i dunno why i never saw your pm.
hempy is stupid simple. you can run other media but if you stick with perlite it's dumb easy. i use two sizes of buckets 2L or 5L, depending what i'm growing, veg time, and how many plants i wanna run. i put the holes at 21/4 inches from the bottom. a 5L bucket will produce the same as a 20L fabric pot in a traditional grow.
you can use hydroton but it doesn't wick as well as perlite, and will work better with clones. once things hit the res it doesn't matter. coco works but not that great. coco doesn't like being in contact with the res, there's a greater chance of catching root issues with coco than hydroton or perlite.
i run RO water. it just makes for a clean start and puts everything in my control. i always know what's in the water and can trust my ppm/ec.
you can adapt pretty much any nute line compatible with hydro. i use mega crop which simplifies things incredibly. i barely if ever check my ec as a result, just measure and feed.
ph is hugely important, as it is in any hydro. i religiously ph to 5.8. it's been suggested that ph is not necessary with mega crop. there's been mixed results from those who dropped it, it's just good practice to ph.
You replied buddy, i asked where would be the best to place the drainage hole on the 25L buckets, you replied 2 or 3 times about but I just didnt fully understand the whole water table part of the conversation and how to go about measuring things for the size of reservoir.
When you say 21/4 inches ? Is that 2.25 inch / 5.715cm.
I've seen some impressive plants grown in 2L buckets/bottles. I might go for 5L buckets when I grow the Northern lights and do traditional hempy with perlite, the last time i used it though the plants didn't seem as well planted/secure in the medium and started leaning over in the perlite as the grew bigger is that quite common ?
I'm using hydrocorn gold label at the moment, I think it's the same thing as hydroton just a different brand basicly clay pebbles. If I didn't need to use it then its money saved, regarding just using perlite in the reservoir, what do you use to stop it from coming out the drainage hole in the bucket ?
I understand what your saying about coco being in contact with the res and more likely to cause root issues, I'm guessing it's because it's saturated almost constantly.
Ideally I would prefer to use the tap water as there's no extra expense involved but again I totally understand what you are saying.
You mentioned earlier in a previous post that anything under 120ppm is like RO water. The tap water i tested earlier shows up as having an a ppm of 108 on the cheap pen and 100ppm on the bluelabs truncheon both have an ec of I think it was 1.6.
I know your not that familiar with UK nutrients but as far as nutrients go, would the pH perfect nutrients still work fine or would I be better possibly switching to the canna aqua vega/flores nutrients that i have there. I could post the labels up if that helps. They are supposedly meant more for recirculated systems but I've read many UK growers using it with hempy and saying it works the same as any other nutrient. Again I'm not that clued up on nutrients
I've always checked pH with the canna nutrients I've used but when I started using the pH perfect I stopped but have now started checking the pH and adjusting it using pH down to get it to a pH of 5.8.
Using the pH down on the pH perfect nutes, will that have any real adverse effects ?
AN say it fucks up the way their pH perfect nutrients work. Again I have no clue how their nutrients work or how it's supposed to stabilise the pH.
Thanks again for your replies and time.
like i said youtube wasn't where i originally got the idea of hempy style buckets using coco instead of perlite but in the video he does mention using coco aswell as the traditional hempy method with perlite only, there is a lot of people who grow this way, both traditional and with coco. It was the simplicity of the hempy bucket that made me want to try growing in the first place.