Most noob friendly Hydro technique?

(sigh) dont listen to ANY of the above, about the "simplest" hydro method, because they obviously have no idea what hempy buckets are. Just do a search either on google or ICMAG and you'll see.

basically its a 5 gal bucket, filled with porous or aerated medium like perlite & vermiculite. 3 parts perlite 1 part vermiculite, fill 5 gall bucket, put 1 hole in the bucket 2 inches from the bottom and yureeka!

You could for sure do Hempy buckets... but then its eaither a manual feed regimen and drainage issues or set up a drip feed system. I use and love Hempy but still recommend Ebb & Grow or similar bucket system.

LiveHigh said:

For buckets, I use 3.5 gallon buckets that fit into 5 gallon buckets. Then I poke a bunch of holes near the tops of the 3.5 gallon buckets but still inside of the 5 gallon buckets. So when the water level rises to that level, they overflow into the 5 gallons. Then I have a nozzle siliconed to the bottom of the 5 gallon that points straight over my reservoir below (buckets are on top of a table with panda film below so no light escapes.) Then my pump inside my reservoir connects through its tubing up to a T splitter, and then through a hole around mid point in the 5 gallon buckets, and then into nozzles that are siliconed in the bottom of the 3.5 gallon buckets.

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Do you have some pics or link to a tutorial? This sounds nice.

Col. kif said:

You could for sure do Hempy buckets... but then its either a manual feed regimen and drainage issues or set up a drip feed system.

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.... Exactly it's a pain in the ass....(sigh) Don't give new guys false info Ursus.....a stand alone dwc needs no vermiculite or perlite, just water and an air stone! Hempy buckets are simple but not as simple as a basic DWC and the manual feeding is a pain and the drainage issues are messy and also a pain.

epicseeds said:

Do you have some pics or link to a tutorial? This sounds nice.

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Let me see what I can do...here are some pics of what I got going. I would have it all in the hydroton bucket setup, but I rushed in extra plants late, so I just popped in em coco. Anyhow...

I took one pic where you could see it all, and see that the 3.5 gallon buckets are sitting in the 5 gallon. The 3.5's are light green and pink (ran out of light green at Lowes!) and the 5 gallons are white. Then I took a close up of some of the holes I cut in the top. They could definitely be a lot cleaner, but as long as you have enough that it's impossible for your pump to overflow, you're good. I use a 130gph pump, so it's pretty weak. It takes about 4 minutes for it to fill both up, and I let it flood every 4 hours for 5 minutes while the light is on.

Then you can see the splitter and where the tubes go through the 5 gallons. I don't have pics of inside the buckets, but the 3.5 gallon just has a nozzle (that the tubing fits on) screwed into a flange (put some of that white tubing tape wrapped around the creases before screwing in) and siliconed into an appropriate size hole through the bottom.

Then as you can see in the pic of my reservoir, I just have the two small pipes pointing straight over the top of the reservoir. They are also screwed into a flange and siliconed into the bottom, on the 5 gallon. It's dark enough that the flash auto turned on when I took that pic, which is simply panda film covering the table with small holes poked through for what needs to go through.