No guesswork, no measuring, no multiple bottles of chemicals, no mess.  Just mix and add.  Best of all, the nutrients have built in pH buffers which do a really good job of keeping your pH in the optimal range of 6.5.  Designed for use with the Bubbleponics stealth hydro growing system, but will work with any hydroponics system.

By cramming six plants into an area meant for no more than two, you are stunting the growth of all six plants, guaranteeing you minimal yield from any one plant.

By growing your plants too tall, you run the risk of overgrowing your lights.  The fact is your plants will grow a foot-and-a-half to two feet AFTER you switch to flowering mode (12 hours light, 12 hours dark).  If  your plants are taller than your lights two thing will happen, neither of them good.  You’ll burn your plants where the light come into contact with them and you’ll minimize the yield from the top of the plant, which is where the biggest buds grow. 

Follow up:

After several rounds of growing, I’ve developed the following procedures.

• As soon as the plants are showing roots, switch to flowering mode.

• After plants get to be between 18″ and 24″ tall, bend them sideways so they are growing at right angles to the ground.  You thick string to hold in place.  This is commonly known as the sea of green technique.  What it does is expose lots more plant to the light and you end up with much higher yields.

So, don’t get greedy.  Think counter-intuitively and you’ll get bigger harvests with a lot less sweat.

However, there is one other important consideration that often goes overlooked for about two to three weeks into your first hydroponics venture.   Successful hydroponic growing requires a complete change of water and nutrients every two weeks or so.  If you haven’t considered drainage until now, you could be in for a big, and unpleasant surprise.

With the Bubbleponics Dual Spectrum Hydroponics Kit, a drain is an optional accessory.  Get it.  Also, make sure your resevoir (and the drain) are raised a good 4″ or more above the area you are going to drain into.  I have it easy, I just run a garden hose from the drain (it fits on quite nicely) out my front door and into the gutter, which is a downhill run.

Raised reservoir (it sits on block of styrofoam) so drain goes downhill

If you don’t have an easy way to drain your system outdoors, you’ll need to drain into buckets or plastic gallon milk containers, and this means you’ll need to raise your hydroponic reservoir high enough to allow the bucket or container to fit under the drain.

Otherwise, you will be faced with the painful chore of bailing out your reservoir cup by cup.  If this was just a one time thing, it would be ok.  Unfortunately, you’ll be draining your system every two weeks.

Simply put, light plus moisture equals algae, and the rock wool cube gets both light (24 hours a day in veggie phase) and moisture making it a prime candidate for algae source of the year. I’ve seen algae come real close to killing a plant which is how I learned how dangerous it can be.

Note how black algae has made the rockwool on the plant on the left

The easy solution?  Get some black plastic (think garbage bag) and cut it into 3″ x 3″ squares then put a cut in from midway through one of the sides to the center of the square.  Place on top of rock wool cube and voila, no more algae.

Black plastic cut from garbage bag prevents light from causing algae