Sticky_icky

@1stmanny,Soil scares me. My ebb and floor flood table set up can be left on its own for a week no problem. The water buffers the pHs it's self with mature plants and dialed in nutrients. It helps to keep pushing it down to 5.5 but letting it stay for a bit at 6.5 like it naturally wants to do does not seem to hurt anything. Every few days I haul a couple 3 gal nutrient solution buckets to top it up. And every few top-ups I drain it out and give it fresh. No risk of a mess-up that I can not immediately fix. I might spend an avg of 5 mins a day dealing with them. I can instantly watch my plants give feedback and adjust their environment as needed. TLDR, hydro can be very very easy. But I am blessed with consistent 6.7 ph tap-water with <30 ppm.

@1stmanny, It's really kind of foolproof for PH and nutrients compared to soil. Height is an issue since you need room for water underneath, With a PH and some form of TDS or EC meter, you know exactly what your girls are drinking. My PH work revolves around squirting an unmeasured dropper of acid into the tub every 2-3 days. This yo-yos it between 5.5-6.5 which is ideal. But if you mess it up, you just test it and adjust. no big deal. My nutrient work just comes down to keeping PPM in a safe range. Easy to see if it's too high and needs diluting or replacing. You can push it and see how much they can handle and calibrate down. Or just pick a super safe range and stick around there. I can't imagine going back to soil. The idea of any single mistake I do being stuck in that soil for good is just not my cup of tea. In my opinion, flood and drain is the easiest system even for a beginner to be successful with and least likely to cause damage when mistakes are made.

@1stmanny, I drilled a hole in the bottom corner of the tray to drain out the ~1/4 inch standing water into a dish and tested it with my PH meter. I had standing water because I was having issues balancing temp with my electric heating pad under it. On low, it was not warm enough but on the medium, it would evaporate all the water and dry out the cubes in short order. I got lazy and instead of just watering a little every day to keep up with evaporation I just overwatered it which never gave the Rockwool a chance to get below 100% saturation. I have not been adjusting the PH of my clone water for quite a while. My tap water usually is 6.6 pH and ~30 ppm. So I was surprised to see the runoff I drained from the tray was 7.5 Since then I have been pHing the water I give them to about 5, and testing the little bit of runoff. it has slowly come up down from 7 to 5.5. Not sure how much that had an impact. I was more concerned about the overwatering. They have recovered now so I am happy. I grow in hydroponics only. Ebb and flow flood table, yes. A couple of under-the-bed storage totes filled with expanded Hydroton clay pellets in a 100cm by 100cm tent. Flood for 15 mins every 3 hours. Been doing that for about 3 cycles now since switching from individual DWC buckets.