Brassmusic

I'm looking into expanding my garden in the near future. I have been looking at Ebb & Flow, Flood Tables & Buckets Systems. Any general thoughts?

Whats a good medium for these types of systems? (Hydroclay, Rock Wool...)
How many times should the Table or Buckets be filled per 24 hours?
How long should the systems stay flooded per fill? (Based on medium)

I currently use a homemade Deep Water self ajusting system with Hydroton. This allows me to drain out into the main, ajust PH, feeding... than refill as I want. The concern I have is that I need to basically stay near my system to ajust PH at any given time. Though, this might be a requirment with E&F also, idk.

I like the results I get from DW. Could I expect similar results with E&F?

Brass

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mothernature

I always used Hydroton. I used it cause I wanted to reuse it. However, the roots stick to it and it's a big hassle. I was looking into switching to straight Rockwool when I was busted. I used Rockwool cubes to start my clones, a soilless mix for my mothers.

My "dream set-up", at the time, was a roller table with ebb & flow and Rockwool slabs.

As far as number of times to fill, I did 3-4 times per day, depending on the plants stage of development. Always when the lights were on.

As far as the length of time...it was 7 minutes. Only because that's the minimum my timer would run for. 3-4 minutes would have been fine.

I honestly feel that whenever you grow indoors, you gotta stay close to your system. Too many things can go wrong, way too fast.

I would have to say my results were quite good.

What's a "Deep Water self adjusting system"?

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farmergiles

Both will work fine, perlite will work fine too. Personally I hate using rockwool but it works.
Say every 4-6 hrs. You don't want the roots to dry out.

The bigger the reservoir the longer you might leave it without adjusting EC and pH but even with a massive rez pH will tend to drift on its own... you'll have to tinker to find how it works for you.
You can buy systems that monitor and adjust pH for you but they are expensive.

Yeah pretty much. Make sure you have a good system of aeration in the rez.

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Brassmusic

Thank you all for the responces... Another question or two to follow up...

My system is a 6 site, 8 bucket system that uses gravity & a pump to keep water ajusting through out the sites. Picture three tiers, main rez up high, 6x grow sites in the middle & a catch rez on the lowest with a pump moving water from the bottom to the top. It's homemade. I started with a single DWC system & advanced it from there. I would take a picture for you if I didn't find my camera in the bottom of the RO tank, along with a few other items like my nutes, meters, but thats another story & it involves a 'crazy' chic! Atleast she didn't mess with the grow, directly.

FG, I have been looking for auto ajust addons but have yet to find any. Maybe you can direct me via a PM or here where to look.

I was doing abit of reading yesterday on many other types of hydroponic system. I read about Airponics. All the reads about airponics say they are really good. Once fine tuned in, they can be easy operations with good, quality yields. Anyone else hear about, know about or know anyone that has good // bad results with Airponics?

Brass

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Every herb blooms in it's own sweet time. Than you pick it!

farmergiles

Bluelab-Dosetronic-Controller

You should get better yields with aeroponics but it is a more complex set up than ebb & flow.
NFT systems can give good returns with a pretty simple set up, have you looked at those?

At the end of the day though it's all about getting air, water and nutes to the roots. I think aeroponics and nft tend to perform well because they both aerate the nutrients so well, plus the access to air and nutes is constant.

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Brassmusic

Whoa! Your right, those BlueLab meters can really play with a budget!

Yes, I have looked into NTF systems. I personaly refure to them as 'Tidal Systems' since the water is always flowing like a current. It too has it's pros & cons like many other growing formats. The main Con for me is having to have mucho water on hand, like with DWC. I like to grow abit larger, Ebb & Flo buckets would allow me to do that, at the cost of canopy space. Today, looking more into airoponics, it seems to be more of a setup process than a constant maintenance issue. Other than not being able to grow over 3-4' in height & being packed tight together, while not over flooding the rez, it's looking not unlike a DWC aspect.

Over the course of the past 2-3 months I have planning on putting together a (edit). Once I can drop the 'pirate' from my self proclaimed title, I will be dropping a few bucks into getting this up & running. Just choosing what type of system I want to use, is what it's coming down to.

Brass

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Every herb blooms in it's own sweet time. Than you pick it!

farmergiles

Plant support can be an issue with NFT.

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mothernature

this.

I'm wondering why you would want taller plants?

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Sometimes sleep is the best revenge- Luke