Ok, I'm the interest of time I'm going to distill about 7 years of hydro experience on you in about three paragraphs.
Oh yeah..do post about the pump when it arrives, you are going to be very very impressed.
So the hydro thing...Sterile rez sounds great on paper. I mean you add your sterilization (h2o2,bleach, hydro sparkle, that dutch master shit) whatever, and it's supposed to be cool and the gang.
And depending on where you live and what your water is like..and if you have well water...beware, you can get bacteria in your water. It's a cyanobacteria that doesn't need light, it doesnt need air, the shit is nasty. And if you scrub your buckets with scotch bright, bacteria can live in those scratches and I have read peer reviewed journal articles that found that bacteria firmly attached to substrates can withstand 6x the usual disenfectent.
Once I got this stuff I tried EVERY FUCK ING THING. Everything. From bleach to physian 20..you name it. all the while there are plenty of folks saying "yeah dude, h2o2 is all you need".
finally I came across a thread on beneficial bacteria. There are several but there is a huge one here. Heisenburg tea. I tried it and wow! I mean wow. I had plants on the brink of death and after about a week they were fucking exploding!
I spent many many many hours researching this shit and I have subscriptions to several online journals (environmental science related). It has been shown time and time again that beneficials ward of disease, increase uptake and increase yield.
They won't reproduce in water, but they do live about a week.
It's simple really, a little molassis, a handful or two of ancient forest, and a scoop of myco powder. Bubble the fuck out of it... with your POS pump, and add to the rez. Once a week
In terms of the mycorhizal powder there are all.kinds available. Hands down the best by a long shot is ogbiowar. Get it..biological warefare. bio war was started by a biologist and grower over at thc farmer. He ordered the spores and mixed it himself. thc farmer makes rhis place look like a CFL grow in terms of the depth of knowledge. Anyways.. people were buying it by messaging him and the results were awesome. So much he started an ebay website...and BOOM His business exploded. Now it is in retail stores.
You can buy it directly from his website. Google og biowar. (whispering) use the code thc farmer at check out and you get it damn near wholesale.
Follow the instructions on his website. It's kind of a pain in the ass but whatever. It WORKS. I have pictures but I'm too lazy to dig them up.
If you Google beneficial tea or he sine burg tea you will find scores of people that are high fiving each other over this stuff.
Oh yeah ...notch that water down a couple clicks...like 67 Degrees
Happy growing mate. Serious clean and professional looking setup. Very very nice