what medium should i use for ebb and flow??

[Wasabi420]

About to start up a new ebb n flow grow with a few tables....I was wondering what you all think the best medium is

1. rockwool

2. Coco slabs

3. Hydroton

post pics if you got em!!

Thanks

P.S. I want to do a SOG

 

[Wasabi420]

I guess what I mean is what are the advantages/disadvantages of each medium. People locally near me don't like rockwool. but I see again and again people on here with kick ass results....so far I'm leaning towards hydroton but im wondering what everyone else thinks

 

[Craven_au]

All 3 are great if i was you i would try all 3 the Hydroton on one table. Coco and rockwool on the other to find out what suits you best.

 

[cannagirl]

We use Hydroton on our flood tables, that we veg on, so we can transplant into RDWC. For years we did flood and drain with rockwool, but after a while I started having really bad skin reactions to it. I actually like the hydroton for its re-usability. Wash it with Phyzan 20, rinse well, let it dry out and you have good rocks ready to go again. We also have ALOT less garbage now. We only throw away the stalks and what ever rocks get caught in the root ball. We went from about 30 bags of garbage to two. Also you dont get much, if any, green algae on the top of the hydroton, in the rockwool you wont be able to avoid it unless you use the covers and you will still get alittle bit.

If you do go with hydroton or coco, remember to flood more times through out the day at shorter intervals than the rockwool. Hope this helps, good luck with whatever you decide to go with.


ETA: here is one of our grows now, using hydroton on a flood table.https://www.icmag.com/ic/showpost.php?p=3322757&postcount=67 Dont mind the large net lids, I ran out of little baskets and had to have the ladies transplanted. They eventually were switched into the 6"net basket, instead.


Oh yeah and one more thing, sorry Im stupid stoned, um...if you are going to bloom on your flood table you'll want to use larger pots, I recommend the tall, square or rectangle ones that dont have alot of holes on the sides. Your roots will thank youfor not exposing them to alot of light...CHEERS!

 

[10k]

wasabi420,
advanced search me for keyword = bigass cubes

You'll find my reasoning for just why bigass rw cubes suck bigtime in ebb & flow.
I've been preaching about the horrors of big cubes in e&f for a good decade now and have sound reasoning for advising anyone new to hydro to stay away from running big cubage in anything other than on slabs in tilted slab trays top fed, the way they were designed for best performance.

If you look hard enough, I'm sure you'll find many who have had success with them in e&f, and probably a larger number of folks who've found out the hard way why it's really not made for a flood table application... but the horror stories show up in sick plants threads on a very regular basis. Worst point is when they become damaged from people squeezing and breaking their structure and when they become clogged with algae causing root system ailments and disease. Trust me you'd be wayyyy better off with a well draining medium like expanded clay (hydroton, leca, growrocks etc)

hth

 

[Mike Seed]

I just did the search on bigass cubes and i won't be going near Ebb & Flow again.

Just too many technical issues that can ruin your crop or negatively impact the final yield.

Funny how i started off Hydro in the early 90's, and now I am going soil. Though, DWC does look nice, i still have many of the same concerns I have with E&F.

 

[dtfsux]

I have grow a ton of weed in E&F tables using hydroton. Flood every 3-4 hours, and you are golden. Simple

Reusing hydroton is easy as well. I would pull my plants out of the containers, shake the rocks from the rootball into a garbage can, while the rest of the rocks stayed in the pot. I SOGGED so I did not have huge rootballs. I would flush the whole table with bleach for a day, rinse, and refill with plants. I also used hygrozyme to help with whatever root matter was left in the rocks.

I know some have had good success with coco but it seems like that may take a little more time to dial in with flood times

 

[dtfsux]

I just did the search on bigass cubes and i won't be going near Ebb & Flow again.

Just too many technical issues that can ruin your crop or negatively impact the final yield.

Funny how i started off Hydro in the early 90's, and now I am going soil. Though, DWC does look nice, i still have many of the same concerns I have with E&F.

E&F works great and is one of the simplest methods out there. Using rockwool may be another issue though

 

[drelow31@yahoo.]

I use hydron and lava rocks and the lava rocks are super cheap........ and available locally about everywhere,,,,,,drelow51\50

 

[superultramega]

I just did the search on bigass cubes and i won't be going near Ebb & Flow again.

Just too many technical issues that can ruin your crop or negatively impact the final yield.

Funny how i started off Hydro in the early 90's, and now I am going soil. Though, DWC does look nice, i still have many of the same concerns I have with E&F.

Weird. E&F is about as simple as it gets.

 

[tokinafaty420]

I just did the search on bigass cubes and i won't be going near Ebb & Flow again.

Just too many technical issues that can ruin your crop or negatively impact the final yield.

Funny how i started off Hydro in the early 90's, and now I am going soil. Though, DWC does look nice, i still have many of the same concerns I have with E&F.

What are your concerns with E&F? Been using the system for 3 years now without any complaints. I don't use those big rockwool cubes though so maybe that has something to do with it.

 

[Mike Seed]

My primary concerns are: Reservoir temps, EC levels, and plant size. I don't want to sog, i like growing them 3-4ft. an E&F table doesn't give me the space and freedom of movement i can have with a bag full of soil that i only have to add water, no nutes.

The last go i had at an E&F table was around 94' or so and i have to pull everything down due to woman problems so never harvested under the system i had then. It was using rockwool so i was having the usual issues with algae build up and a couple others i can't recall, but res temps was one of them which accounted for the slow growth.

You can also say I am sketchy about making an investment in another grow system (I have had E&G buckets and a 4x4 E&F table, and a Phototron in my history). Right now, I am looking at making the most trouble free and least expensive return to growing I can make. So far, my biggest investment has been my Phantom Digital 1000w ballast. I was going to go with Hempy buckets, but ran across Blazeoneup's threads with him soil growing and from reading around other people have used his soil mix with success and that looks really promising right now for my 4x4 space compared to an E&F table that i would have a hard time moving around to tend to the plants as opposed to 16 separate 3gal bags to move, turn, adjust as needed.

E&F tables seem to produce for many and a lot of people love them. Maybe after a year of hauling soil from a grow house to my back forest to ditch will cause me to switch to something easier to manage since i will have the finances to cover things like extra reservoirs & chillers.

 

[9240GrnMachine]

one thing i like to do on tables, to get away from using alot of medium, is to cover the entire top of the table with white plastic. then i punch holes in it where i want my plants to sit. no root exposure to light. i also add one of those long flexy airstones right down the middle to add a bit of air in the now created chamber.

 

[Raphael]

I'm running ebb n flow with higromite which is an expanded clay. +1 for using a form of expanded clay for ease of use and reusability. You can check out my 1000w grow link in my sig to see some girls in higromite.

Cheers!

 

[Danks2005]

I used to run ebb and flow alot, now i'm organic soil. When i did the hydro, I preferred the hydroton. I have filled the whole table with it, and stuck plants into it with good results, but prefer pots of it so you can move plants to adjust your canopy. And it is reusable, I still have garbage bags of it in my shed.

I just read of someones concerns of res temps, I just want to say that one of the benifits of ebb and flow is that you can put the res outside of the grow room, just plan and plumb properly.

 

[Japanfreakier]

Another option is perlite. Super cheap and recycable again and again if you sterilize it.

 

[Danks2005]

While perlite works well enough, that shit gets everywhere, more than hydroton does, and the texture just irritates me, it's like nails on a chalk board everytime I mix it into my soil.

 

[Japanfreakier]

It's not bad after the first use, just got to wash it out first. When I recycle it (shift out roots and boil for at least 5 minutes) I do lay down a plastic sheet.

 

[Airnut]

one thing i like to do on tables, to get away from using alot of medium, is to cover the entire top of the table with white plastic. then i punch holes in it where i want my plants to sit. no root exposure to light. i also add one of those long flexy airstones right down the middle to add a bit of air in the now created chamber.

Except from the airstone, i use exact that setup! I use AIR nothing else.
Most cost-efficient
No rootdamage if needed to be relocated/removed.
No nothing that gets everywhere like perlite or hydrotons.

My chamber is 18 cm deep and in the bottom is roughly always holding 1 cm of water at eb.
The roots dangel around 10 cm in air before they flat out in the water the bottom.

My overflow drain acts like a waterfall every 3´rd hour and the pumptimer is set to flood a few minutes on that "waterfallmode".

This is enough to give the water all the air it needs.

I can´t compare it, but in my belive i now grow between 5 and
10% faster than when i used hydroton.
Reason might be due to more air to the rootzone??

Anyway, aiming for a highpressure aeroponic setup late this year.

Airnut.

 

[Wasabi420]

thanks everyone, I think based on your responses i'll be going with hydroton in net pots. I'm pretty stoked. Only a few more weeks until I start looking for a new place. Wish me luck