I just had a setup for soil for about a little over a month. came home from my mountain vacation to find out my roomate didn't water them and died. I just finished making a simple hydro system with drippers, pump, compact fluros on the fashionably cheap, walmart clip lamp. I need to know what kind of rocks i need to get for the setup and what a good store to get them is and maybe even a brand name. I saw a couple of movies on it, it kind of looks like clay rocks. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Hydroton is what you're looking for. Make sure to rinse them VERY well as the dust will raise your water ph quite a bit.
No offense, but if you couldn't spend enough time with your plants to keep a soil grow alive, don't bother with hydro. It's even less forgiving that dirt is. With soil you can go a few days without messing with your plants. And if something goes wrong it usually takes several days before it hurts the plants, and you have several more days to fix it. With hydro you've got to be able to check on it every day - water levels, pH, TDS, etc, and if something goes wrong, the plants will feel it in just a few hours, and your window to fix things can be a short as 24 hours. As for the hydrotron, you're probably going to have to go to an actual hydroponics shop to find it. It's too specialized for any of the mass-market type stores to carry it.
yeah i figured it would be harder then soil but i will be by its side all the time. lol i ausually never take vacas that was a once a year vaca once my seeds finish germinating i will post some pics of the setup and and some pics of the plants progress. I have some NL x5 seeds so hopefullly everything goes well. Thank you for the information.