I don't hand water anything. The point of hydroponics is that the water and all the nutrients that that the plant needs are brought directly to them, therefore eliminating the need to water by hand.

Before I started trying to grow anything, I got the room completely set up, lights on, water flowing, etc. and ran everything for a while to make sure there were no leaks, check temps, etc. Then, I conditioned the medium (hydroton and rockwool) by soaking them in separate buckets of 5.5 water for a day, changing the water every few hours and monitoring the pH. Then, I moved the conditioned medium into the system and ran the system with the media in it, but still didn't crack the seeds. I did that for about 12 hours and checked the pH every so often, and THEN I cracked the seeds. By doing this I was able to troubleshoot a lot of problems that could have arisen before the plants would have to deal with them and suffer, and I was also able to provide headaches to PharmaCan, Opie, and Weedhound.

Once I cracked the seeds, I just dropped them into the rockwool, tucked them in, set the pump timer, and let them grow. I flooded the entire bin (about 90-95% full) for 15 minutes every 6 hours. The rockwool got wet but not submerged and probably stayed wet, but it wasn't too wet and it has worked out for going on 7 weeks now.

I think you are just thinking about things too hard. Your posts seem pretty frantic like you are just kind of going for it, which is a bad idea when it comes to growing your own cannabis. I would suggest taking some time, get your room and materials set up 100%, and THEN go start the seeds, or start them when you are pretty close if you absolutely can't wait. Maybe I am just OCD, but it seems to have worked pretty well for me. Good luck!


PS> This is my first grow too, so I'm not an expert by any means, but most of what I have learned, I learned within the first couple weeks. The system just kind of goes on autopilot from then on, you only have to monitor regularly.