I have been reading through tons of pages from Lucas directly. There is a lot to take in. He confuses the heck out of me at time and lately I am concerned about the pots and the use of hydroton. Lucas apparently is a big fan of hydroton but it would seem that he uses much larger pots then 3". I'm thinking he is using pots in the range of 6" which means he is wanting more hydroton in the pot then what I am apparently using. There must be a reason for this. my ebb and flow design is apparently not going to work very well after all. Whatever...I'm seriously growing tired of this freaking game of system design.

If I build a tray, apparently I am supposed to water only 4" of the tray, but I also believe there needs to be another inch of hydroton possibly maybe even 2 inchs. Additionally, I think the pots are supposed to be much wider then 3" as the roots are supposed to stay within the pot, is that correct? My roots sort of just free flow out of the pots now and dangle in free air since my tub is about 9" tall and not 4" as tray growers recommend. Is it better to use square pots if I build a tray?

What I want to be able to do is veg in one space and flower in another so the pots need to be movable. How is it best to design the tray? Lid, no lid, what size pots, how deep verses how much water to flood and so on. I've been doing this a long time so I wouldn't ask if I weren't just fed up at this point. Instead of continuing to try and locate a perfect tub, I think I just want to build it right using ebb and flow and forget all this other crap I try.