Hydro maintenance between grows?

[JohnnyRico]

Hi
So my first hydro grow ended with all males and now I am starting a new one. What should I do with the hydroton? I removed old roots as much as I could, but theres a still a lot of small pieces of roots attached to the hydroton. Should I boil the hydroton or just flush it really good?

[Weedhound]

Run your entire system through with some light bleach water for about 24 hours, then run straight water through it to rinse out the bleach (rinse well!!) Air your hydroton for about 24 hours and you should be good to go.

All males? Sounds like you are stressing them somehow....that's usually the reason you get more males than females. ;)

[JohnnyRico]

Thanks for the advice weedhound.

You really think that I might have stressed them somehow? That would explain the all male crowd. But the problem is that the plants grew really well and didnt show any signs of being stressed.

[Weedhound]

Well....that's actually pretty unusual to come out with all males like that. My first thought would be stress.... there's an old link somewhere......brb

[Weedhound]

International Cannagraphic Magazine Forums - How to produce mostly females from standard seeds. (http://www.icmag.com/ic/archive/index.php/t-59901.html)

This is a good article.....may have some info you can use but also talks about which conditions make more males as well.

[JohnnyRico]

Thanks. Thats really interesting article. On my next grow Im definitely trying to optimize the conditions especially from 3rd to 4th week.

On my last grow I actually added red light to the growroom on the beginning of the 3rd week. And I topped one of the plants mid 3rd week. That might have been stressful enough to turn them into males.

[Weedhound]

That doesn't sound like very much stress to me.....I top mine at the fourth week as well. Hope you work out the problem.

Good luck. :)