I've got about 10 8" net pots and I've been wanting to order about 10 3.5gal black buckets. I kept looking at the 8" net pots and thinking the same thing you were. That's alotta hydroton for one plant. I'm gonna order 10 of 3.5gal buckets and 10 of the 6" net pots for my grow. I thought maybe I could find something to line the 8" net pots with to take up some of the space so I wouldn't have to order new net pots but I'm just gonna order the new buckets and net pots together. Also gonna have to order more hydroton anyway I believe.
Also I was wondering why so many people choose the 5gal buckets over the 3.5gal. I'm using some 2 gal now and they're fine but the buckets were white and I had to wrap them in reflective hvac tape. I have to feed the plants every 2-3 days so I'm thinking with the new setup I'm gonna add 1-2 5gal reservoirs to help keep them fed. May even make it a recirculating system. Dunno yet. Also, how often do you clean your buckets? I like to do it once a week when I change my water/nute solution but I was thinking, there's no way these guys with the commercial grows clean their buckets once a week with the amount of plants they've got.
Anyway, hope everything works out well for you with your new buckets.
I've only completed one grow so my experience is limited....
I'm currently using the 6" net pots and they seem to be working fine, I'm only two weeks into my second cycle vegging away.
I use 5Gal buckets because I can easily get them from home depot in the paint department really cheap. My RDWC system kind of requires the height of a 5Gal bucket. After seeing how many roots grow in these buckets, I'm sure the plants enjoy the little extra space because I like to grow my plants a bit bigger because I'm only allowed 12 plants total.
with only one grow under my belt, I can tell you that I didn't do any cleaning throughout the entire grow. I flushed my system only twice, once when I flipped the light cycle to 12/12 at which point I changed my nutrient ratios, and then flushed about 4 weeks into flowering when I wanted to change my nutrient ratios again. Two or three weeks from when I believed would be the time everything was ripe, I stopped adding nutrients and just topped my reservoir with just pH balanced water to the end. To clean the entire system after all the plants were harvested, I completely emptied the system, refilled with regular water, added .5 cup of bleach, and let run over night with all my air stones still going. The next day, I emptied the system completely again, added pH balanced water, bubbled the air stones in a separate bucket for a while, then place the stones back into the system.
then it's ready for the next grow...
