Hey everyone, I am just doing some reading up on hydro setups, and am trying to decide the best hydroponic technique for my needs. I have already built a diy ez-cloner ripoff and eventually would like to convert to a full hydro setup growroom.

If i wanted to flower 6 or 7 plants per cycle, and will have a seperate veg room going at the same time, what would be the best setup to use(ebb n flow, DWC, top feed, etc)?

I am also wondering what the best garden plan is to produce the largest quantity of the highest quality medicine as regularly as possibile. ie- should I grow 6 plants large and crop them all at the same time, or grow small plants and have them finishing in intervals.. etc?

Any experience, advice, or expertise is more than welcome. I am just trying to do all the necessary research

Your first growing hydro I would keep it simple,Flood & drain or DWC.Dwc you can grow big plants or keep them short.The flood & drain you can do erther small or larger.Check out a couple pixs of my cab grows and the closet with the dwc.You can get some ideas.also keep the nutr simple too.It's earier to figture out what the problem is, that may a rise if they do. Peace

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I would say run 3 or 4 in ebb and flow, you can build a system yourself. I'd give each plant about 2-4 square feet. Then I would do another 3-4 in either coco, or peat (hp promix) and perlite, or another soiless mix.

You will be able to compare how each works and decide which is best for you. As each person has a different situation and there is no one size fits all best anything in growing.

Your available lighting, space, and enviroment will somewhat dictate what you do. To do smaller plants in DWC you won't need as much light as you will if you decide to grow TREES.

Ditto with interval gardening. It'll be hard to do in DWC if the plants are all fed by the same res/source because the plants late in flower will require far more nutes in the solution than the younger plants will. Drop a new plant into 1600 ppms and I guaranteee things will go south on ya fairly quickly. However....Seperate buckets...say individual waterfarms...will allow you have plants at different stages in the game as well as to grow strains together/at the samre time that may require different nutrient regime's/ppms/etc.

The yields in DWC are unmatched. If yield is your goal...this is where you wanna be. Ebb/Flow would be my 2nd choice....SOG style. pack em in and just RAM things along.

get a good meter. If you are going with a res system get a TRIMETER. This will aloow you to constantly monitor the pH/ppm/temp at a glance. Hand helds work but you have to find the thing (LOL, damn stoners) and USE IT whereas the Trimeter is chugging along all the time. Set in the right spot you can check your readings many, many times per day.

ww

I like the GH Waterfarms. For me they have been the easiest and the most productive. I tried Flood and Drain and killed some of my favorite plants trying to get the watering cycle right. Plus too much maintenace for me. I tried DWC and it worked great the first time, then the next round I couldnt keep the slime off the roots and could not figure out how to fix it without using the products that cure those problems on a regular basis. I cant afford it. I grow in soil and use the waterfarms but eventually I will go all Hydro because its a lot cleaner and the yield is allways better. I like to grow my girls big and flower on a staggered schedule. Otherwise I run out of medicine too fast. If you can control your smoking harvesting it all at once is cool too. I dont have the control and neither does my little lady! Good luck with your grow show!

Da slime in DWC is usually caused by too high of temps in the res. Anything above 68 and you will enter the zone where problems are far more likely to occur.

I too was unsure about flood cycle times in ebb/flow. This is where I currently start my rooted clones, so I wanted to get it right. I knew from reading that too much water isn't good...so what I did was take my net pots and fill em with hydroton...no plants...then put em in the tray and did some moisture tests. Run it...let em sit for an hour...see what the moisture in the hydroton is like/etc. I knew if I saw leftover moisture I could set it there and things would be OK.

for my temps/room/tray size/net pot size...a 45 second flood every 20 mins was where I ended up. This raised the water to just hit the bottom of the rapidrooter in my cups. Perfect. I've left it here and the girls seem to like it. As they grow I simply ease up the nutes....and then when the roots are rerally jammin I transplant em into their final 10" mesh pot home for blooming.

My system is 10 buckets all fed by the same res...so I don't stagger and I dread the harvest. LOL.

um...which is what I SHOULD be doing now...

good luck folks

ww

I have to disagree with your statement that DWC producing unmatchable yields, above and beyond other forms of hydroponics. I've run plants in 50 gallon, large DWC containers, 5 gallon buckets, shallow water culture with top mounted sprayers, all kinds of NFT and flood and drain. I've moved on to soiless mixes now, my personal favorite form of hydroponics. There is no "best yielding system", the type of system you use is not even close to being the most influential variable on one's yield. If you are growing a plant correctly it doesn't matter if you're in ebb and flow, dwc or coco, what matters is that you've made an even use of your light over properly spaced colas.

My yields have been consistent in every type of hydroponics I've tried, bottom line, for me at least, ymmv.

MMDV. The statement is true here. I never came close to a pound per plant in coco...not even close. Ditto w/ soil or soilless mixes.

Show me the way.

ww

I regularily pull that in 8+ gallon pots of soiless, my plants are actually 6 square feet of canopy each and give up 12 everytime. If I made them a little bigger they would make 16, and I've done that before. You can get 2+ a plant in soiless, just gotta go big, same as DWC.

What matters is gram per watt and gram per square foot. I have been able to get the numbers in all form of hydro. I don't see why anyone else could not, but like I said earlier what's best for one is not always for another.

I certainly have "gaps" and tweeks I could do too my system to improve the GPW take. In the end I'm probably considered a "lazy" grower. LOL

besides, I already >>can't<< use all that I produce...though believe me, I'm giving it my best shot.

ww