Perlite in Hydro

[gudkarma]

I tried the rockwool mini cubes for a while GK... the only thing i didn't like was the water retention in my buckets the top dries out good but the bottom half stays soaked... i also don't like to reuse my medium

to toss or reuse?

i love to reuse & understand the other side.

you know to flood low with crutons? also need extra holes around container (not just on the bottom) about 10mm from bottom (i use two per side).

the idea is to create suction pulling air down & through the container.

these few extra holes make a difference.

different strokes for folks.

 

[smokestack23]

WAY back in the day (early '80s) my roomate and I tried our first hydro room. He had an 8-pod top feed lava rock bucket set-up. It hat 8 2-1/2gal-ish pails and a "heart" with a tower pump in it.
I scored these square white herring roe pails...probably about 3 gal pails. I filled the top pail with pearlite after first drilling a hole in the bottom of the pail and installing a cotton rope. It was probably around 3/4" rope.
Those pails sat inside a second similar pail. A wick system.

This was before we knew to keep light out and before we knew to put an airstone in each pail.
It wasn't REALLY a true wick system because I was top feeding them by hand. I did let the bottom pails accumulate quite a bit of solution but..yeah.
Soon you couldn't even see the rope hanging out of the top pail when you lifted it because they were completely covered with snow white roots.
We had no problems with the roots whatsoever and..my "system" blew the top drip feed lava rock system. I'm not saying lava rock isnt as good as pearlite..I'm more saying that that early system wasn't as good as pearlite with wicks.

So ...I would say that ..as a medium..pearlite is better than a lot of stuff out there, as good as most...but some are probably even better?
Now days you can get the coarse chunky pearlite. I bet that would be cool.

Anyway..I loved using pure pearlite. I miss it. It looks SO clean.

PEACE.

 

[motherlode]

^^^ lol love the back in the day stories

there is so much gear now that you can just go to a hydro store and buy

back then we had to make everything out of sticks and rocks!

 

[smokestack23]

Yeah no shit.
After those systems we tried something different.

We made 3 wooden troughs about 2-1/2' wide and like 11' long. the far end of them was elevated to about 14" off the ground. The front of them were open and sat on a res we made that was like 10' wide by maybe 16" across by 12" deep (2X12s). So the backs of the troughs were a couple inches higher than the front. The troughs were 4" deep and like the res, were lined with 6mil poly.
The troughs were filled with rockwool slabs but under the rockwool we ran a 3/4" tube up to the top where we made Ts with holes in them.
Nutrient pumped up the tubes and out the holes in the Ts to wet the bottom of the slabs. It was a primitive NFT syatem.
We filled them up with IIRC 300 or so clones and went to bed.

WELL..next morning they were ALL dead. We didn't saturate the rockwool first and it failed to wick up the nutes with capillary action. The dry slabs SUCKED every bit of moisture out of the clones' small rockwool cubes

SHIT!

We went to E&F and never re-tried the NFT system. Not that it was an NFT system but yeah..

SO a couple years later we had gone our separate ways. I had bought a house with a nice spare room in the basement. The pearlite wick system gave me an idea.
I made a res that was about 6'X8'X6" deep. I covered it with that pegboard stuff. You know..that mdf stuff with all the holes in it that people trace and hang their tools on?
With a holesaw I cut as many 2" holes in it as I could. Each hole got a styrofoam cup full of pearlite with a piece of cotton lantern wick hanging out the bottom and each cup got a clone.
The res had a little giant 250gph submersible pump in it to keep the solution moving.
It was a very early and primitive DWC (DIRECT water culture..not DEEP...it was only 6" deep). It had wicks but they weren't necessary.

Within a week the res was slimey and stunk like sulfur. The cotton wicks were disintegrating and rotting.
I wish I had known about light in the res, oxygenated water, and..well...the temps were nice and cool but yeah..

We wound up doing more grows together in later years. We did have success with some vertical pipe systems...before you could just go out and buy those too. Turns out we were always on the right track...just never bothered to stick with failed systems long enough to iron the bugs out. :(
The majority of our grows were E&F with RW slabs...for years and years.

Those were the days. No internet, no one else was growing back then..no one to share ideas and problems with...It was good old fashioned flying by the seat of your pants.

Live and learn I guess!
PEACE.

 

[motherlode]

haha I rem them old tube days - ahhh the 90's

 

[PuraVida305]

i did something similar back in the days SS23 but i used rain gutters and laid the slabs in there. I had them elevated to a resi on the floor made out of shower liner framed with 2x10. I wish they would of had half the stuff they got now in the stores when i got started.

 

[devious d]

I started in pots and perlite watering by hand ,mainly sog,s peace d.d

 

[smokestack23]

Yeah so..back to the topic..lol...I personally LOVE pearlite and ...IMO...I don't know of anything that blows it away. That said..I use hydroton lol.

 

[VolcanoVapin]

smokestack, are you using hydroton in a container as a medium or just in a netpot to support the plant? I'm interested in hydroton, but it's much more expenisve than perlite and I don't think it would hold as much water/wick water up as well as perlite, which means it would require more frequent watering... which could be a pain in the ass...

 

[PuraVida305]

the hydroton hold almost no water so you definitively have to water it more... i used to water 6 times a day in veg and 3 in bloom... i hope i can get away with less feeding with the perlite... i heard it hold a lot more water... GL

 

[smokestack23]

VV,
That's correct. I use 6" netpots in pails or tubs.

I start em in the small RR cubes to root then I put em in the netpots in a 10 gallon tote with a couple of airstones in it. (3 plants in the tote)
The wee cubes are wet and the hydroton is usually still wet from having just rinsed it. I give them a watering daily for a while..when I remember..just in case.
I can't tell you if the Hydroton balls have any capillary or wicking properties but they must. The airstones cause little bubbles to burst, splashing the bottom of the netpots. I think my netpots are probably touching the water most of the time though but I'm not sure.
SO..
with all this not knowing and being not sure and not really caring because it's working very well...it MUST be able to wick?? Otherwise my wee plants would dry up in a day no?

They stay in the little tub for a few weeks. Once the roots break out of the basket and get into the water they EXPLODE.
I then take the netpotted plants and put them into the big tubs in the flower room where they havent been suffering lumen shock or anything. No veg time in the flower room.
That isnt the way most people do it but I'm running sort of perpetual in the flower room. When the new plants go in there are others in there that are at week 4 of flower.

So yeah...by the time the roots come out of the baskets, the medium is insignificant. Like I said before..just the fact that the roots are coming out of all the holes in the netpot anchors them to the netpot. The amount of Hydroton I use has NO effect on supporting the weight of the plant.

It isnt THAT pricey either. I bought a 50lb (?) bag..the big bag...for like 30 bucks. That can fill a LOT of 6" netpots bouee.
Plus..in Canada, RONA sells Hydroton so it's EASY to get and still stay incognito.
I don't re-use it. I run sterile reses and for the price of Hydroton, it isn't worth the gamble of possibly introducing anything nasty into my systems.

For me, without a handy growshop, Pearlite just isnt practical. I'd have to buy a lot of small bags of that stuff (the fine stuff not coarse) and that would get expensive and would look kinda funny. IF I could buy the coarse stuff here for cheap...well..I'm still not sure if I'd use it. It can break-up and turn to powdery fragments. Can't imagine that that would be much good for my pumps.
I rinse my Hydroton very well to avoid particles in the pumps. The particles that remain seem to sink anyway and stay put. I also have filters on my pumps so I'd probably be safe but yeah..
I LOVE Pearlite but I think Hydroton is more practical for me these days.

PEACE