So I’m on my second grow now and Iv used soil every time I have a 245 tent and a 1047 tent all in ft 12 48w Leon grow lights and a mars hydro 600 older style big green reflector bluprule/natural light I harvested about 3ozs out of my small tent my first run and upgraded on this grow using fox farm ocean soil mixed with a diy all organic soil ft perlite bone meal bat Quano and fast acting sulfur/iron I add once a week started feeding the girls fox farm trio and since the flip bought some happy front flower and fruit (just got tired of the every day nite mixes) the happy frog has done some wonders for my girls but as soon as these get the chop I got a brand new 4bucket root spa setup but I also about two water pumps to put in another chamber to “auto add” my used water back into my buckets might be over thinking it idk and I’m super nervous as of the issues/sickness with the plant during the hydro grow Iv hit a few Hicups in soil but all Iv read is that soil is so much more forgiving then hydro so my questions are. What are the best hydro nutes? How often do you check you ph/ppm and how and what should you keep your ppms at casue I read 1200is okay and Iv also read you want it near 0 ? Top tips for new hydro grow? Should I use my spare water pumps to topfeed/ refill resivoir or just fill as needed and see how she goes lol! Thanks for the tips and advice here’s my current girls
I think your best bet is to look through people’s journals that do hydro and check out the systems they have.
There are systems from basic start up to larger upgraded ones that are more complicated.
The easiest/cheapest route into hydroponic growing is to run a single nutrient plan from one company, and use ProMix HP or coco coir with 30% perlite by volume. You can build a simple automatic watering system to go along with that.
The problem with DWC or RDWC is maintaining water temperature. It’s easily solved if money isn’t an issue, since you just buy a chiller/heater. But that’s a large investment for a new grower.
I’d look at Jack’s 123 (or is it 321?) as a nutrient regime, OR General Hydroponics. GH is cheaper initially, but Jack’s is much much cheaper over time, since you’re basically locked into buying bulk powdered nutrients, while GH sells small bottles/gallons.
As far as metering goes, sure 1200ppm is about right, but not always. You need to buy a good meter, and then follow the feeding schedule of the nutrients. Also the starting ppm of your water affects your cumulative ppm, so your nutrients may call for 1250 ppm, but that assumes you’re starting with distilled water (and I wouldn’t). Can you afford a BlueLab EC meter?
Please try to punctuate. It’s really difficult to read a block of text without it. I almost gave up.
Before you explore hydroponics, I’m going to suggest you tackle lighting. It [switching from bad to good lighting] is more influential than switching from soil to soilless.
I think your plants looked good for the most part. Personally I wouldn’t use ff for dwc. There are much better nutes out there. And I forgetting the size of your tent if you said but a bigger light would help greatly