Ratio? Mixing CoCo Coir Grow Stones/Hydrotron

Hello I hope to spark some conversation & learn a few things.

I am setting up a flood drain table. I will be using cloth pots.

I will be using coco coir as a grow media, under t5 lights.

I have not used coco or a flood table before so this should be fun.

Fun aside this is for much needed medicinal purposes so I would like to minimize the trial and error.

------
I was going to just use coco, since I want to move away from clay balls, but have been reading people often mix it with perlite, or clay tron.

I like perlite even less than tron so I had almost decided to put a layer of tron on the bottom of the cloth pot, and run 10% - 20% mixed in the coco.

But then I discovered grow stones. But can not find many reports of using it in a cannabis grow. I am thinking I could mix those in and top layer with them. Thoughts are a top layer of the stones would help prevent bugs?

Thoughts? opinions? advice? all welcome, with my thanks.

Subbed

I could be wrong, but it's always been my understanding that the point of hydroton is that it leaves air spaces between then balls. Filling those spaces with coco would seem to defeat the purpose? I don't think the balls themselves do anything or would have any purpose as an additive in a mostly coco mix.

I would think coco would hold too much water for flood and drain. Most that run coco run DTW. I've heard of people mixing coco and perlite in hempy buckets. That's like 3/1 perlite/coco, same as if it were perlite/vermiculite.

IMHO straight hydroton for flood and drain. I just start with new every run and don't bother trying to clean the old. I use the old in pots outside to help with drainage of other plants.

My current run at 3 weeks 12/12. These are in 2gal fabric pots folded down to 6". 8 plants under 600w.

popta said:

I could be wrong, but it's always been my understanding that the point of hydroton is that it leaves air spaces between then balls. Filling those spaces with coco would seem to defeat the purpose? I don't think the balls themselves do anything or would have any purpose as an additive in a mostly coco mix.

Click to expand...

What I have read is people mix the clay balls, in order to increase the rate at which the coco dries out.

RockinRobot said:

I would think coco would hold too much water for flood and drain. Most that run coco run DTW. I've heard of people mixing coco and perlite in hempy buckets. That's like 3/1 perlite/coco, same as if it were perlite/vermiculite.

IMHO straight hydroton for flood and drain. I just start with new every run and don't bother trying to clean the old. I use the old in pots outside to help with drainage of other plants.

Click to expand...

Nice looking plants... It seems straight coco would take maybe 1 flood a day (likely less in my environment). and that would be the purpose of adding the tron, in order provide faster drainage.

I will drain my table to waste, I might run 2 cycles then waste. just depends how the EC looks on the back end. I will be starting with RO and UV filtered water. But will be feeding from a bottom up, flood.

howdy, before you start this project i suggest you look up "perched water table in containers" and "air filled porosity in plant media".

an understanding of these principles will help your decision making.