There are a couple reasons I have not gone to bigger buckets for growing but the main one is because I really did NOT want a bunch of five gallon (or in this case....15 gallon) buckets sitting all over our teeny little house. We really just don't have the room for it. So I wanted a setup that I could start small and then transfer to something larger with minimal problem and stress to the plant at some point when needed during flowering. These plants start as a seed. They DON'T need seven gallons of water from the get go so I really didn't want to have to start them that way and waste large amounts of water and nutes.

The answer (we HOPE) seems to be the 8 inch net pot bucket lids. They fit nicely into the tan w/f buckets with enough extra room inside on all sides for the roots to grow down the sides of the net pot versus having to grow through the bottom of bucket only.