Shake, That avatar of yours is mildly disturbing at times - I swear I keep hearing Bob Ross's voice when I read your posts. Actually, when I get stoned enough I think he starts actually gesticulating like a picture hanging in Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Weedery or something.

Anyway I'm interested in seeing what recommendations you get regarding bulbs - Stinky declared one her hands down favorite in a thread somewhere - or at least I thought she did, but I'll be damned if I can find it now. I'm still running a hardware store bulb, 400 watt, off of an old magnetic ballast - I plan to upgrade the bulb as soon as I'm able and after I take care of any more pressing issues.

My first grow was ebb and flow, with my final system (evolution engineering at work) having the nutrient tank below the grow room's floor level so that it could gravity drain once the pump shut off. The pump filled a "leveling bucket" - a plastic mop-bucket with a large drain hose fitted into the side to set the fill point. From the bottom of this bucket, 1/2" tubing connected to the bottom of the plant containers. Each time the pump ran, the 2 1/2 qt paint containers would fill to the same level as the leveling bucket. The bucket would stay filled to the level of the large drain in the side while the pump continued to run. Once the pump shut off, they would drain through the 1/2" return line back down to the tank. Anyway, dead simple and reliable.

The containers were filled with pea gravel, and the clones were started in peat-pucks and then planted into the pea gravel. If you want to get fancy I suppose you could upgrade to clay-balls here instead of gravel, but you get the point.

Anyway, if you are looking for a DIY route, the daisy-chained multi-flow home depot system is pretty damn bullet-proof and a lot more flexible and easy to work with than a flood tray. You can simply unplug the hose from an individual plant and move it out of the way when it is ready to harvest, replacing it with another. The only problem is when it comes time to start flushing an individual plant in the system - you are stuck either running a second tank and having two sets of lines running, or just hand watering plants while flushing them, having disconnected them from the system.
IAmKowalski Reviewed by IAmKowalski on . help me spend my money as some of you might know i am in the design phase of my new setup build. a lot of the components are coming along nicely, while others aren't. so i was wondering everyone's personal preference for lamps/bulbs? for reference sake, i'll be running a 600w HPS with lumatek ballast. (but as far as it's concerned, what is everyones choice for digital ballast too?!) has anyone used the bulbs with the built in reflectors? something such as this. it says it has 95,000 lumens and says Rating: 5