New to hydro, looking for tips from experienced hydro.

I have built a continuous flow system with a 30 gal reservoir, 400 gph pump feeding two 6" pvc channels with five plant sites each. Think I have the nutrients figured out with the help the local hydro store guys. Lighting is under control, i think, using ten 10W LEDs that change from blue to red for differant stages of growing and about 200W of full spectrum cfls. Was just looking for helpful hints, do's and dont's. I have done a lot research on this, but have found in life that nothing replaces first hand experience. Open to any helpful suggestions.

Thanks to all who help, jmbogus

based on the CFL lighting I am getting the impression that you are doing this on a budget.
Growing on a budget isnt easy, and it gets significantly more difficult when growing in a hydro set-up.
Do yourself a favor and dont begin this set-up until you get a pH meter that works well, and a PPM/EC meter. Test strips and Hanna products dont count:)
The other thing you want is at least a 400w grow light if you can only afford 1 get the HPS.
And... for the love of all hydro set-ups, keep your tubes and res. light proof. a little light makes for huge problems.
Use chemical nutes in hydro. I have done organic and chem nutes in hydro and organic hydro is a major headache.
Just stick to the chem nutes and constantly check your pH and PPM.

...Oh yeah, read books lots of them, and dont be afraid to ask questions.

hope this helps your grow, I know it didnt help your budget.

Whatever type of plan you have for growing just remember that you can stare at websites and catalogs all day looking at fancy lights and auto PH controlers. Before you know it your wish list is about $3K. Bottom line is you can only do what you can afford and you can always improve over time. You said you have lights covered so no preaching there, no need to make your head spin. There are only a few critical areas of Hydro. PH control is a must. Get a good waterproof PH meter. PPM meter is NOT something that is required, does make control a lil easier but if you keep up with res changes you can do without for quite some time. Water is absolutely critical, imagine that LOL. Aeration of water. You want to pump as much O2 into the water as you can. The one thing that I hardly ever see anyone list for Hydro is power. You lose power for an extended amount of time and your screwed. Everything else is pretty much useless so make sure you use your surge strips and if possible Pumps and anything in water should be on a GFI outlet. Any other questions and shoot away, there are quite a few of us that live in the water.

tiny and Ganja make several great points. I'm new to this hydro,too. That being said.. I started small. Small turns into big. Hydro grows way larger plants than small soil containers. You never have to worry about them getting rootbound as you do in soil. But you can screw things up in a second! Then you work weeks to correct it.

Starting with a res that large and never doing it before,is gonna be disasterous.. Start on a smaller scale,as opposed to going big from the start.Just some input.. I hope it helped. There are alot of hydro guys and girls here.. They sure know more about it than I do! But,I did say,I'm learnin'!Slow and small!

Ga.

Thanks to all for the comments. Have a question about ph. Have my system up and running. I have eight plants ready, but have not transplanted any into it yet. Figure they will better off where they are till I work some of the bugs out of the new system. I'm using Biotanicare products started with Pure Blend Pro Grow 3-2-4, Cal-Mag 2-0-0, Liquid Karma 0.1-0.1-0.5. I stayed on the low side of recomended dosage, a recomendation I have received from most I have talk to. I do not have a ppm meter yet, but working on it. The ph is running at 7 - 7.1, from what i have read and been told it should be 6 to 6.5. I was wondering if anyone has ever used lemon juice to lower ph? Will it hurt anything? I know there are chemicals to lower ph, but I'm trying to stay as organic as possible. I know Biotanicare prioducts are not completely organic, but alot closer than a lot of the synthetics. Always open to suggestions

I use Botanicare as well... I don't use the Karma or the Cal-mag. I replaced the calmag with mollasas only in soil. I use the bloom and the grow.. Have been for 2 years. It's better than over fertilizing.. You can easily do that with other nutes. Lemon will make the mix acidic.. ph would work at 5.8,even lower. Not much though.

Ga.

anywhere between 5.5 -6.5 with 5.8 being optimal. As for the lemon, I have not used it before but I know I have read about it more than once being used and I dont remember any ill effects but plz check into it more and dont just go by reading :)

I've used only lemon when I ran out of PH Down & needed something lower my ph until the next day the store opened.

So I tried lemon juice and found that it works, but not very well. Had to squeeze a lot of lemons for only a couple points on the meter.:D So I went back to the hydro store and picked up some ph down which brought ph down to 5.9 - 6.0 very easily. Systems running for six days now no real problems. Plants are in seem to be ok, maybe too early to tell. The ph does seem to be rising a little since plants were introduced to system, had to adjust acordingly. Think it's from the hy droton. Does this balances out or is it constant thing all the way through?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jmbogus

Does this balances out or is it constant thing all the way through?

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What's your water source???

There's a link in my sig , "PPMs Made Easy to Understand".... I think it will be helpful to you....especially since the person needing help in that thread is/was using the exact same nutes you are....

If you have any questions....ask.... Like mentioned, we're here to help....

CGI::::::

Was the Hydrotron soaked in PH adjusted water before putting plants in??

I am on a well. My water is a little on the hard side, mostly lime in it. I have a water softner/filter that keeps my water at 7.1. Thanks for the link it has some pretty good info in it. My ph seems to be better, no change from yesterday. I soaked the hydrotron in water overnight, should I lower the ph of water for soaking? Thanks for the help.

you need to soak tron until the water that it is in doesn't change PH. in other words soak, sit, drain ....... rinse and repeat