TheDude420
Member
Hey Guys.. new to this forum and just wanted to stop over in this section since i feel i am most educated (or failed the most) in this type of method..
For running Automated Drippers in a Coco Garden i would figure out your nutrient plan first, but you guys can figure that out since there are so many different types and ways of going about this. I would stay away from crazy organics when it comes to automated drip systems since you will get clogged drippers and lines much easier/quicker. Some people like things easy, which i would recomend going with something like botanicares CNS17 program (grow/Bloom/ripe) which is a one part formula for the three different phases of growth. Expect great results with very little money invested (about 65 bucks for each 5 gallon at a rate of about 15-20mL per gallon). You will still have to use calMag and probably some silica product to help with stressful times but that is sometimes easier then trying to be a mad scientist with 8 billion different additives and a EC of 4.20 haha.. anways, always use RO Water (very cheap to get a small 100gpd unit from active aqua which is same as hydrologic without the hydrologic sticker on the front). I know people are going to say you don't need it but after i changed to RO from my hard water of +200 out the tap i no longer have drippers clogging or any other issues that i used to run into and can feed at exactly what i need too without having that 200ppm of who knows what in the water to start with.
Always use "Adjustable Drippers" on stakes.. they make things much easier, exp if you are not using a very expensive jet pump that keeps a constant 20/40 PSI in the line. You can then adjust each dripper to drip the exact same amount of water as it does at each end of the main line since if you don't use drip emitters you will get much more flow at the beginning of your main line then towards the end (always use 3/4" and not 1/2" enless you have an extremely small system). A 1500gph pump can easily handle up to about 38 drip sites. You can order the drip stakes (adjustable) off ebay for 15 bucks for a 50 pack.. you might have to replace a few throughout the cycle so don't buy exactly the amount of sites you need. The ones on the stakes are just nice if you have to pull a plant out to check it out or move things around you can just pull the stake out and stick it in another plant for the time being.
Rez and Water Setup
Now lets talk about the rez and water.. Air Stones are garbage (I know people are going to disagree and i dont want to hear it).. use a Venturi. If you don't know what that is, look it up on youtube, they have tons of videos and most pumps now come with the attachment for free, just add a little bit of air hose and run it out of your rez so it pulls the air into the tube and lets it go into the rez water. Venturi is a water pump that you induce air into so not only are you adding air to your water, you are also mixing up your water much better then an air stone can at much less wattage and you can say goodbye to that stupid, extremely loud ECO7 Air pump that you hate!
Water temps
Always keep above 68 degrees which can be easily done by a cheap (35 dollar) aquarium pump. A 350W pump will work for a rez up to 150 Gallons. 74-76 degrees is optimum but if you are running higher temps make sure you use some sort of benies like hydroguard from botanicare (only 1mL per gallon and works awesome) to avoid any slime or other crap that will start growing in your rez. Some people use H2O2 or even ClearRez (just chlorine or pool shock diluted in water, 1gram per gallon and then used at 4mL per gallon in your rez which is a totally over priced or should i say great marketing from the guys over at EZClone) which might work well for some but say goodbye to your bennies and all the little workers that you have in your coco and around your roots that are breaking the nutrients down and helping your plant intake its food.
Keeping your water temps up will not only help when mixing your nutrients (most calcium and silica will fall out of nutrient solutions when temps are under 65-68 degrees) but it will keep the plants much happier. IF you feed your plants extremely cold water, you are just shocking the root zone which will then lead to stress and stress leads to crap yields which suck. Keep your roots happy with some nice mixed up, oxygen filled, clean water!
Container/Pot Size
Coco gardens do not need large containers.. You can grow trees in small containers such as 1-2 gallons but you are possibly creating a problem. For example, say in mid flowering your plants are in 1 gallon pots and you are up to watering 5 times a day. Your power goes out and you don't realize it for a while and your plants are just wilting out and becoming really stressed!
Go with 3 Gallon pots and water once every couple days after initial transplant for about a week then go to once every other day then once a day and by the time you flip to Bloom (which shouldn't be more then three weeks from clone).
With the 3 gallon pots you have a little more room for error and you are still not wasting coco and space by having some stupid 15 gallon pots that are only filled about 30% with roots instead of about 70-80%..
Watering Schedule
Like stated above, after transplant you will want to water then let the coco dry out a bit so the roots go in search of water (not bone dry but don't keep completely saturated like some old coffee grounds!) After your roots are poking out the bottom which should only take a few days (maybe up to a week) you can then go to watering ever couple days to every other day and by the third week of veg which is right before you should flip to bloom if you are using HID lighting, you should be watering once a day.
Say your light schedule is from 6pm - 6am set your pump to be on around 6:30 or 7pm so you have some time to go in your room once the lights kick on and make sure you drippers are working properly and none are getting clogged. Then your plants have all day to consume that water.
If your running a large pump you will only be running your pump for about 1-2 minutes. For example, a 1500gph pump running 32 sites (4 sites under each lamp) will only take about 2 minutes to pump about 1000mL which is a good size feeding for a 3 gallon container which is about .25 gallon. With that small of a watering you will get your coco wet but not overly saturated and you will notice very little runoff which = less waste since you will always want to run coco gardens drain to waste. I know people are going to say otherwise but their is no point to run recirculating in coco. Your just going to dump that whole rez out anyway at the end of your 2 week water change so why not just use almost all the water? exp when your only getting about 1/3 of the water when making RO but that can be for another post..
You don't need much runoff if you run a product from H&G called Drip Clean. Love this product.. it is the only product that i will use from H&G. Only use .3mL per gallon and you will not have salt buildups when only having about 1-5% runoff.
Once you get your watering cycle down for once a day you can slowly move up. I would recomend using the 2 minute feed at 6:30 or 7pm when lights are turning on at 6pm and maybe once again at 1230am for one minute and just keep an eye on the weight of your containers to see if they are extremely heavy and not drinking all the water the following day when you go in to check when lights come on. If they are dry you can keep that schedule up and look foward to adding another watering. If they are wet still and heavy, go back to feeding just once a day.
This is the thing with drip systems, everyones drip times and feeding amounts are going to be different. you just have to learn your plants and if you see wilt and or heavy pots, correct the schedule.
The more times you water, the more oxegen gets to the root zone and the more explosive growth you will see.. if you water like soil, expect soil results.. if you water like hydro, expect hydro results!
Type of Coco
Some people swear by the bags or the premixed crap with other additives but why pay 20-30 dollars a bag when you can buy the botanicare bales for 10 bucks a bale and you get 70Liters of product after hydrated..
You just take the bale, throw it in a rubbermaid tote throw about 4 gallons of extremely hot water on it and watch is blowup and then mix it around.
Looking to be an over achiever? throw in some ZHO or another type of beneficial fungus in the media to help with the rootzone!
throw a box fan or 6 inch inline fan on the ground.. lollypop the shit out of em and watch those ladies explode!!!
Ill add some more about the drip setup soon.. gotta get going!
Keep on Growing!!! and Call the DUDE
For running Automated Drippers in a Coco Garden i would figure out your nutrient plan first, but you guys can figure that out since there are so many different types and ways of going about this. I would stay away from crazy organics when it comes to automated drip systems since you will get clogged drippers and lines much easier/quicker. Some people like things easy, which i would recomend going with something like botanicares CNS17 program (grow/Bloom/ripe) which is a one part formula for the three different phases of growth. Expect great results with very little money invested (about 65 bucks for each 5 gallon at a rate of about 15-20mL per gallon). You will still have to use calMag and probably some silica product to help with stressful times but that is sometimes easier then trying to be a mad scientist with 8 billion different additives and a EC of 4.20 haha.. anways, always use RO Water (very cheap to get a small 100gpd unit from active aqua which is same as hydrologic without the hydrologic sticker on the front). I know people are going to say you don't need it but after i changed to RO from my hard water of +200 out the tap i no longer have drippers clogging or any other issues that i used to run into and can feed at exactly what i need too without having that 200ppm of who knows what in the water to start with.
Always use "Adjustable Drippers" on stakes.. they make things much easier, exp if you are not using a very expensive jet pump that keeps a constant 20/40 PSI in the line. You can then adjust each dripper to drip the exact same amount of water as it does at each end of the main line since if you don't use drip emitters you will get much more flow at the beginning of your main line then towards the end (always use 3/4" and not 1/2" enless you have an extremely small system). A 1500gph pump can easily handle up to about 38 drip sites. You can order the drip stakes (adjustable) off ebay for 15 bucks for a 50 pack.. you might have to replace a few throughout the cycle so don't buy exactly the amount of sites you need. The ones on the stakes are just nice if you have to pull a plant out to check it out or move things around you can just pull the stake out and stick it in another plant for the time being.
Rez and Water Setup
Now lets talk about the rez and water.. Air Stones are garbage (I know people are going to disagree and i dont want to hear it).. use a Venturi. If you don't know what that is, look it up on youtube, they have tons of videos and most pumps now come with the attachment for free, just add a little bit of air hose and run it out of your rez so it pulls the air into the tube and lets it go into the rez water. Venturi is a water pump that you induce air into so not only are you adding air to your water, you are also mixing up your water much better then an air stone can at much less wattage and you can say goodbye to that stupid, extremely loud ECO7 Air pump that you hate!
Water temps
Always keep above 68 degrees which can be easily done by a cheap (35 dollar) aquarium pump. A 350W pump will work for a rez up to 150 Gallons. 74-76 degrees is optimum but if you are running higher temps make sure you use some sort of benies like hydroguard from botanicare (only 1mL per gallon and works awesome) to avoid any slime or other crap that will start growing in your rez. Some people use H2O2 or even ClearRez (just chlorine or pool shock diluted in water, 1gram per gallon and then used at 4mL per gallon in your rez which is a totally over priced or should i say great marketing from the guys over at EZClone) which might work well for some but say goodbye to your bennies and all the little workers that you have in your coco and around your roots that are breaking the nutrients down and helping your plant intake its food.
Keeping your water temps up will not only help when mixing your nutrients (most calcium and silica will fall out of nutrient solutions when temps are under 65-68 degrees) but it will keep the plants much happier. IF you feed your plants extremely cold water, you are just shocking the root zone which will then lead to stress and stress leads to crap yields which suck. Keep your roots happy with some nice mixed up, oxygen filled, clean water!
Container/Pot Size
Coco gardens do not need large containers.. You can grow trees in small containers such as 1-2 gallons but you are possibly creating a problem. For example, say in mid flowering your plants are in 1 gallon pots and you are up to watering 5 times a day. Your power goes out and you don't realize it for a while and your plants are just wilting out and becoming really stressed!
Go with 3 Gallon pots and water once every couple days after initial transplant for about a week then go to once every other day then once a day and by the time you flip to Bloom (which shouldn't be more then three weeks from clone).
With the 3 gallon pots you have a little more room for error and you are still not wasting coco and space by having some stupid 15 gallon pots that are only filled about 30% with roots instead of about 70-80%..
Watering Schedule
Like stated above, after transplant you will want to water then let the coco dry out a bit so the roots go in search of water (not bone dry but don't keep completely saturated like some old coffee grounds!) After your roots are poking out the bottom which should only take a few days (maybe up to a week) you can then go to watering ever couple days to every other day and by the third week of veg which is right before you should flip to bloom if you are using HID lighting, you should be watering once a day.
Say your light schedule is from 6pm - 6am set your pump to be on around 6:30 or 7pm so you have some time to go in your room once the lights kick on and make sure you drippers are working properly and none are getting clogged. Then your plants have all day to consume that water.
If your running a large pump you will only be running your pump for about 1-2 minutes. For example, a 1500gph pump running 32 sites (4 sites under each lamp) will only take about 2 minutes to pump about 1000mL which is a good size feeding for a 3 gallon container which is about .25 gallon. With that small of a watering you will get your coco wet but not overly saturated and you will notice very little runoff which = less waste since you will always want to run coco gardens drain to waste. I know people are going to say otherwise but their is no point to run recirculating in coco. Your just going to dump that whole rez out anyway at the end of your 2 week water change so why not just use almost all the water? exp when your only getting about 1/3 of the water when making RO but that can be for another post..
You don't need much runoff if you run a product from H&G called Drip Clean. Love this product.. it is the only product that i will use from H&G. Only use .3mL per gallon and you will not have salt buildups when only having about 1-5% runoff.
Once you get your watering cycle down for once a day you can slowly move up. I would recomend using the 2 minute feed at 6:30 or 7pm when lights are turning on at 6pm and maybe once again at 1230am for one minute and just keep an eye on the weight of your containers to see if they are extremely heavy and not drinking all the water the following day when you go in to check when lights come on. If they are dry you can keep that schedule up and look foward to adding another watering. If they are wet still and heavy, go back to feeding just once a day.
This is the thing with drip systems, everyones drip times and feeding amounts are going to be different. you just have to learn your plants and if you see wilt and or heavy pots, correct the schedule.
The more times you water, the more oxegen gets to the root zone and the more explosive growth you will see.. if you water like soil, expect soil results.. if you water like hydro, expect hydro results!
Type of Coco
Some people swear by the bags or the premixed crap with other additives but why pay 20-30 dollars a bag when you can buy the botanicare bales for 10 bucks a bale and you get 70Liters of product after hydrated..
You just take the bale, throw it in a rubbermaid tote throw about 4 gallons of extremely hot water on it and watch is blowup and then mix it around.
Looking to be an over achiever? throw in some ZHO or another type of beneficial fungus in the media to help with the rootzone!
throw a box fan or 6 inch inline fan on the ground.. lollypop the shit out of em and watch those ladies explode!!!
Ill add some more about the drip setup soon.. gotta get going!
Keep on Growing!!! and Call the DUDE
