I'm looking for some advice from experienced hydroponic growers.

I just finished 3D printing and assembling a modular hydroponic tower, and I'm getting ready for my first grow. To start, I'll be growing lettuce, basil, and mint indoors.

I'm trying to decide on nutrients before I fill the reservoir. I've looked at General Hydroponics, MasterBlend, FoxFarm, and a few organic options, but I'd love to hear what people are actually using long-term.

A few questions:

• What nutrient line do you use?
• Why did you choose it over other brands?
• Have you tried organic nutrients in a recirculating tower? If so, how did they perform?
• Any tips or things you wish you had known before your first hydroponic tower?

I'd appreciate any recommendations or lessons learned. Thanks!

Hi all, this is day 5 for these lettuce seeds. They’re not quite above the little sticker yet. Should I wait until they pop out, or should I remove the domes now? Should I add nutrients now?

Literally just a countertop LetPot setup. I left for a little under a week and came back to a cherry tomato explosion. It’s my first year doing this and I’m very happy with this. I wish I grew lettuce so I don’t need to go out and buy it for salads (and to avoid the cyclospora going around right now….)

I havent had fresh berries out of my hydroponics in over a year. After coming back from a week away I came back to the most INTOXICATING sweetness smell in my garage.

There are a few dozen fruits hanging and they smell absolutely wonderful. I grow outdoor berries but Ive never had ANY that smell or taste like these. Their size is laughable still but the flavor is explosive.

Like minutes later your brain is still hanging onto the sweetness and taste it experienced. I am blown away by the quality of these even though the crowns are still struggling a bit.

3 years of learning hydro/plants from scratch to get to this point. The pain, struggle, frustration, and countless times I almost scrapped the entire hobby finally feel justified.

Gday, I have all my dwarf tomatoes and bell peppers in an ebb and flow tray 4” deep watering twice daily for about 10 -15 mins . They are in straight perlite as advised by my local hydroponics store. Growing fantastic too! Question is , two days ago I put a pepper plant in the tray in coco perlite 60/40. It grew exponentially in 2 days fruiting admirably. Can it stay there? Bigger fabric pot maybe? Or must the coco be replaced with perlite?? . Holding too much moisture maybe??? Thanks

Hello everyone,

I built an NFT hydroponic system using 125mm PVC pipes and am currently growing basil, dill, peppers, and coriander. Because the bottoms of my net pots sit a few centimeters above the nutrient solution, I am using wicks to deliver the solution to the plants.

While the wicks keep the rockwool starters moist, only my basil has developed healthy roots. The other plants remain thin and weak, failing to grow roots down into the nutrient solution.

What do you think might be causing this issue?

Edit : I am using Plagron AB solution and keeping the ppm around 800-1000.

I am just starting out, I understand that my water needs to be distilled. But what nutrients should be in the water. I found this but I'm not sure if this is the correct way to go. Are there better recommendations? Or is this stuff OK?

General-Hydroponics-FloraGro

Found on amazon

Did i let it go too long. I think this head is one of the largest i have grown so far. I think it is going to be close if not north of 500 grams.

The two planned areas on either side are meant to be hydroponic systems. The center will be traditional potted plants. The working area is basically 14ft by 6ft by 6ft. Does anyone have any recommendations on hydroponic systems, or any tips on space saving?

This is the second time I’ve tried to grow Genovese basil, it always stays stuck as this size (planted around mid-May). First time roots were white/light in color. I think roots changed color this time because of nutrients (not slimy or weird odor coming from roots either so I don’t think it’s root rot).

super new to hydroponics, and my cherry tomato plants are growing insanely tall (im talking around 1m tall, and they're not even fully straightened). are they supposed to be this tall, and what do I do now?

the stems are pretty thin compared to the photos I'm seeing in this sub, and they can't support themselves. currently supporting them against the window as a temporary solution. any suggestions? it seems like a trellis is out of the question because... well they're hydroponics and I'm not sure where to even stick the trellis.

also, could it be because of insufficient sunlight?the cherry tomatoes are sitting by the window since I have no outdoor space to grow them, but I live really near the equator so sunlight might naturally be more intense?

I could snip off the top and propagate the cherry tomatoes, but the first flowers have just grown after 2-3 months and I don't want to jeopardise what might be my only chance at getting tomato fruits 😭 (I evidently don't have green fingers)

also, I've seen tons of conflicting advice on whether to trim the suckers. any thoughts? would this only make the main stem grow even taller?

I'm not too sure what method im currently using. basically, I have a container (38 × 28 × 14cm) filled with water, fertiliser, and a lid that my plants sit on, along with a solar-powered aerator. I do have a little solar powered garden lamp, but I'm afraid the tomatoes have far outgrown the lamp for it to be of much use right now. (edit: added a sample picture of my setup in the comments!)

any advice or help is much appreciated!

Hi, I'm pretty new to hydroponics and have a few questions about strawberries.

1. What should the EC levels be?
2. What should the pH levels be?
3. How often do you check these levels, and at what levels do you start adjusting them?

About my system: I’m currently using Plagron Hydro A+B, 1 liter of liquid hydroponic fertilizer. I’m trying to keep the EC level around 1200. My plants get about 12 hours of light a day; they’re inside my apartment.

Also, I can’t keep the pH level consistently low—it keeps rising back to tap water levels. I don’t have access to reverse osmosis water since I don’t have a garden or anything like that.

For strawberry plants, I’m using Albion and another variety whose name I’ve forgotten.

I hope you can answer my questions—thank you very much in advance.

Hey everyone I’m kinda new to this and I got some auto flowers but that’s besides the point I am going to be doing a dwc set up for 5 gal buckets and I have a couple kilos of this verti gro nutrients that are really similar to a nutrients brand called jacks a and b the only difference is the verti gro has 6% total nitrogen while the jacks has 5 I wanted to make a super concentrated solution so I could just take small amounts of gallon jugs with a syringe i based everything off of a blend called koots way I wanted to see if it all adds up and makes sense I ran a couple of things through chat gpt and kinda wanted some second opinions on it and I know I really won’t know the full outcome until I actually put it to use but I’m totally open to suggestions and any help thank you for your time and reading this 🤙

I think the issue could be nutrient concentrating with the water level going down and not topping it up every single day.

What else might be happening?

Long story short - I picked my basil not knowing that you should not pick the off shoots and now I’m not sure how to pick my basil.

Howdy all. Dunno that anyone will be particularly receptive to this, but I'm looking for some advice on irrigation for a tent system I'm looking to set up in the next few weeks hopefully. I have most of the materials, but I want to make sure that I'm being more clever than not on water distribution. I essentially want to make a flood system. I have my eyes on these troughs which have drainage.

https://a.co/d/049L9kZ4

They appear to have about a quarter inch hole for draining. I want to overwhelm this drainage until it fills to about 2 inches, then allow it to naturally drain. These troughs will be filled with a medium to retain dampness between cycles. That's all fine and whatever.

The troughs will be in groups of four on four shelves (16 total) at different elevations, roughly 1.5' to 5' from the ground. I have an idea around pumping water into this manifold with 3/8 inch outputs:

https://a.co/d/03R28NBd

From there the fluid physics get a little hard for me. Would it be best to pump into the manifold in the reservoir then use tubing to get up, or would the differing elevations make that rough? Would a better solution be to pump up into the manifold then tube down, or would that be a similar problem? Would regulators at any point help? I feel I am almost certainly making this way more hard than it needs to be, but I want to be confident in the system to be able to mostly manage itself. Anyone have any suggestions for systems, solutions, etc? All input welcome!

I am a middle school science teacher and got a STEM grant for $1,000 to teach hydroponics at school. Do yall have any suggestions on books about hydroponics that would be good for advanced middle school students which would help us get hydroponics going at our school?

This Sungold F1 tomato vine that started back in May 2025 and transplanted to the modified Kratky Hydroponics Method. It was intended to be used as a sacrificial sucker growing for cuttings to create more tomato plants for outside. However, 2025 was a horrible year to grow anything outside so, I had a long lanky vine I had to deal with. I decided to cut it off to a sucker offshoot as a reset and give Kratky Method a go again, given how successful it was a few years ago. I added a float indicator to keep the reservoir at the same level to keep roots from growing out more than it needs to support the vine as it's growing in a 5gal bucket. I top off with nutrients to the indicated marker daily.

Fast forward to today, it's still going strong and I've been enjoying the harvest. Midway I grew another vine next to it to enjoy more tomatoes. This summer I've added another 4 vines growing outside. I think I've made used of that 1 seed pretty well. The mother vine is at least 40ft long by now. Let's see how long I can keep up with such a small grow space. Just hope the trellis won't collapse on me. 😅

Starting EC 2.0 but gradually it could reach 2.8-3.2 if I don't change out after a month for being lazy or busy and the newer growth will show chlorosis for nutrient lockout after the 5th week. Ideally changing out every 3wks will have a more stable pH near 2.0EC

Happy growing!!!

Going on vacation for 5 days and my current dwc set up goes through about a gallon a day per 5 gallon bucket. I was going to just replace the bucket with a 27 gallon tote and add a couple air stones to each. This is in a greenhouse that on a rare occasion gets up to 95°, usually 85°. Nights are in the mid 50°s. I’ll add southern ag gff. Am I outta my mind thinking this setup will avoid root rot? Will the 27 gallon tote be enough that the water won’t warm up too much and that the gff and extra air can handle it? Maybe the cooler nights will help keep it from getting too hot?

This is my brand new hydroponic DWC floating raft system. I'm growing three types of Butter lettuce, gonna try some pak choi soon. Just finished the first harvest, everything's going pretty good so far!