Hello! My name is Dmitry, I'm from Russia, and I'm on holiday now and have some story about my hydrosystem. I don't know how much it is interesting for you, but maybe some my experience would be useful.
I have been engineering my own hydroponic system last 2 year. My first experiment was growing lingonberry in nutrien's solution. But I had not a lot of knowledge about how it must work, and result of my experiment was dead plants. I tried to use different types of light: LED, luminescent, incandescent lamp; different nutriens and substrates. In the end of my investigations, I made this construction (see photoes). It is my winter garden, hand-made =)
Square is 0.35x1.2 m.
There are 24 plant units (in 2 litres pot). 8 in each pallet. 3 pallets.
substrate - 100% vermiculite (but drainage layer - claydite - 2 cm thickness)
watering system Easy Grow.
nutriens - General hydroponics.
Light - Grow-LED (checked spectres). There are 4x12 (48 led units 3W) in high niche, and 1х12 (12 led units 3W) on each tier.
I tryed to calculate PAR - it is around 800 micromol m-2sec-1 in high niche, in any case I think that is enough practically.
Because grow-led light is not very enjoyable, 2 green led lamp were installed. R+G+B = white.
Then I thought, maybe my garden could work as room humidifier when winter and humidy is low. And I filled pallets by vermicullite too. After that I sowed a gason grass.
So, as I wrote, there are 24 units:
1) salad
2) salad
3) mint
4) melissa
5) basil
6) pepper
7) stevia
8 ) petunia
9) eggplant
10) watermelon
11) melon
12) tomato
13) lavender
14) rosemary
15) peas
16) thyme
17) strawberry
18) strawberry
19) strawberry
20) strawberry
21) strawberry
22) pepper
23) petunia
24) tomato
as you can see, something has a flowers, something has a fruits. Strawberry had 2 berries, I ate it. Berries were a little acidic, maybe because I watered strawberry a lot. I don't think that it was not enought sun light - berries were big and red.
And I have a big problem with water - best way is using distillated water, but it costs a lot. And now I'm trying to use tap water. But because Calcium's salt (high water hardness), pH is very unstable. I tryed to use lemon acid to normalize pH, but it is very weak acid and salts is gydrolized, with pH increasing to 8. Now I'm using silphuric acid and result is better.
Maybe my project is interesting for you, I'll answer on any questions and practice my english too =)