Mistake #1. Thank you!

Mine started out leggier than yours, I waited too long to put them under good lights. My plants are pretty stout now(small but stout), even with the leggy start. Looking forward to seeing how yours grow!

I'm assuming as long as there's condensation in the container I don't need to add water? How long does it normally take from sprouting to transplanting?

Using rockwool you can transplant as soon as they sprout, should only take a day to harden the seedling to rooms humidity. Rockwool retains alot of water, so be careful on your water level as i had "damping off" problems with it. Too damp for too long and a bacteria will attack the lower plant base, causing sprout death. I

I usually keep seedlings under 24/7 light the first week,helps prevent any stretch. Ill then switch them over to the 16/8 and up the ferts to 500ppm +/- depending in what im growing. Lettuce 500, mater 600-700

If your lettuce does fall over dont be worried. Here is two pics, first one is still growing strong after it fell over. Second is one thats straight up from sponge. Havent noticed an increase or decrese in growth on either.

You're awesome, Chuckwagon!

Edit: Does your electric company send you a Christmas present? :)

Thanks for the compliments.

I wish they did as much $ as i give them a month. Between my 3 bay garage buisness behind the house and more guests at any given time than a party hall i give them over a grand a month.

Ouch. I had a restaurant with a walk-in cooler, 3 refrigerated makelines, and A/C running 24/7 and it was only $600/month.

Id give them a few more days to see progress. My lettuce usually starts slow as well, as soon as the roots pump out of the plugs they will take off. Just make sure you are not keeping the rockwool drenched.

What lights are you using? I see its LED which worries me as the cheaper LED light manufactures really make alot of false claims on output of their lights.

It's this light: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B012R362YK?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o03_s01

14 watts? I am afraid you wasted your money. 14 watts even as efficient as LED's are that Is insufficient light. Im trying to find a lumen output rating or PAR rating and it seems undisclosed. You might want to look around at some LED lighting forums and see if you can buy or make an overdrive unit to up the voltage and get maximum output from the lights you have. Best of luck with it, keep us updated.

I have a stockpile of T12 tubes because that's what I use for general lighting in my basement. Would I be better off picking up a shop light and using those?

Yes, much better. I actually missed the lux rating in the description of that light. Oops. At .3m/430 lux...1 lumen =10 lux. So at one foot that light puts out 43 lumens. Very very poor in terms of plant needs and efficiency. Example one 23w compact fluorescent bulb puts out 1600 lumen.

Wow! I'll get that fluorescent set up and figure out how I want to rig up some CFLs. If I get it done today, think those plants will make it?

If you are just doing lettuce i think that the t12s will be sufficient. Maybe on your tomato bucket get a few cfl's but lettuce should be good with the t12's placed 3-4 inches over them.

Yes your plants will recover, it might take a few days before growth get apparent.

Does that LED light have any value going forward, or should I try to return it?

Id return it, 43 lumens cannot sufficiently sustain plant life. Even a shade loving plant would starve of light under it.

Now you are talkin!!! Bet your seedlings love the change. Once they they get a bit Bigger they may want a second fixture but for now thats way better than what you had with that LED

My goal with the LED was to keep power consumption down. But I did the calculations. Even two 40W tubes running 16 hours a day is only $0.12/day.

I was really surprised how inexpensive the cfls and flourescent tubes are to run. If you check around, you can also find an inexpensive fixture for either kind. I am really pleased with the lights I have, so far they are plenty for my plants, and they only cost about a quarter a day to run.(I have 3-23 watt cfls and 2 2' flourescent tubes.

When you are eating your delicious salad that you homegrew....you won't care if you spent $30 a month.

I look at it like, I have a project car that i blow hundreds of dollars on a month, yes it gives me the chills when driving it. But does it fill mine and other bellys, does it calm my nerves like gardening, does it inspire others to be self sustaining? Nope, yet i still do it. Sometimes a little out of pocket brings more joy and inspiration than what you'd imagine

I wanted to make a big batch of tomato sauce about a month ago. I went to Restaurant Depot to get tomatoes, and a 25# case that normally cost $15 was $40. Romaine also shot from $25/case to $45.

That was literally the day I started researching hydroponics.

Yeah, the price of veggies is outrageous here too, and completely forget anything labaled organic. Even in the summer here farmers markets and grocery stores are getting $4 a pound for heirloom or even any color then red tomatoes. Heads of romain right now are 3.99 each and not a pound. Choy is running $3 a piece and barely half a pound, mostly stem and flavor is lacking big.

Hard to tell what exactly is all given to the plants....pesticides, growth enhancers, Chemical shelf life treatments. I am also quite concerned about all the e-coli and Listeria that has been plaguing the world in the large production crops and blamed on the restaurant or distribution centers. If it is reoccurring then it has to be coming from from upstream site, but nothings ever said of production nor their facilities.

Huge difference with the new light, buddy! Everything is greener and second set of leaves are pushing through. My cuke and kale sprouted like gangbusters this morning.

I have another tub exactly like the first (27 gallon). Any suggestions on how I should punch out the lid? My first tub has 17 slots: 12 lettuce, 1 cuke, 1 kale, 1 spinach and 2 tomatoes that are being relocated to buckets. I definitely want to do peppers (bell, habanero and jalapeno), at least one broccoli, pak choi.

Im not sure of the dimensions of your tote but almost all the plants you listed need a minimum of 1 sq ft per plant. By looking at the pics i would go with 6 plants. Maximum 9 and youll be crowding quite a bit then.

Chuck, I should have my water heaters tomorrow. What temp should I dial in?

Mitch, I would shoot for around 70 degrees. Colder gets you More dissolved oxygen but tends to grow a little slower, any hotter and you run the risk of pathogens growing quickly.

Thanks. I received the 25W heater and have had it in the tomato bucket @ 70 degrees.

Everything else is suffering in 50 degree water. Hopefully that 100W heater will come today.

Even though, it's still fun to watch them grow. Everything looks green and healthy and roots are taking off.

New heater came. Now I realize my tds meter didn't compensate for temperature. So 700 ppm @ 50 degrees is 900 ppm @ 70 degrees. Lol..part of the learning process. I hope to find someone locally who does this...I need a neighbour like Chuck.

But plants seem healthy. Just not as freakishly fast.

Hey mitch. I wouldn't worry about your meter not being temperature compensated. As long as your reservoirs are staying a consistent temperature, give or take, your meter can give you the information you need which should be just a reference point for ppm to see what it's doing when the plants drink water.

Just realize that whatever ppm that meter is showing you is most likely lower than actual ppm. Meters read EC first then do a conversion and salts don't give the same electrical conductivity at the same ppm. Meaning 100 actual ppm of one element will give a different reading than 100 ppm of another element. Sometimes they are vastly different yet the actual ppm is 100. What you are seeing on the meter is an approximation and an attempt to average it out.

This probably doesn't affect you now but when you get into adding supplements like a bloom booster, which many contain monopotassium phosphate, your ppm will be way higher than indicated by the meter and it's easy to start causing salt damage to your plants if you're not careful if you use a meter to shoot for a target concentration.

Thanks! So my water level hasn't dropped because obviously my plants are still small. The water is still about 1/4" above the bottom of the net cups. But the roots are a good 6" long. When I do a water change, do I want to refill to a lower level to promote air roots?

Yes I would drop your water level about 2-3 inches. Give the roots about 2 good inches of air roots. To not shock them it would be best to fill to the current level and over a period of a few days remove a few cupfulls at a time till you have 2-3 inches of roots above your waterline.

Things are looking good, they are at that size that they should start really growing quickly. My lettuce does 80% of its growth from day 20-30.

Yeah, I'm excited now. I know once we start eating what we grow, I can justify expanding. :) When I do the water change do I want to also change the Flora nutrient proportions?

Are you running air stones or doing kratky?

Airstones

What's this silly cucumber doing?

Pull it and quickly. My guess after reading is it has been 2 weeks and no growth...... with rock wool is root rot. Cucs are very water sensitive and will rot very quickly when the roots are drenched. Pop a new one in and keep water lvls lower in res

So even though the root is white (it's about 1" out of the rockwool) you still think it's a goner?

I wouldn't risk it spreading the bacteria. Separate it at least. If it really is not going anywhere i would start a new one. In 2 weeks my cucs are usually on their 3-4th set of leaves.

As always, thanks. Will do.

Right now I'm researching a cherry tomato that would be right for me. If you could shortcut it for me, I'll be your Valentine. Lol!

At first I saw Red house tomato, then I saw bad reviews.

Are you wanting a red cherry? I love lemon drops (yellow and huge producer) and chocolate cherry's (Deep red/purple but have a large heirloom flavor). If you want production its hard to beat SS100, but its average flavor. Tumbler is a large producer for plant size, yeilds super early, and is on par with most container varietys taste.

So to cut to the chase my favorite is lemon drop. Soil i average 15+ lbs off it but have yet to hydro it as it gets BIG. 3 years ago i had 20+ ft vines and it was out of control. It can be tamed and i do plan to hydro it this year but ill have to trim a ton.

The best cherry tomato I have found for hydro is Red Robin. Reason being is that it stays very small and makes it more manageable in a hydro system. I have grown Husky dwarf and Super Sweets in hydro as well. Even though the Husky is a dwarf it can get very large and super sweets just get huge. And they are all messy plants. When they start fruiting, leaves will die and drop and you will have to do some pruning.

The Red Robin will produce, if properly cared for, a massive amount of tomatoes for it's size and they're tasty. Much better tasting than I had expected. Taste and shelf life will depend on how you manage them though. If you don't give them what they need, just like any tomato, they will end up waterlogged and flat tasting. Give them too much and they can get a metallic taste to them. It's much easier to screw up the taste of a hydro tomato than it is a soil-grown one in my experience.

These are two Red Robin I have right now both going into their second production. There is still quite a bit of pruning you have to do with these guys but you can see they stay small making them perfect for home hydro system. These two plants provide us with more than enough tomatoes for eating.

There is also the advantage that if you are using fluorescent that have less penetration than something like HID it's much easier to light the plants.

Thanks, guys.

Chuck...I just looked back at your cuke pix from December. Wow...I just assumed because mine was green and firm that it was okay. It never got beyond seed leaves! Started a new one this morning.

I subscribe to a YouTube channel called Indoor Hydroponics. He's great. His cucumbers went berserk in just a couple weeks.

When can I chow down?

Feel free to harvest the older larger leaves anytime.

Other than my lettuce, I'm done with everything else until it warms up. I didn't expect another cold snap. Even though the water is heated, the surrounding air in the basement is in the 40's. Brrr. My band had shows all weekend and when I got back the habanero was dead.

I'm enjoying the lettuce. I'll put together a bucket setup for other plants in a couple weeks. I always knew having lettuce and peppers and cukes in the same container was just an experiment anyway. Even though they put out nice roots, they're severely stunted.

Hey guys! I raised my lights a couple days ago. I was gone all weekend and when I returned the lettuce had stretched out and filled in.

Since I've given up on any other plants on this round, should I bother doing a nutrient change, or just let it ride? I could top it off, or just let it go as we eat the lettuce.

The water level is only down about 2".

I would mainly focus on feeding your big plants that use the most nutrients,small plants like lettuce can survive in just about anything and will grow fine using flowering nutrients good info here in you need it,newer page but the guy knows how to grow http://growww.weebly.com/hydroponics.html