Hey Guys, I'm going to try hydro for the first time. I have bought most of the equipment I think I need and I should have the setup complete this weekend. Here's an overview of my system (ebb & flow), any comments and recommendations will be greatly appreciated. A list of my equipment: 6-5" orchid pots 1" rockwell cubes hydrostones (I forget the name brand, but they are brownish red & about 1/4" in diameter) GH nutes (pint of grow, micro & bloom) 1000L/hr pump 50 ft. of 1/2" hose 3-10 ft. sections of 1/2" pvc pipe pvc cement 12 pvc elbows and 12 pvc Tees 15 gallon rubbermaid storage tub shaldoll black light leak tape Hanna PH + Temp meter PH calibration solution timer with multiple settings PL Systems 400W HPS w/medium reflector 50 cu. ft/min exhaust fan 2 4" industrial fans Electrical wire, caps, crimps, ties etc. 3" flexible duct tubing Kulu seeds. . . Northern lights, Misty & White widow. Things I need EC/TDS meter (any suggestions? I can get a Hanna for $112) Storage tray (planning on using either a masons tray or a wallpaper tray. . . cheap $$$ @ home depot) I am using some of the equipment from my first grow, such as the light, wiring, fans etc. I have a 5ft x 3ft x 2 ft grow room with the walls painted white. I'm trying to get some mylar from my work, but I can't come up with an excuse as to what to use it for. I am going to use the Rubbermaid storage tub as my resivor and I need to get some sort of a tray for holding my plants. I am debating on getting a shallow rubbermaid tub, or I could use a mason's tray or wallpaper troughs. I have taken two strains of seeds and I currently have them inside folded wet paper towels. The towels are in ziplock baggies and I blew into them for added CO2, I don't think it matters though. I put the seeds in two days ago and I don't have sprouting yet, but I am going to transplant them with tweezers tomorrow. I currently have the 1" rockwell cubes soaked and I will replant the seeds into the cubes tomorrow. The cubes will go into an aquarium wrapped in Saranwrap. I will check them 4-5 times a day for moisture and spray with plain water when they aren't saturated. Once the roots of the seedlings begin to sprout out of the rockwell cubes, I will plant them into the orchid containers surrounded by the hydro-medium. I hope to have my system set up by this weekend, so I will be able to transplant the cubes sometime next week. I plan on using the nutes as the box suggests, but I am aware of the "Lucas Formula". If things don't appear to be going that good, I'll switch it. I also plan on flushing my system every two weeks. I think I've read enough faqs and done enough searching, so I feel like I'm off to the right start. I'm going to try scrog method with pvc & wire ties. I am debating to grow one strain in soil and one in hydro to compare the two side by side. It will also help with my nute formulation epically considering I'm a newbie. So far, I've spent about $350 including the light and stuff from my first setup. For the hydro stuff, I've spent about $175 with the PH meter being the most expensive. I still need to add the EC/TDS meter so I'm looking at just under $500 for the entire setup. I will have pictures and progress reports as the setup completes and the grow starts. If there is anything I've overlooked, please let me know. I know I'll have more questions as the grow approaches, but I think I have most things coverd now. Peace out DaWalrus Koo-Koo-Ka-Choo
sounds like you're off to a good start. Are you going to use tap/distilled/or R/o water? The clay rocks are called hydroton and be very aware of the off brands because some really suck.For future reference you could try lava rock from your local nursery...a whole lot cheaper.
I'm planning on using tap water. I live on a municipal water source, so the water isn't hard. Do you suggest going with distilled? I just didn't want to spend $15 every two weeks on water. Thanks for the reference on the rocks. The bag did actually say Hydrotron on it, I think it was blue writing on a yellow backround. I also have a sh!tload of pearlite. I got some for a soil mix I was doing. As for an update, today, I took the 6 seeds and placed them in the rockwool cubes. Two of the seeds (Nr. Lts.) had sprouted and I placed them sprout down on the hole of the cubes. The other 4 seeds had not sprouted yet. I placed the rockwool cubes w/seeds on a paper plate and put them in a 10gal aquarium. I placed saran wrap over the top of the aquatium to keep the enviornment humid and placed it in my grow box. Right now, I have 4-4ft floro's on and i will be placing another 4 in the box. I don't have the HPS light on yet, as I'm going to wait for them to become stronger before I turn it on. The floros should be enough light to get things started. (Edited by thewalrus at 7:40 pm on Mar. 4, 2004)
you sound like youve done your homework well enough on hydroponics to get off to a good start. i just wanted to point out that most do not and jump into things and have problems,(but thats what were here for i guess lol). anyways much luck to you on a successfull crop... P.S. on the tap water.. if you leave it out in a open container for say about 24 hours, the chlorine evaporates and gives it a distilled effect much healthier for the plants.
If your water is not hard you will probably be ok. The probalem of hard water is calcium carbonate which is a ph buffer and you will never get a stable ph.It will always ris eback to 8+ ph.The only way to get rid of it is distilling or reverse osmosis. I have hard water and cannot use it.
Damn, I think my water is hard. I just took a ph reading and it was 9.0. I re-calibrated my meter 4 times thinking the meter was screwed, I guess I just have hard water. This might explain some of the nute lockup I got from my first grow (soil.) Oh well, it looks like I'm going to be buying my water. Is the average over the counter water PH balanced? I'm going to get a couple of different brands and test out the PH. Is there any way to use Ph down, or should I just stick with distilled water? One more question, can I boil the water, or do I have to condense the steam off the boiling water, just curious. I'm going to leave a gallon of water out overnight and then test the Ph, just to see how much it goes down. Thanks for the info by the way, I saved myself a lot of heartache by realizing this up front insetead of after I set up my resivor.
Distilled water should have a ph of 7.0. I know this scenario all to well and this is what you should expect: Take a gallon of tap and add ph down according to bottle. I think it's 3 drops every gallon,what you will notice is it takes more ph down to bring the ph down than normal,this is the acid being buffered by the calcium carbonate. When you get it down to 5.0-6.0 set it aside. 6 hours later check the ph again and most likely you will see it rise and continue rising.Been there done that LOL. Boiling it will remove some carbonate but not enough,distilling is when the steam is condensed to water. Btw you shouldn't have to spend $15.00 every week on water.You'll just need enough to top off the res for 2 weeks. If you change out the water every 2 weeks like some do,that's where the cost will be.
I have my system just about complete. Waht a bitch it was finding a bulckhead connector. . . every hardware store I checked didn't have it. My hydro store is over an hour away and I didn't want to drive that far away for a $1.00 item, so I improvised. I used a plastic cable connector, the kind you put on the hole that goes through your house from the outside. The back of it fits a 1/2" hose (3/8" I.D.) I used a non-outgassing epoxy on the inside edge of the flange to create a water tight seal around the connection. It's curing right now, I'll test it out tonight. I picked up a cheap Brita type water filter and it dropped the PH almost 2 points. It went from 9.2-9.5 to 7.1-7.3. Is this low enough to use? I ordered my EC/TDS meter, but it hasn't arrived yet, so I don't know what the ppm reading is. I will start my grow with 10 gallons of distilled water, and I will wait for the meter to come in before I use the tap water. I figure it's better to be safe than sorry. I looked into RO systems and if I find out that the tap water is still no good, I'll make the purchase in the next couple of months. It's healthier to drink anyways. One more question, I started the seeds out in rockwool and I have been reading some bad things about rockwool and hydro. It looks like it's harder to maintain a balanced PH with it. It it O.K. to replant the seedlings now, or should I just let them be and go with it? I am planning a mixed rockwool/hydrotron medium, is this going to be o.k. or am I going to run into problems down the line? Thanks again for all your help.
I have my system up and running right now. My temperature is at 70 degrees, my humidity is 50%, my Ph level is at 5.4 and my TDC reading is 210 ppm. I ended up transplanting the seedling from the rockwoll to the hydrotron. I carefully spread apart the rockwool after the first root grew down into the bottom. There were a few tiny hairs starting to come from the main root coming from the seed. I now have 3 white widow plants in hydrotron without rockwool. The other three N. light plants aren't taking too well. One of the seeds never sprouted, one is just about dead from drowning (I was feeding too often) and the last one is still holding on. I'm trying too bring back the one that drowned, but I don't think it will make it. The three plants are under 4 16W floros with 4 40W floros right beside them. I was initially watering for a 1/2 hour every 1 1/2 hours, so I ended up drowning the No. Lights palnt. Right now, I am watering at 2 hrs for 15 min, but I'm still going to increse the time probably another 1/2 hr. I haven't fed them yet, but I already changed the water because the hydrotron wasn't fully cleaned. I am going to give them a rest tonight, they've been under the lights for almost a week straight. I also just read about resperation. I am going to pickup another bucket for my nets. right now, there's a little bit of water in the button of the hydrotron bucket that I want to get rid of. I'm just going to take the bucket I currently have, put a bunch of drain holes in it and place it into the new bucket. This will allow it to fully drain. I installed the mylar on the walls with a staple gun and I can say, it is definately brighter. I had some white paint that wasn't nearly as bright. I'm going to start a LIGHT feeding this weekend. Probably going to start with 1/4-1/3 nutes and see what happens. Everything seems to be going well so far, I needed to tweak my system and I probably will as this grow continues along. I am hoping to get three plants growing out of the initial 6.
