Noob Alert First hydro Dripper positioning help PLEASE

Hi Everyone

Been visiting this site for a while now and have been convinced by some of you to give my first setup a whirl.

This is my first post/Thread so please be gentle

Basically decided to go with a basic drip setup with hydroton balls and rockwool.

Germinated my seeds with paper towel method and transfered to jiffy peat once germinated. then from there into rockwool.

and from the rockwool into the hydroton balls.

my current question is...

Im using the drip method. current stage is pictured in the 3 black buckets. they are still seedlings around 2 weeks old.

how often should i set the drip? My prob is i have peats ---> into rockwool ---> into hydroton.

i didnt wanna overwater the peats and rockwool but its surrounded by the clay balls which require lots of water.

Which leads to my next question with the drippers. i understand it will generally drip to one spot. i can rotate my buckets to spread the water around but where is the best position to place the drips in my setup? on the side over the balls? towards the centre where the rockwool and peat is?

Hopefully u guys/gals can point me in the right direction.

kiss-ass


More hydroton balls have been added since this pic to cover rockwool completely

Also i've just added half strenth growrite A & B to the Res

says for seedlings and cuttings

Update

another update.

Is nobody replying coz its so far correct?

appreciate any input. are my drippers in the right position?


update pic

yeah man, as long as it hits the hydroton/rw it will get everything wet, rockwool/ht work miracles for soaking up and distributing water and staying wet, its what they're made to do.

ur a legand

thanks for the reply.

i just wanted some sort of indicater that what i was doing is somewhat right.

i was worried that if the drippers are hitting the rw it may get too soaked. but then again. water only drips about a drop a second for 15 mins a day atm.

u reks thats cool?

Update

Any Comments?

look great mate. how often are you given them nutes.

how many days since sprouting are they now.

cheers

Hey!

thanks for having a look

Its the start of the 3rd week since poking its head out of the ground. got the reserve tank underneath with about 14l of water and a half strength nute seedling/cutting mix. only been on the nutes for about 5 days.

sorry forgot to say.

its gets watered slow drip (bout 1 per sec)

for 15 mins every morn. automated system

Thats a pretty decent setup yo , all i would suggest is moving your lights a bit closer , those ladies look like they are stretching , other then that , looks good! keep it up

Thanks for the feedback john. i thought that may have been the case but was kinda hoping it wasnt lol. see with the diametre of the pots if i lower the light anymore its gonna shine on the 2 outer pots less. I might just have to grab another longer light. was hoping to just keep using this fluro until it was time to get the hps

well if you want to get just as much light on the outer pots you should grab 1 or 2 Daylight 6500k cfl light bulbs , very cheap , but they work great , i actually use them myself lol , very good results , it will just add a little more light for the other plants so that you can lower that light

Thanks again for taking the time to reply mate.

Ok well im gonna take you advise onboard.

should i...

1. go get a longer flouro lenght?
2. add a cfl
3. get the HPS i was planning on using for the later stage now and use it now?

what ya reks?

whats cfc stand for?

no problem , always welcome to help a fellow grower out! , but you could go get a longer flouro but then you would prolly have to get a longer mount aswell , so id go with just getting a couple cfl's , and you could also get the HPS for later on still anyway for a (just in case light) always good to have one lol , and CFC stands for "Currupt Future Crew"

What do u mean get the hps for just in case?

wouldnt a 600w hps give me an overall better yield?

are you saying to use my flouros and get a cfl for the entire stage or just til i flower

hps light is about $200 odd. i wouldnt wanna spend that on an item unless im using it for sure

me personally , i wouldent spend 200 on a light , if anything , i would just spend that 200 on a shitload of cfls , for one cfls wont make your hydro bill go out , and im pretty sure a hps would , and second ive got just as good of an effect on my plants with cfls alone , as you would with an hps , i have a 400w hps and its shit compared to what the cfls can do , thats only my opinion tho lol , if you dont want to spend alot of money , stick with some cfls and your flouros cuz they will do just as good , maybe (maybe) even better , plus with cfls you can pretty much lower them till it touches your plants and they wont burn , but with the hps it would prolly set them on fire , atleast mine would , cfls dont get hot you can put your hand right on them without burning it , but they do create enuff heat for your plants , so if i was you , id just spend 200 on alot of cfls and plug in sockets and just go with that , but as i said thats only my opinion , i will admit i got a pretty good yeild last year using the hps but this year i see a bigger difference with the cfls (in a good way) , so eather one would do just fine , but the cfls are cheap on money , and hydro bills lol sorry for such a long reply

no no no no apologies man. thanks for even takin the time to write all that hehe.

i got a better idea on the sitch now.

so i can basically go fluros all the way through.

what i had planned to do was move my fluro to a closet type enclosure and use the current room just for flowering.

plan was fluros for veg and hps for flowering.

hmmm looks like i got some decisions to make lol.

Personally for a drip system like that (and I'm building a drip system like that except I'm using dutch pots) I'd use two dripper per pot. As the plant grows larger you move the drippers further towards the edges to spread that nutrient solution evenly. While the plant is nice and young like your girls then you have the drippers closer to the middle as it grows you spread the drippers apart. Just don't have it so close that it soaks the rockwool cube (constantly). That in the long run could cause root rot. Aside for that you should be good to grow bro! Since you don't have two drippers then I'd just make sure you give your plants a 1/4 turn or a half turn every day (which you should be doing anyway. Basically the only modifactions I would have done is that I would have done a bucket with in a bucket to make it easy to rotate my plants around and I would have made the drainage whole a little higher so there would be a little res for each pot so in case of a power outage you could rest easy knowing your plants had enough water to make through the day. That's just my two cents.

I personally wouldn't worry about overwatering. Those rockwool cubes will be given plenty of time to dry through the clay pellets. Clay pellets are great for allowing tons of air transfer. I'd only worry about constantly having the rockwool cube wet and not giving it drying time. That rockwool cube will hold plenty of water for the plant in between waterings. Also whats nice about your system is that those clay pelts suspend your plant up high where as other systems leave your plants kind of hanging in stagnate water.

Personally I think everything looks fine. Some growers stick their drippers right on top/in their rockwool cubes and nothing happens. I wouldn't do this due to the risk of root rot. Your shit is now looks all right.

1 drip per second should be fine. Also who are you regulating your drip? Did you add a regulator or a clamp to your pumps hose? I curious as I'd either like to have a constant drip or just feed every 3 hours for 10 mins or so (dutch pots also hold around a 1/2 gallon of water in each pot so you don't need to water as often). Also does having your pump on all the time cause the res's temp to be kind of high? I'm just curious as I'm doing something kind of similar.

Thank you thank you thank you.

Its great im finally getting some feedback about the setup.

In the end i opted to go out and get a 600w hps for these babies. hopefully they will reward me at the end

the 600w should provide more heat and prolly dry out the rockwool alittle quicker than the flurous i have them under currently.

I just got back from purchasing it. will put it up tonight.

thank you again about the water issues. that helped alot. i think i knew what i was doing but its always nice to have u guys let me know and reassure me.