600W SSH | Multiple-reservoir Flood and Drain | Ground up Build

Discussion in 'Hydroponic Growing' started by cherokee91red, Jan 26, 2014.

  1. This first post is the summary from the end of another topic. With newfound space I am expanding my grow area to accommodate the large growth of Super silver haze. I also wanted to get the ability to grow different plants/strains, so I designed it to be capable of running up to 4 different nutrient levels.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

     

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  2. Now a step-by-step, kinda, of what I did. I had 1 5-gal bucket already from my dwc, and thought it would be easiest to continue using those. Water is pretty heavy, and since I needed a 10 gallon reservoir to run 1 tray, I went with 2 buckets over 1-10gal reservoir from the hydro store. 2 reasons for that. (A), the buckets have handles and carrying one in each hand is way easier than 1 of those awkward, rectangular reservoirs. (B.), I could get 2 buckets, lids and aluminum tape for about $18, whereas a single botanicare reservoir was running around $50.
     
    Ok, so get the buckets, remove the handles, and cover in aluminum tape. Cover the lids as well. I use PVC fittings designed for 3/4" threads since the pvc-to-tubing adapter for 1/2" tubing is 3/4" thread. Also get Teflon tape and O-rings, the fattest you can find. You are going to use a 7/8" drill bit to drill thru the bucket. You could probably use a 3/4" drill bit and the fit would be  really tight, I just only had a 7/8" or 1/2", missing the one in the middle. However, that being said, my buckets are still proving to be watertight after 24hours of running.
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    I used pvc-tubing connectors designed for construction as they are a little fatter, proving to have a tighter seal, than the ones designed for landscaping. With the 2 bucket system I have 1 bucket with 2 outlets in the bottom and 1 at the top and the other bucket has 2 holes in both the bottom and top of the buckets. The bucket with 4 outlets will be the one with the pump in it. Then I will have the 2 returns from the tray emptying into each of the 2 reservoir buckets.
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    Here is the 2 reservoir system, essentially complete except for those adapters I need for the trays. I have the pumps dumping back into the reservoir just to test the system on a loop and ensure watertightness. I use connectors with threads all around so you can install tubing adapters or plugs in any of the outlets. With the gate valves between the buckets I can isolate 1 bucket at a time if needed and with the plugs installed on the inside of the bucket I can disconnect it completely from the system to easily take it to the drain when flushing.
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  3. Between yesterday and today I finished up all the flood tray and reservoir plumbing and construction. The buckets are watertight all the way up to the lid and the trays take about 2.5-3 gallons each to completely fill. Luckily, the pumps and drainage system are working perfectly. With the single pump filling each tray and dumping into the drain bucket, the trays never overflow. I can run the pump constantly and the water level in the tray always levels off about a half inch below the lip. Until I get something growing its a soothing little water fountain. :D
     
    So now I have 2 questions for all of you.
    1) Since I am using giant 6"x6" rockwool cubes, and they hold water much longer than hydro or coco, what should my flood/drain cycle be? When I had the cubes in the trays they were still pretty wet the next morning, so I'm thinking of only flooding once or twice a day. Advice? Opinions?
     
    2) Any advice on the table to hold the trays? I am split between constructing 1 of PVC or just buying a cheap, pre-made table at Wal-mart. If I use PVC, I can run 1 pipe down the middle of the trays (they have 2 channels leaving a nice cutout in the middle a pipe would fit in nicely) and then 1 pipe on either side of the tray to keep it upright. Then, for 4 trays I would need only 1 pipe under each tray and 5 pipes on the sides for support. But adding up the length needed and the connectors it would run around $70-$100. By my calculations I would need about 50' of PVC to make it right. On the other hand, I can buy a table of the right size for less than $40 but it wouldn't look as neat.
     
    Thanks
     

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  4. Left town for 3 days and came back to the buckets completely full still. I think I can safely say they are watertight. Anyone have any thoughts to my previous questions as well?
     
    Thanks
     
  5. #6 cherokee91red, Feb 1, 2014
    Last edited by a moderator: Feb 1, 2014
    Let the build continue... I decided to stick with the PVC table. It ended up costing a little more but it is exactly as big as it needs to be and allows for room to expand the table if need be. After building it, I'm thinking I might chop the legs a little shorter, but will give it a day or 2 of thought before I do so. I attached everything together with duct tape for now, as it is snowing and my only glue is extremely flammable and has toxic fumes and I will not be going outside.
     
    The tent arrived in the mail the other day and took quite awhile to set up. The quality is pretty good in my opinion, shipping weight was 70 lbs! It is a little bigger than I need, however, going up to the 5' over the 4' offers the extra space to walk around the table even with all the doors zipped up. In addition, like stated above, the table is designed in such a way that I can add rows for more trays if need be.
     
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    Here are my original plans, my end design varied a little bit but I think it works out well.
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  6. [SUB]Abandoned the flood today. It wasn't working right between the pumps I bought and the size of the trays. 1 pump will overflow 1 tray, but not even get to the bottom of the rockwool with 2. I visited the hydro store and found this drip system called the Black Hole. It looked exactly like what I would need. Ran all the connectors in such a way that I can get 4 cubes per tray. [/SUB]
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    [SUB]The trays drain separately into 1 reservoir each with an H-connection to equalize pressure. I don't think I will run air stones in the reservoirs as the flow out of the drain hole stirs up the water and creates a few bubbles of its own. I have read before that this is sufficient enough aeration, with water flowing out, but if it looks like I have problems I will run with the stones and just deal with the noise of the air pump. [/SUB]
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    [SUB]I'm running ph'd water through the cubes now to get that pH out of the rockwool. I do have covers for the cubes, they just aren't shown. I am going to call this build effectively done and will be back at some point later with plant updates. Thanks for sticking around. [/SUB]
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  7. I guess nothing can stop evolving. Can't even germ my seeds and the setup was annoying the hell out of me. Nothing was easy and if it was this much work when there are no plants, I can't imagine how difficult it would be later. Replaced the buckets with larger, taller trash cans. The cans didn't have a lid so I'm just letting the reservoirs empty into an outflow bucket. I did however cut out a large piece of panda film to fit around the cubes and shadow out underneath the grow area to cut down on an algae growth. Combined with the aeration and hygrozyme I feel like I should be ok.
     
    The pump bucket is closest to the camera. Pump routes from there and out to all 10 cubes. The dump bucket has a pump as well routed back into the pump bucket on the same timer. I also have a hose full of water going between the buckets which will create a pressure equalization effect so 1 bucket doesn't out-fill the other. I need that 2nd pump though as the gravity tube itself doesn't work quickly enough.
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    I also realized why I got those trays for so cheap. 2 of them leak at cracks around the outlet hole and all my attempts at sealing seem to go awry. Therefore, this will be reduced to a 2-tray table for the foreseeable future.
     
  8. Haha, just looked at my timer and saw that it was switched to 'outlet on' instead of 'timer on'. Which meant that my pumps had been running for about 30 hours straight. Neither a pump burnout, nor an overflow, and the seedlings if anything grew faster, so great news on all fronts. I have my timer set to be on for 40 minutes, 120 minutes off at a time on a recurring circuit. Give or take, it is an analog timer, so the general rule has become, "the pump is on for 1/3 of the time"
     
  9. Nothing major, just thought I'd check in. 5 of the 6 SSH's have sprouted and were stretching so I lowered the light. It is still only on 300W for now. The other 5 cubes contain 3 lettuces, (pictured), a thai chile pepper and an orange bell pepper. Neither of the peppers have sprouted yet, they have been slow.
     

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  10. Man, never realized how much faster plants grow in DWC. I feel like my last few plants were almost ready to go into flower at this point from germination, but I still think they have a few more weeks easily in this drip system. Have the light sitting at 400W currently, with PPM's upped today to about 420. I just re-adjusted the flood cycle tonight as well as a couple plants look to have some signs of over-watering. It looks a little like heat stress too, but I ruled that out as temps haven't broken 75 degrees at any point during the grow so far. I had it flooding for an hour every 3. Switched it around tonight so it only floods twice during the night cycle for 30 minutes, then 3 more times during lights on for 1 hour each.
     
    And on the lettuce front, 3 plants are growing strong, not quite keeping up with the cannabis but progressively growing. The peppers are just screwing with me at this point, am in the process of re-germing seeds as the last set just never sprouted. I feel ok germing late on these as they will be growing with the MJ through their own flowering cycle. The lettuce has a ~30day harvest time so should be ready to harvest before I switch the lighting to flower cycle anyway.
     

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  11. Did some block moving today. The plants in the middle(under the bulb) are growing quite faster than the ones on the ends and need them to be fairly close to the same size. So I took the big ones and put them on the ends so hopefully the littler guys will catch up. When I was moving the blocks around I was quite stunned to see roots protruding out of the bottom of every one, the 2 larger plants actually had quite a nice root system in the tray. I went and bought another block of rockwool and set it underneath to give them some more root room before hanging out in the tray,  that's why it looks a little higher. I went and saw some nice new hoods at the store today, might have to look into getting something with a little better coverage than the one I have now so I won't have to worry about moving plants around again. I will top at least a couple of them in a day or two, after the shock of all the movement wears off. I decided to drop the watering down to (3) 30 minute cycles a day; when the lights go on, middle of the day, and an hour before lights off. They are all still showing signs of over-watering, even after dropping down from my initial cycle last Sunday. As they grow I'm sure that will increase, they just aren't big enough yet to use it all.
     
     
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    Oh, and these are lettuce. The peppers finally sprouted successfully, just to small to see still.
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  12. Guess its time for another update. I do believe my plants were suffering from a combination of over-watering and a screwed up pH. When I added the extra block last week I forgot to soak it beforehand. After a few days of the new watering cycle the smaller plants started to perk back up too. Hopefully they catch up to the end plants soon, I want them to be equal size before going to flower.
    They were all looking hungry so I upped the PPM last night to 650 and they began to look greener overnight. Didn't want to increase to early because I wasn't sure if that yellowing on the little plant was due to the over-watering or lack of nutrients. The growth on this system is tremendously slower than DWC, but I kind like that it slows everything down a bit so I don't have to keep such a close eye on it.
     
     
     

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  13. So have done a few things in the last several days. I now have the reservoirs separated (can't really see in any photos) so the SSH is on one system and the veggies are on another. I bought a digital timer so now have (6) 2-minute feedings throughout the day. I had it at 1 minute but they were looking a little dry. I can't tell if the curling on the leaves is underwatering or nitrogen toxicity. So leaving the nutes alone and doubling the feeding time, see if that fixes anything. Also, biggest change is I went and bought a Blockbuster hood. It is amazing how much better coverage I get. All the light hits the edges of the hood and essentially just goes down. It is allowing me to leave the light lower to get the same coverage, but at the same time it doesn't vent as efficiently as the supersun hood so it has to be a little higher anyway.
     
    OK, now some questions for you guys that have done something similar before. Its my first time on this kind of system and feel like I have some problems arising. I have 2 plants that are representing signs of nitrogen toxicity with the clawing, however, the little guy is showing signs of nitrogen deficiency with the yellowing leaves. 2 plants are showing slight calcium deficiency, while another is showing slight magnesium deficiency. 1 plant is giant and bushy and 3 are small with 1 of those looking just plain puny. I don't know how I can effectively monitor nutes for 5 plants when they are showing multiple and conflicting issues. Can anybody offer some insight?
     
     
     
  14. So have done a few things in the last several days. I now have the reservoirs separated (can't really see in any photos) so the SSH is on one system and the veggies are on another. I bought a digital timer so now have (6) 2-minute feedings throughout the day. I had it at 1 minute but they were looking a little dry. I can't tell if the curling on the leaves is underwatering or nitrogen toxicity. So leaving the nutes alone and doubling the feeding time, see if that fixes anything. Also, biggest change is I went and bought a Blockbuster hood. It is amazing how much better coverage I get. All the light hits the edges of the hood and essentially just goes down. It is allowing me to leave the light lower to get the same coverage, but at the same time it doesn't vent as efficiently as the supersun hood so it has to be a little higher anyway.
     
    OK, now some questions for you guys that have done something similar before. Its my first time on this kind of system and feel like I have some problems arising. I have 2 plants that are representing signs of nitrogen toxicity with the clawing, however, the little guy is showing signs of nitrogen deficiency with the yellowing leaves. 2 plants are showing slight calcium deficiency, while another is showing slight magnesium deficiency. 1 plant is giant and bushy and 3 are small with 1 of those looking just plain puny. I don't know how I can effectively monitor nutes for 5 plants when they are showing multiple and conflicting issues. Can anybody offer some insight?
     
     
     

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  15. I think I'm starting to get the hang of this system. Since I cut the watering cycle way down to 12 minutes a day, things have just taken off. In addition I increased the nute strength from an EC of 0.62 to 0.90 and things got better quick. I was used to the strength for my DWC system, but since the roots aren't in the solution 24/7 it needed to be much stronger than I was used to.
    Flipped to 12/12 yesterday, I'm kinda hoping that plant on the far right is a male, it is just dominating the other 3 and it might do better to pull it.
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    Lettuce is blowing up and I have my next round of 3 more lettuce and 3 broccoli sprouted. I bought another tray to expand into and keep this system rotating well so hopefully I can consistently supplement my diet on a 2-4 week cycle.
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  16. Time for a little timeline update. Of the 4 remaining plants, that right one was still just to dominant, so I tucked it under the fan and itself in a few places, probably causing quite a bit of stress, but I was wanting to shock it and slow down its growth for the other 3 to catch up.
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    Not sure quite how I'm going to set it up yet, but got the other flood filled with my next set of recruits. Plan is to start the seedlings way down here and move up to the other table when they are bigger. Probably going to get a T5 setup to go over this table or rig up another HID bulb in my exhaust line. Not sure how this tent is going to do come summer so don't want to pull the trigger either way yet. The HID would be a cheaper option for me, so as long as I can handle the warmer temps that'll be the route.
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    1 plant started sporting some balls really quick so he got pulled, so now down to 3. No determinate either way yet on the rest. The EC kept rising so dropped it back to 0.60 and see what happens from here. Still on veg nutes until I get a little further and the MH bulb to cut back on stretching during the first phases of flower.
     
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  17. They look really nice man  :smoke:  when will you flower? what kind of stretch are you expecting?
     
  18. They've been on 12/12 lighting almost 2 weeks, sticking with the metal halide bulb for now to minimize stretching. After the last 2 weeks, stretch has only been several inches, so I'm thinking not switching bulbs yet might have helped keep that low. I still have about 2' available with which to raise the light so I'm thinking I should be OK.
     
  19. The final tally is in. 1 more male showed up, but I do have 2 confirmed females, one of which being the monster on the right :hello: .
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    Odds didn't work out to well on this one, 6 seeds, 5 germs, and only 2 ladies. But in any case, they are both decent sized plants, topped a couple times so I shouldn't be disappointed. I do hope they don't stretch much more, I only have another foot about of space above my hood and didn't want to have to tie them back at all on this grow. My res is getting low, so I'm going to keep running the MH and veg nutes another couple days until its almost gone, then swap out the bulb and the nutes together.
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    Oh, this is the male, just thought I'd show what they looked like in natural light. Not much difference than the MH, but the light isn't nearly so harsh.
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