Yellow new growth in Ebb N Gro Pics

[GuerillaAk]

This is my first grow in this Ebb n grow system i plant to convert to RDWC during the winter. I noticed first before the last nute change out 10 days ago most of the plants started to turn yellow on the side chutes and the main grow tip. Three of them are starting to wither away at the tips. I have already started 12/12 so i hope i can figure this out before my yield and quality start to suffer too much. From what I have read it looks like it could be iron, sulfer ,or zinc, deficiency which can be locked out by high PH so I started lowering down to 5.2- area but the next day it starts to go back up to 5.4-5.7.
The buckets used to hold 2+inches of water in the bottom before I put 1.5" risers under them so now only a little bit stands in the bottom. Maybe there should b none.
Well 'nuff said. go head and take a look! Thanks for stopping by
What STRAIN are you growing? Sharks Breath, LA Woman
What was the establishing technique? seed
What is the age of your plants? 27 days total
What PHASE are the plants in? 6th day of 12/12 they are 10-13" tall
What Technique are you using? ebb n flow
What substrate/medium are you using?(Hydroton, RockWool etc.)
What is the Nutrient temperature? 73f
What Nutrient's are you using? started with GH 8m+16b/g topped with GH MaxiBloom when tds gets close to 1100 to take it up to 1330
What is the TDS/EC/PPM you are using? 1330
What is the pH of the "Tank"? 6.4 right now usually around 5.5-5.8
Are you sure your calibration is correct on your equiptment? yes
When was your last watering? every 2 hours
When was your last feeding change? 10 days ago
What size bulb are you using? one 600+ one 1000 both hps
What is the distance to the canopy? two feet but i moved it back some cuz of this problem
What is your RH Factor? 60%
What is the canopy temperature? 76-79F
What is the Day/Night Temp? (Include flucutaion range) day is 76 degrees night i dont know
What is the current Air Flow? (cfm etc.) 630cfm
Is the fan blowing directly at plants? oscillation fan across tops
Is your water HARD or SOFT? RO
Has plant been recently pruned, cloned off of or pinched No
Have any pest chemicals been used? No
Are plant's infected with pest's No

Above is a SharksBreath(GWSx Jamaican lambsbread)

Another SB^

Above is an LA Woman (La Confidential x Martian Mean Green)

SBs to the Left, LAs To the right

they were looking a little yellow from shortly after putting them in the EbbnGro so after the 2nd nute change I added 2.5ml of CalMag+ that was about a week ago

 

[habeeb]

that "LA woman" is over nuted in N

I see purple stem in "another AB" photo, and a little overnute in N also with the leaf tips curling down

not sure on anything else, I don't run hydro so I don't know hydro characteristics

 

[illuminatus]

Looks a little overferted imo, also overwatered. Try to keep the ph 5.5-5.9 for less yellowing in flower using lucas formula. Algae is also most likely causing the ph rise.

 

[GuerillaAk]

that "LA woman" is over nuted in N

I see purple stem in "another AB" photo, and a little overnute in N also with the leaf tips curling down

not sure on anything else, I don't run hydro so I don't know hydro characteristics

Thanks for the replys. :friends: I wander if the inch or less of water in the bottom is causing them to look over fed. I read that both of these strains are heavy feeders. I thought the rams horn was possibly pointing too to much N too but some of them were kind of yellow. Guess thats what i get for running multiple strains Wonder if i should what I should lower the ppms to? Im running currently 1400 at .7. Or i wonder if i should raise the pots a little more and make sure the water is completely drained. Ill probably do both.

Looks a little overferted imo, also overwatered. Try to keep the ph 5.5-5.9 for less yellowing in flower using lucas formula. Algae is also most likely causing the ph rise.

Thanks for stopping by
Is watering every 2 hours maybe too much? Wonder what intervals i should set that would help with the over watered look. Or maybe raising the pots would help to drain the excess water and help with the over feeding and over watering. I also have it set to water once during the dark period, probably dont need to.
I am a fan of the lucas formula. Im low on money at the moment that why i didnt restock on the flora micro and boom.(Im saving them for the coco outdoor (6/9 similar to head and rez) which is doing great so far)
I read a few threads that Maxi at 1330ppm.7 conversion was pretty close too the 100-100-200-60 targets. That's why I went that direction instead.

 

[GuerillaAk]

Today im draining+cleaning the rez(55gallon). I am filling with 20 gallons of rain water and 35 gallon of RO to extend the life of my filters.

Im going to run it with out nutes for a day or two then then start at 700 ppm untill they start to look hungry, then I will know to up the nutes.

I still haven't figured out the best water intervals. I don't know if hours is a good interval at this stage where they are about 12''. I have been looking at an interesting calcualtor on the cannastats site. It will tell you the interval to you after you enter a few details about how much the plants average water usage per day and how much water one your pots will hold. I would like to know what some common settings are for that other growers use.

Im going to start covering the top of the rez so no lite can get in cuz it has a white lid.
To make sure no algae ha start to form.

Is using plain water for a day or two to flush the nutes out?

 

[Portmac]

111111111111111111111111

 

[GuerillaAk]

Hey Portmac. Thanks for the tip. I had mine set for every two hours for a little while, then i change it to 3. I am always afraid of the roots drying out but i don't want them to rot either.
I think they dry out pretty quick cuz the fan I have blowing across them.
But hell, if it works for you all the way to the chop I will give 4 hours a try.
I try to search the forums and find the info I need but the search does each word separately. so I put quataions around it but still didn't search for the words together.

 

[EvilTwin]

Hi GA,
I've just finished building a DIY system similar to yours. I'm finding there are some weaknesses including slow filling and draining through 1/2" tubing and apparently you aren't getting full draining which is a problem.

I know you mentioned you were converting to DWC but I don't know if that's such a good idea. The 2 gallon pots are a little small for that...aren't they? Here's an idea that you may want to consider. Convert the system to a top drip irrigation system. Everything is in place except the easy -to-construct drip system which is mostly 1/4" tubing and fittings...inexpensive and easy to obtain. Your controller will function nicely to pump the irrigation return flow back to the res (just set it for no flood times). I'm seriously considering doing that.

OK, now to your current situation. What immediately stood out was your use of MaxiBloom along with the other GH nutrient. MaxiBloom is not a bloom booster, it's a stand-alone Bloom nutrient. So you have no idea what you're giving your plants by using a non-standard mix like that. Use the MaxiBloom alone. Once this issue is resolved, you could add a bloom booster if desired.

I don't recall seeing how long your flood settings were. If you have your timer set for 30 minutes and are flooding every 2 hours...that's way too much. 3 15 minute floods should be enough, or go with Portmac's suggestion. If you're worried about drying at night...then add one more flood during the middle of dark time. Time a flood...you never want the roots underwater for longer then 30 minutes.

And I personally feel it's bad to leave water in the bottom of the pot. This is E&F and not a Hempy bucket. I just think it's a bad idea. Make sure your pots are high enough so that doesn't happen.

Keep us posted...
ET

 

[GuerillaAk]

Hey ET thanks for your time! It is much appreciated when your girls health is in jeopardy! That goes to everyone else to!:friends:

Hi GA,
I've just finished building a DIY system similar to yours. I'm finding there are some weaknesses including slow filling and draining through 1/2" tubing and apparently you aren't getting full draining which is a problem.

I don't mind the slow filling it takes 15 mins to drain 24 of my pots.
I agree that the standing water could be a problem. I took a 2x10" board and cut 10''x10'' squares to put under them but there is still a little bit of water in the bottom. There was over 2'' of water b4 I did that. The roots far comming out the bottom are really nice and white. At my grow store they did have one set up with bubble in the bottom of each pot. Which they really liked.

I know you mentioned you were converting to DWC but I don't know if that's such a good idea. The 2 gallon pots are a little small for that...aren't they? Here's an idea that you may want to consider. Convert the system to a top drip irrigation system. Everything is in place except the easy -to-construct drip system which is mostly 1/4" tubing and fittings...inexpensive and easy to obtain. Your controller will function nicely to pump the irrigation return flow back to the res (just set it for no flood times). I'm seriously considering doing that.

I always thought ebb n flow was better than drip. From what I have read. I was thinking of just getting bigger buckets and setting it to stay flooded but drain back to the rez ever so often to bring back fresh cool water. I would need a chiller tho. Does that sould like a reasonable way to turn it in to RDWC? I have only ran coco and DWC b4 this grow. I only had a couple bubble buckets tho. The bubble buckets had way more bud than the coco plants. I ran lucas in them. And I ran Monkey Juice for the coco which fucked them up after awhile. Part A I think it was, smelled like mildew really really super strong. Then I change to Heads/rez formula and they started doing great.

OK, now to your current situation. What immediately stood out was your use of MaxiBloom along with the other GH nutrient. MaxiBloom is not a bloom booster, it's a stand-alone Bloom nutrient. So you have no idea what you're giving your plants by using a non-standard mix like that. Use the MaxiBloom alone. Once this issue is resolved, you could add a bloom booster if desired.

I know its not a bloom booster I was using it to bring my PPMs back up.
When I filled the tank I used Lucas formula 8ml FloraMicro and 16ml FloraBloom. I read that MaxiBloom is Lucas formula similar to Floranovabloom without the extra goodies. So thats why I chose it just to bring the PPMs up once they started to get low. It was much cheaper and Im low on cash at the moment.

I don't recall seeing how long your flood settings were. If you have your timer set for 30 minutes and are flooding every 2 hours...that's way too much. 3 15 minute floods should be enough, or go with Portmac's suggestion. If you're worried about drying at night...then add one more flood during the middle of dark time. Time a flood...you never want the roots underwater for longer then 30 minutes. [/QUOTE
Thanks for the info. I now set it to flood every 15 mins four hours like Portmac.

And I personally feel it's bad to leave water in the bottom of the pot. This is E&F and not a Hempy bucket. I just think it's a bad idea. Make sure your pots are high enough so that doesn't happen.
Keep us posted...
ET

Yeah I raised them a inch and a half but there is still a little water in the bottom. Im going to use half inch insulation board to boost the up a little more.
I have been running them in plane water for a couple days now. When I add nutes Is only going to be Maxibloom. Hopefully that will keep the happy! Should I wait till they start to look hungry to add nutes?

Thanks for the post! Hit me back

 

[Lazyman]

No, I would feed them a fresh new solution with nutes, and I would add some of your grow nutes so they get some more N and a better balanced diet. Since P doesn't flush away indoors like it does outdoors, a more well-balanced diet is proving to give indoor plants better yield (see this months Maximum yield for the study.) Some PK booster is fine, but keep the grow nutes up and most girls will do better.

 

[noreaga]

ur nute temp looks onpoint at 73 i would go a little lower though maybe like 69 68 - whats the temp/humidity around the plants

 

[EvilTwin]

Hi GA,
No problem at all. Been doing hydro for a few years and I like to share experiences.

I think changing your flood times and raising the pots should resolve most of your current issues.

On what to do with your system, I'd first recommend sticking with a well established system rather then coming up with your own hybrid. But then again...I've never done DWC. The most common way for people to set up DWC is with a full recirculating system. See Blazeoneup's tutorial on building one (in the hydro section).

But what you're suggesting reminds me of several people over on the Multi-flow thread.

http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=99681

In an effort to minimize the hydroton they have to clean, they're using net pots and leaving the roots to hang down. So that's similar to what you intended. A sort-of Ebb&Flo hybrid with DWC. If you do get bigger pots and convert to DWC, you will definitely have to put air pumps and airstones in each pot (unless you still keep with an E&F schedule). Occasional draining to mix the nutrients won't do it. And your need for a chiller depends on how well you can control your grow room temperature. But almost all people that do large scale RDWC end up getting a chiller.

Far as top drip irrigation being less efficient then E&F. I've never heard that. E&F is easy and relatively low tech, but by no means the best or most efficient system out there. Drip aerates things even better then E&F. You can use a smaller res and the whole risk of flooding is reduced because you aren't moving so much nutrient solution.

Look at all the successful hydro-farms out there. They're still made because people like how fast the plants grow in them.

I see you've tried lots of nutes. Much more so then I. I understand why you're using the MaxiBloom. And I applaud your move to just use the maxi-bloom. It's a serviceable nutrient. Reasonable in cast and I've found that my plants like it. I've grown some killer White Widow on Maxi-bloom. I'm with Lazyman, I wouldn't wait till the plant tells you it needs nutes. Give them something to eat, but don't get carried away.

Good luck and keep us posted...
ET

PS: The above was written while stoned. I'll double check things in the morning...

 

[Abja Roots]

Used an Ebb and Gro myself for a while

A few tips

1) Reduce watering frequency. My theory is that the water that remains is partially drowning the roots. So let the roots use up that water and when most have. Then water.
You may have to water them and then not water for a few hours. Then pick up the pots and check how much water remains. Should give you an idea of how much they're using up. (I watered every 4-6 hours when they first went in to once every 2 hours when they were big, the temps were higher than usual, and they were in the middle of flowering)

2) Also I would consider raising the lights. I find it's less stressful on them to cope with difficult situations when they are receiving intense light. To me it's like feeding at full strength and adding boosts. It works when your plants and room are dialed, but it can be a problem when they're not.

3) I would feed for sure because it's a system with no nutrient holding capacity. Just go light.

Hope some of this helps.

 

[Lazyman]

BTW, I set up a double 32 bucket E&G setup for a buddy who uses it with coco, waters every other day (BLOOM/yellowbottle) nutes and gets over 2 pounds a light with 600's! Love the flexibility of the buckets, just add an inch or two of hydroton at the bottom to stave off root rot. And if you get slime/brown algae flush with Physan 20, only thing that kills it and saves plants. A must have to keep on hand if doing Ebb and grow.

 

[noreaga]

solid advice lazyman, gk hope u get it sorted out

 

[GuerillaAk]

LAZYMAN

No, I would feed them a fresh new solution with nutes, and I would add some of your grow nutes so they get some more N and a better balanced diet. Since P doesn't flush away indoors like it does outdoors, a more well-balanced diet is proving to give indoor plants better yield (see this months Maximum yield for the study.) Some PK booster is fine, but keep the grow nutes up and most girls will do better.

I added 3.5 grams of Maxibloom which brings me up to 890 or so PPMs. 140 was already in the water because I flooded a couple times with the plain water b4 adding the nutes. I want to work my way up to 1330-1400 PPMs .7 conversion. About 7 grams would give me
N 92
P 121
K 215
Mg 65
S 74
Ca 92
So you think uping the N a little bit even past the stretch would help the yield? I wonder how much to add? I have a left over part a from Monkey Juice coco nutes. 2ml/L or 7.56ml/g wil give 85ppm of N. So adding maybe 1ml/L might be good? That would give me a total of 134.5 PPM once I reach 7 grams per gal. I plan on adding some cool bloom once the buds start to blow up. Once I add KoolBloom it would really be a good Idea to add N to balance it out after adding all that PK. That is what I have read a few times could be wrong tho.
I have been growing on and off since I was 17 so that make around 10 years. Although I was always intersted about indoor growing and studied It on forums. Mostly CC forums "back n the day". This is only my second crop indoor tho. I had done bagseeds at first then AK48 from Nirvana Guerrilla style. Not far out of the city tho like Brown Dirt Warrior(gotta love that guy)

NOREAGA

ur nute temp looks onpoint at 73 i would go a little lower though maybe like 69 68 - whats the temp/humidity around the plants

.

The humidity is usually around 60%. I would like to throw some frozen jug in the tank every day but our freezer has no room to fit the Jugs

ET

On what to do with your system, I'd first recommend sticking with a well established system rather then coming up with your own hybrid. But then again...I've never done DWC. The most common way for people to set up DWC is with a full recirculating system. See Blazeoneup's tutorial on building one (in the hydro section).

I have checked out that thread quite a bit. You got to love him for making such a sweet tutorial. Props to Blazeoneup! I would love to make a tutorial some day of such good quality.
I could make my setup basically the same thing a his if I ran a feed line from the rez to each bucket to keep it constantly circulation or set it on a time. And defiantly put some good diffusers in the bottom! Then the controller only purpose would be to pump the water back to the rez. Or would I have to run the feed line from the controller. Im not sure.
If you set the controller to be on a constant fill cycle, then have the feed line running too it the buckets from the rez, would the controller still keep from over flowing? I guess I would have to make some modifications on the setup .
May you could set it on a constan drain cylce but raise the controller buck up to where it will only drain once the water gets high enough it would b pumped to the rez. seems like this would work.
Really I got great results from stand alone bubble buckets replacing the nute solution every week. So the nutrient solution doesnt have to be circulated too much. I think Just setting it to Fill cycle and set to drain for 15 mins 3 time a day.
Defiantly need a chiller for the summer thro.

ABJA ROOTS

Used an Ebb and Gro myself for a while

A few tips

1) Reduce watering frequency. My theory is that the water that remains is partially drowning the roots. So let the roots use up that water and when most have. Then water.
You may have to water them and then not water for a few hours. Then pick up the pots and check how much water remains. Should give you an idea of how much they're using up. (I watered every 4-6 hours when they first went in to once every 2 hours when they were big, the temps were higher than usual, and they were in the middle of flowering)

2) Also I would consider raising the lights. I find it's less stressful on them to cope with difficult situations when they are receiving intense light. To me it's like feeding at full strength and adding boosts. It works when your plants and room are dialed, but it can be a problem when they're not.

3) I would feed for sure because it's a system with no nutrient holding capacity. Just go light.

1. Yup I set them on 4 hour cycle. maybe Ill extend it further. The roots do look extremely health tho.

2. Yeah I dont like putting the lights too cuz the plants don't always like it and you have to keep the room cool and more air flow over the plant because it is some much hotter on the canopy.

3. Makes since. I won't use NE booster til the plants are happy and producing well.

LAZYMAN

BTW, I set up a double 32 bucket E&G setup for a buddy who uses it with coco, waters every other day (BLOOM/yellowbottle) nutes and gets over 2 pounds a light with 600's! Love the flexibility of the buckets, just add an inch or two of hydroton at the bottom to stave off root rot. And if you get slime/brown algae flush with Physan 20, only thing that kills it and saves plants. A must have to keep on hand if doing Ebb and grow.

Damn thats a nice yeild! How many 600s does your friend use? How much space? So he has 64 pots? I have 24 pots in a 4x9 area but I have space fir 3 more pots. I Have 600 on each side with a 1000 in the middle. I have one 600 turned off cuz i dont have all the spots filled yet. I need to take clones to put in my DIY aero cloner. What nutes does your friend use? I don't know what the yellow bottle of bloom is. Does he use chip coco like bcuzz bounce. I mix bcuzz bounce with the purple bag coco along with perlite and hydroton. Thats what I used for my last indoor. I am reusing outdoor in grow bags. doing great so far! I think bounce is ideal for hydro but it is expensive! 5 dollars I think would fill one 2 gallon pot. Maybe I will go coco ebbnflo. I love coco and love to hear about everyone success with it! if it got me 2 pounds per lite I wouldn't mind. 2 pound per lite I would shed tears of joy! Not sure if my shop carry physan I need 2 check it out. I would like to learn 2 get 2 Ps per 600. I

 

[EvilTwin]

Mornin' GA,
Things have gotten a little confused on your thread because of the DWC talk. Since you're currently running your system as designed (E&F), you don't need to worry about water temps so much. Low 70s is fine for E&F. Noreaga's advice would have been correct had you been running a RDWC.

OK, with RDWC (as Blazeoneup builds them), you feed nutrients from the controller to the top of each bucket and it's returned to the controller through the bottom tubing. It really only circulates the nutrient in the controller and the buckets. The res isn't really a part of the recirculating. What the res does is to top off the controller as water/nutrients are used up.

So you would just need to operate your controller on the "fill" mode and never on the "drain" mode. (that would be done at the timer) It would then function as an auto top-off controller. No modifications other then timer setting are needed as I understand it.

Blazeoneup suggests you could install a powerhead and hyper-aerate the controller and then dispense with the airstones in each pot. And I'm thinking the chiller would also be attached to the controller too. Busy little device.

Question. You just got this system and are barely into your first run with it. What are your personal beefs with the ebb and gro that are causing you to abandon it and convert it to a different type of system?

Mind you, I do not disagree with you. I'm doing the same thing (for my own reasons). I'd just like to hear your reasons if you don't mind.
Peace,
ET

PS: You said if you went to DWC you would go up in pot size. Say you go with 3.5 gallon pots, with 24 of them plus your controller volume you're damn near 90 gallons. So you won't be able to use the Ebb and Flow mode as a recirculating tool. Re-think the top-drip system. You have everything except the drip lines which are cheap and easy. But if you really want to go RDWC...sell your Ebb&Gro and start from scratch. IMHO

 

[Lazyman]

LAZYMAN


I added 3.5 grams of Maxibloom which brings me up to 890 or so PPMs. 140 was already in the water because I flooded a couple times with the plain water b4 adding the nutes. I want to work my way up to 1330-1400 PPMs .7 conversion. About 7 grams would give me
N 92
P 121
K 215
Mg 65
S 74
Ca 92
So you think uping the N a little bit even past the stretch would help the yield? I wonder how much to add? I have a left over part a from Monkey Juice coco nutes. 2ml/L or 7.56ml/g wil give 85ppm of N. So adding maybe 1ml/L might be good? That would give me a total of 134.5 PPM once I reach 7 grams per gal. I plan on adding some cool bloom once the buds start to blow up. Once I add KoolBloom it would really be a good Idea to add N to balance it out after adding all that PK. That is what I have read a few times could be wrong tho.
I have been growing on and off since I was 17 so that make around 10 years. Although I was always intersted about indoor growing and studied It on forums. Mostly CC forums "back n the day". This is only my second crop indoor tho. I had done bagseeds at first then AK48 from Nirvana Guerrilla style. Not far out of the city tho like Brown Dirt Warrior(gotta love that guy)




LAZYMAN


Damn thats a nice yeild! How many 600s does your friend use? How much space? So he has 64 pots? I have 24 pots in a 4x9 area but I have space fir 3 more pots. I Have 600 on each side with a 1000 in the middle. I have one 600 turned off cuz i dont have all the spots filled yet. I need to take clones to put in my DIY aero cloner. What nutes does your friend use? I don't know what the yellow bottle of bloom is. Does he use chip coco like bcuzz bounce. I mix bcuzz bounce with the purple bag coco along with perlite and hydroton. Thats what I used for my last indoor. I am reusing outdoor in grow bags. doing great so far! I think bounce is ideal for hydro but it is expensive! 5 dollars I think would fill one 2 gallon pot. Maybe I will go coco ebbnflo. I love coco and love to hear about everyone success with it! if it got me 2 pounds per lite I wouldn't mind. 2 pound per lite I would shed tears of joy! Not sure if my shop carry physan I need 2 check it out. I would like to learn 2 get 2 Ps per 600. I

Yep, I still feed at least 25%-35% Grow nutes/formula all through flower, but go by what your plants will take (push them as hard as you can if you have good roots) but they will take a surprising amount of food if offered. Just don't increase more than about 200PPM per feeding and they won't freak out on you.

K my buddies setup (keep in mind, he's a breeder and keeps the best clones/phenos for himself

2 32-site 2 gallon bucket ebb and grows
2 Solar Revolution movers with 4 X 600w each (+ 1 stationary 600w in the corner)
Canna Bio Terra coco
Waters every other day when plants are big
Bloom is the company name of the nutes, he's using the whole line, only outside additive is inoculaid. Pricey stuff he says.
Sealed room, split AC, CO2 on fuzzy logic, all digi ballasts, separate veg room (plants vegged 7-12 days tops) but god they're pretty, I'll ask if I can snap a couple pics next time I'm over there. He just chopped so it will be a little while anyway. So out of his 5400 watts he's getting 12-15 pounds per cycle. Puts me to shame in sooo many ways.

 

[resinryder]

Feeding them to high of a ppm. And you were watering them to frequently. I never go above 1120 ppm. Basically, you're burning them up
Keep the nute level under 1120. Water this way. 1 hour before lights on, every 4 hours after that, then 1 hour after lights out. Check your plants during the change to make sure they are not drying out between watering. When adding bloom booster, drop back on the normal bloom nutes then adjust up to the normal ppm with the bloom booster. Suddenly raisning the ppm by 300 or so is gonna do what you got going on every time.
Watering-remove the spacers you put them on. Turn the pump on and run it until you get about half way up the medium then run it for another 2 minutes. This will give them what they need. If you water too long on the E&F it will cause root rot and then you're screwed big time.
Once a month, flush with something like Clearx added to the water. Add it and run the pump for about 1 hour and 15 minutes. This will help to pull out the old stuff and help get rid of salt buildup on the medium. During this flush I use a cup to pour the flush water over the medium and use my fingers to help wash away the salt buildup. In hydro, it's important to flush.
I change the nutes every 2 weeks. Never had a problem with this schedule.
I would add calmag at 3 ml/gallon of water. Good stuff.

 

[GuerillaAk]

Mornin' GA,
Things have gotten a little confused on your thread because of the DWC talk. Since you're currently running your system as designed (E&F), you don't need to worry about water temps so much. Low 70s is fine for E&F. Noreaga's advice would have been correct had you been running a RDWC.

OK, with RDWC (as Blazeoneup builds them), you feed nutrients from the controller to the top of each bucket and it's returned to the controller through the bottom tubing. It really only circulates the nutrient in the controller and the buckets. The res isn't really a part of the recirculating. What the res does is to top off the controller as water/nutrients are used up.

So you would just need to operate your controller on the "fill" mode and never on the "drain" mode. (that would be done at the timer) It would then function as an auto top-off controller. No modifications other then timer setting are needed as I understand it.

Blazeoneup suggests you could install a powerhead and hyper-aerate the controller and then dispense with the airstones in each pot. And I'm thinking the chiller would also be attached to the controller too. Busy little device.

Question. You just got this system and are barely into your first run with it. What are your personal beefs with the ebb and gro that are causing you to abandon it and convert it to a different type of system?

Mind you, I do not disagree with you. I'm doing the same thing (for my own reasons). I'd just like to hear your reasons if you don't mind.
Peace,
ET

PS: You said if you went to DWC you would go up in pot size. Say you go with 3.5 gallon pots, with 24 of them plus your controller volume you're damn near 90 gallons. So you won't be able to use the Ebb and Flow mode as a recirculating tool. Re-think the top-drip system. You have everything except the drip lines which are cheap and easy. But if you really want to go RDWC...sell your Ebb&Gro and start from scratch. IMHO

I respect Ebb N Flow and realize that it is a really solid system once you get it dialed in you can pull some quality yields. When I bought this system I intended on running as DWC eventually because I was so impressed with the bubble buckets I have used b4. The yields were much higher than my coco plants in 3 gallon bags. The bud were much dense and they were larger.
It was my first run though and I did have some heat problems once spring hit. I didn't have the cash to cool the room so the canopy was in the 90s and up at times.
But still the bubble buckets came out superb.
I really thing that I could make the DWC system work if I got a larger rez or bought another 55 to add and get them to function as one. Maybe get bigger pumps. and maybe not ever use the feed line. Maybe bigger pumps wouldn't work cuz it will only fill the buckets as fast as the water can move thru those lines. It would help to make sure I use all six ports on the controller for fast fill and drains.
I think of it as running independent bubble buckets but having the controller dump all the nutes into the rez for easy nute maintenance as opposed to checking them all individually. That way the nutes would be uniform in each bucket. Maybe that wouldn't be recirculating but I don't think the nutes solution has to be circulating much as long as you can manage the nute soluton and keep the PH and nute levels where you want them.
Maybe dumping all the nutes in the rez and having the nutes set and oxygenate in the fresh are that was sucked in as the nute solution is sucked out. If 15 minutes isn't too long.
Reasons for wanting to switch to DWC=ROOTs. I Love those pearly white mops hanging down in the bubbling solution sucking up what they need and leaving what they don't. Which is what they seem do as long as you give them the right ratios of NPK plus micros and and the right PH.
I will use this ebb n gro for awhile and get dialed in. If I like the growth rates I will keep it. If not I will try DWC . I wonder if 2 gallon pots would work if you kept the plants small and kept the nuts changing in out to keep it cool. Plus you would have to get a different net pot lid or make one.
Shit I might be crazy. I don't know! LOL Just throw in some Ideas out there. I would defiantly like to here the opinions of some of you experienced heads.
The guys at the hydro store seemed tho think it would b easy to covert. I wonder why 2 gallons is enough space for the roots in grow rox but not in water? Is it the temp issues in the solution it could cause?
Sorry for going overboard. I know its a jumbled mess of ideas!
Hehe! Im willing to try anything once! Then again maybe the guys in the mult-flow thread got the right Idea. But put air stones in