Ive already done a thread on the preparation of rockwool so now its the turn of clay pebbles

Although pretty much similar this is how I do mine

First off i take the full bag of pebbles and burst loads of holes in the bottom 6 inch of the bag while standing it in the bath. I then turn the shower on to the coldest setting(cos more water comes out) and rinse the bag through for about 5 minutes. This gets rid of most of the crap

I then as with the blocks soak them in ph 5.6 water for 24hrs preferably bubbled at around 20 degrees

Tip all the water away and replace with a mild nutrient solution with an ec and ph of which you intend starting your plants on. As long as they have around 12 hours soaking in this solution they will be fine

Your pebbles should then be nice and clean and ready to go into any system you wish, in fact even after soaking in just ph water your pebbles can be used, I just like to get a bit of nutrient into them

Hope this helps

Owd

cheers for this owd, would have saved me some grief if u had posted it a month ago ! does the procedure differ if you re cleaning already used ones ?

If i were cleaning old pebbles I'd soak in a solution to kill all the old root matter first like h202 then yes mate as the above

Owd

cool cheers

The first time I ever used clay pebbles was in my flood and drain system about 2 and a half months ago. I had 2 x 45 litre bags. I opened them and poured them into my 1 m2 table.

That was all I did, i wasnt even aware that I was supposed to prepare them. Grow went great, I dont believe there was any adverse effects.

Hey Owd

Would bubbling old pebbles with bleach and then rinsing them 3 to 4 times before phing them be ok?

Just that i clean all my old hydro equipment with bleach and good rinsing and have had better results that way than using H202.

CLV

Hiya mate - from personal exp. I'd say no to the bleach, especially any soaking (I use it just fine to clean out my system though) - household bleach contains surfactants (soap-alikes), and I've found that this gets the bleach et-al right into pebbles (and some of my clone collars I soaked in it... ugh... ), and takes shit-loadsa soaking and rinsing to get out (I got new pebbles and collars in the end). The problems caused were unmeasured amounts of chlorine leaching into the nute mix and screwing things up, and the surfactants causing everything to stay soaked all the time (the collars' 'sealed cell' foam kinda, 'unsealed'... and they beame 'sponges') - my clones almost all suffered stem rot before they could root, and with the pebbles I just had heaps of trouble getting them to root out at all.

As an alternative if you're adverse to using H2O2, I'd suggest Pythoff for the soak, but still rinsing really well and soaking in clean water/rinse again first. Always worked well for me at least.

Cheers!

',;~}~