I'm switching from soil to hydro - migration advice?

[cbdprospector]

I've been growing organic indoor gardening in a stealth room for about a year now. While I've had some rewarding grows, I am just so tired of dealing with teas and lugging bags of soil, as a repot. I'm not a young guy and need to have a system that is less labor intensive. So, I am ready to make the switch. The only problem is, I cannot have a break in getting my Dad the meds he needs for his ALS.

I run a 4' x 4'w - 8'high tent, with a small veg area (1.5' x 3' - 6'high) with (5) 1.5 month olds which are currently in soil. I'm about 2 weeks away until the harvest is complete and the 1.5 month olds will go into the tent. I want to go ahead complete the next cycle in soil and clone to setup for hydro. When I clear out the veg area, I want to set up a DWC for the veg area and prep for installing an RDWC system in the flower tent.

One question I have is - has anyone had decent luck with rinsing off the soil (or soaking the roots in water/nutrient) and sticking it in a DWC without a clog? May make an ebb/flow for the one plant while finishing the other soil plants?

The other is, anyone using Botanicare products - if so, which do you suggest?

Thanks for any help with this!

 

[DWCPortland]

Hey if you are transitioning to hydroponics from soil for the reason of less hassle and work, I have news for you it is very labor intensive and takes up a good part of your time. Now you can limit some of the labor and headache by purchasing all the proper equipment required for your grow in advance which trust me is not cheap but is well worth the investment and everything will be a lot smoother for you. You have to consider that you cannot leave for long periods of time like a vacation or so on unless you have somebody always monitoring your grow. Recirculating deep water culture will always need to be carefully monitored and can be touchy even when your system is dialed in. What I recommend and what I did is designed my own system and tested it for a week or so until I actually put my clones in, I mean I literally ran nutrients the whole ten yards to make sure everything was stable before I took that plunge, that's my advice. I am definitely new to the game but I definitely did my research and trial and error is the best thing for a learning experience, I certainly have found defects in my system and things I will improve in the future it's all part of the learning process.
For your question about transplanting from a soil medium to a rockwool medium I have no expertise I personally never have transplanted like that before.
I do use Botanicare pH stabilizer up / down and also hydroguard as a beneficial bacteria I did previously use aqua shield which is the older version by the same company all their products that I have used works awesome and I would recommend them. I was using general hydroponics pH stabilizer up / down and it definitely is not as strong as Botanicare pH stabilizer.
I hope this helps have a happy grow.

 

[c526]

no problems washing dirt off to use in hydro,I do it all the time.

as was said above,water growing is a different type of labor,more mentally intensive over back intensive,but when you figure it out,its a breeze...

my biggest growing failures came from dwc/rdwc.root rot is fast and ferocious,ive lost tents in the time it took me to work a shift and come home.

I stopped all dirt/dwc after I found this How to: Simple Hydroponics

very fast and efficient.only system i have ever come across that could produce 50lbs a year and NEVER go above 10 plants at a time

with this system i have had MANY 4 day weekends,and a week vacation,trust the timers and lights,good to go.

I switched over a couple of years ago,(to theCapn style and I almost feel guilty for how little work I really have to do---set it and forget it.

 

[lendee]

I use RDWC and yes it is much easier than soil and I also can leave my system much more than a dirt grower can and for longer times and if needed my system can be totally run from a cell and any problems can be reported to me without me being there it's possibility's are limitless add to this the ease of doing what you have to grow. I pump my waste to a drain, and refill from a hose if for some crazy reason I have a res problem I can dump the whole system and have my girls save and sound back in pure RO water in no time. I have an automatic fill line from my RO water tank to my res tank other than changes of the res I don't have to be there. I recently got a plant from a dirt farmer friend of mine and I let it dry out some then lightly rolled the root ball back & forth in my hands allowing all the dirt to fall into a waste bucket rinsed off the roots good and put into a net pod with planting medium and into the DWC I also used a water/feed ring for the 1st week until the roots popped out of the net pod.I also gave up on the teas and such and went to Dutch Master Zone "no more issues" use at 1 ml gal and couldn't work better. I grow small 4 plants at a time in 2ea 28 gal totes with 1 10" net pod in each tote and 2 plants in each net pod a 13 gal res for a total of 47 gal RDWC system

I have a very small veg area that I have a 7.5 gal RDWC 3ea 5 gal buckets 2 grow and one res hooked together with 1" pvc I circulate my RDWC systems at least 10 times an hour
and supply all the air you can to them I use 2090 liters of air an hour 24/7 to my bloom grow 28 gal totes through 9 air stones 8 to the totes and one to the res. The most important part of DWC is DO "DISPERSED OXYGEN" The amount of free oxygen in the water caused by air stones, water plums,jets spraying to the surface, anything that will break the surface of the water. The more artful you become designing your system for DO the better you'll be. All in all RDWC is a very good system I'm almost 70 and I know what your going through with the soil you'll find this a whole lot easier. One more thing in closing to really make it work great get a chiller right at the beginning. GREAT LUCK