flood table questions

[tokinherper]

i have an 8x4 flood table and a 75 gallon res. how often and for how long do i flood the table? also when i flood the table it only reachs half way up the pots. is this ok?

 

[Bleek187]

wheewwwwwww.. tough question... how often to flood is a guessing game.. depends really on how your using it and what for.. like my mothers and stuff in veg get flooded 2 times a day... they are in small pots with hydroton.. and they grow very very well like this... but if your flowering you might want to flood 3 times?? its really up 2 you..

the plants will grow fine if the table is only half full.. BUT.. if they were all the way full the plants will grow better.. how do i know this?? i had a setup one time.. 2'X4' flood table... i had the table about 3 inches higher on one side so the table would drain better... this made the table fill almost to the top on the drain side and only about half way up on the higher side.. after about 5 or 6 weeks of flower i noticed that the plants that got flooded higher were bigger.. the ones in the middle were a lil smaller.. and the ones on the end that only reached half way were a lot smaller...

My advice to you is maybe look into using a water pump to feed 1/2" hose with a pressure cap on the end.. 1/8" hoses feeding from the 1/2" to the tops of each pot.. this is what i had to do also.. im feeding 25 plants in a 4'X4' flood table from a 40g res...

hope this helps peace..

 

[Hushpuppy]

I have never used flood n drain but I would agree with Bleek on this. I use a variation of this and top feed water to my plants and just let it constantly drain in the pan and it works great for me. I use an 8 port head from one of the lawn watering systems like "rainbird". I use a 1/2"pipe riser straight up off my pump in the rez and top it with the multitap head with the "drip system" hose (I think its 1/4 or 1/8). I also get the little steaks from same place (home depot sells them in USA) to hold the hoses in place in my pots, and let them water constantly. (make sure yu have a very good air pump and giant air stone in yer rez to aerate the water, or the plants could stress from overwatering. Good grow mojo

 

[tokinherper]

I have never used flood n drain but I would agree with Bleek on this. I use a variation of this and top feed water to my plants and just let it constantly drain in the pan and it works great for me. I use an 8 port head from one of the lawn watering systems like "rainbird". I use a 1/2"pipe riser straight up off my pump in the rez and top it with the multitap head with the "drip system" hose (I think its 1/4 or 1/8). I also get the little steaks from same place (home depot sells them in USA) to hold the hoses in place in my pots, and let them water constantly. (make sure yu have a very good air pump and giant air stone in yer rez to aerate the water, or the plants could stress from overwatering. Good grow mojo

all of this can be found at home depot? i'll go in the morning. i need to know exactly what to get.

 

[tokinherper]

i got the 5 gallon per hour drip despensers. i hope they are what i want. i'll be installing it tonight.

 

[Hushpuppy]

Hey sorry I didn't get back to yu yesterday. I had to go out of town for the day. I am curious about the medium that yu are using. The 5gal per hour should work ok. Yu have to test them to see sometimes as it will vary depending on how much pressure yer pump puts out and how high the main line goes up from the pump to the table. I use a 120gph pump that will push about 50gph straight up as high as 4 feet. That is quite important as I found with an 60gph pump pushing 2 feet up to my planter tops would crap out on me after a few minutes, and I couldn't figure out why until I went to a 120gph for a table of 8 plants and an 8tap dispurse head lifting 2.5 feet, and it worked flawlessly. Now, for planter medium, I am using a combination of hydroton and coco coir just because I like the way it works having a layer of rocks on the bottom of my particular pots (not using net pots cause I got these planter pots for free). plus having the coco on top seems to work well with retaining the nutrients from the drip system, and so far the plants seem to love it. I don't know how much yu know about running hydro but I have learned from my experience that its a bit challenging to get the nute schedule down for hydro as everything happens a lot faster. gettin ahead of yerself can cause yu to crash n burn reeeal fast. I start any new grow by running 1/4 strength nutes for a week or 2 then go to half strength for a couple then move to 3/4 strength. For me I don't go any higher on my nutes than that as it seems to be the best for my plants as I feed with every watering (which may prove to be a bit too much, the jury is still out on that). The instructions on my nutes (technaflora) say I should do feed, water, water,feed, but my partner can't get hisself to not feed each time. I tell him that we may be wasteing nutes doing that, plus we are growing "jungle giants" that way, but he has a 'bigger is better' mindset. Pm me if yu want to discuss further. good grow mojo ya