READ! GIVE INPUT! Nutrient Film Technique (NFT)?
- Thread starter mpgkush
- Start date
FilthyFletch
Mr I Can Do That For Half
Your better off doing it as an aero with NFT after benefits.The larger units I build use and sell show how this works.I posted the start of a how to make these and will finish it some time soon to show the final steps.There is afgew shots in my gallery of it.Units yield over 130 oz per harvest
Al B. Fuct
once had a dog named
If you've had trouble with aero, NFT probably won't be any kinder to you. Like pottie said, the nutes have to be right all the time.
Flood & drain with plants in pots of absorbent media are just about the most forgiving and fault-tolerant of all hydro systems. Damn near noob-proof and still productive enough to keep 20-year growers using them because of their low maintenance requirements and impossibility of clogs.
mpgkush
Well-Known Member
Al B. Fuct
once had a dog named
good god man, what kind of a monster pump does it take to trip a breaker? MUST have been a dodgy breaker... unless your pump was a 10hp air compressor or some madness like that.
not a noob
Didn't say you were. Just illustrating that success is easy with pots of absorbent media in a flood.
Al B. Fuct
once had a dog named
Hempy buckets scare me. I know their evangelists claim they don't rot roots but their bottoms are flooded all the time. Counterintuitive.
FilthyFletch
Mr I Can Do That For Half
Did you have your aero misters running 24 hours a day as unless your in the ultar low micron misters with high pressure output which Im gonna doubt you had then you run the misters 24 hours a day. My 32 plant setup uses a 800 gph pump which is like 65 watts.The misters spray the roots and then the chambers have a slight tilt and the overspray creates perfect NFT for the roots as a secondary feeding source.Aero I have found to be one of the easies ways to grow with least maintence.Al is right thought ultra easy hard to fuck up hydro way is a simple flood and drain table. I have a journel going now showing a simple 3x3 table in a homemade tent under a 600 watt light.I use 6 inch square pots 4x4 rockwool cubes and hydroton. I turn the timers on and just check once a day on the ppm and ph.Ultra easy and takes no real maintenece.The journel is posted and think its title Homemade Foodtable and tent or something like that just search my started threads to see it.
potroast
Uses the Rollitup profile
Ahem, Y'know, Mr. Fuct, I've picked up that you have a distinct Mid-West twang to your typing, even though the typing is coming from down below, so surely you must know that in our country a pottie is a toilet. Now what I'm concerned about is whether you don't really think about me in that way, or you actually think I'm full of shit.
FilthyFletch
Mr I Can Do That For Half
Was that based on the word pottie which isnt midewest but southern in usage?
Al B. Fuct
once had a dog named
Ahem, Y'know, Mr. Fuct, I've picked up that you have a distinct Mid-West twang to your typing, even though the typing is coming from down below, so surely you must know that in our country a pottie is a toilet. Now what I'm concerned about is whether you don't really think about me in that way, or you actually think I'm full of shit.
Oh, you want yankee fried? K.
Hellfire Jackson, I sure as hell never thought o' that!
Gawd-DAM. No more pottie.
heheheheh
Maccabee
Well-Known Member
The Yellow Rose of Texas - Vox
I'm a sucker for old radio comedy.
On NFT, here's what I can contribute: the cabinet I use to veg clones in preparation for transfer to my larger closet is kind of a DWC/NFT hybrid. I want to be able to transfer the plants into the DWC buckets in the flowering chamber, but I don't have room for all of that in my little veg cabinet. So I have a shallow tray/reservoir that the net pots sit in, the bottoms of the pots just below the surface of the water--and the water is constantly exchanged with a larger external reservoir outside of the cabinet. Water is pumped up into one side of the tray, and spills out of a drain on the opposite side, into a return tube to the reservoir. The water is about 3" deep, so it's not exactly NFT and it's not exactly DWC. Works well for me. It is important to check the pH etc. every day--but they've been remarkably stable for me. A lot of my cabinet setups have been similar always-on designs with larger external reservoirs, and I've found that keeping water moving can help prevent a lot of problems.
The dead simplest hydro system is non-recovery drip in some kind of soilless mix. After that, for simplicity and reliability it's hard to beat F&D. DWC is still less complicated and failure prone than NFT. Aero, if you ask me, is the most troublesome. Hempy buckets have me mighty curious.
Yield is notoriously hard to predict. I think you can probably expect production on par with F&D or possibly a little better--assuming optimal conditions throughout. But of course, NFT is very sensitive and F&D is not.
What do you need? Plans for a system? To help you there it would be good to have some kind of idea how you want to lay it out, what kind of materials you had in mind, etc. NFT can be done as cheaply as a folded plastic sheeting with rockwool cubes sitting in it or you can do gutters as troughs, or PVC pipe with cutouts for net pots, etc.
I'm a sucker for old radio comedy.
On NFT, here's what I can contribute: the cabinet I use to veg clones in preparation for transfer to my larger closet is kind of a DWC/NFT hybrid. I want to be able to transfer the plants into the DWC buckets in the flowering chamber, but I don't have room for all of that in my little veg cabinet. So I have a shallow tray/reservoir that the net pots sit in, the bottoms of the pots just below the surface of the water--and the water is constantly exchanged with a larger external reservoir outside of the cabinet. Water is pumped up into one side of the tray, and spills out of a drain on the opposite side, into a return tube to the reservoir. The water is about 3" deep, so it's not exactly NFT and it's not exactly DWC. Works well for me. It is important to check the pH etc. every day--but they've been remarkably stable for me. A lot of my cabinet setups have been similar always-on designs with larger external reservoirs, and I've found that keeping water moving can help prevent a lot of problems.
The dead simplest hydro system is non-recovery drip in some kind of soilless mix. After that, for simplicity and reliability it's hard to beat F&D. DWC is still less complicated and failure prone than NFT. Aero, if you ask me, is the most troublesome. Hempy buckets have me mighty curious.
Yield is notoriously hard to predict. I think you can probably expect production on par with F&D or possibly a little better--assuming optimal conditions throughout. But of course, NFT is very sensitive and F&D is not.
What do you need? Plans for a system? To help you there it would be good to have some kind of idea how you want to lay it out, what kind of materials you had in mind, etc. NFT can be done as cheaply as a folded plastic sheeting with rockwool cubes sitting in it or you can do gutters as troughs, or PVC pipe with cutouts for net pots, etc.
