Recirculating Top Feed?

I just had a flood and drain setup, and it was hard to manage a plant individually because of the way I had it set up. I'm about to get some clones and put them in 1.5 gallon pots, and have 4 of them on my 2x2 tray. I plan on running the water pump to an irrigation manifold to split it to 4 hoses, one for each pot. I don't plan on dripping, just use the solution straight from the 1/4" hosing. These clones are coming from an aerogarden (there's no medium) and are going to be directly planted in hydroton in the pots. Will the 1.5 gallons be enough to sustain a 3' plant? And how often would they need to be watered? Constantly? Thanks (=

1.5 gallons is fine for a 3 footer. People have a lot of success feeding the way youre describing. I'm not sure about threads on RIU and i dont think im supposed to link other forums..

But a google of these terms will show you some good examples:
krusty buckets
freedom buckets
maybe throw "weed" in there to get you on the right track.

From what I see, people constantly run through the 1/4" hose.

Clown Baby said:

1.5 gallons is fine for a 3 footer. People have a lot of success feeding the way youre describing. I'm not sure about threads on RIU and i dont think im supposed to link other forums..

But a google of these terms will show you some good examples:
krusty buckets
freedom buckets
maybe throw "weed" in there to get you on the right track.

From what I see, people constantly run through the 1/4" hose.

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Thank you so much for that great post I had no idea what they would've been called, except for top feed pots lol.

I appreciate it (=

Edit: I couldn't find too much about it, and it seemed that it was a little different than what I was trying to do. You pretty much answered my question about constant watering and pot size though, so thanks

teresa on IC mag grows like this. Her design is really simple, it uses 5gallon buckets with 10" netpots. Personally I sink 3 gallon buckets into 5gallon buckets. I like having more hydroton and less air space. But judging by the pics, her way works just fine. She plugs the water pump into her light timer, so the pump runs the whole time the lights are on.

someoneyouknow does warehouse grows with this system. he's also on ICmag.

Sorry for plugging ICmag, but they have more indoor tree growers on there than RIU... I searched for good krusty bucket threads with pics on this site n couldnt find any.

i use 2" net pots and collars and have 5 footers with no problems.

Bwpz said:

I just had a flood and drain setup, and it was hard to manage a plant individually because of the way I had it set up. I'm about to get some clones and put them in 1.5 gallon pots, and have 4 of them on my 2x2 tray. I plan on running the water pump to an irrigation manifold to split it to 4 hoses, one for each pot. I don't plan on dripping, just use the solution straight from the 1/4" hosing. These clones are coming from an aerogarden (there's no medium) and are going to be directly planted in hydroton in the pots. Will the 1.5 gallons be enough to sustain a 3' plant? And how often would they need to be watered? Constantly? Thanks (=

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I got my feet wet with a system like that. You can run the emitters 24/7 if you like, the roots just love flowing water. You can also run them 15 on 15 off.

the water just keeps draining back to the res then back into the pots constantly?? Where would you PPMs be for that set up for the first 3 weeks

STLbudz said:

the water just keeps draining back to the res then back into the pots constantly?? Where would you PPMs be for that set up for the first 3 weeks

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Seedlings or cuttings? With seedlings, I would run them at 300 PPM or so until they start branching, then go to 500 ppm for three days then 700 ppm. With cuttings I give them very little fertilizer until I see roots hanging from the pots, then dial it up to 500 PPM for three or four days, then 700 ppm until it is time to flip them. It is very important that they drop roots before you hit them with fertilizer; this is because some clones will take off immediately, and some will take off in 4 or 5 days. In the end they will be wildly different sized plants, which is a headache. Let them drop roots, and they all take off at the same time. Even sized plants are very easy to manage and your results are a lot more predictable.

Thanx, and what pots would you use? and does the water keep flowing thru the pots and back to the res constantly?

STLbudz said:

Thanx, and what pots would you use? and does the water keep flowing thru the pots and back to the res constantly?

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That would depend on what medium you used. In straight hydroton a 24/7 schedule is good, but also (as mentioned above) a 15 minutes on/15 minutes off is good too. If you're top feeding rockwool or something else that holds a lot of water then you wouldn't have to have it flowing as frequently.