advice welcome: 400W hps, 4 buckets setup - beginner

http://forum.grasscity.com/do-yourself/600352-budslingers-recirculating-bubble-buckets.html

big fan of this... it works well, and easier than a single bucket type of grow

also not a fan of the euro wing... you need to be air cooled... but best just to get started and see how things are looking and just be prepared to modify your design as problems arise...

start a journal...

 

Everything must be the same level, or its a ebb & flow, which also works

 

For it to work as you have pictured, you will need to make a few modifications.

First and foremost you will need an overflow drain or you will end up flooding your closet. If it were me I would put the overflow where you have your fill located, which should be at about the bottom of where your roots will be.

Second is relocate the fill to the bottom of the buckets, this isn't necessary, but it does make it not splash so much which isn't a big deal.

Third, you will need to put your water pump on a timer cycling 8 minutes at a time four times a day during daylight hours.

Fourth for this type of setup I would double bucket and fill the bucket with pellets rather than netpots. Reason being is if you will be doing a flood and drain you don't want your roots drying out in between floods.

 

I'm sorry I was typing on my phone before. I'll try to explain a little easier.

What I mean by double buckets, is that you would use two buckets per plant. You would put one bucket inside of the other. The top bucket would have some holes drilled into the bottom of the bucket so the water would rise and fall inside the inner bucket. The top bucket would be filled with the clay pellets, and you would put your rockwool block in that.

The reason for using two buckets instead of one bucket with a net pot lid, is because during the times that your pump is not running; your roots would be dangling down through the net pot and would eventually dry out. If you have them in a bucket you would have less chance of that happening.

Now you wouldn't have to do the above if you wanted to do a complete recirculating DWC setup. But I think that would be a little more complicated to do. It's doable, but just a little hard to explain.

The timer is to do a flood and drain schedule for the Ebb and Flow Setup. If you don't do a timer and go with a recirculating setup, just beware that if your pump burns out while you are at work. There is a chance that your plants will be dead or at least close to it by the time you notice it.

 

Here is a picture of what I'm kind of getting at. As you can tell in the picture if you hover your mouse over the picture of the buckets it will enlarge the picture. There are two buckets per plant site. The inner bucket is filled with hydroton. Your roots will not dry out in this system, because the clay pellets will retain moisture between flood cycles. Whereas if they are just dangling from netpots, they are just hanging there in the free air. They will dry out very fast when exposed to air.

http://www.ezhydroshop.com/products/C.A.P.-6-Grow-Pot-Ebb-&-Gro-System-Add%2dOn.html

The inner bucket has the holes in it so that the water will fill and drain out of the bucket. Your water pump is pumping water into the bottom of the outer bucket, the water level will rise in the outer bucket as well as the inner bucket (since it has holes in it). The water rises until it hits the overflow drain at the preset level of your choosing. The water will maintain that level until the pump shuts off. Once the pump shuts off then all of the water will drain out of both buckets through the fill line.

I hope that helps. I know it can be a bit confusing at first, but once you assemble even one bucket and do a test run, the light bulb will light.

You technically don't need the inner bucket to be honest with you. You could just fill the outer bucket with hydroton and be done with it. But I don't like to chance those clay pellets getting inside of my hoses and clogging something up.

 

It seems to me like you are having a tendency to try to combine the principles of recirculating dwc's with ebb and flow.

If you are going to build a bucket flood and drain, then look at the CAP Ebb & Grow system and try to replicate it.

If you want to go with recirculating DWCs, then look again at budslingers example.

Otherwise, what has the least set up proceedure would be just to use your net pot lids and keep the DWC buckets independent.

 

(Double post due to browser timeout)

 

OK if you are going to keep them all on the same level and go with DWC, then I would put your airstones in the buckets your plants will be in and not the reservoir. DWC is definitely the easiest to maintain. Your drawing you have pictured above looks to be more recirculating DWC, which is a little more complicated, but will keep your nutes all one strength throughout all buckets.

When I first started with DWC I was under the impression that all buckets would have identical nutes since they are all connected and auto level due to gravity. Well that is untrue. My res can be at 6.2 PH with an EC of 1.68 while my bucket closest to my res will have a PH of 5.9 with an EC of 1.5.

So I would think that if I were to switch to RDWC that would take care of that problem, but as I said it is a lot more work and heat. I prefer to not have the heat associated with RDWC.

 

I prefer tanks to buckets.

My RDWC is as simple as it gets IMO.

Anyway, keep your pump out of the reservoir.

If you insist on that design, I would have a level switch in the rez turn on the pump when needed, rather then timed.

Check out my rig, it works.

 

You can use 8 or 10in bucket lids filled with hydroton and run a pump inline to drip rings 24/7 to circulate your nutes/oxygenate. If you use the drain holes to set water level to the bottom of the bucket youre safe from pump failure for a while.

 

I run 8 buckets two res's same system. PH will be the same in each bucket, most of the times. Since its constantly being recirculated and mixed.