For All Cap Ebb and Grow Users

so is there anyone at all who likes are has had success with the STG inserts? i just bought two of the systems with a butt load of the STG inserts not long ago, and now im finding the "go to" thread for these systems and it doesn't seem like anyone likes these things. it sounds to me from videos and threads that the problem with the STG's is that they retain to much water in the bottom of the buckets which causes root rot and other crap to go on. and the solution is to raise the inner bucket a little. that to me does not sound like its that hard. it sure seems a lot easier that washing those damn clay pellets. IMO. is there anything else that people dont like about the STG?

great thread. enjoyed all 79 pages of it.

mrduke said:

I also flood mine 5 times.after each oneof my grows the roots have been a thick mass in the exact shape of the bucket, but I've never had them be anything then whiteish tan.do you lift your buckets at all? I have mine sitting on a 1 1/2" block to help remove more of the left over water, leaving just a 1/2" or so. Do you add h202 to your res. it should help with the root rot.

post pic of your zero veg I've always want to do that with like 24-30 sites under 2 1000's

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I raise my buckets 1 inch with insulation board. I wonder if raising the inner bucket might be a good idea as well. As designed, they flood really deep. I use H202, 27%, but I'm skeptical about its ability diluted in 45 gallons of water; I think it completely oxidizes before it ever gets out of the reservoir. But this is not pythium type root rot where the roots turn to jelly and mush. I made the mistake of getting my nose close and sniffing. I gagged. sulphur and dead things. ugh.

Next run I'm going to run flood cycles as infrequently as possible. Once or twice a day max.

shnkrmn said:

I raise my buckets 1 inch with insulation board. I wonder if raising the inner bucket might be a good idea as well. As designed, they flood really deep. I use H202, 27%, but I'm skeptical about its ability diluted in 45 gallons of water; I think it completely oxidizes before it ever gets out of the reservoir. But this is not pythium type root rot where the roots turn to jelly and mush. I made the mistake of getting my nose close and sniffing. I gagged. sulphur and dead things. ugh.

Next run I'm going to run flood cycles as infrequently as possible. Once or twice a day max.

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For root rot prevention I have found Dutch Masters Zone as a superb sup instead of H2O2. It is milder and has no effect on iron. It will not dissipate either. The dose is 1 ml/gal so 1 liter goes for 1000 gallons, or about 2 cents/gal, way cheaper than H2O2 at 5ml/gal . Also, I have a big ass air-stone in the res that kicks on 15 minutes before flood time. I also will get bags of ice and pluck them in the res once in a while to help keep the temps under 70 degrees. I don't have to do this all the time because I found placing a fan above the res and blowing into the res barrel helps tremendously keeping the res temp down.

Between grows, as part of the sanitizing process, I run everything through a STRONG solution of hygrozyme for a day. Than I clear out the hygrozyme with replacement fresh water and clean with a STRONG solution of H2O2 for another day. When I do this I set the flood times for 1 hr on 1 hour off so everything soaks good. This gets all the crap out that's in the nooks and crannys of the pumps and lines.

Finally, any hydroton that I keep I clean with Clearex real good. Clearex will neutralize the ionic polarity accumulated on the rock after use. If the root ball was excessively embedded in the rock like the picture I showed you earlier, I toss it. The labor involved removing old root and cleaning the hydroton is not justifiable.

I don't see the advantage of raising the buckets. No matter what you do, there will be that pool at the depth of the drain hole. Raising the bucket higher in relation to the feed bucket will also mean a lower level of flooding. I would rather the flood level reach the bottom ring of the bucket as designed.

I agree about not trying too hard to reuse hydroton. "excessively embedded in the rock" is right. The only 'ton I'm keeping is the stuff that remained loose and unbound by roots, about 25%.

My res temps were between 54 in February and 63 degrees at the end of the grow. Definitely not too warm.

I'll upgrade my airpump and stones before the next cycle. I'm also looking to upgrade the tubing; anyone have specific suggestions or suppliers for less kink-prone tubing?

Your recommendations for between grow sanitizing are good, nice and methodical, but why the redundant application of hygrozyme AND h202? The H-zyme is expensive

I guess it is overkill but I'm paranoid. I had a bad past experience with root rot and I hear no matter what you do, some of the beasties may be lurking in there so I went with the overkill method!

hygrozyme hygrozyme and more hygrozyme, never an issue and raise your buckets one inch, this will leave one inch of water, this is just right, / hygrozyme is used in food preperation manufactuerers and used in cleaning surgical room equipment, nothing better than it out there for your roots. you can also save money by running only 4-5ml/gal instead of the 8-10ml they recommend. roots are scavengers, if you raise the buckets too high say 2 inches they roots will grow into the lines, this killed 5 plants of mine, so remember no more than an inch, and and with the use of hygrozyme for shitsd and gigles i didnt raise buckets for one run and the roots were perfect, they did not need to grow out into the hose looking for water

morrisgreenberg said:

off topic, but i need some serious info and since this is the thread where most of you guys have a good rapport with me, so i am considering a new start in life, i am thinking about moving to san diego and setting up shop and starting a new life in warm weather, can someone honestly tell me whats the scene like out there? i am will to go and make a run out there for atleast a yr, this will be a heavy investment and for the community of "ours" do you think it would be a waste of tim,e? i know the locals dont like new jacks rolling up on there scene, any thoughts guys>?

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Think long and hard about that decision. Unless you plan on coming out and setting up a warehouse w/ appropriate number of coop member's it's hard to make a buck in this market. Also, with the lagalization question prices may be coming down even more. Careful what you wish for my friend. The grass is alway's greener and all that shit.

Good luck with your decision.

got a question for you fellow Ebb and Grow users!

i have 30 pots, 5 running to each of the inlets on the controller and they are positioned in the room in rows of 5. my furthest row of pots does not seem to be getting watered well! my hoses are ran really clean cut to the exact legnth they are spaced and all run down one side of my room and are loosly zip stripped togather so they dont move. for some reason those buckets just dont fill up all the way. i'm running 30 min fill cycles and i even raised my brain bucket a few inches until the closest buckets are filled to the rim of water but the back buckets only fill up about 1/3 of the way. the furthest row of buckets is about 12-15 ft to the first bucket and buckets are spaced about 1 ft apart so the furthest bucket is about 20 ft max. brand new hose this run and running house garden nutes which run super clean so i'm sure i have not clogged a line in the first two weeks where i'm running really light nutes. any suggestions?????

This may sound batty but are you in a basement ? The floors of such slope 1/8 to 1/4 inch a foot for flooding to a drain so when you have a length of 20 ft , thats a slope of 2.5 to 5 inches. So if the controller bucket is near the drain area, the furthest bucket is that much higher. Just a thought.

Str8Dank said:

got a question for you fellow Ebb and Grow users!

i have 30 pots, 5 running to each of the inlets on the controller and they are positioned in the room in rows of 5. my furthest row of pots does not seem to be getting watered well! my hoses are ran really clean cut to the exact legnth they are spaced and all run down one side of my room and are loosly zip stripped togather so they dont move. for some reason those buckets just dont fill up all the way. i'm running 30 min fill cycles and i even raised my brain bucket a few inches until the closest buckets are filled to the rim of water but the back buckets only fill up about 1/3 of the way. the furthest row of buckets is about 12-15 ft to the first bucket and buckets are spaced about 1 ft apart so the furthest bucket is about 20 ft max. brand new hose this run and running house garden nutes which run super clean so i'm sure i have not clogged a line in the first two weeks where i'm running really light nutes. any suggestions?????

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yeah, i would put a level down on the ground and check your floor if your traveling that far. if your not in construction, as a buddy thats frames home. hell have a 6' level you can use and you can get it dialed. if its not level, put your buckets on a 2 by 10 and level it out. that way everything is the same.
good luck.

Anyone have advise on doing an emergency move of a 12 site with 3 foot plants in flower? The new room is ready for them, but it is 60 miles from their current location. It's a shitty situation, but they have to be moved by the end of the week because my friend is an idiot. I appreciate any help that I can get to minimize the stress on my girls.

Need to know what type of transportation u have and your current light schedule, day on or night on. Makes a difference. Can U get a van with tinting? or a pick-up with a topper?

Rent a moving truck for a day. Just make sure all the signal lights are functioning. You don't want to have a traffic stop over some useless shit. Move em in, strap them down and put a lock on it. Drive 2.4 miles over the speed limit. Do it all during their light period so you don't interrupt their cycle. If you are efficient, it shouldn't stress em out too much. They shouldn't even miss a flood cycle.

What did your idiot friend do???

that sounds like a f'ed up situation. but if you listen to shnkr's advice you should be OK

Yeah i had to move 12 plants-5 weeks in to flower at 3am so no one in my apartment would see, I got the biggest u haul box they make, and put one plant per box, i did have the moving truck, there was no way to do it without it because they were so tall... the hard part was hooking my buckets back up because i made the mistake of just cutting the tubbing rater than taking it off. as long as you dont have a small tent to hook the buckets back up in, you should be fine. Just use the lighter trick.

Whats the Longest you can veg a plant in the ebb and grow for and still have a good healthy plant, I was thinking of vegging 6 weeks but with all the talk about root mass problems I am worried about growing to big of a plant for the 2 Ga buckets

my last whiteberry run vegged 6 weeks and had 5 ft plants with over a QP each on avg. this root bound talk is all bonk, in a flood tray you can rock a 3-4ft plant in a 5inch net pot

Thanks for the input guys. More info; light schedule is 10pm-10am and we are planning to rent a box van or trailer that they can all fit into safely. We're thinking of doing it just after a flood towards the end schedule (morning), but I am unsure of taking the whole thing apart and then not getting it back together before 10am. I picked up a bunch of extra tubing, grommets, "t's", etc. to replace them as needed, but I was thinking of taking all of the inner buckets out and not disconnecting the hoses on the outers to reduce the potential for leaks. The issue here, of course, is that I don't want to crush my beautiful roots. Do you think that I am best off disconnecting each bucket and putting them (both buckets and some tubing) into individual boxes in the van?

Boxing119--You can definitely veg for 6 weeks in the system. I vegged for about that long and the girls look beautiful without any issues. Check out my journal. I've been bad about adding pics since flower, but you can see what 6 weeks of veg in this bad boy system is capable of. Like MorrisGreenberg implies, you can grow trees with the E&G. I'll be better with pics once the ladies aren't 60 miles from me. One note, I am having to add a light mover and additional space because the plants got bigger than expected. It's getting hard to maintain proper light penetration on the bottom parts of the plants.

i dont know who said it but i read somwhere that you cant get plant rootbound in hydro, you just have to up the water schedule. i veged mine 5 weeks from clone and them bushes are huge and happy in week 5 of flower

morrisgreenberg said:

my last whiteberry run vegged 6 weeks and had 5 ft plants with over a QP each on avg. this root bound talk is all bonk, in a flood tray you can rock a 3-4ft plant in a 5inch net pot

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What do you mean by a flood tray? What do you mean about a net pot? So your talking about an ebb/flow system? There is no such thing as root bound? I think you are right though to up the water schedule to reduce it. But because you don't get yours root bound does not mean it can't happen. It did to me as the pik showed but maybe thats what I should do in the future is water more.