What type hydroponics system do you recommend?

Y

yankee7568

New Member
Well, I think I will be going hydroponic in the future and was wondering what system you think would be good for me. I will be a beginner when it comes to hydroponics systems and I will have to order most stuff since there is not much here on island. I want to be able to grow as many plants as possible in this box shown below
DSC_0065.JPG

The space is like 3 feet wide by 3 feet tall.. Its 18sq feet... I am in soil right now and I want to go hydroponic to give more head room and to grow faster!! I also will be growing from seedings cause I have no room to clone.... I would love if you could post some pics of one... I am not sure what I will be getting myself into but I have to learn sometime.. I know nothing about hydroponics systems haha... So, more info the better! sorry if you answer this a lot..
 
A simple step from soil to hydro is simply drain2waste, top-fed. You can hand do this & you are essentially running it like your soil grow. Should be very familiar ground. The major difference will be in the nutes used (hydro only) & your maintenance thereof (levels/pH/frequency/etc). You will already have all sorts of hydro decisions/challenges from this... for the first time.

You can recirc from there, play with diff mediums, then move into differing systems, if desired. This is my recommendation. BTW, imho, you are making a good move to hydro. Best.
 
Agreed, the waterfarm is a good system to start up on, but it does use a reservoir. So, you will truly be jumping into hydro at that point. Ditto all the way around on PV- you can peruse the multiple systems out there to get an idea on how to self-build a system. Just take the principles employed & then you will need to spend a day or two shopping at the varying stores to fit components together. I've seen people pushing shopping carts of stuff at both HDepot & Wmart... once you do it yourself, can quickly see it when others are out there trying! lol...

Drain to waste is simply mixing your solution, pouring it in your pots, letting the solution excess flow out the bottoms into a water catch of some sort, then throwing that solution away. You only need to watch pH/ppm's at mix & go for 25-35% run-off at each watering. You will use a hydro medium (soilless and/or coir, would recommend) so it has no nute values at all. You will be feeding them from day 1 till the end. That's hydro at it's simplest. There is more to it, of course, but as simple a design as you can get. No pumps, no rez, no piping, really close to what you are used to in soil.

That's it for this one. B happy to answer any questions though. It will be a long thread if we walk through it together though... lol! Best brah!
 
Check out the thread that is hovering next to this one on "hydro buckets"... it is the waterfarm design, in essence. Best.
 
Thanks for the replies. I will look the system up and do my research. As for the bucket, I wont be able to build that since I can't have it that tall... I will have to have it 10" tall max but can be wide
 
Why do you want to switch to hydro? How well did your first soil grow do? You do realize that hydro requires more maintenence and attention than soil or soiless (coir etc) grows do. I run a run to waste coir grow but most who do this don't realize that to do a run to waste set up correctly you feed several times a day while keeping total daily run off to 10%. Otherwise it's just another container grow with a coir medium.
 
Is this incorrect? I dont' want to hijack a post, so ,ay I PM you instead, but would like to dialogue a little over the coir, if cool with you brother?

I agree that d2w in coir is very close to a soil grow... fig this would be the easiest transition to do. imho, a hydro like this is actually easier for someone starting out vs soil. It just seems to me that if you don't run the soil properly on the front end, most can't recover on the back end of the grow. With coir (d2w) you can fix almost any problem within a few days to week. Hasn't this been your experience w coir? ((fig this last part still applied to his post... ;-) ))
 
Racefan said:
Why do you want to switch to hydro? How well did your first soil grow do? You do realize that hydro requires more maintenence and attention than soil or soiless (coir etc) grows do. I run a run to waste coir grow but most who do this don't realize that to do a run to waste set up correctly you feed several times a day while keeping total daily run off to 10%. Otherwise it's just another container grow with a coir medium.
Click to expand...


Like I said I want to grow faster and I have a limited amount of space and a hydro setup would give me more room.. Money is not an issue on me building it, so I think the one with low maintenance would be idle for me.
 
I want to go hydro cause the soil here is Miracle grow and cheap stuff. I want Fox Farm but that's not possible! I just want to try it out. I really want to see about how hydro is..
 
Hydro is by far cleaner way to grow and more precise than soil. You may want to look into aeroponics systems. There are a few good guides up on this site right now about it.
 
I have some 7" high, 4$ dishpans 15x20" hold 7 or so gal water. I floated close cut styrosheet inside and drilled 2" holes. I rooted cuts in inch an a half RW, put in 2" net cups and flowered 8 to learn sex of seed (veg held) plants. 12" finished med providers floated just fine. Yup, I did it all wrong and drowned them but guess what? Aeration baby! Try it, you'll like it.
Man's trying to grow pot in a cabinet, Yankee, I called it a cab. Tops of my finished budded babys was 18" off the bottom of my cab. That, my friends is low rise.
 
Ok, Let me reword this to see if I get you right. You got a dishpan that was 15x20 and 7" high. You took a styro sheet cut to fit close. Cut 8 2" holes in the styro sheet for your 8 2" net cups. Flowered them and they budded 18" from the bottom of the cab. Is this right? If so I might try it... How did you cool the nut. water?
 

Similar threads

P
Emily's Garden Hydroponic System
2
Replies
22
Views
18K
No Pain
No Pain
FuseHydro
Super Flow Hydroponic Systems
Replies
0
Views
1K
FuseHydro
FuseHydro
Sana
Basic hydroponic system
Replies
15
Views
4K
Rushed
Rushed
N
good prefab system
Replies
0
Views
1K
niqnak
N
W
Curious Question/Hydroponic size
Replies
0
Views
1K
wingtip25
W
Back
Top Bottom