I use foxfarms, and am looking to convert to an ebb and flow in the very near future. Im pissed w/ soil and its time to convert! I'll keep you posted with my future results, I havent heard of hydroton..im using a 1000 watt hydrofarm hps, and im looking to put it on a 6' track as well to increase its motion range. Im curious about the PH controllers with dosing pumps before i commit to my conversion I'd like to gather the most info I can. I know how crucial PH precision is, but are they really necessary? For the price they seem to average, I am hoping its something thats usually steady enough to maintain manually.? Anyways, keep in touch
I have the same set up i use and ebb and flow with hydroton and use foxfarm nutes.. I do my clones in 1" rockwoll and then put them in a 4" cubes and place that in the hydroton for stability. When the plants are larger it gives them more stability while the tray is flooded.
do you think your RW cube dictates how often you flood? from my research, RW really holds the moisture. What is your watering schedule? I have one tray that is 3x a day for 15min during photoperiod, none at dark, my other tray, which im taking more seriously is 4x a day for 15 min, none at dark. But i take my clones from an ez cloner and they go straight to hydroton. Do you follow the hydro feeding schedule to the T? My one tray, i dont, im just kinda of "winging" it so to speak. the other tray i just transferred last night from the cloner, and i have my res set at about PH 5.8 and 330ppm using RO water and following week 3 @ 1/4 strength. I plann on monitoring that this first week and gradually adding nutes to get up to full strength by schedule week 4 (week #2 for sog) If you do follow the hydro feeding schedule, im interested how you transition from cloner to flower, obviously there is no veg time, so that makes me curious.
I only flood once a day because of the RW cubes. if you were going to just put the 1" RW into the hydroton then i would water as if it was hydroton only cause the roots are going to be digging into the hydroton more then they will be in the RW when they are fully grown
Also my only complant about foxfarms is there feeding schedule is very conservative it ususally ends up being almost double to get the TDS into the 1700 range..