ebb flood and drain Basics, am I missing something?

OverCloudz

Well-Known Member
Hey guys, I'm a newb on flood and drain systems, can you tell me if I'm skipping something with this method?

1. Get a flood and drain table and a reservoir under it. The reservoir should be 3-4x the capacity size of the table and has to be covered.

2. Make 2 holes in the table, 1 hole for a flood valve attached to a pump and 1 hole for a drain valve. Also have an air pump to circulate the water in the reservoir.

3. When seedlings are ready for transplant, fill up the table with 6" rockwool cubes, hide the top of the cubes for algae and get a coco mat to hide the future roots on the bottom of the table.

4. Mix nutes with correct ppm & ph in the reservoir and constantly check throughout the days if there's a change in levels. Change the water in the reservoir once a week.

5. Adjust flooding schedule by observing and testing. 10 minutes flood once a day in veg and 2-3 times a day in flowering seems to be a popular way.

6. Hand feed them from top every 2 weeks to flush the accumulated salt at the bottom of the cube.

7. Flush, harvest, win.

Anything else?
 

Treesomewanted77

Well-Known Member
There is a few things. Use a water pump in the res to circulate the water instead of an air stone and pump. Also I think it would be easier to use hydroton to fill your table instead of the rockwool cubes the rockwool holds water like crazy so you would only be flooding like once a day and the idea with flood and drain is to pull in new oxygen when the drain happens so hydroton is the best bet I think.
Also no need to swap res every week just keep it topped up with fresh nutrient solution.
And no need for flushing ever unless you have lockout and need to correct it
 

pegboy

Well-Known Member
In my experience with ebb and flow (bottom feeding) and rockwool, top flushing is absolutely mandatory. You will 100% get salt buildup in the blocks otherwise. The build up will actually be at the top of the block where the water wicks up and dries faster.

Start of with 1/3 recomended nutes and work your way up if you need to. My ec rarely ever goes higher than .7 to 1.1. Usually on the lower side of that.

Theres no hard rule for watering. You'll need to adjust on the fly. Once a day might actually be too much in early stages. Later it might be more.

Check ph and ec in res often.

Only flood the RW 1/3ish (no more than 1/2) height of the entire cube. The solution will wick up.

I have run a classic ebb and flow with rockwool from day one. On a very very small scale but I've done it for a long time.
 
Top