Questions about growing mediums

[RabidRabbit]

Hi all,

I am setting up a little closet operation and had a few questions for anyone who cares to offer and opinion.
My primary question pertains to growing mediums. For my first grow I have already decided to setup 2 bubble buckets to play with and have some soil based plants as a back up in case I drop the ball on the BB plants. For the soil/non-hydro plants is there any reason why I should not use hydroton or coco-fiber instead of regular dirt? I will be paying a good amount of attention to these plants so having them dry out is not really a primary concern of mine. I just want to make sure that I can get the max amount of oxygen to the roots and was thinking that having a few plants growing a 5gal containers filled with hydroton or coco-fiber seems like a great way to maximize the amount of O2 available to the roots and to prevent them from drying out too much all of the containers would have plenty of drainage holes at the bottom and all containers will be sitting in a tray that could ensure that each container is sitting in an inch or two of water just to be safe.
I figured an added bonus of using such a free-flowing medium is that flushing the medium will be a little easier than if I was using regular dirt/perlite.

Any comments, suggestions or thought would be much appreciated, especially is you actually know what you're talking about.

Thanks for your time

[irieluv]

Well Bro the thing is.. if your talking about your "soil" part of your grow that you want to use coco or hydroton rocks and leave it in a table with an inch of water.. shoot that ain't dirt, it's hydro.. Just pay a little attention, don't drop the ball and do one little flood table in there with either buckets/bags of coco, or hydroton rocks(I'd use coco). And get a real nice result from the whole deal(you have a couple hundred watts at least right?)

But like you said, for the soil ones, is there any reason you shouldn't use hydro mediums, and put them in a flood table, in otherwords do them hydro too,... and no there isn't, All your going to do by having soil next to hydro is dissapoint your self with soil....

Also,... If your gonna do hydro, you might want to consider a flood table rather than buckets, they're more failproof...

[RabidRabbit]

I am trying to get a better understanding of the ebb/flo system as that seems like the easiest to maintain for a first-time grower. I really want to build a few bubble-buckets but am still a little concerned about the maintenance of them - (I am currently in my last year of college and travel ALOT during the spring for my college lacrosse team). I need a system that can be left alone for a minimum of 2-3 days and during spring break would have to train/teach a roomate to maintain the system for a week!!! Makes me a little nervous...

As for light, I have a 600 watt digital HPS with a sealed/cooled hood (8" openings each side) mated to a 8" inline fan that can completely remove all the air from my grow closet in less than a minute. I will have the fan setup so that it is cooling the bulb/hood while also helping to ventilate the room - and of course all this will be exhausted through a carbon scrubber. (I realized that no-one really needed to know all this but I just wrote it anyway)

Part of this grow is just going to be a budget science experiment - I want to see the difference in growth between soil and hydro. I just worry that properly running a hydro setup will be a little more labor intensive that I think, even though all the BB/edd-flo/drip write-ups make it all sound so easy.

Thanks for the response

[venumus]

well even with ebb and flow you have to check pH at least once aday. with any hydro system your gonna ahve to do that.

[RabidRabbit]

After doing more reading on ebb/flo setups I think I may as well just go with that system. It seems by far the easiest and most idiot proof hydro setup.

I have some questions about checking the ph and PPM levels for anyone who has some experience:
1) Do I actually need to do this daily? I will do it anyway for my first grow but based on whay I have read it seems a lot of people just check their system every few days or once a week even.
2)Although I am looking to spend as little as possible, what are the cheapest but still useful/effective PH and PPM meters out there? Brands and models would be greatly appreciated.
3)If my reservoir is massive shouldn't I have to check the nutrient and ph levels less often since the relative amount of solution used will smaller, if compared to using a reservoir of , say, half the volume?

And just to make sure, I want a decent sized (or multiple) aerostone in the nutrient solution to keep it properly oxygenated, correct? Or does the draining of the table provide enough O2 to the roots?

Thanks for any wisedom/comments/suggestions anyone can offer