Londoner
Well-Known Member
I use flood and drain, its the same watering as ebb and flow, except you don't use a seperate 'controller unit' with five float valves, a timer and a pump, no individual 'bucket lines'. I do use pots in my system, I like to be able to move plants easily. The effect of high water temps is that it holds less dissolved oxygen and can promote root rot and mold. I compensate two ways. All of my reses have a double air stone and the acion of the flood and drain. When the pump shuts off the water flows back to the res and pulls air down to the roots when it does so. Ideally, I would just buy 6 chillers and keep the water temp at 65 degrees. VV
im an organic soil man myself now but when i first started out i used an 8pot flood and drain system it was a bit pricey lookin back on it now i could of built it for a fraction of the price, but i was a noobie at the time and thought it was the must have thing! It was a similar type system to what u mentioned using a simple pump and digital timer with inline taps on all of the pots supply pipes to balance the flow and get even flooding across the pots, timer flooded the pots for 3mins every 3hours, the 3mins flooding was just enough to flood the pots just up to the overflow pipes then shut off. It worked great! The flooding action acts like a big syringe pushing all the stale air out and drawing fresh air in! Every 3hours, turbo charged hydro!