slow growth in ebb and flow buckets..... any help appreciated!

its been four weeks since i put my rooted clones in my ebb and flow bucket system.
they are 10 t0 14 inches tall now with sparse growth.
i have 44 buckets in 4 rows covered by 3 600 watt hps lights.
the water is kept at 64f, ph between 5.6 and 6.1, and the ppm is now at 570ppm. gh nutes, 3 part veg formula 3,2,1.
the room temp is 79-80 with lights on and 70 with them off. no rh to speak of, the meter says --.
i flood the buckets every 3 hours for 1 hour because it takes 45 minutes for the water level to get high enough to reach my roots.
im on 18/6
the plant is la con
they look burnt. leaves are similar to upside down tacos. the leaves look wrinkly, burnt on the edges and there is some retarded growth on some of the leaves.
the roots are brownish and barley coming out of the pots. i cant seem to tell if im watering enough, or to much.
im in clay pellets, and i use the 6in lids that drop about 5 or 6 inches into the 5gallon buckets.
the lights are like 3 or 4 ft above the canopy and set on 400watts untill they start performing.

i cant think of any other info you might need. the roots refuse to shoot down into the buckets. like i said before, they only go down maybe an inch from from the pot, although they cover pretty much the entire bottom of the pot.

any advice? any idea what im doing wrong?

thanks yall. peace.

i can get better pics later. my lights wont turn on till 5pm. these are from my time lapse and they show that my plants arnt growing for shit....

one more thing, i changed the rez 5 days ago, and i always see new nice white roots starting to come out, and then they stop.

if you could snap some pics of the roots that would be great. the problem with the lids you are using is they are made particularly for DWC and for the roots to be completely submerged all the time. when the roots come out of the pot and are free floating in the air they have nothing to rely on to keep them moist, this is the reason cap and most other systems like it have a inner pot about the size of the outer pot, so that the medium you use is hydrating the roots in between flood cycles yours are just dangling out of a pot and prably (my best guess) is they are getting air pruned and are not capable of growing out any further. if i was you i would grab more 5 gal buckets and drill holes in the bottom and fill with hydroton and plant in that as a pot not small net pots.

that makes sense. i think my next step will be to flood and drain in complete succession. cant afford to do a double bucket on 44 buckets at the moment. ill flood for an hour and drain for an hour for 24 hours and see what happens. thanks for the advise.

that or flood more often to allow the roots to be more saturated (i wouldnt know how frequent) this would be like running a aero setup that only waters every 3 hours your plants roots wouldnt survive that long without water.

well said. thank you

no problem, good luck to you and let us know how it goes. that will be one hell of a producing system when dialed in

that is the goal, my friend. ill be back to let you know for sure! peace! and thanks again.

ive decided to add sprayers in these buckets. this is totally aero and ive been treating it like ebb and flow, using ebb and grow advice!
adding sprayers shouldnt require more then a couple new pumps with the capability of powering 24 sprayers at a time from 15 to 20 feet away. ive already got a shit ton of sprayers from other projects ive done for clones. ive got tones of tubing so im pretty much ready to go. a bunch of elbows and im good. always fun to have a new project. although it will be a nice feeling to know ive got everything right and no changes have to be made.
so glad i posted, i dont have any other growers to spitball with.

budherder said:

i can get better pics later. my lights wont turn on till 5pm. these are from my time lapse and they show that my plants arnt growing for shit....

Click to expand...

Wow 44 buckets thats alot of buckets....I use 6 buckets....inbetween grows that would be alot of stuff to clean up.....anyway good growing I'll be watching......nitro.....

budherder said:

ive decided to add sprayers in these buckets. this is totally aero and ive been treating it like ebb and flow, using ebb and grow advice!
adding sprayers shouldnt require more then a couple new pumps with the capability of powering 24 sprayers at a time from 15 to 20 feet away. ive already got a shit ton of sprayers from other projects ive done for clones. ive got tones of tubing so im pretty much ready to go. a bunch of elbows and im good. always fun to have a new project. although it will be a nice feeling to know ive got everything right and no changes have to be made.
so glad i posted, i dont have any other growers to spitball with.

Click to expand...

That could work out nicely man. I think that will help you out allot.

right on Nitro. ive got a system that takes me about 3 hours to clean all the buckets, tubing, and rez's and do a full nute change. its not to bad. it was originally a bunch of bubble buckets. when i put my put my clones in the bubblers the roots shot down to the bottom and they took off!! then about a week later a black root slime set in and almost killed em all. i wasnt using sm 90 or zone, just h202. the biggest problem was that i was using the biggest air pump i could find. not sure the size but it was like $90. i used 2 of them so 1 for each 24 buckets. anyway, those pumps get hot as fuck and pumped hot air into your buckets! not a good thing. water temps in the 80s, you cant cool bubble buckets, so i bought controllers and fitted 2 55 gallon drums together and ebb and flowed them. they worked great because the bubble buckets gave my roots a good start, so they could already reach the bottom of the buckets.. i cured the slime issue with benny tea, then went back to sterile with dm zone, which works awesome. anyway... cops came, i had to kill all the plants and move, even tho i am a legal grower in a legal state.

the new grow i started as ebb and grow, big mistake. realizing your mistakes is very liberating.
ill post back next week to let yall know whats happening. peace

budherder said:

right on Nitro. ive got a system that takes me about 3 hours to clean all the buckets, tubing, and rez's and do a full nute change. its not to bad. it was originally a bunch of bubble buckets. when i put my put my clones in the bubblers the roots shot down to the bottom and they took off!! then about a week later a black root slime set in and almost killed em all. i wasnt using sm 90 or zone, just h202. the biggest problem was that i was using the biggest air pump i could find. not sure the size but it was like $90. i used 2 of them so 1 for each 24 buckets. anyway, those pumps get hot as fuck and pumped hot air into your buckets! not a good thing. water temps in the 80s, you cant cool bubble buckets, so i bought controllers and fitted 2 55 gallon drums together and ebb and flowed them. they worked great because the bubble buckets gave my roots a good start, so they could already reach the bottom of the buckets.. i cured the slime issue with benny tea, then went back to sterile with dm zone, which works awesome. anyway... cops came, i had to kill all the plants and move, even tho i am a legal grower in a legal state.

the new grow i started as ebb and grow, big mistake. realizing your mistakes is very liberating.
ill post back next week to let yall know whats happening. peace

Click to expand...

Ok budherder....

I use two air pumps for six buckets an ECO,AIR#5...90.00 and an ECO AIR#3.....72.00...

Useing these's two pumps I wouldn't want to do anymore than 6 buckets...IMO......I am not shure what kind of air pump you had but 22 buckets for one air pump might of been a problem, not shure though........nitro...

DONT FLOOD FOR AN HOUR JESUS!!!!!!!!!!!!! 15 mins my man

im flooding 22 5 gallon buckets. it takes 45 minutes for the water level to get where the roots can actually touch the water. so i am actually watering for 15 minutes. ill reduce the flood times as the roots get longer.

so my plants are recovering really well. i started playing with the flood cycle and finally got it to flood for 30 minutes on and 30 minutes drain, essentially flooding the root zone for 15 minutes every hour. the roots are still plenty wet by the time the flood comes back. the plants seem to be loving it!
roots are exploding and the leaves are a beautiful green and fucking huge!
i think the way this system is designed ill be able to grow massive roots and hence massive plants and buds without worrying about drippers or sprayers. the entire 5 gallon bucket can be dedicated to root mass instead of medium or plumbing. now that its dialed in these plants look amazing and are growing faster then anything ive ever grown, while they are still recovering from the torture ive put them through over the last month under watering them!

one pic is taken on the 11th the other on the 16th