Hey,

Seems you have your stuff sorted.
To answer your questions,
1. as your using soil ferts, makes sure its dissolved, also make sure its a complete fert. micros and all. Start with 1/4 strenght soltuion and work up. Cant coment on how often to water/fert as I dont know the plant so to speak.
2. Depends on what ph that fert comes out at dissolved, and what would be ideal for your plants. As its a peat you where using that will of acted like a buffer for the ph. Expanded clay dosent have any buffer. Also depending how much you washed your clay peebles, and if its not done well, if could rasie the pH alot, so what I do is Wash it the n soak it in a ph'd solution overnight to make sure the ph dosnt rise to much after the first water/feed.
3. Waterfrom the top to get an established root system for that type of system. So the plant can draw from the bottom of the pot. Water from the top but getting that balance of dry enough to promote root growth/wet enough so the clay Peebles dont dry out.

Best o luck.

Thank you for the reply. It's always comforting to get a second opinion, especially since you confirm much of what I already knew but wasn't sure about.

And thanks for the fertilizer tip, will keep that in mind.

This post was edited by noobie236 on Wed, Jan 28, 15 at 23:43

Hi, how is your sans? Just read your post and I am courious how you're getting on with transplanting your plants. I grow sans in clay pebbles, and they do very well.

Well, so far it looked decent enough, I think it had a bit of growth as well. However, these last few days on of the leaves turned a brownish green and it seems like it's beginning to wilt.

I also have it in clay pebbles, but not sure what's happening. Guess I'll just home it pulls through.

I wouldn't use a fertilizer intended for soil. most of those types of fertilizer use a form of nitrogen that needs to be broken down by soil borne bacteria. it could very well be the reason for the foliage problems you describe.

if you're growing hydroponically, you should only use hydroponic nutrients.

I use ecogrow standard nutrients. I don't grow sansevieria, but the nutes work fine for all of my plants; basil, onions, lettuce, tomatoes, cauliflower, peppers...

I'm pretty tight with my money and ecogrow is the most economical I've been able to find. 30 us dollars for 5 pounds of powdered nutrients. my hydro unit holds 30 net pots and 5 pounds lasted almost 2 years. You can find it at ecogrow.com. I don't have any connection with ecogrow except for buying their product.

I've also read that you should dump the nutrients weekly. but I just monitor the PPM levels and top them off as the plants use the nutes. I only dump the nutes about every 4-6 months. that's probably why 5 pounds of nutes last more than a year.

good luck

I'm far far away from that shop, but point taken. By this time it's almost completely dead unfortunately, not sure if it was the nutrients or lack of them. Or as you mention, the missing nitrogen. Will keep these in mind for the next tryouts.

not sure where you live, but if you don't have a hydroponics shop nearby, most shops will ship nutrients. I'm not near ecogrow, but I mail order nutrients from them.

another route you might want to explore if you can't afford, or don't have a hydro shop you can buy from, is organic hydroponics "tea".

I've never used it, but from my understanding you put a bunch of compost into something fabric (blanket, cheesecloth, burlap bag, old pair of jeans...) you tie it up so the compost can't get out and then put it into a bucket of water. bob it around for a couple of hours, like a giant teabag, and the nutrients end up in the water. then you just use the water as nutrients for your hydroponics.

good luck, and hope your future experiments work out better.