Ok I have been growing 30 
years not a single grow in hydro. I would love it if someone could walk me through my first hydro grow. Everything still in boxes. I have a 60gal 6 bucket aircube ebb & flow i have the 1000w scorpion Diablo X with 36W UVA . Grow medium probably will be clay balls I tried germinating in ROCKWOOL 1 X killed everyone of them not 1 made it out of seedling stage. I need someone to drop me a list of what I am going to need. I have all meters but like plastic web pots what size ? should I clean it before i use it ? It came with fabric insert pots should i use them or just fill bucket with clay balls ? How often do i flow a day ? Where should my water line be for the seedlings? I hope someone gets what I need.
Thank you for your time
First, you can tag folks using the @ sign ahead of their handle like this: @Myfriendis410
Hydro; this is highly technical and very much equipment-driven. You’ve got good lights and a start on a setup. There are a few things you should be aware of when setting up a good system. First off you will need a chiller. Water temps have to remain below 70F or you will have problems with root rot and O uptake. Setting up a large reservoir outside the grow space will help keep nutrient solution stable (PH) much longer. Also, having a large rez means less labor-intensive as well.
The larger the net pot, the deeper into the individual buckets your plants will be which reduces overall reservoir amount. Distance between net pot and liquid should always remain at 1 1/2 to 2" below net pot, with copious air in each bucket/tote. I use 3" net pots and grow plants that yield in the 12 oz. range at harvest.
I chose to use yellow topped totes for my plant reservoirs due to the extra space and volume for roots to grow into. Hydroton is preferred.
Rockwool is a little bit tricky: soak rockwool cubes in mild nutrient solution, wring out with your hand until slightly damp. Then drop your sprouted seedling into rockwool cubes and keep under a humidity dome on a 24/0 light schedule. Mist the humidity dome once or twice a day.
For cleaning, peroxide is your friend. It disinfects then dissipates into water and O. Running beneficial microbes like Hydroguard is a good idea.
I like Jack’s for a nutrient line and you’ll find many on here who do as well. Very economical and grows good cannabis.
Until roots depend into water you will be top-feeding. This can be manually or automated. Really it’s what you’re more comfortable with.
Obviously you need good instruments for monitoring your nutrients. Don’t go cheap on them as they are the most important tool in your inventory.
Tag me with your questions anytime!
Ok, so I looked at your system online, and although it’s been around 25 years since I’ve ran an ebb and flow, it seems like a pretty straight forward rig.
The inserts keep anything (including roots) from plugging up the feed lines, they are necessary. You would just fill the pots with medium… pebbles if you choose, but you’ll need lots and lots of pebbles.
They have an instruction manual on their website with water timing for the different medium options, like hydroton.
Good question. Rockwool isn’t easy to work with. Hopefully somebody with more ebb/flow xp will come by, but I’d say use a small cube of rockwool, and get the water level as high as you can without adding more moisture to the cube, then time your cycles so the pebbles never dry out all the way up to the cube. Once roots start forming, the flood level can be dropped, but this is ebb/flow, so you want a pretty deep flood anyway, just not so deep it causes salt build up and algae on the tops of the pebbles.
As far as a chiller, you might not need one. As long as you keep the res outside the grow area, you won’t have any standing water inside to get hot. If you can keep the lung room a reasonable temp, you’d be fine.
…and btw, Welcome aboard!
This seems to work well for me. It’s R/DWC, but at this stage it’s pretty similar. The water level is as described, the difference being it’s kept constant instead of a flood cycle. But the cube size (twice as deep as is wide) and root development I thought was worth noting here and should have relevance to your setup. This is day 10 on this OG Kush regular.
I keep everything moist, yet breathable with coverings, like this. (different grow, 4x bigger cube)
