Plants should not be suspended without nutrient solution for more than maybe 10 minutes in the shade. Use other buckets with water to put them in while you work? That's what I did in DWC with only single buckets.
Thanks, I have the basic knowledge, but these sites don't explain exactly how to switch your solution in a Dwc system..they just say change solution every week,.
I won't be able to do that as each of the buckets will have 2 plants, so that's 18 plants all in a fixed position because of piping, space..
It's not adviceable to let two plants grow in the same bucket. This will only cause a lot of stress when you do rez changes and competition of the nutrient solution. Roots will get tangled together and you want to avoid this.
In NFT I emptied, washed and refilled and let the plants sit in a dry tube until I finished. Then continued pumping nutes down their tubes.
shouldn't take an hour to drain and refill a rdwc setup. at least mine didn't. and if you run a sterile system, you shouldn't need to clean it out entirely every res change
I have considered this, but I am going to run auto flowers my first time and I think there is enough room for the roots, I might adjust to 1 plant next season
Thanks bro, I'm just trieng to troubleshoot every problem I can think of before I have it... Truly appreciate the input
if you build it so the drains are on the bottom of the containers and not the sides, it will all drain out instead of leaving a good bit behind in each one.
Damn, I was going to have the drain on the side kind of like an overflow, this was this simplest method I thought of yet, now I need to do some thinking lol
I will have to manual pump out each resevoir with this method, maybe I can add secondary drain pipes on the bottom solely for draining
are you planning on a rdwc or dwc? when you said control bucket, i assumed rdwc. if so, use the drain pipes as the recirculation pipes too. maybe run a top feed from the control bucket to the buckets and then it would return in the bottom drain pipes
I'm planning rdwc, the way the system runs is not my issue.. I just need to know if the roots will be OK when I drain the whole system. They will be without water for 30min or so I guess
i would think under most circumstances, 30 min would be fine.
They'll be fine. I run my RDWC almost like a flood and drain 15 mins on / 15 mins off 24/7. Res change takes about half an hour and I use a wetvac to slurp it all out from the return in the res. I've let them go an hour or so to upgrade pipe fittings, no issues, roots all look great.