ebb and flow questions.

[killedkilleryo]

hi i.c. im looking into getting a 4ft by 4ft ebb and flo table and have a few questions
1. how deep should the table be and what size resevoir is needed 2.how many plants fit in a 4x4 table ,plan on doing single cola plants vegged no more then 2 weeks. 3.should i use net pots or just put big rockwool cubes in it by themselves and what would prevent light from getting to the roots. 4.do you use your nutes at full strength or half and what nutes are good but simple for ebb and flo. 5.do you put a airstone in the resevoir so these are my questions for now im sure ill have more. i use the search feature to learn alot of stuff but theres so many different opinions that the search becomes almost useless sometimes .anyways thanks for any responses any info would be appreciated.

 

[yamaha_1fan]

What makes you think you will get unified opinions here?

1. how deep should the table be and what size resevoir is needed. The tables come 6-7" deep , not like theres alot of options. I think 35-50 gallons will work. The bigger the better



2.how many plants fit in a 4x4 table ,plan on doing single cola plants vegged no more then 2 weeks. Plant them every 6". Thats 4 per square foot, so I belive thats 64 plants. Remember some 4x4 tables are measured from the outside, and some are measured from the inside, so some are a little smaller than 4x4



3.should i use net pots or just put big rockwool cubes in it by themselves and what would prevent light from getting to the roots. I dont use either. Somehow the roots need to be covered by panda film/poly or hydroton. I use a straight bed of hydroton




4.do you use your nutes at full strength or half and what nutes are good but simple for ebb and flo. I use GH nutes fill strength on the Lothar formula





5.do you put a airstone in the resevoir so these are my questions for now im sure ill have more. I have but they broke and have not seen any ill effects from their disappearance.

 

[Sloppy Seconds]

The one part of the question that wasn't brought up is the amount of lighting, I know Yamaha_1fan knows his stuff so i wont dispute anything he says but if you do have 64 plants going you will need proper lighting, I think a 1000 watts minimum will work. good luck

 

[killedkilleryo]

thanks guys yeah i do have a 1000 watter .yeah i know i would probably get conflicting advice but the point is to narrow it all down to something that i would prefer myself from all the advice i can get from experienced growers like u guys.how often do you clean the full bed of hydroton and does it matter if the clones were started in rockwool i guess u just bury it in there.

 

[yamaha_1fan]

I clean the bed every harvest. I pull it out into garbage cans, then vacuum all the bits of roots out, as I put it back in the table.

I use rapid rooters but I imagine rockwool would be the same. Just bury it in there.

 

[killedkilleryo]

hey yamaha how many gallon per hour pump would work best for a 4x4 tray

 

[Murphy]

300 gph, but it's a preferance on how fast you want the tray to fill and how long your flood is.

 

[killedkilleryo]

so is running the pump for 15 minutes the acceptable time from what ive read in post most run it 15 minutes like 3 to 4 times during lights on and some people do 1 during lights off sorry for all the questions i wanna know as much as i can before i actually attempt it. and looking through yamahas 9000 watt grow has impressed me and makes me want to try it even more .im on my 3rd soil grow and its a pain and im not really utilizing my space with pots .i think getting the whole tds ec ppm thing down will be a lot easier then wondering what ive got in my soil and if i have enough of it in the soil.

 

[LV_Kid]

I would use net pods and drill the bottoms out of them so water can easily flood the roots. On the 4x4 tray, i would put up to 40 plants max. Then you have the option of a 600 or 1000w lighting. Even with one cola plants if you could pull 1/2 ounce per plant your looking at 1 1/2 pound. The best advice is use full nutrients from the start and use bud blood during your grow. It starts the flowering cycle so much faster and honestly i believe shows better results. For the reservoir i would use a 35 gallon and put a small water pump in there to mix the nutrients so that the plant eat evenly.

Good luck with your grow!!

 

[fishheadbob]

My 2 cents... With rockwool cubes we cut off the bottom half of the plastic wrapping, bury the cubes in hydroton to that level. The airstone got lost a long time ago; we still use the bubbler but it's just the hose down in the reservoir, no apparent ill effects. I start off at full strength with nutes, but let the plants tell when they're getting too much. Nute manufacturers want you to use a lot of their product so sometimes their recommendations are on the high side. Watch the tips closely for beginning signs of nute burn which is always a problem with less experienced growers. If a little fertilization is good, a lot isn't better. I think I'm the only person in the world using the Ionic brand of nutes, but it works swell for me. I also swear by the cannabis infirmary on this site. My Name Stitch has it all covered well, using that thread I can spot problems early on and fix things before they're a problem

 

[killedkilleryo]

ok so today went to the hydro store and bought a used 3x3 botanicare table along with a 40 gallon res , a 400 gallon per hour pump all the fittings and hoses .my plan is to run 2 tables , this 3x3 will be for veg and i will get a 4x4 for flower so i would be transfering plants from table to table.so i guess some kind of container is gonna have to be necessary in order to transfer them does anyone use seperate tables for veg and flower and if so how do u do it.

 

[killedkilleryo]

ok i was just reading up on the lucas formula using the general hydroponics flora micro and bloom .from what i understand u can use that same recipe through out the whole grow .is this correct and if so can u add other things to it like hydroguard, budblood ,mollases or is it strictly micro and bloom nothing else.

 

[Murphy]

No Mollases in hydro, soil only. If this is your first hydro grow, stick the the basics for the first round so you can learn the system and the plants, then start thinking about additives. Also, if you run into a problem on your first grow, the more crap you dump in the res, the harder it is to tell you what went wrong. I strongly suggest keeping it simple for the first round but, to each his own.

 

[killedkilleryo]

yeah for sure i want to keep it simple so i think the only additive i would use is hydroguard along with gh flora micro and bloom so three products total and clearex to flush does that sound pretty simple .

 

[midwestnug]

make sure you have a big overflow tube, i have a 1in with a 350gph pump and need to go bigger.

i use gh nut. liquid karma, and hygrozyme. rockwool works good for me. i run it in drip setup in veg. thought about going drip in flowering too.
i find airstone makes sludg. and it messed with ph, took it out and fixxed problem. got small pump mixxing nuts in res.


only 10 plants for 2foot by 4 foot try here. like them to get a little bigger, and my sour deasel's like the room. i water 4 times for 15min. they been needing more, the bigger they get, its a good idea to flush with ph water every res change, or every other one. i flush for a day.
new to hydrotronics my self, its trial and error. the guys on this site rock.
they have help me along the way alot......
MidWestNug......

 

[killedkilleryo]

when u flush with ph water what do u adjust the water to or can u just use straight r.o. water.

 

[midwestnug]

ph

ph

5.8 is ideal for ph, in ebb n flo. i guess from 5.5 to 6.0 would be ok. with mix of nut. try to keep ppm under 1200. 800-1000 ppm is my ideal setup. didnt see ppm mentioned. thought id give my input on it. my 1st time i ran 2500 and got nut. burn. seems to be common problem, for us new to hydro. my sour deasels seem to love 1100 ppm.
MidWestNug....

PS i mix tap water and distiled. my tap is allmost 700ppm so i use distiled to bring it down to half that. distiled missing a few things tap water has. and distiled is hard to control ph, but mixxing seems to even it out.

 

[killedkilleryo]

bought a truncheon ppm ,ec meter today .tested my tap water it was 140 ppm with the 700 measurement and 100 ppm with the 500 measuement.with those numbers would u guys still advise r.o. water .i have a nimbus water maker i think its the smallest r.o. device you can buy and it hooks right up to the faucet but it only produces 8 gallons a day .its great if you have a small grow and only cost 90 bucks .ill attach a picture to anyone whos interested .im thinking half r.o water half tap water what u guys think.

 

[Sloppy Seconds]

On my table I also had problems with the draining part...my pump filled so fast it couldn't drain out as fast! I added a second drain line, problem solved.
run a few "test runs" for sure to see if there are any glitches.

I use the rockwool cubes (4X4) and a drip system for veg and move them into lava rocks ebb&flow for flower.
for cloning I use the 2X2 cubes, they work for me as they fit right into the 4X4's.

my first run I had too small of a rez for veg and it didn't work too well...I used a 4 gallon bucket, now I use a 20 gallon and that fixed that.
good luck!

 

[midwestnug]

another point, small res, is hard to matain ph, i moved to bigger res, and less problems. thinking of even going bigger. went from 10 gal to 18 gal, thinking of jumping to a 32gal.