I’ll try it. Convince me to switch from organic soil.
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i cant cuz im lost af when it come to it but im here to be convinced too lol
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No soil, no mess, no run off no waste, exact control of your growing medium and massive growth rates.
My 4 gelato girls 8 weeks from seed, flipped 2 weeks ago, disadvantage lot of pruning to do today.
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@StevOz about has it covered but I’ll add, larger yeilds, less chances of pest as there is no dirt.
I do both dwc and autopots with coco/perlite and if you really want to go hydroponic, autopots are my favorite by far.
Absolutely no watse water, no pumps, I fill my reservoir once ever 7-10 days and don’t have to open the tent but a few times the entire grow really.
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Ok I’m intrigued.
What’s the best method for a dirt farmer like me to try this out? I’m moving toward using scrog tables in my flowering room - I’m willing to make one table a hydro pot of some kind to try it out.
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I would recommend a basic DWC setup using big totes, this setup is as simple as it gets, low cost, easy setup and cannot leak.
Checkout my first grow, although I did make mistakes, let them get too big, some pH and nutrient issues, still pulled a pound of dried buds.
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Beauty of a grow, thanks for sharing. I’m close to wanting to try this. I’m concerned about a few things
Water - Ive got a well and my water is hard af. PPMs are wayyyy up there right out of the tap and its great for organic soil growing - I don’t even add Cal Mag the water is so crazy hard. I’m not hot on buying an R/O filter, I’m under the impression they’re big, and take forever to produce small amounts of water. I also don’t want to buy water. Can I use my tap water??
Equipment - there’s a bunch of meters and stuff I need to get, right?
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I actually just use a basic on tap filter, Stefani brand, with a replaceable filter, good for 1500 litres/3 months. Bought it at my local warehouse hardware super mart, Bunnings. May not be perfect looking at the small print, still better than nothing, I guess. Cost me about $50 and replacement filter is $11.25, was an easy DIY fitting.
Effectively reduces* bacteria - Particles such as micro-plastics - Chemicals such as chlorine, pesticides, herbicides, hormones, and pharmaceutical residue - Metals such as lead.
The tap water here is also not that great, the pH is 7.9 so I always need to add pH down. Phosphoric acid is the stuff you want, it’s powerful, you only need a few drops to bring it down so be careful not to overdo it.
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Here is a picture of all my test equipment, a PPM (parts per million) pen and a pH testing kit. Here you can see how my tap water is near on pH 8.0 and if I recall it still reads about 320 PPM out of the filter.
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Alright so what about nutes? I grow organic and I assume there’s organic hydro nutes (right?) I’m not wed to growing organic so am willing to try something mineral based if it’s significantly easier.
Suggestions?
I’m looking for some success and easing into it for a first try. I don’t think I want to drop the coin for an auto pot just to try out hydro even though that looks like the kind of system I could deal with long term.
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Sounds a mean set up!!! 
You had us at no gnats!!! 
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From what I understand you don’t use organic fertilizer in hydro because it can cause some nasty growth in your reservoir. And you can always collect rain water. When I did back in Ohio, my rain water tested at hardly any ppm and ph was in the upper 5s
A simple bubble bucket or even a kratky bucket would be the easiest and cheapest to just throw together to give it a try.
Kratky is nothing but a bucket of water or rather nutrient solution of course… lots of videos on YouTube showing how to DIY a setup.
This is my water only made from totes. Ones a 17gal the other is 5. The 5gal i use just to house clones really and I’ll grow and flower in the 17gal.
I do have some 5gal buckets as well but I dont do alot of dwc, mostly autopots theses days.
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I just happen to think about hempy buckets with coco coir and perlite would be basically the same thing as autopots only you would fill the bucket with water manually.
And they are a easy DIY project or there is many online kits.
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Good ideas! Lots for me to google 
What do you guys use for nutes?
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I use general hydroponics flora series alot and general hydroponics maxi series.
I use silica blast and hydrogaurd, i have used just nutrients with no silica or microbes adding h202 (brown bottle proxide) in whats known as a sterile system with good results.
Sterile is cheaper as h202 is cheap.
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I use the Canna Aqua range myself here, with good results. Mainly due to it being the most available bang for buck here down under and it is very simple to use, they seem even better value over in the good old USA.
For a full grow I use very little of the vega A+B, a litre bottle of each lasts 3 or more grows as this is only needed for the first 6 weeks and less is needed as the plants are still small. I go close to using a full litre of the flores A+B after the flip as they get bigger, use more and the after flip will be close to 12 weeks.
Also use CANNA PK 13/14 but only need a small amount for application on weeks 4 to 6 after flip, made the mistake of using that too much once and it killed all my shade leaves.
Also add 50mls of 3% H2O2 on occasion, if I get any smell or discolouration or the roots, as it will kill all the bacteria and dissipate after a few days. I would use hydroguard or similar instead, though it is unobtainable here.
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Hydro requires more attention to be given to the plants. It’s not a system you can go away for a couple of days until the next watering. I do grow in an ebb and flow system and monitor daily with tests being taken twice a day. Keep you ph at the correct level and the ppms not to high and you get great results. Here’s a picture of my current grow.
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Another reason why I like the autopots, I set ph at 5.8 and by time it gets through 25gal of nutes ph has drifted up to maybe 6.2 at most which is no problem for the coco coir at all.
Where nothing is recirculating my ppms don’t change, it either uses it or any excess just settles in top layer of coco.
I really am amazed at how well they work to be so simple.
I started to expand my dwc to rdwc adding 10 pots.
I decided to get a spring pot kit to try, well i order 8 more a month later.
And I’m so glad I did, they have been truly effortless for me, compared to any other way I’ve grown.
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