budding horiculturalist has some questions

Hey all,

I am new to the scene here, and I am trying to design a home built hydroponic setup. Last year in school I was part of a team that came up with a conceptual design for converting a warehouse into the ultimate self-sustaining growing environment. It was a pretty clever design using tilapia to produce fish poop, which was then pumped through an aqua-ponics type setup to provide plants with nutrients. If anyone is interested I can tell you more about our setup (we did a rather detailed technical analysis). I am not about to convert my basement into a tilapia farm, but it did leave me with an interest in experimenting with an indoor grow setup. Ok, now I will stop talking like an engineer....

I have a little 4'x8'x6.5' room in the back of my basement that I want to convert into a grow room. I am going to be primarily growing bud in there, with the possibility of some other stuff too. I really like the idea of using rockwool cubes with a dripper setup to keep the plants fed. However, I have not been able to find a clear explanation of how much flow you want through the dripper, and how often/long you want to run the pump for? My other idea was to use a more "gravel-ish" medium and allow for continuous flow around the roots.

My second question is one of logistics. Using clones to grow smaller plants (sea-of-green) is attractive because of the reduced plant height (i want to grow both sativa/indica and pure sativa strains) The only problem is, I dont want to buy another light to dedicate to mother plants, nor do I want to dedicate another part of my house to mother plants. (and a sativa mother, would be a big mutha fer) Also, since I don't need to have pounds of pot laying around (predominently a personal use guy here) is it even worth it to go the clone route, or should I just germinate seeds, and grow them out of rockwool. Would the standard rockwool cubes even be large enough to sustain a fully matured plant. (I am still trying to get a good handle on what the actual size of these plants will be) One final point is that I would like to harvest seeds from one flower as I dont forsee myself growing bud continuously. It will more than likely be a rotation of crops, switching back to pot when I need to replenish my reserves.

Sorry for the stupidly long post, but I had a lot of stuff to get out since its my first post!

Thanks in advance for your thoughts!!

first welcome...and please do not apologize for the stupidly long post.....its all good.....

that sounds like a cool school project. I have heard of similar approaches and even scaling down to smaller grows with smaller aqauriums and not the scale of a tilapia farm...but anyhow ...cool idea.

Regarding your own plans...that room is a good size. soil vs. hydro....my preference is soil....though there are many that the yeild/speed for effort expended is greater for hydro. I guess as a biologist...i just like the idea of growing in soil.

clones vs seeds - this is a timing and availability thing....clones shorten the total time....but depend on their availability.

in terms of growing...it has be3come apparent to me...and this is my first indoor grow....that there are a bunch things that are needed....sufficient light (energy), water and nutes, and air (o2 and co2) and your plants will grow. keep it simple...don't fuck with them all the time tweaking this and tweaking that...let them grow...stay vigilent as to what the plants are telling you.....(i.e., how they look)...and be patient....lastly....all of this comes down to your own personal choice...there are a thousand ways to do it...and for each individual...their way works for them....get informed and make informed choices...and adapat and adjust as necessary...its all good! walk on man! and good luck!

what tahoe58 said - though i started and stayed with hydro. I don't think it matters at all - just a preference.

I'm also a personal use grower who doesn't want a lot laying around but didn't want to grow year-round. If you are interested - i'll post some of my scribblings and previous posts about basic weed growing and share any limited experience you might be interested in. Just let me know.

If you haven't looked into aeroponics - you should check it out. Water forced through a nebulizer that is sprayed right onto the roots.

also -- never stop talking like an engineer!

If I don't turn it into at least a little bit of a science project, I won't have any fun with it. (well not until I harvest that is... ) I was going to get a 400W Hps lamp, and setup a couple of dutch irrigation type trays filled with hydroton. Then I would have my plants groing in 4 or 6 inch rockwool cubes on top of that (is 4" too small?)

What do you guys recommend for nutes? I see general hydroponics has a three part deal that is like $30 for a quart of all three components. What is the typical mixing ratio for nutrents? (i.e. how much use would I get out of $30 of nutrients) Also, is that enough, or do you recommend using other supplements as well?

Are the ph/ec/tds monitors worth the aditional cost? ($140 for a Hanna 3-in-1 monitor vs. $24 for a cheapo PH and $24 for a cheapo TDS) With the monitor where in the hell do you mount the probe so it doesn't get all f-ed up or dry out?

I did some quick flow rate calcs on drippers too. I read somewhere that each plant needs about 300cc of solution per day. Assuming thats correct, they need less than a tenth of a gallon, which means even the .5 gph dripper is huge, and it become a duration issue. First of all, that seems like a very small amount of fluid, and second of all, that means I would have to invest in a decent cycle timer that lets me take the duration down to a few minutes or seconds. What do you guys use? a cheap digital timer, or one of the $75-150 cycle timers you can find on ebay. (some even with a photocell)

I thought about cloning and I decided that even though it is a pretty slick way to go about growing, from a logistics standpoint it just seems like too many plants doing too many different things. Therefore I will just germinate seeds when i want to grow. It will also make crop rotations easier as I would like to try some other stuff like tomatoes or flowers or something.

I looked at aeroponics but I couldn't really find anyone doing it the "pure" way. I would describe most of the setups I saw as a hybrid between either Water culture, or Aquaponics (I think thats another name for NFT) and Aeroponics. Not that thats a bad thing, but it doesn't seem to be drastically different than hydroponics in that type of setup. If I could figure out a way to cheaply do a "NASA-style" setup then I would seriously think abou it. Then again I have never actually done either one so someone please set me straight! (and maybe try to sell me one way or the other)

email468, I would appreciate any and all advice you (and anyone else) could give me on you past experiences.

Hey man welcome to the forum. I'll jump in here with a thought or two. I don't keep mothers. I do know the advantages. Clones take up such a small space, I don't need to rush them into flowering. I can put 90 clones in a 1' by 2' space if I need to, so I just take clones off the plants when I am ready to put them in flowering. You should do some more research on light. We need an engineer checking the facts on led's, t-5's etc.
Since we have a few scientests around how about researching mushrooms while we are at it, let me explain. We, the old hippies, just jumped your thread. Welcome to our club. Tahoe posted it somewhere.
When I first started to grow this guy was explaining to me that you could produce co2 naturally by growing oyster mushroom. Set them to cycle through your system right long with flowering plants. Instead of spending money you would have a second saleable crop. Can we figure out how to do this as an experiment ?? Well, I figure thats what makes it fun. VV

I'll try to help as best I can. Keep in mind that I'm no expert and would listen to folks that have more experience when you inevitably hear contradictory advice.

First topic -- nutes. I use General Hydroponics BUT i have never used any other kind. Lots of people say Advanced Nutrients is the way to go but I haven't heard or seen any compelling evidence but again, that is just my experience. The only reason I use G.H. is that is what came with my very first piece-of-crap system.
Here is a link to their feeding schedules:
GENERAL HYDROPONICS
I use the Drain to Waste Keep it Simple Program which consists of the three-part (Flora Grow, Bloom and I use the hardwater Micro). I also use Floralicious Grow and Bloom (I'll get the Floralicious Plus when i run out of the other). I add KoolBloom during flowering and use FloraShield while rooting and FloraKleen to rinse.

The amount of nutes you'll use depends on the size of the plants and the size of your reservoir. I am carefully documenting my current grow and will eventually get around to posting a journal but in the meanwhile - to give you an idea.... i have three plants getting on two months old. They are about 3 1/2 feet tall and very, very bushy. They can drink over two gallons per day so i change my res every week. I started out with three brand new gallon jugs of the G.H. three part and have used nearly 1/2 (using more micro and bloom) so far.

I purchased a $30 dollar PPM and a $30 dollar pH meter. Lots of people love them and have used them successfully. I, however, never could trust mine and I'll tell you why. If i calibrated my pH meter to 7.1 and tested in the 4.0 solution it was off and vice-versa. Same goes for the PPM meter. I bought the Hanna (HI 9813-6) and never looked back. Easy to clean, calibrate, and use and the electrode is replaceable. You clean it with cleaning solution and store it in storage solution (a drop in the bottom of the electrode cap). I really, really like mine but i am uncertain if it is necessary to spend so much but i'm glad i did.

I use four timers. Except for the heavy-duty timers for the lights, all are the cheapo plastic kind and they work fine. I put the following on timers: lights, light exhaust fan, hydro system, ozone generator (NOTE: haven't needed ozone yet w/carbon filters).

If you want to do a perpetual harvest you'll need to clone. The good thing about cloning is you know exactly what you're getting (strain, sex, etc..). The bad thing is you have to have an area for the the clones, possibly a mother plant, and the current grow. you are also growing year-round. The problem with starting from seed is you don't know if it is male or female until you've invested a lot of time and effort into the grow. You may plant ten seeds and end up with ten males and have to start over. I have had great luck with feminized seeds but your mileage may vary.

You are right about aeroponic systems being hybrids. Most of the ones i've seen (and the one i use) do spray the roots but also lets the roots grow into the reservoir. My experience has been pretty explosive growth. I use 6" net pots lined with coco-tech liners and filled with hydroton. I keep the seed in place with a piece of rapid rooter grow plug.

VV is soooooo right about us needing an engineer that can experiment with lights. All i know is anecdotal and it is this: until i got HID lighting my plants sucked.

the hydro system i use is the RainForest 66 and I use Sun System VII (dual-spectrum) 600w HPS and a 400w MH that run at the same time throughout all stages of growth.

LOL,

So you grow the mothers to the point where you in fact know its a mother, hack off some clones, dispose of the mother, and then grow the clones to harvest? Is that purely from a space saving standpoint, or do you come out ahead in the end because you have "more roots in the ground"

Not having actually researched the mushroom concept and only speaking from prior experience, here is a thought on the oyster mushrooms:

My grandpanrents grew shitaki mushrooms back in the day. They (the mushrooms) liked dark cool, damp areas with plenty of rotting stuff (usually a log with a series of pockets drilled in it) to consume. Your standard sun loving plant grows primarily by making use of the sun's energy. Mushrooms on the other hand "cheat" rather than use the sun to grow, they let the plant do all the work. When the plant dies and decomposes the mushroom finds a nice home. Therefore the first obstacle to overcome in that setup would be to keep the growing environments separate, yet connected. (since they will likely be polar opposites in many ways.)

I did a little google research and came up with a book that explains how to grow mushrooms. They have come a long way since log-culturing to say the least.
Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms - Google Book Search

Its definitely something to check out, but it looks like it can get just about as involved as growing marijuana!

As for the lights there is more there than meets the eye (literally). That is, our eyes are able to detect electromagnetic radiation that falls in a specific range of wavelengths (visible light). However, lights also radiate heat, which is still an electromagnetic wave, just at a different wavelength. (if you had a IR camera you could "see" the heat) This also helps to explain why you don't get a sun tan from incandescent bulb, and why certain lights wont damage photos being developed in a "dark room"

I know that doesn't directly answer the question you asked, but it is food for thought. For that reason, different light sources cannot be compared solely based on the lumens/watt they put out.

Again, that was all "off-the-cuff" and not really specific to your question, but maybe someone will find some use in it.