ebb and flo tray help

I just fininshing my first grow dwc. I wanna set up ebb and flo. I have timers and seems fun. I need help designing the individual buckets for the tray. Do i just fill completley with hydroton? Will 4 gallon pots from home depot work? Any advice?

I dont think you have the right idea about how ebb & flo is suppose to work. Hydrotons and 4gallon pots are generally not used for this kind of setup. Shrug... Draw us a picture

a tray i imagine. where buckets it on it, in it. bucketts are place inside with holes and when the tray floods the bucketss fill, and when the pump stops the tray drains and the bucketts drain. Ive herd it done with the bucketss filled with hydroton , rockwool , or lava rocks. If yu haver other ideas id love to hear them. Cost is a factor lol. WOmen. . .

this can help you to make yours this one is almost done
(air stones go in the tank)

this is my design

Eharmony420 said:

this is my design

Click to expand...

use this design

hey thanks that is a godd idea. What is ur medium?
I hear hydroton, i hate the cost of shipping. Some say rockwool cut up. Iwas hpoing something like lava worck at home depot or something thwey have their.

sorry horrible speller, lol. Nice pic. Anyway i tried to post a drawing but cant get it to work right thot big ble might cheer all up.

Eharmony420 said:

hey thanks that is a godd idea. What is ur medium?
I hear hydroton, i hate the cost of shipping. Some say rockwool cut up. Iwas hpoing something like lava worck at home depot or something thwey have their.

Click to expand...

im gonna use hydroton

k think i got it

cool , i also think of the tray method with indiviual pots inside, had never pictured urs before. I cant post my pic but u got the idia i am sure. I have 400 watt hps and a 4x4x6.5 i gonna throw at the girls. i DO SOME THINKING i styill a month left in flower with my other plant , my first, but i got 5 clones eady to go

sllik said:

this can help you to make yours this one is almost done
(air stones go in the tank)

Click to expand...

That is a very functional and low lost Flood and Drain System you have there. Well done. Kind of sucks you have to pick the plants off the res everytime you even want to add water. But Hey Boo-Hoo.

Hey after thought. Why not stick a hose in the side, at the top. When you need to top it off just stick a funnel in it and pour away. Res changes would be a little harder. But what about checking the PH and PPM daily? IDEA:: little half inch 90 elbow fitting that you use to run a hose up the outside of the tub. When you need to check the PPM's, you blow just a little air through the tube to get fresh nuts, then lower the tube to drain just a little into a cup to test it in the cup. I used to do this with my water farms.

Still a sweet flood and drain, but I think you will need to tweek it some. As you said though, it is not finished.

Eharmony420 said:

I just fininshing my first grow dwc. I wanna set up ebb and flo. I have timers and seems fun. I need help designing the individual buckets for the tray. Do i just fill completley with hydroton? Will 4 gallon pots from home depot work? Any advice?

Click to expand...

Harmoney,

thought Id chime in since it seems you got no real help in this thread so far.

Many people use hydroton, in fact for ebb an flow it is Greatly considered the best medium to use.

Alot of factors also depend on the sidewall height of your ebb and flow tray.

This will directly limit how bug you want to go as far as pots.

The best thing to look for is the widest pot, that hold the most.

Im not saying the pot cant be taller than the side wall, but you dont want to go sticking in 5 gallon buckets as the hydroton will not properly wick up the moisture all the way to the top of the rocks during flood.

With a little research you should find the perfect pots for your setup.

Also Hydroton needs to be watered more often than other mediums because it drains and dries super quick.

Expect up to 4-5 times a day, some actually run non stop drippers so even more is possible with hydroton.

Best of luck and if you have any more questions please let me know.

Thank you ganja goddess. I wish there was a cheaper substitute at home depot for a medium i could use. I am so over cost on supplies this month. I jumped into gorwing and learned as i went. Now i got everything. Bought a lot of the wrong crap. Anyway, barring that ebay has some good deals. Im just happy someone saw my post. I figiring as using a wide rubbermaid container as a flood tray, 3 gallon pots with hydroton, and a another rubbermaid as a reservoir. I figure i have to cover the pots or algae will come, also use h2o2, a cheap pump and a 15 minute timer will work and thank you for the 3 or 4 times a day. I have a 4x4x6.5 tent and a 400 hid light. Fans and duct, mid eighty temps and lower. Its summer so that should get better. If worst comes to eworst i got like 25 net pots and a 100 liter rubbermaid i can g massive dwc and use a cheap water pump to res change, lol, but seriosly i hioe not. Anyway rep to yu! I gonna go research

I'll stick my 2 cents in here. If you have a 4' by4' space, you could put (2) 2' by 4' flood trays in there. I have tried so many different containers, none of them work as well as the pre-made flood tables. They are about $60.00 for that size, the 3' by3' are about $80.00, and the 4' by 4' is too big for the tent, you can't give seperate nutes to your plants in different stages. Use a res that is bigger than you need and only put the amount of water you need in it, ie I have 45 gallon reses, I only need 30 gallons of water in them. I have one I have been using for 2 years, no leaks. Its pretty easy to build a stand to put it on out of 2by4's. If you need some of that type of material, stop by, I have some from tables I had built and tore apart when I got the premade trays.lol VV

Gotta agree with VV, I have tried alot of diff containers as ebb and flow tables, and they just dont quite cut it.

The cheapest thing I found is to build a flood table out of wood, and pond liner.
works for me.

Also I dont use hydrton because it is increidibly expensive.

Have you given any thought to using like 4 inch rockwool blocks, and flowering straight from rooted clone instead.

High Density Sog, it can give you the highest G to Watt ratio, short of going vertical.

yep, i have just fallen in love with cloning and i read a post wher in an ebb and flo table a Mr. A.L.Bfuct uses rockwool cubes cutup as a medium in the pots. I diy'd lol a dwc bubbler cloner and got 100% success. Just waiting on current girl to finish flower. Cloning is beautiful, damn. I have seen those tables and they look good. Ganja goddess just saw ur grow and wow! Congrats. I bought the euro hood too, lol, other than that u blowing me away! Thanks for the advice ladies and gents, sorry about the spelling! I hear a lotta people say leaking trays why they do the wood with pond liner or the pro tray, i had not thought a rubbermaid tray would leak..I short of tools here, so i hope i go with the pro made stuff

Building a table of wood and then lining it with pond liner or the thickest plastic you can find is how they do it in large scale greenhouse ebb&flo systems. It works great. Another idea I had a few years back was to use plastic guttering that you buy at your local home improvement store. Cut some styrofoam or something to work as a lid. Shrug just a through, never tried it tho

just tried experiment with rockwool cut up into cube as a medium. After they got wet first and didnt float up it worked pretty neat. That stuff si cheap. I took a net pot and dunked it with the rockwool and a clone. I will do this 2 times a light cycle by hand just to see what happens, i got a while before my next grow anyway.

You will want to make sure you don't overwater the rockwool, even in flood and drain once a day is enough. VV