Nutrient Help

Hello,

I need a little assistance in setting up my nutrients in my new flood and drain. Im using Botanicare Pure Blend Pro Grow and the Bloom(soil formula cause its better im told). I have a 20 gallon reservoir.

How many gallons of water should I add to the reservoir to feed 6 to 8 plants?

The seeds are in day 4 in jiffy pellets at the moment but will be going to 5.5in net pots with hydroton rocks as the medium. My flood tray is 2 x 2 x 5in deep.

I will be adding nutrients based off how many gallons of water I should add to the tank so any help would be nice.

I will throw them under a 400w MH there second week of growth and then under a 400w HPS when flowering.

Thanks in advance.

Well I've never used that system before but I guess you would want it to flood all your medium but not get at the stem. So how ever much that is.

Thanks for the advice. If anyone has experience with this setup please chime in I could use the help.

Also do you know if a 185gph pump will be strong enough. I was told so by the hydroponic dealer but wanted to know what you all think. :stoned:

The pump should be good. I haven't done flood and drain but the nutes you should get a tds pen. There is a chart in the faq's that shows how much nutes for what stage the plants are in. That's not counting additives just nutes then add to that. Seems with flood and drain you will start off with flood every 4 hours or so and work to tune it from there . It will need much more as plants get bigger. Hope I'm helping and not confusing you. Some one come and help a flood and drain newb. We all learn from it.

I went out and bought a hanna ec/tds/temp digital pen today along with some hydroguard and a RO water filter system. Im hoping that will help me quite a bit.

Blazed, your hannah pen will be very useful in your grow. You also need a pH pen though if you didn't already know that. I grow in an ebb and flow system that is 24gal max reservoir capacity and about 20gal tray so this is very similar to what you are working with.

Like someone said, you want to be able to flood your plants' roots (or where they will be) without the pump pumping more water than your drain hole can drain (otherwise you will have overflow of the worst variety). Loc is dead on, start with 4 hours gap between floods and keep the flood for 10 mins at a time. Increase as the plants get bigger and as you get into flowering, but the first sign of the plants sagging you should cut back on watering periods.

Unfortunately for your first time with the system you might just have to get some sort of measuring method and actually measure out how much H20 you are putting into the system. Be it with 5 gallon water tanks or individual gallons.

you need to have enough water/gallons in rez to allow you to fill e&f table to desired capacity with about 5 gallons added for ppm control and evaporation/depletion control. You don't want your plants to drink the solution and run your pump dry.
So:
table capacity +
5 gallons= desired rez solution in gallons.

Use pure blend pro as directed, but monitor ph, because for some reason their accelerated bloom and veg formulas are not ph buffered.

It is kind of a trial and error method when you build your own. Keep a mop and bucket handy. LOL Hope this helps. Peace

Thanks on all the advice.

I actually have a seperate hanna ph champ and a serpate tds/ec pen. I also purchased a complete RO system stage 5 i think. My city water has a ppm of 60 and the ec says 114(if i read EC right). Im debating if I should take the RO system back and just use tap water.

Any suggestions on my water quality?


As far as the flood tray im not sure how much it holds. The hydroponic store i got it from was helpful but not very giving on information specifics. I know its 22" x 22" x 7" and the res is 20 gallons.

I got some 5 in net cups and hydroton rocks im going to put in tonight.

If you have RO...You always know...

yeah, don't take it back I have been growing for only under a year and we are getting a RO system next after we perfect the drip system.

Maybe ill end up keeping it. It just seems to be a pain in the butt to hook up. I got one of the undersink whirlpool ones but I have to tap into the cold water line and then if I move I have to leave it.

Since I went with Northern Lights x BB and my seedlings are in there 9th day when should I flower them? My cab has room for 3' plants max.

I think I let the seedlings stretch to much as they are already 4" tall and 2 sets of leaves other than the fan leaves. I buried some of the stem in the rockwell to offset the height so I hope that helps.

no..you tap into line with self piercing valve. then if you need to move...you secure valve in off position and remove waterline. Bam

Any advice on the height before switching to flower?

1 to 1.5 ft depending on strain. Or flower when your plant is 1/3 the size of your total grow space.

sell crazy some place else, cause we're all stocked up here-Jack Nicholson/As good as it gets.

:D and it applies to these forums nicely I think too

I just wanted to update you all with some pictures so you can see what im working with. Any and all comments are welcome. As you can see im working with 9 NL x BB from nirvana and tommorow(sunday) they will hit there 14th day(second full week).

http://img130.imageshack.us/img130/8642/dscn0359zu1.jpg

Sorry for all the post I didnt realize when I went back to re edit it would post again. If someone can tell me how to delete a post I will gladly do it.

dont think you can.

yuk yuk

How do you think things are looking so far? Day 14 as of today from seed.

Im only a little concerned that the stems streched a lil bit when I first started them under a 45w t5 bulb(bad advice on height from hydro store).

They seem pretty healthy as far as I can tell. I can already tell im going to be hooked on this type thing for a while. Cant wait to contribute knowledge to others in the future.

Also if you can see from the pictures the roots are starting to come out the bottom of the net pots. The roots under the pots seem fine but I think the ones growing outward into the tray are getting fried by the light. Is this normal and if not how can I prevent that?

Your plants look pretty good thus far. Follow my thread for some ideas to think about. Our last grow was almost identical to yours and we learned a lot of things from this forum about what we were doing wrong. http://boards.cannabis.com/hydroponi...ink-setup.html

One thing I can tell you right now is that you need to figure out how to cover the light from getting to the roots that are coming out of the baskets! Sounds like you are right at the point of when you want to start thinking about that anyways.

Yeah your right about blocking the light. I have been debating on what I should use. Check my other thread for updated pictures. They seem to be growing pretty good from what I can tell.

what is your other thread?

http://boards.cannabis.com/hydroponi...k-3-nlxbb.html

is my other thread.