I need a simple hydro set up

Hi all
I really like the redused veg time hydro gives
Can any 1 help me with an easy diy 4 pot system
Cheers

Dwc, 4 5 gallon buckets, air stones, hydroton, air pump. Or coco top feed drain to waist.

When should the res be topped up

Have you done hydro before? Are you sure you want to deal with it? Coco is a great option and much less hassle.

Get a sip and some soil, doesn't get any simpler, and you still get the awesome growth rates

Plants flower a bit quicker when grown hydroponically too.

A DTW "drain to waste" drip system with coco would probably be the easiest most forgiving first system to set up. Just need a flood tray/drain table, a pump, timer, a small bit of tubing/plumbing to make drip manifolds, and some way to drain it off. Maybe another pump with a float switch. You could make a simple drain table at a slant, with cheap corrugated pvc panels, going into a gutter, and even go back to the res if you wanted to recirculate. Like this:
DWC could be as easy as using one large container/bin with net pots in the lid, and an air pump. With one grommet, an elbow, and some tubing somewhere on the res, that way you can drain it when needed. I use lead free soaker hose with barbed\compression fittings instead of air stones myself.

RDWC is more complicated with all the plumbing, but let me know and I could tell you how to build one from scratch too. Even the bulkheads for cheap. Or any system for that matter, I like DIYing them all!

I use an external res and a tray I got from the hydro store.

Plumbing sucks a lil bit but it does the trick.

xtsho said:

Have you done hydro before? Are you sure you want to deal with it? Coco is a great option and much less hassle.

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No just soil

i would go right to RDWC. the greater water volume makes it easier to keep your pH in range.

put your control res outside your room or tent and then you can mess with it during lights out too.

If you do decide to do hydro there is a wealth of information online. It will help you going forward if you take some time to learn up on it.

Good luck with whatever method you choose.

I actually find DWC less hassle than coco.. either way i have to mix a bucket of nutes, with DWC if i have to skip a night or 2 of checking on them no biggy.. plus when done with dwc, i clean the bucket and it's good to go again in 3 minutes, getting rid of old coco, hydrating and setting up new coco is just blah to me

I also don't change water in my dwc from start to finish, i use southern AG and just top up when it's about half way down the bucket.. i can see how people that change water non stop would find it a hassel though.

Flood and drain tray covered in panda plastic, cut holes in plastic and slide in pots filled with hydroton, flood every 2hrs for 8-10 minutes.

OG Doge said:

Flood and drain tray covered in panda plastic, cut holes in plastic and slide in pots filled with hydroton, flood every 2hrs for 8-10 minutes.

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I would actually like to try that.. if i weren't so lazy

OG Doge said:

Flood and drain tray covered in panda plastic, cut holes in plastic and slide in pots filled with hydroton, flood every 2hrs for 8-10 minutes.

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So just a tray with nothing in it why would you cover it???

Individual dwc buckets are cheap to setup but kind of a pain to manage. But since you asked
get a 5 gallon bucket with lid, cut a hole in the lid for your net pot, drill a hole in the lid for your your airline that’s hooked up to an aquarium pump on the outside and an air stone on the inside. Keep your ph between 5.6 and 6 run it “sterile” .25ml/gal bleach:water. Leave a couple inches between the top of the water and the bottom of the net pot. Rdwc is easier to maintain but far from cheap. Even a small 4 site system is gonna run a few hundred$

Honestly though you could just veg on 24/7 in soil and see the same perceived growth rate as hydro on 18/6 in veg. I haven’t seen a difference in speed of flowering or yield relative to plant size between hydro and soil though.

The only way I’d go back to hydro is I if were running a commercial op and had a big stock of moms to take cuts from then just root and fruit in flood tables.

I'd highly recommend looking into dtw coco. If you just have a few plants, handwatering twice per day in bloom is doable, otherwise I'd set up a automated system or use blumats. Honestly, you'd probably have more success with hydro eventually if you start with coco and really learn it. Personally, I find true hydro systems to be a nightmare.

Newgrow31 said:

So just a tray with nothing in it why would you cover it???

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To create a root zone. So when the roots outgrow the pot, instead of shriveling and dying, the roots form a mat at the bottom of the tray. Needles to say yield is increased, more roots = more buds.

Rurumo said:

I'd highly recommend looking into dtw coco. If you just have a few plants, handwatering twice per day in bloom is doable, otherwise I'd set up a automated system or use blumats. Honestly, you'd probably have more success with hydro eventually if you start with coco and really learn it. Personally, I find true hydro systems to be a nightmare.

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Blumats are cool but a pain in the ass to keep calibrated, I ran them 10 years ago with success but it was not set and forget. Coco is good drain to waste but I do not like trashing the coco after every run, never reuse it, you will rue the day you do. To me, hydroton is superior in performance and sustainability.