Prepare 2nd Grow

First grow ended a little premature with males but I'm looking at upgrading for my next. Man did I learn a lot along the way on the first.

Anyhow I'm thinking about going with ebb n flow again. With a 3x3 tray that has a lid and bigger resivoir. Instead of placing pots in the tray I'm thinking about cutting apprioraite size holes in the lid of the tray so they hang from the lid off the bottom of the tray a few inches and fill the lower half of the tray with hydrton so the roots can grow out the bottom of the pots and into a hydrton bed to allow for bigger plant sizes.

I have Nirvana Snow White and Venus fem seeds this time :) But I'm thinking about building a little rapid rooter bubbler starter. I saw how to make one pretty easily. The only thing I'm worried about is how do I get from the rapid rooter plugs to/into my ebb. Do I just place the rapid rooter cube in rock wool? Do I just bury the rapid rooter in hydroton? Do I break apart the rapid rooter and place the plant in rockwool? I've never used the rapid rooter plugs before but not sure how to get it into my ebb in flow.

I finally have a ph meter and ppm meter. I wish you couldn't even buy hydro setups without a ph meter I wasted a lot of time and effort stressing over ph with ph drops.

On a 600w hps in a 3x3 tray what is the best amount of plants in this space?

Lots of good questions.

Getting a lid and cutting holes for net pots is great. You'd fill the net pots with hydroton, and the bottom of the tray should be empty. No hydroton. Your nutes will fill it and drain and the roots will just be free in there.

You can put rooter plugs in rockwool, but there is no need. I'm not a fan and since you'd be using netpots you would just put your plugs directly into the net pot and fill it with hydroton. NEVER rip open the plug once its been rooted.

In a 3X space I would grow between 1 and 4 plants. 1 would be huge, but you run the risk of losing your whole crop too easily. Pretty much no matter how many plants you run you will yield the same total.