So I have been using soil for my past grows and im tired of the mess, hence converting to hydro. I currently have a 4x4 foot flower room and a 2x3 veg space and another 2x1 clone space. The flower room has a 1000w HSP, veg and clone areas both have t5's. My goal is to have 6 plants on constant rotation. For my clone space I just have a humidity dome with rockwool cubes, as far as I know it would remain the same after converting to hydro. The veg phase is where I need some more insight. I was thinking about running a bubble/dwc system like this: Bubble System for the veg phase and buying an additional set of nets and hydroton for rotating the plants to the flower room with minimal hassle. In the flower room I was going to make an Ebb & Grow system like this: Ebb & Grow. I would fill the 5 gal bucket with hydroton and plop the netted pot from the bubble res in the middle. Various questions I had: 1. Is this even a viable route and/or is there a better way? 2. My flower room is in a loft area but I would like to house my res for the Ebb & Flow system on a shelf below the loft, (will be roughly 4 feet below the system) will I need a beefier pump? 3. When I transplant from the small nets to the big 5 gal bucket do I need to manually water until the roots grow a bit more? Any help/tips are greatly appreciated, even if its not related to my questions.
Hey schmal, welcome to GC. The easiest way to move from veg to bloom is to use the same bucket type for both, but not sure if that would fit in your veg area. At minimum, use the same size net pot and you can lift that out for transport. You can use bubbler only with no plumbing for veg, and when it's time to switch to bloom, just pop the lid and move the net pot and veg-ed plant to the new ebb & flood bucket in the bloom room. Helps to have an extra bucket for carrying to the new location so you don't drip all over the floor Good to see you've discovered Jakester's Ebb&Gro, that is a bad ass system But you said "I would fill the 5 gal bucket with hydroton and plop the netted pot from the bubble res in the middle. " The hydroton should go with the net pot, none in the new ebb & grow bucket, nutes only in there. You will need a pretty good pump for the lift, but 4' is not bad. Most all pumps come with a gallons per hour rating at various lift heights, choose wisely & you'll be good. By the time you are ready to go from veg to bloom, you should have established a very good root system capable of reaching the nutes. Jakester's system "floods" the buckets several times a day, and most of the roots are left aerating the remainder of the time. Hope this helps, bestaluck to ya.