Danknuggler
Active member
Can someone post a link to somewhere that sell canna coco slabs. I've looked and cant find anybody even here in cali.I use loose canna coco right now and even discount hydro dont have slabs.
I cant keep my coco wet by handwatering.They are almost bone dry when the lights come on and take quite a bit of water to get a runoff.I need a drip system badly!!!!!!!!!!!!!nuggler
if you want to recirculate make sure to get a good inline filter on the return to stop your pump clogging
Thanks Caligrown for all the info. A few questions if ya don't mind. Cut and pasted your info into this and my questions/remarks will be in a different color.
Home depot sells a cheap hole punch for installing drip connectors.
You talking about a regular hole punch for paper or the one like gm uses made for leather?
Mo Budz Has a thread and shows a cleaver way to make a "drip ring" from the 1/4" tubing.
Looked at it and that's a great way to do it so I will, lol. Where do the drippers go on his system? On the 1/2" main line to supply the 1/4" feeder hoses
The 1/2" main tubing can be connected directly to the output from a fish tank pump.
Is a fish tank pump all I'll need? Is it strong enough? What GPH capacity or pressure rating? Don't want it so big I blow my drippers through the wall, dude ;-). I can get my hands on a more commercial brand if need be.
There are 2 types of tubing that look very similar. The stuff you want is the more flexible vinyl tubing. The depot sells it in the pond supply section but not in the drip fittings section
Thanks for telling me where it is. I'm about to write off the Depot and start going to Lowe's instead cause the peeps at the depot don't want to seem to help me find shit. Course I live in a college town so they might not be getting help that gives a damn about anything other than earning beer money for Friday nights.
There are threaded connectors available if you can find them and they help with the fatigue and the blisters.
The depot have these too? Are you talking about them being threaded on the compression fitting? If so, other than the quick lock kind, I thought all compression fittings were threaded.
If you are going to use the connectors that press into the hose then a good trick is to connect a piece of 1/4" tube to one side of the connector before pressing it into the 1/2" tube.
OK, here are you talking about the tee connectors or the straight connectors. I thought I would just push the 1/4" hose into the half inch main like gm did.
I use the hole punch to pop 5 evenly spaced holes in 1/4" tubes that were about 10"-12" long. Then I just connected a tee to the 1/4" line coming from the 1/2" main and connected both ends of the 10" piece to the tee.
Did ya put drippers into each of the 5 holes and are these the 10-12" tubes you wrapped around each plant to form the drip rings?
Think about a filter bag for the pump as well. The inline filter works but is installed after the pump so there is still the chance of clogging the pump.
Not sure what you're talking about when you say a bag filter. Is this a sock type filter you just fit over the intake on the pump? If so, mind cluing me in on what kind of store you got yours at so I'll kinda know where to start looking?
One thing to note is that I did have to cut a small piece of tubing and superglue it to the hole punch to make it work with the 1/4" tube but once I did that it was like butta.
You talking about cutting a piece in half to lay the tubing in to keep it from squirting out of the punch when ya try to punch it?
Thanks again Caligrown.
What configuration tank is everyone using for the reservoir? I've got a 55 gal drum I can use and just mix up enough for about 7 days I guess. Or should the rez be open on the top?
How about a collection tank for the return as I don't know how I would get rid of waste - besides, I will want to reuse the nutes my plants don't eat the first time ---I think. How do folks connect the return tank to the primary and how do they know what nutes to add back into the water.
Water? That brings me to another problem as my tap water has too much salt in it to use straight. Been mixing ro water 50/50 with tap water and it's been working well but I have to drive to get the ro water and I bring it home in 6 - 5gal jugs. Now I bet you're glad ya got the ro under the sink system huh, Cali, lol.
Wife's leaving tomorrow to go see her mom and she'll be gone for 10 days. Any luck and I'll have this done by the time she gets back. If she bitches, I'll tell her I did it so I could spend more time with her, lol.
GM thanks for all your help, man. As always, if it's been done, you've found a way to tweak it so it gets done right, hehe.
peace all
hats a cool setup NPK, i love the simplicity of coco. you might wantto consider letting more of your sexy stocking show, lol.
i mean so that the lump of accumulated coco in the stocking hangs in the water, this way you get the added benefit of a place for your beneficial bacteria to cultivate? i have even seen guys make a pillow of hydro ton/coco with a stocking tied off on both ends and they just leave that floating around in the tank.
it's really true about the irrigation section, one can get a lot of ideas for solutions to ones challenges.
mojo didn't you show us some rubber maid containers that were really low? to roll under the bed i think they were? anyway some thing like that would be low enough. some places have those rubber maid things in all shapes and sizes.
i can't wait to see how you solve your automated watering?
Indica Sativa no it's the whole system. 8 buckets, tubing, air pump, reservoir, controller, the works. On another thread it was mentioned that the system runs all the time and if that's true, I definitely don't want it as coco won't tolerate that. At least the way I want to grow.
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?
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.
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.
building interest in coco these days ... thank you for a great thread ...
can I use clay carrots to feed in coco medium?
spageti hoses hoked to clay carrots that are buried in medium, when they get dry the roots pull nuts trough them ... would it be sufficient?
how about a table filled with coco and lots of perlite, not to deep with clay carrots?
I'm thinking about trying some tree grows in coco. 8 x 600 watts vertically... 7 trees in 5 gallon containers of coco.. drain to waste.
What is my best option for a good drip system and rez to last me a week at a time?
Hi there, gr8 thread..... Could we have a thread on using coco in buckets with drippers please????
I'm getting ready to set up a coco slab drip system, I'll be using dutch leach trays and draining to waste. I just have a couple of questions:
1. Would the neoprene inserts that are used with an ez-clone unit work with the coco slabs? seems like they would be too flimsy, would it be better to just root them in the larger 4x4 cubes?.. I'm going for 50 plants so cloning differently than i usually do might be a bit of an endeavor, but if its necessary i will do it.
2. Once the clones are rooted nicely, and I have placed them on the slabs, how many days should i wait from that point to switch to flower... I've never grown hydro before and have no idea how fast I'm supposed to expect those roots to reach into the coco.
thanks for any help, I'm sure I'll need more along the way...
I read elsewhere that watering too quickly and "gurgling" isnt a good thing to do. but I was wondering why not? doesnt it draw even more oxygen down into the roots in those big bubbles?
sorrry for the newb question, but I am one :wink:
1 more question for anyone who knows, what is the length of a slab?Reason I ask is I'm in 3 x 3 trays and I hope those are large enough to hold a slab without having to go buy bigger trays.I went to canna's site and searchedelsewhere but couldnt find any length dimensions thanx. nuggler
Ok, so let's see if anyone here has any advice on this situation...
This last crop I ran my drip system much more frequently than on previous grows. Originally, I was hand watering, then switched to the drip system using it to basically water as frequently as I hand watered, and this last time I ran it twice a "day" keeping the coco bags much wetter the whole time.
My main observations on this last run were that the buds turned out PHENOMENAL! Ridiculous crystal production and awesome taste. But...I had half the yield of my last crop which got the same treatement, just less frequent waterings. The roots did not even fill the one gal bags and were very small and weak. My first thought is to mix perlite in the next run for better drainage and air to the roots. Everyone says you cant overwater with coco, but have there been problems like this? I ran 12 plants under two 600watters and got about an oz per average... Last time it was 1.5 pounds! Boohoo...
was it the same exact strain??? genetics is everything in this game man, it is the number 1 determining factor in success.
I had this problem also, and i know what your problem was.
2 runs ago, i also switched from hand water to drip, and i thought that i yielded less, the truth spoke after i harvested, and the roots werent nearly as setup.
When you transplant and when their young you need to let the pot dry out A LITTLE more then usual at the beginning. for the first 10 days i say. This will force the plant to search for water and spread roots throughout the pot. once the roots are setup in the pot, water away, watering more frequently causes the roots to grow slower since it doesnt need to search for moisture and nutrients anymore. Im gonna flower my plants in 1 gallons, and when they are almost rootbound im gonna flower and water 3x a day.
NOw woulnd't letting the drain run through a net cup , 10", in the res lid & filling up to the top of the basket w/rockwool croutons???I always thought that would work....
@ JackKerouac
do you run to waste? or recirculate?