What type of hydro setup would you recommend?

Im trying to plan my next grow and because i need to do some pheno hunting(male and female, but only one male will survive based on which one vegs best and does the early flowering the best), i need to grow SOG style with as many plants as possible with short veg time.

The thing is that its really annoying to water so many plats every day, especially if they are tightly packed, so i need some sort of automatic watering for them. For this reason i have been playing around with ideas of various kinds of passive hydros etc. I dont want anything that makes a lot of bubbling noises etc and i have autopots that i could modify or use their tank with something else. Also i have been considering to just use a simple valve to it that i could turn on every day that would water the plants. But that would end up with more drained water because not every plants soil will be equally dry etc. and i would need to get rid of that and i suspect it would start to get as much of a hassle and complex than just doing some passive or other hydro setup.

One thing besides autopots i was thinking was this:

But make it so that its not very deep and that it leaks on a 2x2 foot tray that has 8 plants on it(about half of which would be male and be removed). I could fit two of these in my flowering tent. It seems like it could be the best option, but i dunno. Im pretty new to hydro stuff, with just one for lulz grow in a mini bubbler over 10 years ago and little with autopots.

What type of setup would you recommend based on what i said? I want something easy to DIY, not something i need to pay tons of and this type of growing wont be something im going to do much in the future most likely. My flowering tent is about 2.5 x 5 foot(80-150cm). Most likely i will start to use Remo nutes if that makes any difference, not only because i hear so much good about them, but because they seem to fit also with autopots and soil well and various types of hydro.

Hempy
Coco

But any rezz will need either water flow or bubblers unless u do LOS and just water with plain water

BobThe420Builder said:

Hempy
Coco

But any rezz will need either water flow or bubblers unless u do LOS and just water with plain water

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Good thing you mentioned this. I thought they were only needed in deep water culture for oxygenation of water or for flowing water around.

I actually just started giving a bit of liquid nutes along with plain water for my current autopot plants as they seemed to start showing deficiencies(ended up vegging for quite a bit longer than expected) from just their soil(mostly coco with biotabs) mix. So i guess i need to put my air bubbler or water pump in it, but they make awful noise and already too much noise :/

I was thinking mapito as a medium. Do you think there is some advantage in coco or hempy over it?

I hate Coco personally..way to much labor for me, but peeps have good success with it, watering every day sucks

Hempy is passive hydro, works great


Any rezz with nutes needs something to keep the water from stagnation and growing Lilly pads...lol

BobThe420Builder said:

I hate Coco personally..way to much labor for me, but peeps have good success with it, watering every day sucks

Hempy is passive hydro, works great


Any rezz with nutes needs something to keep the water from stagnation and growing Lilly pads...lol

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Yea i never used coco bricks. Only ready coco from biobizz and was it growth technology ready clay pebble/coco mix.

Are you serious about actually lily pads starting to grow? xD I thought part of the idea of using hydro suitable salt based nutes was that they dont fall in bottom of res tank, but will keep mixed up properly. But okay.

It seems like it might be best to just use plain water then and use biotabs in coco, clay pebble, perlite and a bit of normal soil mix. And make 2 of those trays for 8 plants with that plantit thing or modify from autopots.

Stagnant water isn't good anywhere

Flood and drain table

Octopots using pro mix and the nutes you are planning on using. They are easiest most "leave it the fuck alone" method I've tried.

Tiger said:

Octopots using pro mix and the nutes you are planning on using. They are easiest most "leave it the fuck alone" method I've tried.

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Yea this octopot is pretty much a copy of autopots with some added bells and whistles and has the same idea that i was thinking with the DIY thing with using, but i can fit twice the amount of plants with the DIY solution than with octopots, and octopots cost and im looking for a temorary solution to grow as many plants as possible in small space with automatic watering solution, or at least something easy.

Im kinda leaning on making a DIY thing from an autopot watering valve thing, 60x60cm plastic tray that barely fits 9x square pots, but because of the aqua valve, theres only room for 8 in it.

I went and bought the remo super charged kit the other day and im now leaning to the idea of using biotabs also, but only 1 per pot(which is not enough to last through flowering) and then start feeding the remo nutes when they start looking hungry. But im not sure if that would be a good idea if it would fuck up the NPK values if some specific nute runs out first. So maybe just a half of biotab in there or something, you are supposed to use 1 biotab per 5litres of soil and pots i would be using are 6 litres. The idea would be to use them to give enough nutes through vegging and also supplement during flowering with organic slow release nutes.

Im still open for ideas, even tho this one seems like it might be the way to go. i still got like a month before i need to start using this what ever thing i end up with