containers.
 
PetFlora

PetFlora

Well-Known Member
Polished ornamental rock is smooth, inert, cleans and removes easily after each grow

Net pot lids allows you to quickly move/remove plants
 
papaganda

papaganda

Member
i had some issues with my cloner. the temps were too cold, so i put an aquarium heater in. the heater took a shit, so i put a 100w heater in. that seemed to be working fine. i was doing a res change, my daughter was being a handful, i left the tent and went to work without plugging in the pump :( when i got home the babies were all wilted but not crispy. i plugged in the pump and by morning every clone was standing straight up, and seem to be in good shape. there was one cut that was way ahead of the rest, so i put it into a bubble bucket two days ago....WOW. its taking off! i'm taking pictures twice a day and hope to create a slideshow after two weeks in the system. I've been looking at hydroHybrids videos on youtube, and think i may go that direction. i will be filling the table once to give it a go in the time being, as it will take some time to get the plant that big. i already have most of the partd to build a one pot system, he uses two.

i bought a Hannah ph pen that i'm not a fan of. i bought 7.0 solution to calibrate the pen, got it set to 7.0 then tested my res and ph was fine? then rinsed the pen and stuck it back into the 7.0 solution and it read 7.1 then a second later jumped to 6.2 then 6.8 then 7.7! then back down ant then up again. not sure whats going on but i don't like it! never had these problems with the eco-pen. I'm bummed but I'm going to purchase the eco in the next week or so. I'm using test strips until then, and all looks good.
 
PetFlora

PetFlora

Well-Known Member
I used to be a pH natzy

Since switching to HR V+B and checking it for a good year, I don't bother anymore

However, I do complete rez changes weekly
 
70's natureboy

70's natureboy

Well-Known Member
I can't believe nobody mentioned the Hydroton drawbacks. In flood and drain they float and offer little support for the plant. If one floats out of the net pot it will end up plugging the small drain hole and slowing down the whole drain. If one gets in the tall drain while the pump is running then it floods more and more Hydroton floats away. I like the Sunleaves rocks because they don't float and don't roll so they hold the plant much better.
 
papaganda

papaganda

Member
thats a great point that i never thought about. i did end-up getting tall pots vs the shorter net pots. my drain holes do have filters on them, but I've seen bits of the hydroton that could prob fit through.
PetFlora, when i first started growing i wasn't big on ph. then i got a meter and i saw great results. then i got away from it, and there was a noticeable difference.
 
papaganda

papaganda

Member
she is getting big.the first picture is day one, and the second is day six. looked this morning and the first root has popped through the bottom! i love it when it starts to grow so fast that the center of the plant is bright yellow and the top leaves are all curly. i am so pumped about this one. she's going to be my mother plant. and maybe scrog her out after the table is done. ill be setting up the table tonight, ill be putting 7 in the table first then i have 12 or so for the next round. I'm going to pull the 12 out of the cloner and put them in rock wool b/c the cloner is leaking constantly. i got some caulk to hopefully stop the problem, and hopeful the babies do well it the transfer. ill post more pics as i get the thing set.
 
ODanksta

ODanksta

Well-Known Member
papaganda said:
i had some issues with my cloner. the temps were too cold, so i put an aquarium heater in. the heater took a shit, so i put a 100w heater in. that seemed to be working fine. i was doing a res change, my daughter was being a handful, i left the tent and went to work without plugging in the pump :( when i got home the babies were all wilted but not crispy. i plugged in the pump and by morning every clone was standing straight up, and seem to be in good shape. there was one cut that was way ahead of the rest, so i put it into a bubble bucket two days ago....WOW. its taking off! i'm taking pictures twice a day and hope to create a slideshow after two weeks in the system. I've been looking at hydroHybrids videos on youtube, and think i may go that direction. i will be filling the table once to give it a go in the time being, as it will take some time to get the plant that big. i already have most of the partd to build a one pot system, he uses two.

i bought a Hannah ph pen that i'm not a fan of. i bought 7.0 solution to calibrate the pen, got it set to 7.0 then tested my res and ph was fine? then rinsed the pen and stuck it back into the 7.0 solution and it read 7.1 then a second later jumped to 6.2 then 6.8 then 7.7! then back down ant then up again. not sure whats going on but i don't like it! never had these problems with the eco-pen. I'm bummed but I'm going to purchase the eco in the next week or so. I'm using test strips until then, and all looks good.
Click to expand...
Lol, that sucks. I have a hanna combo that does the same shit. I like my bluelab the best. But I do not really use them that much anymore. I know what the ph of my nutes are so I just use 5 to 6 tablespoons pH up for 5 gallons and im good to go. I ran tables for years but I sold them a while back and went back to soil. My tables took up to much height in my rooms. But the best run I had on tables was 2K above a 4x4, 9 3gallon pots (the kind made for tables) with straight coco botanicare cheap stuff in the bricks. And Flora nova, I yielded 3.7 lbs. Btw I only flooded once a day for 15 mins through veg and the last month of flower I flooded twice a day for 15 mins. But I used three extensions on the over flow, so I let my water raise higher then normal. And another tip which some might argue with, I never, ever change the res out. I used a 50 gallon res for two tables. They drank so much I couldnt keep up I just topped off, i set my pH around 6.4 to allow for the swing once it got to 5.6 ish i would raise it back to 6.4. I would also throw in two 2 liters bottle of frozen water twice a day to keep my res temps down. Also in my res I do not use air stones just two small 100 ish gph sub pumps. Airstones are actually kind of bad especially with flora nova they will clog up quick
 
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