Alright everyone, this is my first post so I will give a little background. I have grown outdoors several seasons and have about 5 indoor grows under my belt. I am a person who strives for maximum efficiency...which led me to aeroponics. I am talking TRUE aeroponics. I knew a few things - I needed sub 50 micron droplets sizes and I wanted to use a traditional site setup to allow for fully grown plants. So this is what I came up with...Notice the fog creeping out of the bucket...this is sub 10 micron droplets. I am 3 days in to clones and there are new roots shooting down into the bucket...I think we are ready for take off.
Looks good! I use an Aeroponic system for cloning..it's so much easier than any other cloning method.
that mist... wow... is that plain water? how does that thing handle nutrients?? can you link the components you're using please?
Alright, this is my 5 day check in...roots are starting to come in nice and white, some of them are fuzzier than others... I am using a basic 2 part jungle juice right and keeping it around 350 PPM. Over the course of 24 hours, it uses a gallon of water and about 6 ml of each nutrient. There is no need for a drain back to the reservoir. I am spraying 5 min on 55 off and the roots are staying moist. Neon PhD - I will link some components once I get things finalized. I spent a ton of time studying flow rate, back pressure, discharge angles and am still making some adjustments. I already have a few distributors asking me to sell them kits, but I want to get at least 1-2 grows through it and study yield results. I already know it is MUCH more efficient in terms of water and nutrient usage.
I am very interested in your operation! I have been reading about ultrasonic foggers and aeroponics for the last couple of days doing research and had written them off as a bit of a novelty. They seem theoretically much bette/more efficient than say a deep water culture system but due to practical limitations of the foggers themselves they cannot be used past cloning/seedling stages. How do you plan on dealing with salt buildup from the nutrients clogging your fogger? I have read that past 500ppm the foggers will get clogged. I also read somewhere that you actually need 50-100 micron droplets to effectively deliver the nutrients to the roots, any comment (is this wrong? source?)? Also what about the heat that the fogger generates, will you be using a chiller/cooler?
Ultrasonic foggers are a joke IMO...I have a machine that I used to work with that puts out 5 micron droplets and will NEVER clog. I have never seen anything like this out there and so far it is working beautifully. I'm not trying to be a jerk, but I am getting a patent on this design so I can't release too much info... Correction to my previous post. The picture in the previous post was 3 day, this is now 5 day root growth.
Oh I know that machine you are talking about, it's actually the real joke IMO. I have this even better machine that produces super droplets that make the plant grow a foot per day and it doesn't waste any water and it doesn't even run on electricity it just takes advantage of gravity. It's pretty top secret so I can't tell you anymore about it though. Do you see how dumb that ^ shit sounds? Also you still haven't commented on the fact that droplets will need to be 5-10x as large are you claiming you are generating them right now if they are going to be able to deliver nutrients. 5micron isn't going to cut it past seedling/cloning.
I have an high pressure aeroponics system I started a couple years ago but never had a chance to finish and use. I was going the red cloud top route with 85 psi feeder lines backed up with a small accumulator tank at 100-120 psi. This route gets you close to the desired 50 microns and can hand nutrients as long as you maintain nozzles. I literally just ordered some more parts to finish it out and adding a fertilizer injector that way I can run pure water through the system (pump,tank,regulator,solenoid) and add my solution at the feeder line keeping everything clean.
You are right...I am an idiot for not broadcasting my proprietary design on public forums... I was running a 400psi high pressure system with mister nozzles. They are super prone to clogging especially with any non-synthetic nutrients. Of course I was running nozzles in the range of .004" to .012". Sent from my iPhone using Grasscity Forum
I'm not aware of any feeders that are capable of high pressure...maybe I didn't look into it deep enough. Sent from my iPhone using Grasscity Forum
Day 8 root update: Still using about 1.5 gallons of 300 PPM per day. Not getting great veg growth...only had flowering plants to take clones from. They will hopefully switch back over to veg mode in the next week or so...pretty stoked Sent from my iPhone using Grasscity Forum
Please dont be discouraged with your experiment. Its interesting to say the least. Im gonna sit over here and watch if ya dont mind. Carry on! Hey man, you Got a link to that cloner by chance? Im interested. Thanks bud.
I've already thought of a great version 2.0...should be more efficient and support up to 10 plants. More info coming soon. Sent from my iPhone using Grasscity Forum
Alright everyone. This is day 12 check in. Still running around 300ppm at a rate of 1-1.5 gallons per day. The foliage is really starting to green up from the nitrogen depletion during cloning. The roots are looking reeeaaally good. Day 7 root growth on top, day 12 on the bottom. Sent from my iPhone using Grasscity Forum
I did slip up and let them dry up the other day. I am in the process of transferring to a larger reservoir so this doesn't happen again. The 1000w HPS is on behind me so there is some UV effect happening also. This is a high red image so you can zoom in a little more. Sent from my iPhone using Grasscity Forum
They dont seem to have grown much between days 8-12. Whats the top growth look like over that period of time?
It's tough to see in the pictures, but there are probably twice as many roots hanging. I could only get my hands on cuttings that came off a flowering plant. There was absolutely no new growth until 2 days ago. Everyone told me to expect that from flowering plant clones. Since then there has been about 2 inches. Will post more pictures in a bit. What is average growth in a hydro system for roots/foliage? I went from super soil straight to aero... Sent from my iPhone using Grasscity Forum
Ok, so I was hoping for some more feedback from the grasscity community, but I'll keep posting... Day 17 root growth check in. Sent from my iPhone using Grasscity Forum