Alright.. Just bought a controller now what???? :)

[SAP420]

Here's the deal... I have been doing the water farm grows the hard way by adding water to bring the levels back up to each farm individually. Now that I have a controller.. what should I put in it? Ph'd water to top off plants at all times or nutes? And I understand that I will not have to change out nutes as often right? Anyone who has experience with this please help me out since I am new to using a controller. Thanks in advance!

[herbie the love bud]

With all of your waterfarms hooked together and into the controller, just fill up the system and add the nutes appropriate to the total amount of water in the system. In your case it is not really a controller, it is an external reservior. But that is just as good. Now you add water, test pH and EC, and flush all from one source.

When you fill your system for the first time mark with a laundry pen inside the controller the water level. Then each day add fresh water to fill it back to the line. Or if you got the float valve, just attach that to a 1/4" line of fresh water.

[SAP420]

Why wouldn't it be considered a controller? I'm not gonna do the recirculation setup just yet but I would like to have it hooked up already anyhow.

[herbie the love bud]

Because the "Controller" aspect is the float valve "controlling" the nute/water level. That's why they sell a controller and external res. You fill the external rez with water, it is connected to the float valve of the "controller" which is connected to all the farm buckets.

In your scenario, YOU are the controller.

[SAP420]

No no no no...... I actually purchased the GH water farms controller system.

[SAP420]

O.K. I took some snapshots of my controller and reservoir system. I basically set it up outside the tent and have the feed tube running into a flap section of it. I have nutes in the controller section and I put ph balanced water in the top just to keep the plants topped off. Is that correct or no? I figured I should not have to rinse the plants as often and have fresh nutes to them as they need them. I figure I should be able to mix up bloom nutes next week as this is a transitional feeding. I have no clue as to how I am going to get the nutes out of the plants reservoirs without making a huge mess to flush the hydroton. Any ideas on this would be very helpful since this is my first time using the GH controller/reservoir setup. Thanks!

[herbie the love bud]

Oh nice, you bought the controller AND the reservior. Excellent. First what I would do is take the reservoir off the top of the controller. Sit it down on something the same height. This way you can actually access the controller.

Next lets say you normally fill 10 gallons in your system. Then fill the ten gallons all through the controller (slowly) and add the nutes there. Then fill the rez with plain water.

You can check your controller as you like and when the rez is empty, its time to change out the nutes.

[SAP420]

so you mean to take the res off the top of the controller and set it on something that makes it stay up higher than the controller to enabe the whole gravitational flow setup. You don't mean that I should set the res on the floor next to the controller right? I ask because I think there would be a flow issue from the res to the controller. And when you say to pour the water into the controller and then add the nutes, I guess you mean that I should just mix the nutes at once in the controller after adding the appropriate amount of water? and fill the reservoir with say same amount of water as I had mixed with nutes? I think I got ya on it. :hippy:

[herbie the love bud]

Yeah all of that is what I meant. You'll figure out that its kinda retarded (can i still say that?) to have that rez sitting on top of the controller.

[SAP420]

SWEET! I will do that after the res level gets down some. There is 8 gallons in it right now so yeah. Can't wait to get the full bloom goin with this new toy :D

[SAP420]

Do you think that having my hose come up off the ground a bit to go inside the tent flap will cause flow issues? or the suction of the water levels will cause the flow to occur anyhow?

[herbie the love bud]

Actually, what would be best is if you elevate the WF buckets by an inch or two off the ground. That will help bleed out more water when you do a change.