The Basic Hydroponic System Types
With all the different hydroponic setups on the market it can be confusing to tell them apart, especially because they all seem to look so different. But in reality there are only six different types of hydroponic systems. Any of these hydroponic systems can have many different configurations, different sizes and even made from many different materials. That’s why they can all look so different. But weather they are home built systems, or commercially manufactured systems sold in hydroponic supply stores, they all come down to the six types of hydroponic systems, or a combination of 2 or more of the six types of systems in one system.
1.Wick System
The simplest type of hydroponic system is the wick system. This type of system has no moving parts at all. It works exactly the same way that a oil lamp or tiki torch works, by wicking up the liquid as it’s being used. Although it can be constructed many different ways and out of many different materials, the basic function still remains the same. The plant is placed in the growing medium, and the growing medium is kept moist from the wick. The wick is simply made from a strip of a highly absorbent material like felt or cotton. The wick runs through the growing medium and out the bottom of the container into the nutrient reservoir. As the plants drink up the moisture in the growing medium, the wick continually sucks up moisture, keeping the growing medium moist with the nutrient solution.
2.Water Culture System
The air pomp provides a continuous flow of tiny air bubbles to the root systems. That way the roots can get the air/oxygen they need so they don’t suffocate being completely submerged all the time. The air supply is left on 24/7. The air pump and stones are not expensive and can be found in any pet supply, or aquarium store. You may also hear the term DWC, that stands for “Deep Water Culture” witch is the same thing as a water culture system, it’s just referring to a the depth of the nutrient solution in the reservoir (usually about one foot or so in a DWC). Although most so called DWC systems are a combination water culture/drip system, or water culture/aeroponic system.
3.Ebb & Flow (Flood & Drain) System
The Ebb & Flow system is not much more difficult, but does need a submersible water pump (like a fountain pump), and household light timer to run the cycles. There are so many various ways to build a Flood & Drain system it’s only limited by your imagination. But the basic principal is always the same. It has a reservoir that holds the nutrient solution. This reservoir is placed below the plants, so the siphoning action that happens when the pump is not running will automatically drain the nutrient solution when the pump shuts off. The timer is used to periodically flood the system to keep the roots moist.
The second part of the Flood & Drain system is where the plants are contained. This is often constructed in any number of ways, but always has two main parts to it. First is the fill line, this is connected to the pump and fills (Floods) the system when it’s turned on. Second is the overflow tube, the overflow tube is set at a particular height, usually about 2 inches below the top of the growing medium. This keeps the water level in the system from overflowing out the containers the plants are in, and instead it flows directly back into the reservoir to be pumped back up to the plants again. But at the same time it is the height of the overflow tube allows the water to rise high enough to saturate the root system without causing stem root. That is why it’s usually about two inches below the top of the growing medium, instead of the top of the containers
4.NFT System (Nutrient Film Technique)
The NFT systems is quite similar to the Ebb & Flow except for a few things. First, it doesn’t need a timer because it runs 24/7, so you don’t need a timer to control cycles. But like a Ebb & Flow system it also has a reservoir that’s below the level of the plants. This way gravity will be able to allow the nutrient solution to flow/drain directly back into the reservoir to pumped back up to the plants again. The main difference between the two is that a NFT system does not actually flood the system. It rely’s on a continues flowing stream (film) of nutrient solution at the bottom of the containers that hold the roots of the plants. The roots that reach down into the nutrient solution, are able to wick up moisture to the upper roots, and the upper roots can also still get the air/oxygen that the plants need as well.
Although a NFT system could be made in many different ways, they are usually laid out as series of tubes in rows that hold the plants. The tubes allow the water to be directed easily from one end of the tube to the other end, that way all the roots get water (nutrient solution). An important aspect to an NFT system is that the containers (tubes) are tilted downward on one end. The water is pumped into one, then gravity allows it to flow downhill to the other end. From there it can be collected again in a return system (that can be constructed many different ways). From there it’s directed back to the reservoir to be pumped back up to the plants again. You can have just 1 row, or hundreds of rows in one system, and can be easily expandable.
5.Drip systems
Drip systems are quite simple. They are similar to a drip irrigation system you would have for your flower beds in dirt. Except instead of just plain water, with a hydroponic drip systems the water is the nutrient solution (just like any other hydroponic system). There are actually two ways to run a drip systems, a recovery system, or non recovery system. A recovery system just means that you collect the nutrient solution after it drips, and return it back to the reservoir where it can be pumped out to the plants again.
A non recovery (also called drip to waste) just means that you don’t recover/return the nutrient solution, and it’s just allowed to drip into the ground or somewhere else. Most drip systems are recovery systems (so the nutrient solution is reticulated). The nutrient solution is pumped through the lines out to the plants, then it drips down through the growing medium to the bottom of the container where it’s then directed back to the reservoir through return lines. With a drip system gravity is what allows it to flow back to the reservoir, unlike an Ebb & Flow system where it’s siphoned back to the reservoir through the pump and fill line.
6.Aeroponic System
The aeroponic system is similar to the Ebb & Flow system also except the roots are completely suspended in the air. Naturally with the absence of a growing medium to hold in moisture, the roots will dry out much quicker. Because of that, the timer needs to be capable of many more cycles per day. The roots are directly sprayed by misters that spray the nutrient solution frequently. The nutrient solution drips down off the roots into a reservoir, or collection area to be collected and sprayed again. A true aeroponic system will have the roots completely suspended in air. Again, any type of hydroponic system can be constructed many different ways, with many different materials, but most aeroponic systems sold in stores are really a combination aeroponic/NFT, or aeroponic/water culture system. A true aeroponic system will completely suspend the roots in air.
Conclusion
You may have herd of Aquaponics and wonder why It’s not listed as one of the different types of hydroponic systems. Well Aquaponics is not really a hydroponic system, it’ actually a technique used to create the nutrient solution. Using fish waste, as well as living organisms to decompose the fish waste so it’s broken down into a form the plants can absorb. Also so that all the elements for healthy plant growth are in sufficient quantity’s in the solution. Once the living environment has produced a quality nutrient solution, it can be used in any of the different types of hydroponic systems as the nutrient solution. Although the aquaponic technique can be used in any type of system, it’s probably most commonly used in conjunction with a water culture system, NFT or Ebb & Flow systems.
Many hydroponic systems combine one or more aspects from the other types of systems. There is nothing wrong with that, but it is important to understand how each different type of system works and functions. Now that you know what makes each type of hydroponic system different, you can recognize what they are, and if they are actually a combination system or not. Also you will be able to build your own hydroponic systems, either by combining different aspects, or just a straight forward system.
ဒီ၆နည်းကိုအခြေခံပြီးသင်စိတ်ကူးဉာဏ်ကောင်းသလိုတီထွင်နိုင်ပါတယ်၊ ရိုးရိုးသစ်ပင်ကို မြေကြီးမှာစိုက်သလို ဒီမှာတော့ ကိုယ်စိုက်တဲ့သစ်ပင်အမျိုးအစားပေါ ်မူတည်ပြီး Growing Mediums ကိုသုံးရပါတယ်၊ Nutrients ကျွေးရပါတယ်၊ ရေကို တတ်မှတ်ထားတဲ့ Nutrients Slution ဖြစ်အောင် PH တိုင်းပြီးထားရပါတယ်၊ နေအလင်းရောင်ပေးရပါတယ်၊နေရောင်မပေးနိုင်ရင်တော့ မီးထွန်းပေးရပါလိမ့်မယ်၊အေက်ကလင့်တွေမှာစုဆောင်းထားပါတယ်၊ စစိုက်တဲ့အခါ အစေ့ကပဲစိုက်စိုက် ပျိုးပင်ကိုဝယ်ပြီတော့ပဲစိုက်စိုက် ရပါတယ်၊ ပျိုးပင်ကို စိုက်ရင်တော့ အမြစ်မှာကပ်နေတဲ့ မြေကြီးများကို ရေနဲ့စင်ကြယ်အောင် ဆေးရပါလိမ့်မယ်၊ပြီးမှ Growing medium ထဲမှာထည့်စိုက်ရပါမယ်၊ အောင်မြင်ပါစေလို့စုတောင်ပေးပါတယ်။
Nutrients
Growing mediums
Ph for plants
lighting
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