BUILD YOUR OWN STARTER KIT

The great thing about indoor gardening and hydroponics is that everyone seems to have an opinion on what works best for great harvests.  While our three basic starter kits (CFL, Metal Halide, and LED) are complete packages that include everything you need to grow successfully, we realize that there are some growers who might want to tweak our three standard starter kit offerings.  To you, we say, "Tweak On!"  You can now customize your hydroponics growing system with our Build Your Own Hydroponics Kit.

Build Your Own Starter Kit


There are four easy steps to creating your own Hydroponic Starter Kit.  First, you need to get a grow tent--we recommend ours.  Then you choose your lighting system.  Next is your grow area outfitting and finally you choose which, if any, accessories you need.  The video below runs through your options.


Build Your Own Hydroponic Starter Kit Now

STEP ONE: BUY YOUR GROW TENT
Ours is 48" x 23" x 50" high.  It has a 8 square foot floor area requirement and provides 40 cubic feet of growing area.  Made of thick, durable black canvas on the outside and silver reflective surface on the inside.  Plenty of cut-outs for duct tubing, exhaust fans, and odor control.  These cut-outs are surrounding with pre-drilled screw  holes to make attaching flanges and fans a breeze.
$169

STEP TWO:  CHOOSE YOUR LIGHTING SYSTEM
We offer three distinct lighting solutions.  Each has their advantages depending on your situation.  Each of our lighting solutions provides more than adequate light for successful grows within our grow tent.
  • CFL Grow Light Solution.  CFL (compact fluorescent light) offer several advantages.  They are relatively inexpensive, they last a long time (I've done five grows with mine and they still are blazing away), and they put out relatively little heat.  Our CFL Lighting Solution contains three (3) 85W CFL bulbs, three (3) cords with sockets plus an extension cord to tie all three CFL's into one electrical plug, a digital timer and a yo-yo mount.
$199

  • Metal Halide Grow Light Solution.  Mh (metal halide) bulbs are the pick of most professional growers.  Their light spectrum is perfect for flowering and they put out the most lumens (measurement of light output) of any of our lighting solutions.  They do get rather hot, which is why enclose our metal halide bulb in a cool tube with a built-in, in-line fan that draws cool air over the bulb and greatly reduced the heat output.  CFL bulbs also require a ballast to work and they do draw more electricity than our other lighting solutions.  Our Metal Halide Solution includes one (1) 400W metal halide bulb, cool tube with inline cooling fan and reflector, digital ballast, duct tubing, hose clamps and flanges, digital timer and yo-yo mounts.
$299

  • LED Grow Light Solution.  The LED light is the wave of the future.  With both red and blue bulbs, LED grow lights do a wonderful job of giving plants the light spectrum that works best.  LED lights last a very long time and they put out a modest amount of heat.  They run off of normal electric current.  Included in our LED Lighting Solution is one (1) 300W LED light assembly with six cooling fans on its top, digital timer and yo-yo mounts.
$795


STEP THREE:  CHOOSE  YOUR GROWING AREA CONFIGURATION
We offer three distinct indoor gardening/hydroponics growing area configurations.  They all do the same job--provide support and irrigation for your plants.  How they do it, and the maximum number of plants they are designed for is where they differ.

  • Hydro Grow Pots.   This grow area solution consists of four (4) hydro grow pots that contain a bottom water reservoir space to feed nutrients up into the plant.  As with all of our hydroponics growing area solutions, a six months supply of nutrients (veg and bloom) is included.They are designed to use soil as your grow medium, but of course any inert hydroponics grow medium will work as well.  It's surprising to see how many big growers have switched from pure hydroponic systems to soil based hydroponics.  The main reason is they are so simple to use and have no moving parts, hence no maintenance.  Plus it's a lot easier to move a plant in a hydro pot than it is to move six or more plants in a water filled hydroponics grow area.  NOTE: we like to sell stuff, but if you want to save some money, just go to your local nursery and buy some regular pots for gardening.  Then order the nutrients from us. 
$149

  • Six Hole Hydro Tub.  This is a pure hydroponics system.  It contains a five gallon grow tub with six cutouts for mesh growing pots.  It uses a water pump to force water through the six port irrigation manifold and directly drip water on the base of the plants.  The tub has an attachable drain to make draining your tube easy.  Also included are an air pump with two air stones, mesh pots, growing medium and six months of nutrients (veg and bloom.)
$89

  • Nine Hole Hydro Reservoir.  The preferred hydroponics growing are for professional growers, the low profile hydro reservoir is a drip irrigation system that is easily backflushed for draining purposes.  Our Nine Hole Hydro Reservoir growing area includes the reservoir, water pump, drip irrigation system, mesh pots, grow medium, air pump and air stones (which slide in to designated slots on the bottom of your reservoir so they don't come bubbling to the surface) and six month supply of nutrients (veg and bloom included).
$299

STEP FOUR: SELECT YOUR ACCESSORIES
While all of our hydroponic starter kits are designed to have everything you need, we realize that different people have different needs or preferences.  For this reason we offer a few select accessories that you should consider. 
  • Odor Control System.  Includes professional exhaust fan, carbon air scrubber/filter, duct tubes and flanges.  This is heavy duty, industrial strength odor control.
$169
  • Intake Fan with flange.    This is a high quality fan designed to bring cool, outside air into your grow tent environment.  This helps keep your plants at their optimum growing temperature (mid 70s to mid 80s) as well as provide air circulation which plants seem to groove on.
$49

  • Year Supply of Nutrients.  Proper nutrients for medical marijuana are usually not found at your local nursery.  You need two different nutrient formulations if you want to grow successfully.  Vegatative nutrients help your plant gain maximum fullness, bloom nutrients are necessary for great buds.  In our year supply of nutrients we provide four months of veg nutrients and eight months of bloom nutrients (medical marijuana seems to grow best with one month of veg state and two months of bloom state).
$125
Build Your Own Hydroponic Starter Kit Now


OUR REVIEW

Hydroponics for Dummies offers three great hydroponic starter kits plus a build your own starter kit package that we really love.

We love the modular design that has gone into the Build Your Own Starter Kit.  First time/novice growers can be overwhelmed by the choices many hydroponic manufacturers put you through.  Not so with Hydroponics for Dummies.

Ask a dozen growers what they use for lights and grow areas and  you'll likely get a dozen answers.  The funny thing is that everyone of the answers is correct.  In other words there is no right way or wrong way to grow hydroponically...all we're really concerned with, at the end of the day, is that we have a great harvest and spend more time smoking it than we did in growing it.

Here's to happy, successful harvests no matter which hydroponic starter kit you choose.

FULL DISCLOSURE:  The products we recommend have been purchased and used by us.  Our reviews represent our honest opinion about the product.  However, in many cases we do make a small percentage (usually 10%) of the purchase price if you click on our link to the product before you buy.