For All Cap Ebb and Grow Users

rocklee420 said:

I don't know if anyone has posted this or not, but these things work great for filling/draining your res. http://www.petco.com/product/108265/Aqueon-Aquarium-Water-Changer.aspx?CoreCat=certona-_-productdetail_2-_-Aqueon%20Aquarium%20Water%20Changer-108265

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for $20 more you can get one of these.....



i can empty my res in about 5 min and refill it from my ro res in another 5 min. paint mixer tip on a power drill and in 20 min i can drain, fill, add all parts of nutes one at a time and then ph.....

i just got back my controller bucket. CAP cleaned it up real nice ( or its a whole new bucket ).

They also gave me two brand new pumps! I can use them if one fails or on my DIY controller bucket ( bought two kits http://www.aquahub.com/store/product39.html )

Thank you CAP!

From a note on the box they had to repair a timer, a float, and something else. Yikes.

hey DTP, hows that aquahub unit working for you? that looks like a perfect replacement for the price, better than the $300 CAP charges, besides i think if you went out an got all the parts individually it would be more expensive. did you find it difficult to wire up? with that unit and some buckets you can build a good looking unit for less than half of what cap charges, and i got my CAP systems for $399

I'm about to chop after my first grow with the CAP system, check out my journal and let me know what you think.

morrisgreenberg said:

hey DTP, hows that aquahub unit working for you? that looks like a perfect replacement for the price, better than the $300 CAP charges, besides i think if you went out an got all the parts individually it would be more expensive. did you find it difficult to wire up? with that unit and some buckets you can build a good looking unit for less than half of what cap charges, and i got my CAP systems for $399

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i got my system for around that price. I think it was an old model. I notice the new controller they sent me added a delay or something, so that when the float switches are tripped, it takes a while for the pumps to turn on ( I think this is to avoid constant on/off and like if the controller water is sloshed it wont keep turning on the pump )


i havent built the aquahub kit yet but it looks like it will take around a day to make.

I've done two grows with this system. There is a lot of pros and cons. LOTS. One thing I learned was to just put enough water to fill your buckets then around 5 gallons in the res. Anymore is just a waste of RO water and nutes. (but make sure to keep an eye on it, you don't want ur pump sucking air) I had 24 buckets, ran it 30 mins 4 times a day. NOTE: When you flush your res remember there's still a lot of water in the buckets and lines so adjust your PH and PPM after running the system.

2triple0ss said:

I've done two grows with this system. There is a lot of pros and cons. LOTS. One thing I learned was to just put enough water to fill your buckets then around 5 gallons in the res. Anymore is just a waste of RO water and nutes. (but make sure to keep an eye on it, you don't want ur pump sucking air) I had 24 buckets, ran it 30 mins 4 times a day. NOTE: When you flush your res remember there's still a lot of water in the buckets and lines so adjust your PH and PPM after running the system.

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i disagree, you would want to fill the tank as high as you can, more water means stable PH stable PPM and stays cooler better. espexially with a 24 site system theres tons of water being taking up by plants that you will get Violent swings in your water readings

morrisgreenberg said:

i disagree, you would want to fill the tank as high as you can, more water means stable PH stable PPM and stays cooler better. espexially with a 24 site system theres tons of water being taking up by plants that you will get Violent swings in your water readings

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I agree with your disagree. I tried 30 gallons for a 21 site system. i was PH down twice a day just to keep up. once i switched to RO, and filled the entire thing, it calmed down a ton.

cvbud said:

I agree with your disagree. I tried 30 gallons for a 21 site system. i was PH down twice a day just to keep up. once i switched to RO, and filled the entire thing, it calmed down a ton.

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I agree with your agree with his disagree. 18 plant site now, I fill 55 gallons on the res. In week 6 right now of flowering, and the plants drink probably 5 gallons of water every day. I top off the res every few days and add nutrients once a week. Welcome to the Lucas Formula.

On a side note, when the system is brand new and empty, it will hold about 1/8th gallon per bucket in each bucket, and then as much water as your hoses are long all the time. Nothing terrible to worry about. Off of one 55 gallon reservoir with 2.5 gallon buckets as mine is, I think your safe with about 25 plants max. More than that and you'll be out of water often.

i agree with the disagrees as well lol.

it is POINTLESS to use just over what it takes to fill your buckets even if you flush weekly (and i do faithfully) because then you just have to add back daily! IDK what your system runs like but my girls can drink up over 5 gal a day. fill it up to the top and when it gets so low that it is getting close to not being able to fill your buckets without running out add back RO water (and nutes if you prefer). this creates ZERO waste.

55 gallons
drinking 5 gal a day
in 7 days they go through 35 gallons. why not just put all that in on day one instead of incrementally having to do it daily? more buffer for ph. more stabilized PH, better mixed nutes (if you have air running in your res) it just makes sense on every level.

even if your plants only drank 3 gal a day you are still talking about 21 gallons being sucked up per 7 days so filling it up to 50 means you would have 26 still in res when ready to flush which is just enough to fill up the buckets if you are running a good amount and have extra hose and a res outside of the room (and you should).

the intent was there but it's a bad idea bro switch up your process.

I also tend to disagree with the statement of filling the res with JUST an extra 5 gallons. I like to fill my 30 pot system with at least 40 gallons. This like the others have posted keeps the levels more stable.

I have been growing for 3 years using a drip slab system with rockwool slabs, PBP full line, and Beneficial bacteria (plantacillin) with no problems.

I recently moved and acquired new equipment. My room is a micro climate with co2. I am running liquid cooled lights and a small window ac unit to keep the temps at 75 during the day and 65 at night. The mechanics and equipment of the room seem to be working great. I have included pictures of the room and of the largest clone.

This is the first time using an ebb and grow. It has 24 sites placed in 3 circles of 8 around each light. I am vertical with 3 1000k's)

I stated off my clones in an ez cloner and rooted all 30 in 7 days. With the first sign of roots, I added my bennies and superthrive. The roots blew up for a week, and then I added a light dose of Botanicare ferts. They looked great, and continued to blow up over the next week. I transplanted four days ago into my pre-washed hydroton and all seemed well. I mixed up some PBP, half strength bennies, superthrive, and ph to 5.8. and run the system every three hours for 15 minutes. After a few days my ph rose along with my ppms. The res smelled bad and white floaties were in it. It is the beginning of a bacteria infestation.

I am noticing how difficult it is to grow with hydro organics with hydroton as the medium. Since I have no rockwool and nothing for the bennies to culture to in the main reservoir, I think the bad bacteria is taking over the main reservoir, but since the bennies have cultured in the root zone, I believe they have not burdened the plants with rot yet. Since I can't run h202 with PBP, I switched it out for the BC that came with the unit.
Today, I refilled my reservoir with 45 gallons of dechlorinated 100ppm tap water, with only 25 ppms total of the BC line (no carbs) dutch master zone, and 1 tsp of h202 basically for a flush. I am sure this is going to kill all the bennies in the root zone of the plants, but will trade that for no bad bacteria any day! I am trading my wonderful hydroorganic ferts for chemical ferts to help ward off the bad stuff.

Any input would be awesome. Has anyone ever had this problem?

Has any one ran two rez's to the same grow, i got a 24 site set up the are in the first week of flower but are pretty big considering i vegged for 6 weeks and the drink a ton of water... i have an extra rez im currently not using and i was ondering if i could run them both, just get a plug for the other pump and connect it with the other one, would this work?

Anyone else running into this problem of mine? Do they use zone? What Do most of you E&G & hydroton users with reservoir temps of 72-76 use chemical ferts and h202 and not Hydro Organic ferts? This stuff is kinda beating me up and wan't my plants to do well so once again, any help would be great for a new E&G user!!!

JeffersonBud said:

Anyone else running into this problem of mine? Do they use zone? What Do most of you E&G & hydroton users with reservoir temps of 72-76 use chemical ferts and h202 and not Hydro Organic ferts? This stuff is kinda beating me up and wan't my plants to do well so once again, any help would be great for a new E&G user!!!

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I had onset of root rot and here is what I did: Drained system. Cleaned Res and pipes with chlorox. I got a wide bucket and filled it to 3 gallons of cool (65F) RO water with 5ml/Gal H2O2 and Clearex (forgot the dose) and dipped each plant individually in this bucket for 15 minutes each, changing the water out every 3 buckets or so. I than filled the res with Max concentration of ZONE (4ml / gal) Non-RO and ran through 5 normal cycles. Than I dumped the water, to include as much of the residual water remaining in the buckets (raising them). I than filled the res with RO and went 50% nutes for 3 days (with normal dose of Zone, 1ml/Gal )than upped to 100% (EC 2). It worked fine. Maybe I went too gung-ho but it worked. My res temps were 73 or so. The Zone has chlorine in it which is the real killer of the bad-guys and the good guys !! Like you said Dump the Hygrozyme, it's for soil. go 100% chemical in rock. I thought it did wonders for my grow at first but what really was going on is the Zone is keeping the bad guys dead so roots are healthy and multiply.

With the maint level of ZONE, you should be able to tolorate higher res temps. An airstone also can increase the oxygen levels somewhat. I don't use H2O2 because of the Zone, it seems rather redundant for pathogens. H2O2 will increase your DO , but it is short lived. Zone or Clorox will keep the pathogens at bay even in higher temps. The only down side for some is that it is for chem grows only. I never did Co2 but I heard that you want a higher temperature in the room to facilitate co2 uptake. Good luck, I know it's alot of work.

Edit: The reason I dipped individually was so I could complety submerge ALL the rock.

patlpp said:

I had onset of root rot and here is what I did: Drained system. Cleaned Res and pipes with chlorox. I got a wide bucket and filled it to 3 gallons of cool (65F) RO water with 5ml/Gal H2O2 and Clearex (forgot the dose) and dipped each plant individually in this bucket for 15 minutes each, changing the water out every 3 buckets or so. I than filled the res with Max concentration of ZONE (4ml / gal) Non-RO and ran through 5 normal cycles. Than I dumped the water, to include as much of the residual water remaining in the buckets (raising them). I than filled the res with RO and went 50% nutes for 3 days (with normal dose of Zone, 1ml/Gal )than upped to 100% (EC 2). It worked fine. Maybe I went too gung-ho but it worked. My res temps were 73 or so. The Zone has chlorine in it which is the real killer of the bad-guys and the good guys !! Like you said Dump the Hygrozyme, it's for soil. go 100% chemical in rock. I thought it did wonders for my grow at first but what really was going on is the Zone is keeping the bad guys dead so roots are healthy and multiply.

With the maint level of ZONE, you should be able to tolorate higher res temps. An airstone also can increase the oxygen levels somewhat. I don't use H2O2 because of the Zone, it seems rather redundant for pathogens. H2O2 will increase your DO , but it is short lived. Zone or Clorox will keep the pathogens at bay even in higher temps. The only down side for some is that it is for chem grows only. I never did Co2 but I heard that you want a higher temperature in the room to facilitate co2 uptake. Good luck, I know it's alot of work.

Edit: The reason I dipped individually was so I could complety submerge ALL the rock.

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Thanks for the reply patpp!
because my buckets were on shims I just lowered my controller bucket to empty most of the old solution back, then raised it to submerge the rocks. After the first cycle, I drained the reservoir and added fresh water and a half dosage of zone then ph to 5.8 It should flush for the last cycles of the day and I will drain the main res. again and add a half dosage of zone and a light dose of ferts. I think this should get the plants back to where they should be. Oh, and yes I do have 2 air stones in my res.
I have been trying to scour the internet for an ebb and grow with rocks and using zone for a bit so thanks again for the reassurance. Plantacillin is a great beneficial bacteria, but if your res goes beyond 68, then you should be using h202 or a product like zone with a chemical based fert. Hydro organics and even beneficial bacteria with a higher res temp don't work!
I do have Physan 20 if things get ugly, but i think the zone wash will be great.
This is the first time I am using another fert line and a chemical one at that. Botanicare is a great fert. Until i get another chiller, I will be using chemical ones though.

As for the co2 thing, I need to supplement co2 into my room because it is sealed with no intake or exhaust. Basically with no loud fans to pass air and no fans to cool the lights, besides the whisper of a few occulting fans and quite blow of a good window ac unit, the room is virtually silent both inside and out.

thanks again!

Sure thing JBUD. If you haven't already, you should lookup Fatman7574 and go thru his posts...excellent resource, should be right up your alley. He explains the chlorine thing.

can your PH in your rez. with a flood and drain table fluxuate a little example- 5.5 to 6.0 with out hurting the plants?

Humboldt14 said:

can your PH in your rez. with a flood and drain table fluxuate a little example- 5.5 to 6.0 with out hurting the plants?

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Humboldt this is ideal.. Different minerals and nutes get absorbed at different PH levels. During veg I like mine 5.3-6 and flowering 5.7-6.2.

BeginnersLuck said:

Humboldt this is ideal.. Different minerals and nutes get absorbed at different PH levels. During veg I like mine 5.3-6 and flowering 5.7-6.2.

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thanks man. so that means a little flux is good then?