GanjaGed
New member
I'll post here in case anyone has something to add or correct:
Basically the system is 2 containers, a Reservoir and a Table. The Res is below the table and the Table has 2 holes, 1 smaller and one larger. The smaller is hooked to a sump pump and feeds water as well as acts as a drain. The larger one just hangs in the res above the waterline and up in the tray you set the height to how full you want to flood. That prevents overflows.
You run the pump on a timer to flood the table and drain. A baseline of 3 floods a day during lights on, adjust to local conditions and plant health. So like 1 hr after lights on, 1 hr before lights out and once in between. Mechanical timers make it a 15 min flood but that can be reduced with digital timers, and probably should. More on that once I get it going.
One of the things about Flood and Drain is how well it oxygenates the roots. When you Flood the water pushes the old air out of the medium and when it drains it sucks fresh air into the medium and once you have the times and number of floods dialed in it's simply impossible to over or under water.
LECA is the medium I'm going to use to start. Fill the table with LECA then bury my clones, when ready, in their netpots, into the LECA on the Table. But you can run coco in pots, whatever. You can add a dripper and run a top feed grow, you could just set some soil plants in pots (fabric, etc,) and had water if you want.
It's just an amazingly flexible system that doesn't pigeon hole you into any one thing, and I really like that.
Because of the waterfall of the overflow tube in the res as well as the movement of the water during flood you don't need an airstone or worry about stagnation.
Plus you can SOG, SCROG, or pretty much whatever you want.
Next grow will be all Flood and Drain
Basically the system is 2 containers, a Reservoir and a Table. The Res is below the table and the Table has 2 holes, 1 smaller and one larger. The smaller is hooked to a sump pump and feeds water as well as acts as a drain. The larger one just hangs in the res above the waterline and up in the tray you set the height to how full you want to flood. That prevents overflows.
You run the pump on a timer to flood the table and drain. A baseline of 3 floods a day during lights on, adjust to local conditions and plant health. So like 1 hr after lights on, 1 hr before lights out and once in between. Mechanical timers make it a 15 min flood but that can be reduced with digital timers, and probably should. More on that once I get it going.
One of the things about Flood and Drain is how well it oxygenates the roots. When you Flood the water pushes the old air out of the medium and when it drains it sucks fresh air into the medium and once you have the times and number of floods dialed in it's simply impossible to over or under water.
LECA is the medium I'm going to use to start. Fill the table with LECA then bury my clones, when ready, in their netpots, into the LECA on the Table. But you can run coco in pots, whatever. You can add a dripper and run a top feed grow, you could just set some soil plants in pots (fabric, etc,) and had water if you want.
It's just an amazingly flexible system that doesn't pigeon hole you into any one thing, and I really like that.
Because of the waterfall of the overflow tube in the res as well as the movement of the water during flood you don't need an airstone or worry about stagnation.
Plus you can SOG, SCROG, or pretty much whatever you want.
Next grow will be all Flood and Drain
I have an actual camera instead of this damned 15 yr old ipod, now but gotta wait for payday to get a tripod, stupid tremors...
