ebb and flow question

How often should I flood a 4' x 6' table with 48 plants under one 1000 watt?

hey i have a 4x4 table with 45 plants with a 1000 hsp with 4inch rockwool cubes and i flood 4 times with the light on. works for me. now do some ppl flood with the light off???

what kind of yield are you getting? How big are your plants before you flower them? I am going to foliar feed with the lights off. . . .

The number of times you would flood should depend on the medium you are using, provide the details you will get a better answer. There isn't any reason you would have to flood four times a day with rockwool, it retains more moisture than any other medium. There is not any reason too flood with lights off. VV

I'll be using a coco mat on on the bottom, 4" rock wool cubes, and clay pellets.

I have a 3'x'3 ebbflow system and I am going to have around 25 clones. I was wondering the same thing. I cannot choose a medium for nothing. I just want one that is goof proof with the way I have been killing stuff lately in soil.

3 or 4 times a day.

pimpnitjc said:

I have a 3'x'3 ebbflow system and I am going to have around 25 clones. I was wondering the same thing. I cannot choose a medium for nothing. I just want one that is goof proof with the way I have been killing stuff lately in soil.

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You are right to be concerned about this, if you have been consistantly killing your soil grow you have been overwatering, the symptoms for over and under watering look kinda the same.
All of the different mediums will work, otherwise no one would buy them, they do require different watering schedules. Potroast has a thread on hydro,https://www.rollitup.org/hydroponics-aeroponics/1009-hydroponics.html , he has been growing and instructing folks how to grow for about 100 years I think. I would suggest reading the first few pages of his thread. VV

i use an ebb/flow system with hydroton, i flood until the water gets to the precise level i want just for a second, then drain... i do this every other hour, (7 times a day during flowering) - this would be very hard to do with only timers though

So you don't use a timer when you flood? I'm too lazy to not set up my pump on a timer! You just use hydroton?

yeah i just use hydroton in my planters - and i dont use a timer, i use a PLC (industrial automation equipment) i have 3 containers, with 3 different kinds of water pumps, each container fills for a time that i set because the pump rates are different. (1 is 65 sec, one is 80 sec, one is 90 sec) this is impossible to do with a timer... but as long as the roots can sortof dry out before the next flood you are all good... rockwool cubes dont drain fast enough to flood every other hour.

I am thinking of going with hydrotron. so you flood 7 times during flowering a day, what about when they are clones and are in early veg stage. How many times do you flood then?

when i'm in 18hr mode i flood 10 times... once when the lights turn on, then once every other our until they go off...

this is not the "standard" way of doing it though - and i dont know if you will be able to with just a regular timer...

some people flood few times a day, but flood for 15 minutes at a time... i spread it out into more, short length floods.

So the size of the plant does not really regulate the times you water, its the medium u use and the light period pretty much?

yeah - you dont flood in the dark, and you wanna make sure it can dry out pretty good before the next flood...

if you are trying to choose a medium, i would go with hydroton, or its new alternative (which looks similar, but all the rocks are not perfectly round, i forget the name)... i would use the smallest rockwool cubes you could get, and possibly cut them in half (against the grain) to get rockwool "slabs". Basically, use as little of that shit as possible, because if you use huge cubes - 4" or 6" they take way too long to dry out if you were to flood them up to the top, and you can easily soak them too much and slow your plant way down (or kill it)...

the smaller the "cube" the better - as soon as the roots can get out, the plant will take off and you can flood more times a day... if you are not doing enough flooding, or are flooding too much - the plants will tell you...

so basically 2-3 times for rockwool and depending on the med. no more then whats needed keep a eye on ur plants. I had a drip type e&f. system i had runing 30min every 3 to 4 hrs witch was in coco pebbles and it started as a clone box but keeped one in there and with 30min every 4hrs it was growing bigger then the space wit no signs of over watering

I'm using the Ebb and Gro bucket system. I'm using 80/20 coco/hydroton mix. I'm not satisfied with this medium had some problems with root rot from the buckets not draining well enough and the coco stays too wet. I only flood every other day. I'm in week 6 flowering. All the plants are stunted and are not reaching their full potential. I'm going straight hydroton next round. Is it true that I don't have to flood in dark hours? Even in Flowering?

hey horsepower850 ebb andflow with rock and coco isnt that messy??
6x6 pots with clay,4 feedings in 12 hours,28 pots total

Yes it is a bit messy and gnats love coco. It was not a good idea to run coco in the E&F bucket system. Yea straight hydroton is the way to go for a medium in these systems. Just have to make sure the roots don't grow into the drain tube. Just had that issue. Some plants looked thirsty too soon and the outcome was of a tube blockage.

pimpnitjc said:

I have a 3'x'3 ebbflow system and I am going to have around 25 clones. I was wondering the same thing. I cannot choose a medium for nothing. I just want one that is goof proof with the way I have been killing stuff lately in soil.

Click to expand...

Hydroton. Make sure to wash it before you use it, too. Because the stuff comes dirty.

Flood ~every 3 hrs with the lights on.