I am no expert but I can offer you my opinion on a few of your questions

1. I just sprinkle a bunch of seeds (always more than I need) expecting just a few to germinate and then to my surprise (every time) far too many germinate, not sure why I never learn this lesson but anyway I generally let them grow for a week or so and then kull the weaker ones if they start competing for space. Cilantro or where I'm from coriander can get pretty big so I wouldn't plant too many in each cube 2 or 3 maybe.

2. Neutrients: you could spend a lot of time researching this, in the beginning I wouldn't get caught up in it all. Go to your local store, ask what they recommend, try it, then start doing your research and try different brands and see what works best for you and your specific needs.

3. During germination its water only, putting in neutients at this stage is just throwing money down the drain, it won't hurt but it won't help. The seed contains all the nutrients the seedling needs, at least until you have the first leaves out.

4. You skipped four

5. I change neutients once a month some people recommend a little more often some less, try it out yourself.

6. i believe cilantro can grow to about 500mm diameter fully grown but I would start at about 50mm between plants but again I'm no expert on cilantro.

7. Lighting: can't really help you there. Same hours as the sun is out?

Anyway hope this helps you a bit. I do find it a bit hard to believe that you couldn't find any information out there, a little search in Google should bring you an overwhelming amount of information.

Remember the most important part is just get in and give it a try don't get caught on the details and have fun growing!!

Wayde

I appreciate the feed back!

if I told you I was on google for 4 hours before I wrote the questions (4 is overrated to me apparently) would you believe me? not all at once but spread out in one day. Plenty of info on vague items, but specifics was the issue. Having it hydroponiclly grown vs soil doesn't help finding information any easier. I am wanting to get as "close" to right so I don't have to wait another month before I can harvest, if I were to have a failed attempt.

Again Thanks Wayde!

Haha Ok, finding specifically: beginners guide to hydroponically grown cilantro may take a bit longer than 4 hours hahaha yeah you may need to puzzle the info together :) maybe there is someone on here that can help with the specifics but I like to make the mistakes and experiment, but your right, you will have a few failed attempts before you get it right. But to be honest it's pretty hard to completely fail with hydroponics, you may not get the best result from the start but you will get something eatable at least.

If you want to speed up the trial and error method I like to split my systems into a number of sealed off sections. This way you can trial a number of different combinations of variables at the same time.

how have you been sealing them into separate sections? i was planning to run (well drive, its -10 out) to the hardware store and pick up a few extra Rubbermaid's for different experiments, but if I could easily separate 1 bin into multiple compartments I'd take a stab at that too. I do expect plenty of bumps, part of life.

Sorry for the late reply. I'm not really sure how your setup looks or what type you have and unfortunately I can't send you a picture of mine as its back in Australia whilst I'm now living in Sweden, but basically you could think of it as having multiple systems completely seperate with their own water reservoir and pump but located in the same place (in fact the growing surfaces are intertwined so that they are exposed to the same lighting conditions). But I was using an NFT (this is what I'm referring to here), but I have in the past achieved the same thing with deep water culture but in this case the systems were simply side by side. My next system that I will be building here in Sweden will be a vertical tower solution with drip feed and I will be aiming for just two seperate water systems. The problems is you need double the number of pumps and pipe and what not but I think it's worth it.