How many gallons of res needed?

[stealthScrog]

I'm planning my next grow and I want go hydro due to several reasons, one of which is the ability to instantly control notes. I had problems with nutes with my soil grow and adjusting it was difficult. Anyway, I have a 4x2x4 height area, going scrog/lst.

If my medium of hydroton is 8" deep and 4' x 2', and lets say that equates to a 40 gallon area, how many gallons does my res need to be? I'm guessing 1/2 of the total area because the area of the hydroton displaces the water, but i wanted to be sure.

 

[Standaman]

How many buckets you running? If thats the total 40 gallons then i would say 45 gallons
I'm interested myself to be honest because i am still to get mine through not knowing

 

[Blunt_69]

If you havent completed a soil grow successfully your asking for failure in hydro.

How many gallons depends on what kind of system You plan on running the number of sites..ect.. There is no set rez size, however i have found bigger is better. PPm and PH are much more stable the bigger the rez.

 

[ogatec]

yes! bigger the better

 

[Standaman]

Cheers guys i was reading earlier that bigger is easier to control as opposed to a small res so that's what i'm gonna do!
Thanks

 

[mpd]

I run a four-station system with 5-gallon buckets filled to the 4.5 gallon level with a 12-gallon reservoir on constant recirc. for a total of 30 gallons in the system Works just ducky...

So that works out to around 150% of the station's capacity times the number of stations gives you the total amount to be pumped in circulation. Subtract out the 4.5 gallons for each station in your system and that gives you the amount of fluid in the reservoir and the reservoir should never be more than 75% full.

 

[Standaman]

Yeah i got the 16 litre 4 bucket system with a similar sized res but i would like an additional or a bigger res as i think the current res will be too small.

I'll sleep on this one i think but thanks mpd

 

[stealthScrog]

I'm still in the planning stages but my big takeaway from this thread is that bigger is better, so that's what I'll do.

Blunt: Could you (or anyone) elaborate on why I'm asking for failure in hydro because I had trouble with soil? I know hydro requires more care, monitoring, and maintenance, but there are some advantages to it over soil that I feel would help me improve. First, the ability to control nutes and pH quickly. I can't do that in soil. Maybe I could if i had a ph/EC/temp stick, but i don't and i know id have one if i went hydro. And if I wanted to add nutes, I have no way of knowing what the nute composition of my soil is (they have the NPK test kits at Lowes...not sure how accurate they are, but they can't tell me Ca, Mg, Mn, Fe, Bn, etc.) In hydro I would always have all the micro nutes i needed without having to guess. Second, roots. I cant see my roots in soil, so how do I know how healthy they are? Maybe they're screwed up and causing my problems...but i don't know because i cant see them. But I agree that there is a much larger capacity to make mistakes in hydro, but there are a lot of advantages too.