I have always run hydro except for the soil in my closet. I like RDWC because it's hard. I found out how hard it can be on my last grow... talking about a learning experience. I had 4 plants in water. 3 Ayahuasca Purple, 1 Pineapple Chunk. At about 3/4 through flower everything stopped. I took pictures and asked everyone I knew who knows more than me, what the fuck. I had dark clawed leaves, and it looked to everyone like Nitrogen toxicity. I flushed, changed nutes, messed with Ph. Nothing changed. Most of it went to make RSO. Here's the interesting part. When I'm done I take the system apart take it outside and clean the shit out of it. I used to use 2 cobble stones that I picked up on vacation to help hold down my air diffusers. One is granite. The other is white. Kinda looked like marble. When i went to clean the white one it was chalky, and not at all like it was when I stole it from the hole in the sidewalk. This stone was subjected to some sort of chemical reaction that changed the physical properties of it. I believe this was the problem.
But, i like the fact I have to keep an eye on it. Theoretically I could start it up and walk away for a few weeks. I have RO autofill on my res. The only thing I would have to do is automate the Ph. But that's no fun.
Honestly my thing is building stuff. I'm a manufacturing engineer by trade, building stuff is what I do. I like changing things in my room. Get some juicey knowledge and put it to use.
To be fair, I'm not entirely sure how organic these suppliments are, i just know some hydro people will give the fuzzy eyeball if you tell them these items,are in your tank. The first is Gen Hydro Floralicious (spelling?) I dig this stuff. Never had a problem with lillipads or anything. The other is a calmg from Gen Hydro. Its got a blue and orange label. This stuff is thick, stinky, and dark brown. I quit using it because it would cloud my res. But it worked well.
If you want to do hydro. First decide how much work you want to put into it. DWC is popular here, you can buy a premade system from Under Current, or build it yourself. Depending on the size, a UC system can get spendy. A 6 site system is around $1300 if memory serves. The other side is a homemade system can suck if you aren't mechanically inclined, there's quite a bit to it. You may just want to look into bubble buckets. Its basically, a meter, air pump, a couple 5 gallon buckets and nutes. You will still need a basic understanding of Ph, TDSor Ec, and nutrient protocol, what goes in first, how much and when, but all this info is dripping off the walls in this site.
Thanks for giving me the low down on what you do!
