I've been growing chili for years and last year, I build a simple hydroponic system. Well, not that simple, but an ugly one. It's called EBB & flood and the point is that there is no soil for the chilis, they get all their nutriends from the nutrient rich liquid which is flooded in the tank 2-4 times per day.

4 plants of different sizes, two Malawi Birds eyes which are pretty small, one Omnicolor and a Aji Fantasy, which is the biggest one. It has been there for a while and it's been growing really well.

I built a simple "case" for my hydro to make it suit better in our living room and so I could hang a light above the plants so they will not die out in the winter. The outside is pretty much plywood and some paint. We don't have proper room for sawing or anything, so I had to do everything in the kitchen and nothing is as straight as it should be.

The front is removable for the times I need to switch the water/nutrient liquid.

Here you can see what is under all that plywood. I have built this from two plastic boxes. Upper one is filled with clay pebbles and that's where I have the plants. In the box underneath I'm having the nutrient water and a pump, which is attached to a digital timer. It is 2 minutes on 4 times per day, in winter I'm having it 1 minute and 3 times per day.

I have two extra holes in the upper box to prevent overflows, they are at a proper height in which the water will start flowing back from 2 holes to prevent overflowing and floors getting wet! This is more important than you think!

This works pretty well, but every time I want to replace the water I'll have to raise the upper box and let it rest somewhere, while the biggest plants are getting shaky when I'm lifting them around. If you build a system like this, use small plants or make sure you don't have to lift anything around.

Building one of your own

The way to keep this most simple, you need one container for the plants, a second one for the liquid. Put a pump in the liquid and a digital timer (regular timers are usually working with 15min or 30min times, but it's too much, better go with few minutes with digital timers) 2-4 times per day, as the plants get everything they need from the nutriend enriched water.

In it's simplest, it's nothing more difficult than that. You can construct the upper container from plywood, I've seen 3 meters long and 40cm wide plywood containers filled with pebbles and chilis, but you'll have to paint the plywood with water resistant paint, so the water will not run out from your container! And make sure your water container is big enough, as you don't want to run out of water when pumping some for the plants.

Change the water in 1-2 week interwal to prevent any harmful growth, add nutrients to the mix and aim for a pH level of 5.5 - 6.5, so you might need some acid to get the pH right, yo.

At it's best, you'll get far better yield than in regular soil based growing. My EBB is in a too dark spoth though, but I'm getting some results!

For a detailed tutorial how to build an simple EBB, you can check this site of Fatalii who also has his own seed store over here

I'm getting all my seeds from him. He has some good basic info about growing chilis and he's currently writing an English book about all the wonderful chili in the world.