Couple of hydro questions...

jestermite said:

What's up all? I'm in the process of switching from soil to hydro and need some help. Here's my issue:

In my new flood and drain setup I have 30 vegging plants set in 3" net pots full of hydroton. The setup works nicely and they flood every four hours to about an inch under the rim of the little pots. I rinsed the hydroton thoroughly under warm strong running water before putting it into the system, but to say it's trashing the system is being kind. I can't imagine a dirtier, grittier, more motor-destroying medium. Dirt clods maybe. On top of all the grit on that sinks and settles on everything the water is pink to red and the small drain is already developing some slimy shit. There's some shiny layer on top too. This is a brand new system that was ulta clean. The other additives in the water are AN's Micro, Grow, and Bloom and a ton of pH down (acid.) It took me a full half of an 8 oz. bottle of General Hydro's pH down to get from about 7.0 to 5.8. in a 15 gallon res. Can that be right? All I can think is that it's really weak. I'm going to try to lay hands on some muraitic acid tomoorow because two water changes used up my whole supply.


Can anybody recommend a medium that I can pick up tomorrow? Something clean for fuck's sake. I don't have a hydro store around so something a nursery or a Wal-mart / Lowe's would have would be ideal. Amazon if not.

Thanks for reading. This site rules because of all the knowledgeable assed growers who are cool enough to share what they got to know probably by learning the hard way. Peace

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jestermite said:

Yeah super - So there's an end to the dirt they put out? If that's the case I'll keep at them until they run clean. I can't imagine where I'd get different water but you'e right it's super hard here. Right about light in the res too. got that fixed last night. Is PPM any indicator of water hardness? What kinds of problems will hard water cause? Am I looking at some kind of filtration system?

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jestermite said:

What's up all? I'm in the process of switching from soil to hydro and need some help. Here's my issue:

In my new flood and drain setup I have 30 vegging plants set in 3" net pots full of hydroton. The setup works nicely and they flood every four hours to about an inch under the rim of the little pots. I rinsed the hydroton thoroughly under warm strong running water before putting it into the system, but to say it's trashing the system is being kind. I can't imagine a dirtier, grittier, more motor-destroying medium. Dirt clods maybe. On top of all the grit on that sinks and settles on everything the water is pink to red and the small drain is already developing some slimy shit. There's some shiny layer on top too. This is a brand new system that was ulta clean. The other additives in the water are AN's Micro, Grow, and Bloom and a ton of pH down (acid.) It took me a full half of an 8 oz. bottle of General Hydro's pH down to get from about 7.0 to 5.8. in a 15 gallon res. Can that be right? All I can think is that it's really weak. I'm going to try to lay hands on some muraitic acid tomoorow because two water changes used up my whole supply.


Can anybody recommend a medium that I can pick up tomorrow? Something clean for fuck's sake. I don't have a hydro store around so something a nursery or a Wal-mart / Lowe's would have would be ideal. Amazon if not.

Thanks for reading. This site rules because of all the knowledgeable assed growers who are cool enough to share what they got to know probably by learning the hard way. Peace

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supertank said:

oh yea just quikly how come you are putting grow and bloom nutes togeter
super

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jestermite said:

Thanks captain - nice website. Looks like they have it together.

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jestermite said:

It seems to me as a brand new newb to hydro nutes that with the AN system you run all three products at varying levels throughout. Relatively low on the bloom, high on the grow until they go to flower and then the scale starts to tip the other way until you're pretty heavy on the bloom. Jeez don't tell me I have that wrong too... Ever used this line?
Also, the hydroton cleaned up as you said and the res is crystal clear again on plain water. Roots working into the hydroton and plants are up and lively. Much relieved. Plants too, they are greening back up. Split the grow back to half soil, half hydro as this little shake up had me in fear that my livelyhood was on the line. I'm not good enough to throw all the eggs in one basket like that.
To pose another question: My dro system for the bigger and later stages is a 4" ABS 4 tube setup from two reservoirs with the same 3" net pots set about a foot apart in a flood and drain set up. I can find very little on 4" pipe systems, other than some small aeroponics systems. So I pretty much pulled this one out of my ass. Anything stand out as messed up? Also, I'm looking at moving into the master bedroom and so am trying to find a dro setup that will be good on a larger scale. Do you know, or know of where, I could find info that gets past the closet grows? Gold said he had a 55 gal. res? Damn.

Thanks brotha

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kali love said:

Ok so I just read this thread and may I offer a few pieces of advice as well first as far as the slime u had do u think its popssible it was algae bc I heard net pots allow light to penetrate through the pot n cause algae which inturn can cause ur ph to fluctuate and be hard to maintain have u thought about using h2o2 or hydrozyme (I believe what its called chk my grow in my sig we talk all about this in the first pages) this I heard helps to prevent the algae as far as nutes go u said it right just keep doing what u are doing with them in regards to that I think some where u stated u are looking to go bigger have u looked into larger ebb and flow setups with multiple tables n lights u could have plants in different stages set up some sort of perpetual grow sry kinda started to stoner ramble but ne ways I uase a 40 gal rez probly fill with 24 to 26 galls max I have a 2x4 tray probly add 4 to 6 gal every week to it n change about every to weeks I hope this helps

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jestermite said:

Yeah that's my experience with the net pots and hydroton. - There's not a good way to keep light out of the flood tray because it slips in at the very top of the net pot. You'd have to mound the hydroton to keep it only indirectly out. (i dont know if this helps bc i thin you said u veg in ebb and flow and then put tem in a pvc tube correct ) if so this wont help to much but can change pots ie solid pots or even smart pots are good as far as the top you need to cover it wit something look in my journal page two gypse bush presents a nice pic of this and how to cover the tops again if u put them in the pvc tube for flowering changeing pots is not an option i understand that but u should think about alteast covering the tops of your pots to prevent some light from coming through or you could continually run the hydrozyme or h2o2 in your res My solution had been to totally black out the reservoirs in all other respects and make sure the top tray empties all the way to leave no water sitting. Yes this sounds good you are on the right track with this

I have no experience with this and am not sure how much light it takes to cause problems. me too not to worry my this is my first hydro grow
As far as water, I think I have a genuine problem. Super was right on about it being too hard. I live in a little mountain community that runs off wells. Long story short the external house softening system is being bypassed right now and my dishes have more scales than a carp. PPM out of the tap is 660 and pH at 7. Muriatic (pool) acid changes the pH in a hurry, though I think the effect of this is more salt in the water?
i currentl have the same wate problems you do i try to let it sit out and i keep it airated withairstones for at least 24 hrs i dont know if this helps out much

Plants are now at 5.8ish on very light nutes and seem to be happy. I just learned that some nutrient companies make specific products for hard water. Hydrozyme is on the list too, though I think the slime was from a basic failure to block out both reservoirs. 2 coats of expensive black spray paint made specifically for plastic was not enough. I ended up duct taping and black plastic bagging the whole system which seems to have it handled.
Perpetual grow is a big concept that makes my head hurt when I think about actually implementing it. What I'm onto is this: I'm lucky enough to have three upstairs bedrooms, 2 about half the size each of the big one. So with these two rooms I'll do all of the cloning and vegging because the rooms naturally serparate the 24 hour light from the flowering plants. The big room will flower these I hope 5X a year. This is a big room with 10 ft. ceilings. So yeah, multiple light probably multiple reservoir. I think maybe the more individual systems the better.
wow i have to say you are are sofa king lucky man you can easly set up a perpetualy grow man id use the biggest for my main flowering room the medium one for my mums and rotting my cutttings the third room you can do as you like another flowering room a room t breed plants in etc list goes on but yeas your gonne need multiple systems so you can stagger your flowering plants there are four really good people to look up and follow how they grow and crop rotations they all use different methods too Al B Fuct Stinkbud subcool and heath robinson very good ideas and way to do things in all there threads read through them while you smoke and thin about how you would want to do it itll come to you
Anyway, yeah this is getting long. 10' X 12' room needs a design. Any suggestions on dealing with hard water would be cool. Anybody growing on a big scale or with 4" pipe plz plz leave me a link to somewhere. Also anything on dro nutes and how to use them. It seems to me that adding as many different products as some people do, or as companies want to sell you would skyrocket the ppm and cause overfeeding? I don't quite get how to stack all of these products or for that matter how even to top off and add.

All right - good on you if u read all that. Peace

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