Some questions on hydro? Any help would be great...

Hey RIU, well as you can tell from the title I have some questions and after searching and searching on this site and others,yet I find myself asking more questions about hydro and how to go about it.

Just so you know ,I have been growing in soil for about 3 years and I'm getting good results but am looking to expand my hobby and knowledge and give hydro a go. I have a few books and have an understanding of how it would work and how things are done,....
But I wont bore you with more about my grow or whats currently going on, instead I will see if anyone can help with some of these questions about hydroponics.

So,

I think I will go flood and drain(ebb and flow) simply cause I don't want to go NFT because I think having a pump on all the time is abit of a waste of power. So that is my first question, in an NFT system dose the pump stay on 24/7? I have read that its 'pretty much continuous' ,so dose that mean it is constantly on?
Ha just reading that back makes me sound thick....

Now more importantly medium.
So i have heard rock-wool is good ,but not in flood and drain.(read that on this site) It holds too much moisture,also prone to salt build up... also in the same post it mentions hydroton, the clay pebbles are the kittens mittens but I know that to get those clay balls they are mined and that is not good for the environment, also that when you wash them you still get clay in your system and also pouring the clay down the drain(while pre-cleaning) isn't a good thing.. So i was thinking I would use rock-wool blocks planting them in the flood table and maybe some of that smooth gravel in between the plants and then covering the table with a lid, is that a good idea? what would you recommend.??

And lastly,
PPM and EC. Now i see alot of people saying you need a low ppm and that ,but I thought PPM was inaccurate and not as constant as EC.? Simply in my bible it says something along the lines of , PPM is inaccurate as it could be 20PPM of pure N, or could be a balanced complete range of elements at 20PPM, so I was just goin to use EC.. is this a bad idea and should i get PPM meter as well as an EC meter.?

Please feel free to say well thats not good or your wrong about this or that, any help is appreciated..

Take it easy,.....

no, the pump does not stay on all the time. roots need o2. my pumps are on 80secs and off 8mins.
you really should check out stinkbuds thread, harvest a pound every three weeks, or mine, my 3 stages of flower. no media needed.

I have an EC meter, it reads in PPM and i believe it to be more accurate, its reads 430 on my tap while a regular PPM will read 350-380. I use my pump running continuously 24 hours with a drip ebb and flow and i use hyrdroton but it can some breaks just fine i suppose, i just keep it running because the pump just uses 6 watts. The power from 1 hour of my 600 light would power it for weeks. Maybe you can look into coco too

bunnyface,

Hello, I hope I can of help. I was pretty set on hydroponics when I first started due to "what I have seen" produced.

Different hydro systems require different experience levels in a few things. If you have never done it before, you will have to go through your own learning curve, dealing with some trial and error at times. Here is what I found so far that might help.

Your PH is very very very important in hydro. If you buy a system, you might want to ensure that you will be able to check ph's in all buckets, bins, tanks, etc. You could have 30 buckets, but when you do your weekly/biweekly water change, pumping new water in will alter the PH and you will spend about a day toying with it to balance it out (so far in my experience, others have been luckier).

I run a general hydroponics water farm kit. It is a drip system that requires the use of an air pump. Well, that being said, I had to figure out the right timing cycle. I found, 15 on/15 off was good, I also have 2 water pumps on the same time cycle. The kit didn't come with the water pumps, I purchased them because I found that I would rather circulate the water and make my changes/corrections, let it cycle, and find out what my overall system number was, rather than have to check each and every bin.

The biggest thing I came into problems with also, was nutrient burn. You really want to start out slow and low. I started 800, went to 500, and had to go to 300. Seriously, start low or youll regret it.

PH down is a must, the stuff is cheap, 12 bucks a qt. PH up, no need to buy, just add water (if your ph is 8-8.5 out of the tap like mine)

As far as what kind of system you want to design, DWC or a flood table will probably be your most simple design. Ebb & flow, bucket systems, NFT are a bit more complicated (and pricey) NFT is done by pumping water into the header and letting it run down the pipe and drain out. You don't need a constant stream in there, but you'll need enough water so that your roots don't dry up.

For a first time, I wouldn't suggest a circulating drip system like my custom water farm setup. I would use a single bucket or bin, and expand after that. The single bucket will allow you to control your PH much more effectively. Having 13 different buckets like I do makes for some variables and some fluctuations to my ph until I'm done doing the balancing act. PH is big, because some ranges will uptake nutes and some wont. Included is a pic of what I'm talking about. Take note, that at 5.8, you can uptake Cal and Mag, but if you veer off any, you wont be able to uptake it. The soil chart is amazing. Lots of availability but soil has the balancing act too, like with the Iron.



Hope this pic helps. Don't hesitate to PM me if you have questions, I don't mind sharing what knowledge I have with you.

bunnyface said:

Hey RIU, well as you can tell from the title I have some questions and after searching and searching on this site and others,yet I find myself asking more questions about hydro and how to go about it.

Just so you know ,I have been growing in soil for about 3 years and I'm getting good results but am looking to expand my hobby and knowledge and give hydro a go. I have a few books and have an understanding of how it would work and how things are done,....
But I wont bore you with more about my grow or whats currently going on, instead I will see if anyone can help with some of these questions about hydroponics.

So,

I think I will go flood and drain(ebb and flow) simply cause I don't want to go NFT because I think having a pump on all the time is abit of a waste of power. So that is my first question, in an NFT system dose the pump stay on 24/7? I have read that its 'pretty much continuous' ,so dose that mean it is constantly on?
Ha just reading that back makes me sound thick....

Now more importantly medium.
So i have heard rock-wool is good ,but not in flood and drain.(read that on this site) It holds too much moisture,also prone to salt build up... also in the same post it mentions hydroton, the clay pebbles are the kittens mittens but I know that to get those clay balls they are mined and that is not good for the environment, also that when you wash them you still get clay in your system and also pouring the clay down the drain(while pre-cleaning) isn't a good thing.. So i was thinking I would use rock-wool blocks planting them in the flood table and maybe some of that smooth gravel in between the plants and then covering the table with a lid, is that a good idea? what would you recommend.??

And lastly,
PPM and EC. Now i see alot of people saying you need a low ppm and that ,but I thought PPM was inaccurate and not as constant as EC.? Simply in my bible it says something along the lines of , PPM is inaccurate as it could be 20PPM of pure N, or could be a balanced complete range of elements at 20PPM, so I was just goin to use EC.. is this a bad idea and should i get PPM meter as well as an EC meter.?

Please feel free to say well thats not good or your wrong about this or that, any help is appreciated..

Take it easy,.....

Click to expand...

The PPM/EC meter is the same (good god i really hope that's true, im under the assumption they are the same anyway, correct me if im wrong), just read in different ways. Basically one is standard, one is metric if you think about it like that. They have calibration fluid for whatever unit of measurement you are using.

The PPM is your friend. It displays TDS which is total dissolved solids, which don't specify what solids they are, but they will give you an idea of the RATIO of water to dissolved solids in the water. If your plants are drinking a lot of water, you will see your PPM rise. As your plants eat food, the PPM will lower. With nutes, too much is a bad bad thing. It's like cramming a protein shake down your throat and refusing to water it down or give you water at all. GROW HUMAN GROW EAT PROTEIN SHAKE AND NOTHING ELSE. Well.. ya that crap doesn't work like that. Well, over-nuting will do the same thing. Too much food and your plants will get pissy with you. I started at 800ppm (940 with a 140 base) and it wrecked them. went to 500 (640 with 140 base), and they still did it. I thought I was over-watering so i set my timers to 15/15, and that helped, but what i didnt know was it was simply the fact that I had lessened the nutrient delivery to them. Once I went to 300 (440 with 140 base), they just went into beast mode and started going buck wild.

My PPM is very stable too and I'm only adding PH adjusted water. They are simply drinking the heck out of the water.

Hope my ramble helped you lol

i'm pretty sure whether you are taking readings in ppm or ec, it relies on the same, underlying mechanism. i'm pretty sure that my hanna multimeter reads ec, then converts to ppm using a constant factor.

what you need to be more concerned about is taking care of your meter probe by storing it properly, periodically cleaning and recalibrating it. i like to have a backup pH test kit that uses reagent drops.

the power draw for a pump that's on 24x7 is minimal. my pump uses 33watts, so that means 23.76kwh/month. i pay roughly $0.10 per kwh. so my monthly cost of running the pump 24x7 is $2.38. for a 90-day grow, just over $7. negligible, if you ask me. while setup and operating costs are legitimate concerns, you have to consider the costs along with a number of other criteria. you shouldn't necessarily rule out a particular method of growing because it uses $2 more electricity a month. consider the supposed performance each method gives you compared to the others, simplicity of the setup, tolerance for pump or power failure, required maintenance, flexibility to modify or expand the system later on, and so on.

regarding rockwool, yes, it can get too wet and cause problems. i have rockwool blocks buried in hydroton on a constant flood and drain. i've had no problems, but that's my particular setup. there's no universal flood/drain interval that works for everybody. that's impossible. it really depends on your system setup, your media, your strains, etc.

people who have had their systems running for a long time have dialed in pump on/off intervals, flood/drain intervals, temp, rh, ppm, ph, etc that works for THEIR setup and THEIR strains in THEIR environment. don't make the mistake of blindly using their settings. it takes time for you to figure out what works in YOUR setup with YOUR strains and YOUR environment.

the first thing i learned about hydro running a drip dwc was that, even with a small pump, running it all the time will heat the res considerably and its a breeding ground.

Right, thanks for the info everyone.
You have all made it a little bit clearer. well you answered my questions. I guess I will maybe be taking two steps back going to hydro before i can take more steps forward.


take it easy.... and thank you.

Id suggest looking into under current it is defiantly the top of the line most advanced hydro system imo and very easy to build yourself.

Chronicknowledge42o said:

Id suggest looking into under current it is defiantly the top of the line most advanced hydro system imo and very easy to build yourself.

Click to expand...

and not at all what a noob needs

I wouldn't do ebb and flow myself, just because it ends up wasting nutrients and media. I like aeroponics or deep water culture since they really cut the waste down to almost nothing.
Good decision to go hydro, the plans veg a lot faster for me

Bomb Turtle said:

I wouldn't do ebb and flow myself, just because it ends up wasting nutrients and media. I like aeroponics or deep water culture since they really cut the waste down to almost nothing.
Good decision to go hydro, the plans veg a lot faster for me

Click to expand...

Would you mind explaining why you think ebb and flow is a waste of nutrient, I'm interested to hear it because I have had the same 2.5 gal base nutes for over 12 months and my res is 55 gal's.

Op, I have grown many ways hydroponically and can say, although I like quite a few, I have always returned to a ebb system for my grows. It's so easy to run and effective. The thing about entering hydro as a newb and setting up a difficult system that requires allot of attention to detail on just the system means usually the plants will suffer, need a easy system so you can dial in the actual grow and worry about the fancy systems later, that's system IMO is the ebb and flow, DWC is also a good and favorite of mine but again when doing larger grows its a bitch to change single res's and the water temp can get out of control, if doing a DWC make it recirculating with a chiller, IMO this would be the best way to go DWC.

drgreentm said:

Would you mind explaining why you think ebb and flow is a waste of nutrient, I'm interested to hear it because I have had the same 2.5 gal base nutes for over 12 months and my res is 55 gals

Click to expand...

I always thought that maintaining moisture in all that media might wasteful, but it sounds like you have it dialed it pretty well. I haven't ran an ebb n flow in my own garden so I never had firsthand experience. I'm in coco, switching to DWC.

Hydroton really doesn't leek into the system. As far as nutes you have to do your own calculations electric conductivity and parts per million only give you a baseline to not overdose or create a imbalance. My best advice is dive in with what you have learned and adjust to the ladies. Find a easy strain to start and the sky's the limmit from there.i just smoked nl1 from my Dwc aero so I'm rambelin but good luck and welcome to the 600 club