I'm using DWC, and from the reading I have done I personally think its the best way to go for small time personal grows. Its not expensive to put together, and if you make a mistake with your nutes, you just empty the res and start again, no need to flush.
Not sure what you mean by tips, but I can tell you how I will do it, if thats any help?
I use 4 x 20 gallon buckets, each plant sits in a net pot with clay beads. I have a good sized air stone in each bucket connected to a fairly powerfull air pump, generates planty of air into the water, help keeps the nutes mixed, and get food to the roots as they grow. With the old small pump I was using the water wasn't aggitated enough and you could see the nutes collecting on the bottom, I will still check this every day, when I do my checks, and I got a simple hand whisk to help mix it all back up again, but with the new powerfull air pump, the tests I have done look much better.
I start off with the water just below the level of the pot, and as the roots develop and grow I lower the amount of water, till the bucket is about 1/4 - 1/3 full, and keep it there. I don't use the 'recomended' dose of nutes, but start at about 30% and slowly work up, watching the plants for any signs of over or underfeeding, and adjust my feed as needed. Keep my PH balanced and checked once or twice a day, at lights on and lights off, to measure any drastic daily swings in PH. Check the PH of you feed AFTER you have put the nutes in, as this can sometimes affect it.
Get at PPM (parts per million) pen, and check your water (if possible use distilled or RO (reverse osmosis) water, distilled water is very expensive where I am, but you can pick up and RO machine pretty cheap from fleebay, these types of water are 'pure' so have little or no crap in them, water straight from the tap is full of crap, and also chlorine and other stuff the water companies put into it, if you are unable to use these types, then at least make sure you let you water stand for 24 hours to remove the chlorine) I am not exactly sure what the recommended PPM is, but the info is on the site somewhere, so a bit of digging should find it, or no doubt someone will reply with that info, but I think the less crap disolved into it, the better, rain water is aparently very good, but don;t use rain water that has been collected through the guttering after is drained off your roof.
Make sure your buckets are light proof, any light getting into your bucket can cause algae and other nasty stuff to start to grow inside, and thats not good. I use black buckets, and black airline, and I seal the hole where the airline enters to amke sure no light gets in. You can also get some covers to go around the base of the plant and cover the top of the pot, but I don't use them, and not had a problem with light getting in through the pot of beads.
Some people will change the water once a week or every 10 days, some don't, I personally don't, but monitor and top up when needed, from what I can tell there are 2 schools of thought on water changing, neither is wrong, personal choice IMO.
The bets tip I can give is daily monitoring and inspection of the plants, roots and water. I trick I have learnt is to take a photo when the lights come on of the plants and the root balls, and then take another just before the lights go out, I can then view them on my PC, and spot any changes in growth as well as any changes is problems. I keep all the photo's so I can also look at them at week start and week end, and month start and month end. I keep all the photos on a CD/RW or DVD/RW so that the images are not kept on my PC and I can hide the disc almost anywhere. I also keep a diary of what I have done, when I have done it, and how much I did, makes looking back much easier, I can see where I went wrong or right and adjust as needed.
I shall be starting my first grow, in my new grow room, in a few weeks (hopefully), as I am still learning alot (thanks to all the info from the guys and girls on MP), so my grow journal will be on here, and I will be filling that with everything I am doing, so feel free to watch that and the replies I get telling me where I am going wrong and right.
and I thought it was gogin to be as simple as putting a few plants under a special light hahahahahahah
