Let's talk coco slabs with drippers

[Gemini]

Question about drip system

Question about drip system

I was thinking about going with a drip system in coco. I guess what i can't understand is, how do you get the entire medium wet when you are working with the drip lines? It would seem to me that the drip system will only wet one area of the coco. Do you have to move the drip lines every so often, to get even distribution? If you leave the drip lines in one place, does it soak the whole medium? Thanks for taking the time to answer.

 

[skin]

i will answer for now till someone who knows a bit more than me comes along , no you dont have to move the drip lines .
some people have more than one dripper , some mini spray heads but most just one dripper depending on the size of the pot of course .
you feed every few hours , probably 3 or 4 feeds lights on and never let the coco dry out , the feed solution just absorbs right the way through .
i have only had limited experience with drippers , just about to finish my second grow with them , but as yet i have not had any nutrient distribution problems , even the first grow in 25 litre buckets with one dripper .
hope this helped but i am sure one of the proper guiding light s will be along soon
skin

 

[est1977]

just adjust your dripsystem timer to how long it takes for your entire medium to get wet example i feed 6 times a day at 1 minute intervals cause it takes 1 minute for my medium to get as wet as i need it, capeche?

 

[SOY.ALTO]

So the system running now is coco in 2 gallon pots fed three times a day with ring-drippers made from the spaghetti tubes like mentioned near the beginning of the thread. My question is in regard to recirculation: How do you manage additions especially during flowering but in general as well? For example the nutrient regimen in use now calls for root stimulator and hygrozyme for the next three weeks switching to bud enhancer after that and then to top booster and shooting powder. If you never completely change out your reservoir how is this managed?

yo vik, you can just drain your res with a water pump. Probably a good idea at least a couple times during the cycle. Even better would be to not only drain your res a couple times and start fresh, but also flush the plants when you do it. Always a good precautionary measure.

 

[raygun]

Hey Vic I am running a re-circ drip coco grow and i have noticed that after 2 weeks of flower i needed to completely change my res and flush my plants as i had my pH constantly increasing to about 7.
I think that part of the cause is the RO has a PH of about 8 right now and as it my res has a top off on it and the RO water kept increasing my pH.

I flushed today and am starting fresh. Yesterday i cut off the auto topper water supply and just let the remaining water get used up by the plants they drink about 2-4 gal/day and my res is only 4-6 gal at a time. So today when i went to change i only had about 2 gal of nutes left in the res which i used to water the outside plants around my house, they really like it.

Prior to this i ran bio-buckets so was used to no flush and just add as you go that is what i tried to do with this and so far it is just not working like i hoped. The plants all look great and if i can find my camera i'll get some pict cause they are fun to look at.

As far as the single dripper to get the entire medium wet it will dispurs via osmosis to the whole pot just make sure that you have enough runoff of water out the coco by the end of the light cycle. I run 3 cycles of 3-5 min each. 1st is 5min 2nd is 2min and 3rd is 3min right before lights out. Before I transfered to larger containers i was running 3x 5min each.
Hope this helps.

Can anyone tell me why my pH keeps climbing and i am getting what looks like fermentation going on in my res?
Thanks.
~raygun~

 

[Gemini]

Hey Skin, thanx for the answer. Where did everyone go on here. It sucks that it is so quiet. So basically you are saying that using one dripper will wet the whole medium. I thought you had to keep moving it around.

Ray, i wish i knew more about this to help you. But from what i understand, when you do a recirculating system, you have to keep an eye on your PH in the res. because it will continue to rise. If you do a run to waste system, the ph will stay stabilized.

 

[skin]

hey gemini
just one dripper is fine ,some people do use more than one dripper but that is usually only as a precautionary measure incase one blocks and your maybe to busy to check your girls as often as you would like .
my first grow i had a few blockages due to recircualtion and no filter , so i doubled up on drippers while i sorted a filter .

 

[raygun]

Hey Gemini i figured out that it is due to my high pH of the RO connected to the auto topper for my res was causing the increase. I increased the amount of water in my res and it helped to stablize it as well. Basically less "new" water was being introduced when i increased the total capacity. It now hovers around 6.2.

As far as the drippers go. I would personally double up. I did and am thankful for that. Since i am set up on the dripers on a timer i am not there to watch the flow all the time and sometimes one of the drippers will get cloged.

 

[yts farmer]

what do you guys use to stop leaks in your dripper system.

i set up a 16 site dripper from scratch and have small leakage from about 4 or 5 of the nipples,nothing major but would rather a leak free system.

 

[skin]

hello yts farmer , i tried using hose pipe style pipe with dripper nipple inserts and eventually gave up because of the leaks ! i tried lots of things but nothing worked completely so i sat the whole thing on an old nft tray to catch the leaking solution .
i have just finished building a 25 mm ldpe pipe system similar to what is described by gaiusmarius in this thread and it is the dogs bollox , it works to perfection and without any leaks !

 

[raygun]

i used the soft pond or fish tank black plastic hose. It is softer and the barbs hold much better.

 

[Gemini]

Better late then never.

Better late then never.

Hey Skin and Ray. Thanks again for the replies. I know it's been a while, but I figured I would at least say thanx. I will probable be around a bit more these days.

Gemini

 

[la-jake]

hey guys i was pointed to this thread for a question i have with coco. im looking at this system. http://www.v-drip.com/v2/systems/v12.html
i was wondering how many times should i water the plants a day to make it a hydro setup. also what i was curious about is how long should each watering be. or could i run the system continually. also if i were to run it hydroponically would i be able to use general hydro nutes?
thanks all the info has been great so far in this thread

 

[acidblue]

hey guys i was pointed to this thread for a question i have with coco. im looking at this system. http://www.v-drip.com/v2/systems/v12.html
i was wondering how many times should i water the plants a day to make it a hydro setup. also what i was curious about is how long should each watering be. or could i run the system continually. also if i were to run it hydroponically would i be able to use general hydro nutes?
thanks all the info has been great so far in this thread

3 times a day during lights on is usually the norm, water for about 10-15 mins
each time. During flowering it's a good idea to water once when the lights are
off just to keep the medium(coco or rockwool, etc) from drying out.

If your using the hydrotron instead of the coco then you would run it continuously-Coco is good at retaining water, hydrotron not so much.
Coco has almost the same consistency as soil.

Yes you can use GH nutes, but i would recommend a Coco specific nute.
Canna makes a good one, lots of people here use it and can give advice.
I never used them myself.
Not sure if GH makes a Coco specific nute--Flora Nova? maybe.
Ask the Flora Nova users they can tell you better than i can.

If your gonna use the hydrotron instead of the coco and run it continuously
then the GH nutes will do fine.

Interesting system BTW, the 12 cup model is $140 which isn't bad, $100 would be better though, i'd buy it myself and put it in my hydrohut if it were
a $100.
Good luck anf happy growing!

 

[la-jake]

thanks for the info. i plan on putting it in my closet with a tent to make it more manageable. the price will be more around 100 b/c the guy is local to me. hopefully it will all be good. ill make a grow thread once i get everything going and im sure ill have more questions to ask.

 

[acidblue]

Yes! do a grow thread.
Will like to see the Vdrip in action.

 

[Onepunchko]

I read ealier in this thread that coco needs to be top watered. Im currently using a self watering bucket system that wicks from the bottom. I currently use a soil/coco mix and it works fine, but Im pondering the idea of all coco and more feeding. Will this not work because of the bottom feeding?

 

[gratefuldawg]

Say I want to feed 3 times a day, do I want run off with every feeding, or just have about 10% total throughout the whole day? I'm in 2gallon pots with bcuzz coco. As of now I'm just gonna go with 10% by the end of the day.

Was thinking about putting some guano in the stocking filter, and let that sit in the water???

In mid flower, when should you start to worry about your ppm runoff? Right now my runoff is about 300 above what I feed, not thinkin it's a big deal because bcuzz coco starts with a 1,000 ppm runoff from plain water. It has a bunch of goodies in it

What about using a multizyme like mayan mycozyme in coco?

Swweet thread, feel I have all the knowledge to go set one of these bad bitches up tomorrow. And I do have to soon, cause I'm going to a music festival in March.

peece-

 

[doubleds]

resevoir

resevoir

I am sure i read in the first couple of pages that once you have mixed up your nutrients there is no need to aerate the nutrient solution ?? This has got to be a mistake, doesn't water go stagnant without bubblers ?? This doesn't sound right to me !!

 

[Raijin]

Nice forum Gaius

Nice forum Gaius

I've been growing in coco for many years now. I find it the single easiest substrate to be in. It is the most forgiving and with little effort, the most rewarding with fewest headaches.

I'm adding in my two cents about drippers. I like to use the blue cage dripper because it never clogs and waters well. They take a 1/4 inch line and the newest ones that I've bought have a long nipple to hold the 1/4 line on so well that it never comes off.

As I said, they are non clogging. This is the key for me. When building a larger garden, having drippers clog is a pain in the ass. Here is a link to where I found them http://www.hydroasis.com/hy/product...oduct=drip-stake-non-clogging-blue-cage-spike