Ebb & Flo for small areas

I'm going to be traveling more and have been thinking of moving to a Ebb & Flow system. All the kits out there seem to be for a much larger size (6-12 buckets) than I have. My tent is 2x4 and I usually only grow 2-4 plants at a time. Are there smaller linked-bucket systems out there?

You could build your own or just get a 2 x 4 flood table and your in business.

Like tallen said build your own or cut back on the pots used with the bigger system, build your own and save cash. You’re traveling so a larger reservoir is not a bad thing. Plants drink a lot of water plus it evaporates (1 to 2 gal a day or more late in the grow with 4 big plants) so extra gals of water is not a bad thing.

Picture your grow for a minute, you just mixed up a batch of nutrients and planing on going away fora couple of days. Your PPMs are 1000 they drink 2 gals of water that day. Next day the PPMs are over a 1000 because the water evaporates and leaves the nutrients behind. Plants don’t uptake enough nutes to keep PPMs at 1000 with less water in the res so it rises. 2 gals gone the next day and another PPM rise, so on and so on, first thing you have nuked your plants.

Don’t let me discourage you, there are way around this, I just wanted to let you know it’s not “set and forget” but it can be easily done if you have half a brain and a little cash. If you want to know more just ask.

Yeah, monitoring the reservoir is one thing I'm concerned about. I'm also thinking about setting up a drip system for soil grows. When I water I tend to water multiple time in smaller amounts over a couple hours to give the water a chance to absorb in the soil and I think I can set something up like that for the soil.

just use a larger res and your g2g

I run 8 5 gallon buckets off a 55 gallon rez.. Dyna grow nutes Lucas formula.. I'm able to leave for weeks at a time for work... I do have someone come check on them once a week but have never needed to do anything... If you can keep a Rez outside tent that's how I'd roll... From the rez you can run a drip line. or flood and drain.... lots of options.. Keep a bubbler in Rez also..

Here look at this for an idea.. just use smaller buckets. http://michiganmedicalmarijuana.org/index.php?showtopic=35773

run a flood and drain table with a big res and u have nothing to worry about... on multiple occasions I have done a nute change one day, checked the ph the next day and gone on vacation for 4-6 days with absolutely no issue. Im running a 40gal res. and its set up to flood 3x daily not saying that there isnt a possibility of issues if u dont know what you r doing, but i have done it at least a dozen times and never worried about it. the only issue i had was the ph being .2-.5 lower than i like it when i get back, and that was never a problem. on 6-8 day trips i had my girl add a little ph up and it was fine ( she has absolutely no clue what shes doing, and didnt have an issue)

One thing I do worry about is the water. We're on our own well which is fine for soil growing. PH is 7.4 out of the tap but we do have a lot of minerals in our water, mainly Iron. With soil grows I basically just toss my nutes in the water and I'm good. Would I need to switch to RO water?

You need to test your water to know for sure, over 200ppm is bad. Get a TDS Meter or use nutes designed for hard water. Collect rain water, it's perfect PH and almost 0 PPMs on TDS meter. lol

My base water is 200-300 and I have a few issues but nothing serious. Once I got it dialed in no worries. My res is 100 liters and it is stable for a week then I change water but I have let it go for 10 days with no issues. I built my own system for under $200 pumps incl. If you wanted a 2 plant system use smaller totes but not to small that its hard to keep things stable IMO.