Big bud,

My friend Chet is halfway through flowering his first Hydro grow after 2 soil grows. Here's what he thinks:

1. Ebb & Flow is the easiest hydro method. You should change the water every 1 to 2 weeks, if you're shooting for 2, use clean (RO) water.

2. Use RO (Purified Reverse Osmosis) water, tap water is bad. You'll have anywhere from 200 to 500 tds before you add nutes with tap, and that's crazy. It's also cheap for a small grow, only 63 cents/gallon at Wallymart.

3. GH 3 parts nutes or FloraNova by GH. FloraNova is 2 part and requires less mixing, works great. If you use RO water you also must have CalMag-Plus, there is no exception on that.

4. Get a PH pen, Chet used the drops and the litmus paper and nearly killed his crop. You can't tell within .5 PH what your PH is with those, and nutes color the water making the problem worse. Bad PH or fluctuating PH will also kill your plants, take it from Chet. The difference in growth you'll see from having the PH close, to having it nailed is huge.

5. Get a digital ballast, smaller, lighter, much cooler, and most can handle both MH and HPS bulbs making them so much better you wouldn't believe it.

6. Stay on grow nutes for the first week of flowering, Chet wishes he had listened to that one...


That's it, most of the other rules you can bend (but not break), but those have been key in Chet's experiment. Have fun!