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Northwest Skunk
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Thanks for the insight. Are the mediums you are suggesting re usable or would I be replacing it every show? Yes for sure I will be putting pond liner in, drain holes, and slanting the beds.Wow, nice steup you got there. If your going for GPW the only real improvements i could suggest would be to go verticle in order to eliminate the loss via refraction from the reflectors, or chang your medium as you suggested. You could use your exact same setup (assuming you have drains somewhere on those beds) just line the whole thing with pond liner and put it on a slant. THen fill them up with coco or perlite or hydroton or a mix. ALso i would reccomend laying down at least enough hydroton to cover your drains so the coco doesnt clog em up. Let me just say also that I do not yeild 2 gpw but im working on it! Goodluck!
No I don't want to fix anything..I would like to improve yield if possible. I believe we have to always test and try to do the best that is possible. Trying my style in a hydro system is something I haven't done yet and I need to find out for myself if it will improve my current system. If not I will keep growing this same way but I have to try..it's been on my mind for a long time now.Wow... You really want to fix something that ain't broke? Good luck.. Peace
Hey thanks a lot. I enjoy sharing my passion with other growers/smokers. If you ever want to try the system again feel free to ask any questions you want. I have to get 50 posts I believe to pm forum members but if you have any questions you want answered please post them on this thread.sub'd i followed ur threads on another site and they were all amazing. I tried to copy ur design in a 4x4 bed but failed LOL!!! Good luck!!!
I was also thinking of ebb & flow. What medium would you recommend? Would you recommend baskets in another medium, or rockwool, or sure to grow blocks, or other?Bro, I humbly submit that I could probably help you out, depending on which way you wanted to go.
Seeing as how you wanna keep your beds, I'd recommend just doing a simple E&F setup - you could do a DTW top feed if you wanted, but 75 different spaghetti tubes per light would be kind of a pain in the arse, ya know?
Any questions about E&F I can help with, but honestly, if you're consistently getting 2-3lbs/light in soil, I'd really question whether it's worth it to switch to E&F.
Just my $.02, but I'm subbed to see what you decide.
Is your soil setup right now automated at all, or do you handwater?
I am very happy with where I am don't get me wrong it has taken a long and interesting road getting here but I am a restless person and my mind is always chasing ideas and goals. If I don't try I will never know for sure. Are any of the mediums you mention 100% re usable? Meaning I can just flush them after a show and re use them again? Would I plant directly into the medium you suggest or have some sort of basket or plant holder in the medium? Any opinion on the Sure To Grow blocks?I loled when you asked for improvement, best I can give you is to try out canna coco or 100% perlite or 60/40 hydroton/coco or 70/30 hydroton/coco I wouldn't mess with aero or recirculating anything in your case. I hate peat mixes though so I am biased.
I'd recommend 6" square pots (not netpots) and hydroton, which is reusable after being cleaned.
Bro, you're gonna need MASSIVE reservoirs with tables that size - without doing the math for gallons that each table could hold, I'm gonna guess around 250 gallons per table (and that's prolly on the low side - 300 or 350 would prolly work better for ya).
And you're not gonna be flooding several times an hour - once an hour is as high as most go (I flooded once every two hours when I had a hydroton/E&F setup).
After a week or two (depending on personal preference), you empty out the reservoir and mix fresh nutes.
I never used nor do I feel a chiller is worthwhile for an E&F/hydroton setup - some will disagree, but the oxygen to the roots comes when the flood subsides, so the amount of dissolved oxygen in the actual nute solution is fairly irrelevant (IMO).
Honestly, when looking at your current setup, the time and trouble to change it to an E&F setup (basically the need for 1000 gallons worth of reservoirs) leads me to believe it's probably not worth the change.
2-3 lbs./light is outstanding, and I'd recommend staying with your current setup.
Antimatter
I am very happy with where I am don't get me wrong it has taken a long and interesting road getting here but I am a restless person and my mind is always chasing ideas and goals. If I don't try I will never know for sure. Are any of the mediums you mention 100% re usable? Meaning I can just flush them after a show and re use them again? Would I plant directly into the medium you suggest or have some sort of basket or plant holder in the medium? Any opinion on the Sure To Grow blocks?
Gottchya, thank you for explaining now I understand what you mean that the res temp matters more when the medium is wet for a longer period of time. Ya I think the res size thing is going to screw me.Both rockwool and STG need to be discarded after each grow.
No, I'm not sure, but I need about a 50 gallon reservoir for a 4'x4'x7" table, so I was just doing some ballpark figures - your beds are abour five times bigger, so I just multiplied.
And I understand that your reservoir will get toasty, but you're not hearing what I'm saying - in hydroton, the temperature of your reservoir is not a big deal - if you went with rockwool or a more "wet" medium, than keepin your reservoir under 70F would prolly be a good idea.
That would be the best scenario to try but I would need my res to feed the soil beds and I don't have room to put another res in just for one bed, unless I do rock wool in the one bed and just hand water it hydro what do you guys think of that?Instead of changing over completely would u be able to just convert one bed to hydro? It'd be interesting to see them side by side all the way through!!!
You make a lot of good points. I love the smoothness and taste of my weed and I even re use my soil with no drain holes. Just give lots of water at the end with clearing solution. Ya I had a sealed room fill up a foot and a half deep with water from leaving a fill hose going in my res without it hooked up to a float valve before so I hear ya there I imagine there's much more opportunity for that to happen with hydro.Keep your setup as you have it bro....2-3 per light ...in soil...is fucking stellar...your costs will significantly go up like electric just from all the added pumps timers ect...plus how do you beat the taste of soil frown buds...you don't...hydro is awesome but flat out soil is the best medium for our MJ plants...it's where jesus first put em ;-). I feel you on the "wandering mind" comment...but I would just explore new strains and find something that puts out just a little stiffer of a donkey penis cola and your good to go. My homie switched to hydro from soil, let me just say make sure you have the necessary insurance to cover flood damage,...500 gallon Rez to his entire single level home...not to mention the float valve didn't shut off so that sum bitch just kept a floodin'....whatever decision you make make sure you get good insurance
Thank you or your advice. Well I do currently re use my soil, but I was looking forward to using a new system where I could avoid the rota tilling, amending it, etc. I think I may have to be steered in the direction of using rock wool and hand watering the beds because of the size of res I would need by doing a E & F system.Canna Coco can be reused a couple time, but you know I personally don't like reusing it because of pathogens that could possibly spread from crop to crop and the scale of your grows would make reusing probably more hassle then its worth..
Sure to grow is crap nothing but bad reviews on the stuff. Fytocell which is different but sorta looks similar is supposed to be good but would need to be tested on a small scale before converting over to it.
Perlite is light for transport and is hydro, have read a few guys doing 100% perlite in sogs and said they had a good improvement. Coco is still heavy like soil and alot more expensive but you can use alot less of it and then theres canna coco slabs those look decent.
My conclusion is you want something you don't have to mix and you want something that is gonna be easier to transport and cleanup out of your beds so its either gonna be coco or 100% perlite or rockwool cubes which can get to wet. Im no mentor though I just do what I feel like doing and soil is f*cking out for me.
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