Some pretty cool additions to my grow closet: A diaphram pump and a water filter. I am replacing my pond pump with a good diaphram pump (ebay) that does not need a prime and will suck my buckets clean. I plumbed a "whole house prefilter" unit to the new pump. I bought some real cheap filter inserts to go with it. I use a water pump to fill, drain, recirculate, and adjust PH in my DWC closet grow. I can't stand the little chunks of stuff that collects over time in the nutrient. I try and keep the whole system as clean as possible. Cleaned up my nutrients big time. At harvest I had zero residue on the bucket walls. Slime is not that big of a problem with my system, but I do feel some build up when doing the after harvest cleaning normally. Not all my ideas work out, but this one has made it to my keeper list. I should have got the filter housing that was not "see through" (saved some tape). The filter insert it came with was more then I needed, I wanted it to clean the nutrient solution but not take out any nutrients. Some cheap'o sand filters fit the bill. The unit in place: Peace, R
hey i'm another one of those newbies gettin into growing for my first time. so i basically have the idea of hydro and whatnot (although i'm not underestimating it, i figure there's gonna be hell once i start growing) but im kinda confused on the pump deal, im trying to figure it's purpose. id figure the filter will the trap the nutes and not give any to the plant, so what is this doing??? sorry for the inconvienence of asking dumb questions but i figure you guy enjoy answering these. thanks a bunch -zim
Nice setup bro... curious though, filtering doesnt remove any nutes or friendly bio's? I suppose it wouldnt but some of those can be pretty intense filters (carbon, etc) that I'd wonder...
if you read his post, that's why he bought the cheap'o sand filters. He wanted filters that would clean the nutrients but not remove them. You could then check the ppm's to see how much if any nutrients were lost. he uses this pump to "fill, drain, recirculate, and adjust PH in my DWC closet grow." he added a filter to the pump to filter out all the little chunks of stuff that builds up after time. This is awesome rumple, i'll think about investing in something like this. Would be nice to not have to scrub the tubs so often. And please correct me if i'm wrong about any of the ^^
Nice addition Rump, what did that pump on ebay roughly run you? The filter and housing were sourced from a big box store like Lowes or Home Depot I'm guessing? I've been writing up a simple continuous recirculation DIY that I have yet to post because I have some more pics to take to complete it. I potentially solved some issues of gunk by using a filter bag around my pump(in reservoir). Of course the bag would need to be removed on occasion to remove any build up. I'll post the DIY up today or tomorrow.
That pump IIRC is made here in the US and is the shit,that simple high micron pre-filter is used for sedement in the first stage of an R/O or for poor quality water with sedement,$30 at HD.I use them for pre-filtering bio-fuel and need to find my spare so i can use it in my RDWC BB system,i use a big pump in the res. for the chiller(will add this filter set up soon)and a tiny one for the buckets circ.ATM i have a foam cover over the big pumps intake but it gets gross in a week and if the res. gets too dirty the lil pump(the heart,but i also use bubbles)can get clogged.Thanx rumple,read this long ago but forgot cause my first grow was soil.