How often to flood and drain(clay pebbles)?

Hi,

I have a wilma 8 system with about 1 foot plants. The flood pieces shoot out 8 liters of water in 10 minutes, my question is, how many times a day to flood the system and for how many minutes for one flood, this puzzles me most?

And should I put the flood pieces shooting straight into the rockwool start block, the block is about two inches wide and 4-6 inches deep?

Thanks alot.

PS. wilma 8 http://www.growforce.co.uk/product_images/830/thumbs/1/organic-wilma-8-pot.jpg

Flooding 3-4 times a day under 1k watts for 15 minutes start of flood to finish works great. No droop and with ppm at around 1600 life is great.

I use Hydroton and Flood 5x a day for 3 minutes (my pumps fill my pots in less than a minute), for 15 minutes total. One hour before lights go on then 3 minutes every four hours until 1 hour before lights go off, then once for 3 minutes in the middle of lights off.

In flowering my lights go from 7:00pm to 7:00am. I flood for 3 minutes at 6:00pm, 10:00pm, 2:00am, 6:00am, and 12:00 noon.

Santos L Halper said:

I use Hydroton and Flood 5x a day for 3 minutes (my pumps fill my pots in less than a minute), for 15 minutes total. One hour before lights go on then 3 minutes every four hours until 1 hour before lights go off, then once for 3 minutes in the middle of lights off.

In flowering my lights go from 7:00pm to 7:00am. I flood for 3 minutes at 6:00pm, 10:00pm, 2:00am, 6:00am, and 12:00 noon.

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Great schedule man, im going to see how this works for me thx

bomshankar said:

how many times a day to flood the system and for how many minutes for one flood

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Are you running a flood or a drip system? If a flood system, flood to 1/2" below the RW cube. The water level should not touch the cube or it will saturate and give you root rot probs.

bomshankar said:

And should I put the flood pieces shooting straight into the rockwool start block,

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No! Wet the pellets, never the cube. The RW cube should be put in the pellets when it has a decent spray of roots out of the bottom. The watering system, whether a flood or a drip, should only moisten pellets. The roots will find the damp pellets and carry on from there.

Roots in pellets can be flooded rather frequently, starting with about 3x/day for about 5mins/flood. For larger plants, a foot and taller, you can go to 4-5x/day.

It's critical that your RW block isn't kept saturated. You'll get root rot, followed by yellowing/wilting leaves and leaf fall.

Flushing means watering no?

No. Flushing means pouring a large volume of plain water (pH adjust to 5.8 ) through the medium, usually to remove excess nutrient in the case of accidentally overdosing.