Hello, curious how people chose their set ups? As in why choose DWC vs Aero etc. Ill share my reasons but very interested in hearing from other people first.
I chose top feed DWC because I believe it's the best combination of simplicity and effectiveness. Water is the simplest medium. I also believe that separate buckets for each plant make things too difficult, so I greatly prefer single, larger reservoirs that hold multiple plants. Continuous top feed eliminates the need for airstones. An external master reservoir with a float valve can make maintenance very easy.
I went with dwc originally because I was new to indoor, and it was supposed to be the easiest to fix mistakes in. After 2 dwc runs, I have changed to coco under QBs. Not near as many root/res issues and the QBs have made a world of difference compared to blurples.
The idea of growing plants in air just seemed very cool and some of the test results made me question if it is that much faster than soil/outdoor. One of the reasons I went with aero was because of the water in DWC seemed like such a hassle and much easier to mist from a separate res. Less to mess with the roots the better. At first it was a daunting task to get my head around doing things a little different, but aeroponics is pretty cool. I'm getting crazy fast growth that I dont get with outdoor summer not using any medium whatsoever.
I just switched completely to a single external reservoir for two 2-plant reservoirs in 2 separate tents. It will take more experience before I'm certain how much I like it, but preliminary indications are that this is very simple. Today zero maintenance was needed, except to fill humidifiers. All ppm's and pH's were stable. My plan for the next 2 weeks of the present operation, and for the whole next one, are to use this setup without ever changing out the reservoirs. If that's possible (some people are doing it right now), then this will be as simple as hempy or auto pots. My limited understanding of autopots is that they never get their reservoirs changed out either, and hempy gets limited watering changeouts, which are probably needed to remedy a lack of airstones.
Coco/perlite 70/30 drain to waste. Automated top feeder. I set a res that last about two weeks. At the end of two weeks the res has maybe 5% solution left. Drained and a new mix is made. I can adjust solution to last one week or less if needed. I don’t recirculate because it’s literally 100x easier doing drain to waste because I never have to worry about ph drift any more. I have a PH monitor on the res but everything has become so predictable I barely check any more.