4x8 ebb and flow yield techniques...show me what you got!

How much can you yield off a 4x8 ebb and flow tray? Looking for new ideas/techniques. I can only get 1/2g/watt, trying to push that closer to 1g.
Post pics, mediums, nutes, techniques. I currently run 12 2-gallon mesh bottom buckets filled with hydroton and a cocotek mat underneath to maximize root growth, veg for 4 weeks from clone, top several times and train through a nylon treseling net, nutes are lucas formula for bloom (8ml/16ml GH) but I do it backwards through veg and until stretch has stopped 16/8, also feed them 3-5ml of H2O2 once a week. 1800w total. Not looking to add plants (12 is our legal medicinal level in CA for my wife and I) and not looking to veg longer. Show me what you got ebb and flow!

Bigger pots, bigger roots = bigger plants, Im switching to 5 Gal Geo Pots rom 3 gal smart pots, 18 five gal pots will fit in my 3x6 trays. You should get some additives and pump your plants more, plane old Lucas formula isn't gonna cut it to get to a gram/watt. Get a PPm and pH pen and start pumping those plants, If you dont want to buy additives then you should at least run this PPM schedule; wk 1 - wk 8: 1000, 1250, 1500, 1500, 1500, 1250, 1250, 0
Of course there are a few basic things you can add to help build weight, a humic acid supplement like Liquid Karma or Floralicious + all throughout, a phosphorus supplement weeks 3-5 and a phosphorus and potassium stack the last two weeks.

Yes bigger roots is what I've aimed for this time around. With the coco mat, I don't think the 5 gallon makes a difference since I can grow down into the tray. 2 gal was about as big as I could go with hydroton if I didn't want to hand water them the whole time or add a drip to the top, the roots will only survive to the flood level and thats maxed out now. I was previously in 4x4 cubes on a slab and switched to the 2gal buckets with a mat underneath, the root system is about twice as big. As for Lucas, I had followed a thread where some guy did 3 1000's in an ebb/grow (2 gal) 15 plants and got 5.5 lbs. Thats when I switched and I actually saw an increase in yield slightly over my more complex nute formulas. Plus, its much easier to solve problems if any arise. The ppm stays at about 1400 the whole way thru so its not that different than what you said above in terms of ppm. The P loading in the final weeks I have had neutral results and my plants sometimes look deficient so I'm not a big fan of that. Might try some Karma though. I'm thinking I need to do some aggressive LST along with the netting to get some more tops up higher in the canopy. If you switch over to 5 gal, you might want to go ebb and grow with a controler bucket rather than in a tray unless your top feeding in coco or something. Dripping in hydroton doesn't seem efficient (not sure what your're doing though).

You could use rockwhool with the cocoa mat. There are a few guys doing this on another forum "the farm" and they get stellar results. Most are pulling 2 lb. per 1k light.

In my experience training and pruning are crucial to yield. I have doubled my yields just by getting better at training and pruning. FWIW

You dont really have any options if you dont want to alter plant numbers or veg time. Your in cali, where plant numbers arent really established so you can def run more as long as you keep it under 99. Id run 32 plants veg to about a foot maybe a little more, should pull 2 ozs each. 4lbs off 1800w = 1g/w

I am trying to do the same setup. But am looking to get 4 lbs per table. what do yall think the best nutes would be? I have already picked top producing strains.

No$kill$, i've done slabs/mat and I get better roots from 2gal on mats, more air and its easier to flush too. Roots are going crazy, whole tray is full. My stalks are noticably larger too. I prob have it to about .65/w vs. .5/w with the slabs. Share some of your pruning/training techniques, i usually top to get 8-10 tops per, train them thru a net to spread then out and then lolipop them about 1/3 of the way up at 14 days after 12/12. The canopy is extremely full with just 12 pots. Have any better suggestions??? I'm pretty sure the trainign is the key but I'm not sure what to do any better than I am already.

lotsOweed.....CA is 6/12....read more about the kelley case, it just means you have a defense in court, it doesn't stop anyone from arresting you or pressing charges for over 6/12.. all the kelley case did was throw out SB420 (the CA legislatures limits imposed as a followup to prop215) as unconstitutionally limiting people to 6/12 and moving it back to "an amount consistent with medical needs" which is what was originally written in Prop 215. Kelley also had only12 plants/12 oz and had 10 years of serious medical conditions and was able to prove that was consistent for his needs. over 6/12 is officer and DA discretion unless your county allows more, if your in a "bad" county, they could theoretically arrest you for having 7, press charges and then its up to you to buy a lawyer and prove what is medically consistent for you personally to a jury. 7-99 is all grey area and is gonna be dependent on where you live how much would be walked away from. Its posted on the NORML website too that californians are misinterpreting the supreme ct ruling and that the 99 thing is BS. I've also seen articles about DEA prosecuting as little as 40.

I dont prune much after I flip. I prune 1/2 to 3/4 of the plant while its in veg. I supercrop everyday or every other day to get the stems nice and strong and to get the plant into the shape that I want. You may want to look at doing a scrog because of your low numbers. IMO that is the best use of space.

Did you check out that link? That dude is runnin 4x8 tables with 2 lights over them.

what do you think of running net pots filled with hydroton on coco mats instead of RW. it seams you could fix some of the algee, ph and over/under water problems by loosing the rw.

No$kiil$....I think I'll try to do an every other day method, strong stems are what I'm looking for, i typically have 2-3 tops with thick stems and the rest are a bit thinnner, the weight obviously comes off the larger stemmed ones. Sounds like a lengthy fix of trail and error. I haven't crossed the line of doing the stem snap yet, just tying and bending. Guess I'll have to nut up and try it.

Mrduke...i do the net bottom pots now, works really well. have to hand water for a bit though if you're flooding or build a temp drip. btw, I put a few full net pots in with the net bottom ones, the full net ones slow growth in my opinion (light leaking in I think). I've tried 4x4's with rocks in tray, 4x4 on slabs with mat and pots with rocks on a mat and the later is by far the most superior from my experience. tip...leave the mat off for a couple weeks so you can move the pots around if you want and it avoid algae on the mat. I start a few extra so I can get rid of the slower growth ones so I need to be able to move them. When dealing with a small number like 12, you don't have room for one bad one like you would if had 18/24/32 going. Doing 24 in one gallon pots on a mat would probably be the ideal way to go if you want to do that many.. veg 2-3 weeks from clone and focus more on building a root system than getting height (light nutes with infrequent waterings) for the first part of veg. RW work great but when the roots are always wet, they have a tendency to become complacent and not root as fast. That why i moved to the rocks. Rocks are messy/hard to clean, heavy, etc but are a superior medium IMO.

yeah that waas my thought to i hate cleaning and dealing with the rocks but it beats rot root

you shouldn't get root rot with RW, you must be over flooding. Don't flood RW/cocomat setup more than 2x day lights for 15 min, even if you don't get root rot, your roots won't grow well when its that wet. When you first put the clones in, you should almost let it dry out before watering again (every other day). I go every two hours with the pots/mats. A great thing add to your rez (regardless of medium) is 3ml 29% H2O2 once a week, it adds oxygen which is great for warm resevoirs that don't hold as much oxygen, it also prevents algae and root rot. You can't use it if your using beneficial bacterias though cause it will kill those too, depends on whats in your mix if you can use that. I've heard you can go as high as 5ml but too much over that is toxic so I'd stick with 3ml. A couple more facts, it breaks down every 3 days and you can actually add it more often than weekly and small plants you need to be careful with it. Its basically water with an extra oxygen molecule attached so it just breaks down into oxygen and water. Its cheap too, 15 bucks a 1/2 gallon.

if you are using RW in a flood table a good idea is to get the cube off the tray (i use rapid rooter trays in the bottom of my tray with the cubes sitting on top of that) this will break the amount of water that gets trapped in the cube from it sitting on a flat surface and allows the cube to dry/drain more quickly so you can flood much more often not to mention those fat, white, fur covered roots can emerge and not be trapped in the wool that are usually brown and nasty looking, some food for thought.

and @treegear, if you are looking to increase your yield and get closer to the numbers you want you could use something like a ebb and grow monster setup and veg your ladies up much larger then do some vert lighting (i know you said you didnt want to change many things about your existing setup so this might not suit you) another thing you could do is get a much higher yielding strain (although your using medicinally so these higher yielding strains may not suit your medical needs) so just a few options off the top of my head. whats your yields look with your current setup?? im assuming around 2 lbs with 1800 watts at 1/2 gpw. which isnt to bad off a 4x8 really.

I actually built an ebb and grow (3 gal) + controller box from scratch but I had new floors put in recently and was scared to run it due to possible flooding. thats 50gal of water of the floor if a shut off fails or a tube comes loose, my wife might kill me. Thats when i decided to put the buckets in the tray but the 3 gallon were too big to flood so I settled on 2 gal with the cocomat...Have yet to see the results. I get 2-2.5 off of a mendo purps x green crack strain called kryptonite, not to be confused with kryptonite OG. (and I don't weigh anything thats 1/2 the size of a dime or less...that all goes in the bubblebag...that's another QB) I've gotten 3.3 with blue dream but I don't prefer that strain. This is all personal medicinal use for my wife and we like the krypto strain so I'm just trying to max that one out. If i could get to 3+ i could maybe cut a cycle out every year and save on power...tier 4 rates of 44cents/kw are almost criminal. I'm not complaining about my yield, I just hear people say they can get 4p off a 4x8 but I don't really believe them, thats why I started this thread. Basically just looking to share ideas to maximize on 4x8's.
btw...great idea on raising the 4x4's up with rapid rooter trays. thumbs up!

TreeGear said:

I actually built an ebb and grow (3 gal) + controller box from scratch but I had new floors put in recently and was scared to run it due to possible flooding. thats 50gal of water of the floor if a shut off fails or a tube comes loose, my wife might kill me. Thats when i decided to put the buckets in the tray but the 3 gallon were too big to flood so I settled on 2 gal with the cocomat...Have yet to see the results. I get 2-2.5 off of a mendo purps x green crack strain called kryptonite, not to be confused with kryptonite OG. (and I don't weigh anything thats 1/2 the size of a dime or less...that all goes in the bubblebag...that's another QB) I've gotten 3.3 with blue dream but I don't prefer that strain. This is all personal medicinal use for my wife and we like the krypto strain so I'm just trying to max that one out. If i could get to 3+ i could maybe cut a cycle out every year and save on power...tier 4 rates of 44cents/kw are almost criminal. I'm not complaining about my yield, I just hear people say they can get 4p off a 4x8 but I don't really believe them, thats why I started this thread. Basically just looking to share ideas to maximize on 4x8's.
btw...great idea on raising the 4x4's up with rapid rooter trays. thumbs up!

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i hear ya man ya the more per harvest the better as the meds become cheaper the higher on the gpw scale you get, i actually followed a thread on another forum where a guy was running 4x8's (straight sog 128 rooted clones per tray straight to flower) and he was running 2 600's on a mover over each tray and pulling about what you are, which is good in my eyes, im assuming you are running 3 600's over that tray for you total of 1800 watts if so you could prably delete the middle one and grab a light mover, you may not increase your yield but you could prably get the same with less watts which would be cool to use 600 watts less power and you would be at about .93 gpw so hey lol. but sounds like you guys got a good system going at for the krypto god i wish i could get a clone, a guy i know grows it and he is a dick and wont let anybody get a cut off of him.

the mover is a good idea, are those loud? tell your buddy to clip you a baby..geez! I can see a little why he wouldn't though, its an amazing strain, he obviously sells it. I'm suprised its not more popular around here. Everyone wants a full purp or an OG it seems. Not a big fan of growing/smoking OG, although it almost trims itself.
128 is crazy, i'd be looking thru the blinds all day. I'll stick with my legit grow and spend the extra month of 18/6.

you know what i always thought they where loud untill i actually saw one in action and they where not bad at all, i wish he would give me a cut man some people are just stingy lol i like the kushes but they are on the low yielding side so i dont like that but the product is good. i would stick with the legit grow as well man its not worth the trouble and always being paranoid, this dude had 8 4x8's in flower it was retarded cool grow but i wouldnt do anything of the sort without state approval.

I'm wanting to e&g in rockwool... When do you transPlant to rockwool and how often you put the water on it?

transplant? what are they in now?