Question About Draining

Hey everyone, we just did our first flood and feeding and i have a question. I'll post a pic first..



The short tube on the right is where the water comes in and out and the taller on the left is an emergency drain incase the pump never shuts off.. when the table has completly flooded and starts to flow back through the pump it stops at the top of the tube because it will not drain any further, leaving water in the table. will it hurt the plants to be sitting in constant water? we are using 6" rockwool cubes and a coco mat.

thanks
 

Bizkitcrux

Member
You should remove the spacers on tube from the pump to get it as low as possible. You want the bottom of the growing media to be completely above the level of the nutrient solution when not on the watering cycle. Rockwool will draw nutrient solution up from the bottom through capillary action.
You may have read that it's impossible to over-water rockwool. It's not true. I lost three plants before I figured that one out.
I'm currently using 6" rockwool cubes and water only every 48 hours.
The best of luck to you!
 

Bizkitcrux

Member
In this pic of the overflow/drain tube on my setup, you can see how short the one on the left is. That's the one from the pump.
Adding or removing spacers on the overflow tube on the right determines the max height of the nutrient solution.
You could add the spacers to the tube on the left, but shouldn't because you want as much of the nutrient solution as possible to drain back to the reservoir.
 

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Clown Baby

Well-Known Member
get your fill/drain fitting flush the the bottom.
Rockwool retains too much moisture as it is. Dont keep it flooded.
 

tibberous

Well-Known Member
Not only will it kill the plants (unless you add airstones, at which point it isn't really ebb and flow), you will get a huge amount of algae.

You basically just installed it wrong - was there a reason you wanted to leave it constantly flooded?
 
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