I'm not exactly sure what triggered it but I decided I wanted to start growing and while it largely started with piecing things together I already had, it quickly evolved into spending money to turn it into a better version of what I was getting by with. Before doing really any research I had this vision in my head of what the system would look like, the vision evolved but overall it's not too far off from what I originally thought up. The further I go, the more I realize just how much I don't know and things that I imagined being simple have turned into me scrambling to find answers to questions I never imagined. I wanted to do hydroponic from the beginning but I did an initial 2 plants in dirt just to get my feet wet and while I didn't completely kill them, it went far from good starting with way overwatering in the beginning and struggling to get back on track after almost killing the plants because of it.
I built my system from scratch but I'm pretty certain I've spent well more at this point piecing things together than I would have just buying a system, but one of the reasons I wanted to build it was to tailor it to my space and the original vision I had in my mind. The system is made up of 5-5 gallon buckets with 4 of them for the plants and one for the reservoir which sits outside of the tent. There are 2 sets of 3/4 inch PEX lines running between the buckets with a pump connected to one of the lines in the reservoir to push/mix the solution out to the other buckets periodically. There is another set of 1/4 inch lines running to some homemade drip rings in each basket which is fed by a 2nd pump in the reservoir. An aquarium pump feeds an air stone in each plant bucket. I set up an Arduino to run both of the pumps on a cycle and a Vivosun controller for the lights, fans, and humidity. The entire system holds 15 gallons comfortably which is where I started but I could probably add another 5 gallons without issue. To start out I had just been using A and B solution at 2 ml/gal each but I've also added in about 1 ml/gal of cal mag now too.
I currently have a couple big questions:
PH – I didn't get a PH meter into the system until about 2 weeks after starting the seeds at which point I realized the PH was sitting around 8.2. I ordered up some PH down and begin adding it in small amounts to the system but quickly increased to larger amounts after seeing it not move the PH much or even at all, I've added 70ml so far over the last 8 days and I've only gotten the PH down to around 6.5. Maybe I'm just not understanding the scaling of things but should I really be adding this much and seeing so little movement?
Water temp – The temp in the reservoir hovers around 74-75 degrees while the lights are on, from what I've read this is higher than ideal. I did add some Hydroban into the system after reading that you need something to keep root rot away with the higher temps. So far the roots are looking okay from what I can tell but is this something I should be worried about? Should I be looking into adding a chiller?
CF/EC/TDS – How much should I tailor my nutrients to these levels? Should I stick with the nutrient charts regardless of these numbers or should I add more nutrients to bump these numbers up? Right now I'm at 9.0 CF, .90 EC, 452 ppm TDS; from some of the resources I've seen I'm quite a bit lower than the ideal.
Now here is the question I feel really dumb asking: The nutrient charts show everything in ml per gallon, what do I do when I go from a week where it hasn't been using a certain nutrient but now the next week it should? I'm not supposed to be emptying the solution and starting over with new right? Should I just add a lump sum to start based on how much liquid is currently in the system?
I don't know if it's worth mentioning but I've never smoked much and will pretty much be giving away everything I grow.
by grumbleguss