Fytocell or perlite

[ijustdontcare]

just wondering if anyone has had experience using this was told its better then perlite.. would love some opinions Edited September 9, 2008 by ijustdontcare

[loylty gets u nothing]

i tried it wen it 1st came out

i think they where experiencinmg ph issues then

cause i mixed up everything as per bag instructions

and got a product wiyh a ph 0f 3 or something

i think theres a couple of others here who have tried it since then

with some good results

so i gather they have finished there trials and have successfully got a good product

on the same note perlite thats dialed will yield well too

imho its not tha medium its getting to know ya strain

all tha best

bil

[ijustdontcare]

thank you for the reply bill always good to get others opinions first before u start spending money

[ijustdontcare]

yes it does thank you cooper. i will stick to perlite seems the way too go the more info the better

[Al B. Fuct]

Sounds like my experience is atypical. I've been running Fytocell in my flood systems for about 8 mos now and have had very good luck with it. It performs much better than my previous medium, RW floc, because it can be flooded more often. It is not quite as absorbent as floc and has much more air content.

 

I have not had any problems with increased EC of the nute soln. With RW floc, due to some limestone dust remaining after mfg, tank pH does rise slightly over a 2-week life of a tank of nutes. Fytocell does not alter the pH of the nutes used to flood it.

 

My main complaints about Fytocell are that it can float and that it escapes pot drain holes. I have been tightly packing a 25mm or so layer of RW floc in the bottom of each pot to allow water in & out while keeping the Fytocell crumbs in. The wet RW reduces buoyancy and keeps the pots from floating.

 

Other than that, I agree that the roots spread well through Fytocell, better than floc, anyway. My yields are up about 10-15% with a greater proportion of plants thriving as not.

[BentBuddha]

I used fyto for about 2yrs. It's excellent. There's 3 things that are a problem with it.

1. Scarid fly love it. That can be fixed by using about an inch or two of a dry medium on top like maidewell diatomite (silica rocks) or hydro ton.

 

2. Because it holds so much water it's important to keep an eye on your room temperatures. If it gets cold in there the roots will be in a lot of cold water. Fyto holds a shit load of water without drowing their roots.

 

3. If you're using pots larger than 50lt, the fyto will compress from weight. This year i switched to 90ltr pots so fyto was out of the question and now i'm using a coco mix.

 

When you're finished with it you can dig it into your garden for the hot summers. Your plants will love the water retention and it's biodegradable. When i first started using it i would ask at various hydro shops if they had it and most often i got all these stories from their customers about things that were bad about fyto. I thought it was strange as i had really good results with it. An important thing is to make sure you soak it for 24hrs in water or at least over night. If you skip that step you'll regret it. Fyto needs to be soaked for it to work properly. Once i tipped dry fyto into pots and run the shower on them for 10mins and that crop was very average. The best way i found is to buy the 50lt bags, cut a small hole in the top corner of the bag, put bag in the bath tub and fill the bag (not the bath) with water. The 50ltr bags seem to fit well in the bath and i often had about 6bags full of water in my tub. Then the next day i bring the pots into the bathroom, place pot socks in them with hydroton on bottom for drainage, and tip the fyto bags into the pots. All water drains out the bottom. You may want to put a tea towel over ur bathroom drainhole so that any little bits of fyto don't go down the drain.

 

good luck

Edited September 12, 2008 by BentBuddha

[Al B. Fuct]

An important thing is to make sure you soak it for 24hrs in water or at least over night. If you skip that step you'll regret it. Fyto needs to be soaked for it to work properly. Once i tipped dry fyto into pots and run the shower on them for 10mins and that crop was very average.

 

Because handling wet Fytocell after soaking is such a mess, I have been loading it into pots while dry and wetting it before plugging clones in with nute soln from the res and a spare pump and hose. I've still been getting better results than with RW despite not soaking the stuff for 24h. I'll have a go at that on the next batch on your suggestion.

[BentBuddha]

If you're flooding it every day then i'm sure it would work properly. But for ppl who feed from above, if you want capillery action, that is if you want the water to travel all through the fyto so that the roots will also, it really needs to be soaked. I used fyto once on auto pots and it was perfect. The top of the pot was always equally as moist as everywhere else in the pot.

[Al B. Fuct]

I guess it's working OK. It does wet evenly all the way through, which kinda surprises me being that it's not fibrous like floc.

[BentBuddha]

They look great Al.