new to ebb and grow, looking for advice

[bucketcleaner48]

hello. so i recently picked up a 48 site ebb and grow. its turned out to be one problem after another.

im growing la con and gdp.

im in week 6 of veg, but been having problems since week 2.

first thing, i didnt realize how long it would take to flood that many buckets with these little 1/2 inch hoses. not recommended. i dont see these 1/2 inch tubing working well for anything more the a 12 site system. i need 1 inch for sure. ill upgrade next grow, im just gonna have to deal for now. it takes an hour and 15 to fill the buckets. about the same time to drain. so roots are under water for like an hour x 4 times a day. 18/6

my plants veged in 4inch rockwool before getting placed in the net lid pots with hydroton (next time id like to avoid having to use rockwool at all, it absourbs to much water for this system, i think)

first couple weeks went well, then root slime. i tried h202 and it didnt work, then sm 90 and that didnt work either. i did a batch of ewc tea and that cured it up. im cleaning the system and going to use enzymes with treatments of sm 90 and h202 to keep the bacteria at bay. also i now have a chiller to keep the water under 68f
if slime comes back, ill have to switch to using ewc tea full time. which i dont want to do because it leaves shit in the bottoms of my buckets just asking for infestation.

i cleared up the slime, my plants still looked weak, curled under and losing color. turns out it is now root aphids. i just treated with spectracide.

2 days ago i almost decided to cull the whole garden since the recovery from the slime has not been so great. the roots started exploading but the leaves continued to look stressed. fat ridges, curled under, not eating nutes, losing color.
i turned off my lights, unplugged the controller for the pump and walked away thinking i was culling the garden the next day. 2 days goes by, and today i turn on the lights and my plants look better then they have in weeks. very strange. makes me think i was overwatering. i didnt think that was possible. 2 days no light and no water with cold air temps and they look better then they have in weeks. strange. so i decided not to cull and see how they recover from here.

im using gh nutes. just the 3 part for veg, then adding monster bloom to flower. oh, and magic cal.
im about to start adding enzymes with the sm 90 and h202 for prevention along with cooler water temps. (im pretty sure the heavy 16 additive i used in the beginning is what helped cultivate the root slime, so i no longer use it.)

my main concern now is figuring out a irrigation cycle. the 4" rockwool cubes kinda fuck me, i feel like. i have some with clay pellets benieth the cubes, and others with the cubes at the bottom of the net pot. both look overwatered.

what should i do with such a long duration to fill and drain these buckets?

any advice, critiques, whatever are appreciated. i wish there was a sticky for ebb and grow...

thanks everyone

 

[rickisonline]

hello. so i recently picked up a 48 site ebb and grow. its turned out to be one problem after another.

im growing la con and gdp.

im in week 6 of veg, but been having problems since week 2.

first thing, i didnt realize how long it would take to flood that many buckets with these little 1/2 inch hoses. not recommended. i dont see these 1/2 inch tubing working well for anything more the a 12 site system. i need 1 inch for sure. ill upgrade next grow, im just gonna have to deal for now. it takes an hour and 15 to fill the buckets. about the same time to drain. so roots are under water for like an hour x 4 times a day. 18/6

my plants veged in 4inch rockwool before getting placed in the net lid pots with hydroton (next time id like to avoid having to use rockwool at all, it absourbs to much water for this system, i think)

first couple weeks went well, then root slime. i tried h202 and it didnt work, then sm 90 and that didnt work either. i did a batch of ewc tea and that cured it up. im cleaning the system and going to use enzymes with treatments of sm 90 and h202 to keep the bacteria at bay. also i now have a chiller to keep the water under 68f
if slime comes back, ill have to switch to using ewc tea full time. which i dont want to do because it leaves shit in the bottoms of my buckets just asking for infestation.

i cleared up the slime, my plants still looked weak, curled under and losing color. turns out it is now root aphids. i just treated with spectracide.

2 days ago i almost decided to cull the whole garden since the recovery from the slime has not been so great. the roots started exploading but the leaves continued to look stressed. fat ridges, curled under, not eating nutes, losing color.
i turned off my lights, unplugged the controller for the pump and walked away thinking i was culling the garden the next day. 2 days goes by, and today i turn on the lights and my plants look better then they have in weeks. very strange. makes me think i was overwatering. i didnt think that was possible. 2 days no light and no water with cold air temps and they look better then they have in weeks. strange. so i decided not to cull and see how they recover from here.

im using gh nutes. just the 3 part for veg, then adding monster bloom to flower. oh, and magic cal.
im about to start adding enzymes with the sm 90 and h202 for prevention along with cooler water temps. (im pretty sure the heavy 16 additive i used in the beginning is what helped cultivate the root slime, so i no longer use it.)

my main concern now is figuring out a irrigation cycle. the 4" rockwool cubes kinda fuck me, i feel like. i have some with clay pellets benieth the cubes, and others with the cubes at the bottom of the net pot. both look overwatered.

what should i do with such a long duration to fill and drain these buckets?

any advice, critiques, whatever are appreciated. i wish there was a sticky for ebb and grow...

thanks everyone

Sounds like we are running a similar system. Even down to the rockwool cubes. I use 4x4x2.5 cubes to vege in. (my flower system is a titan flo/gro) In the titan I run hydroton. I mention this because I recently had a similar experience and I think it was due to using the CANNA line up in it. Stagnant water and extremely large root mass not good. So, now I am aerating each bucket with an airstone in each one, flooming the rez again and it seems to have taken all the problems away that I experienced with the canna nute program.

Anyway, when you lift your root pots do you notice any leftover water or are the buckets draining all the way? Another reason I went with the titan is 3/4 tubing = about 15 minute flush on a 40 gallon exchange. I noticed about an inch of water left in my buckets when I first got the system so I tilted them towards the hose drain and they run completely empty. (placed a 3/4 inch thick piece of strapping on the underside of each bucket)

I don't have much experience with using enzymes in hydro but it would seem to me running h202 and enzymes at the same time would be counter productive. Which product will succeed?

As for the darkness/coolness and waterless improvement, I think all that you have done is slowed down the pathogen creating the problem and created an environment that may not be suitable for the rapid expansion it has the potential of doing. Just my .02 and best wishes.

 

[reggiebaseball]

OK, let's work this out. The ebb and gro system is bulletproof, easy and should not be giving you these problems, so here we go.

#1 - are you in the USA? At Home Depot they have 2' X 4' sheets of insulation, styrofoam 2 inches thick.
You need to buy sheets of this and cut them into 1x1 squares and place one square under EACH pot to elevate them above your controller.

#2- at Home Depot go to the PVC fittings aisle and look for 69 cent 3" PVC couplers. It is jsut a 3" tall section of 3" PVC pipe. You insert this BETWEEN your outer and inner buckets.

The combination of elevating and separating the buckets will prevent ANY standing water and will give you 50% more room for your now healthy rootmass to accumulate. These two steps should be done immediately and will fix 99% fo your problems I promise.

No CHILLER needed.

It DOES NOT take 1 hour to fill even 120 buckets. Pull and check your lines to make sure they are not blocked by hydroton. NEVER EVER Fill for more than 30 minutes and only then if you have 48 buckets!

You should be using 3-6 of the feed lines from your controller bucket. IT should take 15 minutes to flood up to 24 buckets to a pretty decent level (you dont need to fill to the brim).


Dump the rockwool next time, use earth plug type starters or just hydroton.
However if we don't flood all the way to the brim it will not matter for this cycle.

You should fill and drain 4-5 times during your light cycle, and maybe once in the middle of the night. You are drowning your plants right now and they hate you.

Just because your reservoir can hold 55 gallons doesnt mean you need it. You should be filling with 20-30 gallons of nutrient solution and maintaining that level during the week.



Do the above steps, then when you run your system take out the last pot in a line and see how full it gets during a 15 minute fill. report back.

FYI by 6 weeks of veg you should have an inner pot full of roots and many crawling out into the lower pot- another reason you dont needto fill to the brim.


Get busy, save your ladies, and post a second round of stuff if you want any more help!

 

[bucketcleaner48]

ill raise the buckets to get the excess water out for sure.

my system is made of 5 gal buckets and 6inch net pots.

i have over 200 gallons of water to pump in those 48 buckets or it doesnt reach the root mass.
because of this, the time it takes to fill is way longer then you might think. 1.25 hours to get filled, im telling you.
so this means, the bottom part of the roots are submerged for much longer then the top of the root mass. by like 30 minutes. i really need bigger tubing. its such a bitch once youve got it all drilled for 1/2 inch.

the roots only go down about 4 or 5 inches from the bottom of the pots. some only an inch. i had to remove most the roots because of the slime problem i just over came.

enzymes vs h202? if im not mistaken one chemically breaks down organic matter and the other staralizes. that sounds to me like they would work together just fine. please correct me if im wrong

thanks for the info guys. off to the depot

oh yeah, im in cali. :banana1sv6:

 

[reggiebaseball]

the system does not scale to 48 * 5 gallon pots with a single controller.

Unless you have a custom control bucket that is 50+ gallons and has 1000+gph pumps,

OR if you have 6-8 discrete 5 gallon controller buckets each feeding only 6-8 individual pots


otherwise you are going to have nothing but trouble with this system trying to use 48 pots on a single flood controller.

 

[FromGROtoFLO]

Reggie knows his sh*t - Im impressed. I ran the system for 3 cycles finally got it dialed in and switch to trays because of the lengthy cleaning process (200 buckets x 3 rooms). Key is cleanliness. H202 frequently and numerous airstones. Enzymes work very well but they are pricey. I ran the GH line and ALL the additives, didnt work out with 1/2" line. Elevating the pots works well and i also used the PVC (didnt use until my second round but noticed a HUGE difference). Trial and error is the key to success...I dont know how many times I flooded my warehouse...

 

[bucketcleaner48]

i think im gonna get another controller tomorrow.

my leaves are already starting to droop, obviously to overwatering.

also, my buckets dont fill at the same rate, i think adding a controller will fix that and the flood duration problem.

i picked up some dutch master zone today to run instead of sm 90, enzymes or h202. it has copper in it and i remember using copper to kill the hardest to kill algeas and bacteria in pools, when i was a pool cleaner. copper kills the stuff chlorine cant touch.

no new bugs after yesterdays nuke session. im going to dunk two more times at 7 day intervals.

im spraying the tops with neem. that fucks up the flyers big time. infact, the crawleys die too from it, but im not taking any chances by just using neem.

 

[bucketcleaner48]

just an update. no slime has returned. no bugs have returned.

after the first dose of spectracide, dead bugs were all over my system. this kinda caused some unwanted bacterial growth even while using the h202 for the first 3 days, and then dosing with sm 90 after that. those products seem to slow things down, but dont stop shit.

anyway, i cleaned the system again, 4th time in 2 weeks. cleared all the dead bugs, and did another soil drench in bayer tree and shrub just for good measure. i dont ever want to see those bugs on my roots ever again! i think these two treatments should do it. i may treat one more time with bayer, in a week, just to make certain. im still in veg so i can. so glad i wasnt in flower and forced to use organic bs.

i added the second controller, i use the blue multi flow. i also re did the tubing to reduce the amount of distance and the amount of fittings used. now all 48 fill and drain in the proper 30 minutes.

keeping my temps between 62 and 65 in the rez.

using dm zone, gh cal mg, gh grow, micro,bloom ph'ed at 5.5-5.6

lets see if this does the trick.

 

[bucketcleaner48]

the system does not scale to 48 * 5 gallon pots with a single controller.

Unless you have a custom control bucket that is 50+ gallons and has 1000+gph pumps,

OR if you have 6-8 discrete 5 gallon controller buckets each feeding only 6-8 individual pots


otherwise you are going to have nothing but trouble with this system trying to use 48 pots on a single flood controller.

that was a huge issue. i was constantly overwatering since it took 1.5 hours for the buckets in the back to fill up. thanks for your input.