Thanks, thats the ego boost I needed right after having to cull the smallest plant out of my garden because its loosing the battle for space. Chopping it into a bunch of clones for the next run right now, sad. It was just too short to compete and the other plants really needed the space it was taking. This is my first go at hydro and I greatly underestimated how quickly they grow, amazing compared to soil. I made my setup so I could do up to 9 plants if I wanted, I think from here on out I'll do 5 tops, and still be wall to wall.. The 6 I have now is a little too much. There taller than my yard stick after 2 weeks of flower, I'll have to move my filter out of the way so I can get the light higher.. way to go House & Garden!
Awesome thread and a stellar grow!! Just one thing; Please share your cloning technique with us fellow blades!
i helped build this garden, and know a lot of hydro's practices. H&G nutrient chart calls for A&B mix pH then let sit for a min or two, then add additives, and check pH after, u pretty much never have to adjust after u add additives. it seems to work well for the plants, and if it ant broke dont fix it. once again the chart calls for 4ml per gal drip clean and 3.8ml multi zen. druid can answer the rest
I am using the same H&G feeding schedule Hydro is, it says to add A & B let stand, adjust pH then add additives last. They say the additives may temporarily drop pH while they react for the first few hours but it should return back to what you originally set it at. The concern is if you adjust the pH durring that reaction period from the additives then you may screw it all up. So far I havent seen a dip in pH after adding supplements, but I havent been using them all so I dunno.
I replied to your PM pons. For everyone else wondering what the heck? A&B aqua flakes contains all the micro and macro nutes needed including Cal/Mag. Calcium helps stabilize water that's been purified. Think about water for a second. It's a universal solvent and destroys everything it can over time to bring the minerals into solution. Solution is the key word here. Keeping nutrients in solution or they fall out and become useless. Then bio-films can feed off these fallen nutes which is bad. Mixing A (mostly micro and secondary nutes) and letting sit for bit allows all inorganic minerals to fully mix in a stable environment then add B (rest of NPK's) and allow to sit. Now the solution is balanced thoroughly from calcium and the rest of the nutes mix properly. Calcium is one of the few nutes that interacts with all the other nutes. This is why Cal deficiencies can be drastic on plant. With other nutes that aren't as stable as H&G like Advanced Nonesense I find adding cal/mag (50-150ppm) to RO water first letting sit then A&B then pH works best. Calcium stops water from being aggressive. Additives when added won't effect solution after mixing because it's STABLE. Hope this helps clarify. It's hard sometimes to put all the knowledge into a quick paragraph sometimes. Hope I didn't confuse anyone. ~HD
Since I am only running two plants I felt no need to run both of them off of a central res... not to mention i don't have space for another 5 gallon bucket in my cabinet. That being the case my ladies will each drink about 3/4 to 1 gallon of water per day meaning my top up creates quite a drastic change in my ppm level. Far more then the 40-50 range you aim for. Perhaps I'd be better off using a diluted version of the mix? Instead of adding back my pre mixed solution of 1000 PPM i could dilute at a rate of 87% nutes and 13% distilled water. Meaning I'd be adding back 1 gallon of 870 PPM solution. Seeing as how my buckets only have about 3 gallons worth of water my 87% add back would mix to 95.6666% total nutes. Giving me a final reading of 957 PPM (after rounding the decimal). Not bad seeing as it stays in the 40-50 ppm range. Of course I'd have to take a sample from my res before each add back, do a quick calculation to figure out the exact ratio of nute solution/distilled water to ensure I have an even drop. Not to mention as the roots grow they take up more of the bucket, thus leaving less water. Perhaps some trial and error runs will have to be done before coming up with an adequate solution. What do you think though? Better then adding straight distilled and watching my PPMs drop drastically? By the way my meters conversion rate is .7. What are you running yours at?
Simple is better... Can you run a large reservoir outside the room and let it gravity feed to your buckets? Then you can only worry about plant health and make changes to large res without calculations on the fly to small buckets all the time. Like you said. your root growth will displace water eventually making the small res's of each bucket even harder to maintain. A larger res is more forgiving and will experience shorter swings. I used to run those pesky hydrofarm buckets with the air pump/feeding ring. Every single crop I ran always had some type of problem no matter how much attention I gave it. The small res was the reason. Engineered a large res and problems went away.
Amen! I might be able to swing something with another bucket outside the room. It just looks a little inconspicuous having a large bucket with a whack load of hoses running into the back of a steel storage cabinet. haha. Stealth is fairly important to me... as it should be for anyone growing really. I might be able to squeeze something behind the cab to keep out of sight. Definitely something to think about in the future.
sorry if you already went over this as i was just skimming threw but im lovin that trestle light hanger where did you get that or did you fab it up yourself? super clean looking!
Thanks, Picked it up from a stage light truss manufacturing company. Gave them my specs and they fab'd it up and shipped it with in a day or two. $160 after some negotiation; won't break or bend (over 14' long), super light aluminum. I use truss mounts to hang rig from loop winch and pulleys with U-bolts to mount lights. Rig is rated for 2000lbs which is way, way over kill. After this run I will be adding two more trusses and an additional winch. I will connect all trusses with Tee's and 90's making it a solid piece with 9000W. ~HD
Here is a wacky thought. Might work, might not. Take a 20 gallon Structural vessel tank used to store purified water. Using a pump system fill tank after mixing nutes in a res. Full Tank is stored somewhere hidden and single run's of 1/4" tubing to buckets controlled by a simple mechanical float or magnetic float. The tank will give decent pressure to push through the line. No pumps turning on or making sudden noise and a single 1/4" John Guest poly tubing acting as your supply line that could be fished through walls or hidden. This would be pimp and fun to do. ~HD
Ya no doubt! That would be pretty pimp! I like your thinking. I've been thinking of different ways to link a res up all night. I'm settle on something eventually. By the way, what RO unit do you use? I've been buying distilled water from the store in those massive 18L jugs and I'm getting kinda sick of it. Not to mention it looks a little bait carrying 2 huge jugs of water in every other week. haha.
http://forum.grasscity.com/grow-room-design-setup/751120-ins-outs-water-purification-grows.html Here is a post I did on my RO system. The RO was a basic RO system converted to a high performance system. I make/design custom RO system but it would be in violation of GC rules to try and solicit selling them directly to you. You can order a system from various companies and the Hydrologic systems from local hydroponic stores are totally decent. ~HD
Hey Druid, I just did a res change with my girls after noticing a little nit def. I mixed my nutes exactly how you do - 25ml of A, mixed well, let sit for 5 minutes - 25ml of B, mixed well, let sit for 5 minutes - Brought PH up to 5.7 - Added MultiZen and Drip clean, mixed well, let sit for 10 minutes - Took final readings of 875 PPM at 5.75 PH It went together really well and i noticed how little PH up was needed in comparison to when i used to add everything and then adjust PH. One question though. After adding A & B my PH was sitting around 3.45, super low! It took about 1ml of ph up to get it to the desired 5.7. Do you find your mix to be fairly low after after just adding A & B? Also, after PHing i would mix thoroughly, take a reading, add a little more, mix thoroughly, read again. I did this until i hit my 5.7 but noticed that my PH would raise as i stirred the mixture. When stirring stopped the ph would either stabilize or drop slightly. If i let it stabilize then stirred it once more it would slowly step back up again about .1. Would you say the most accurate reading would be done about half an hour after mixing everything? Just let it sit for 30 minutes then come back and check my new reading? Also thank you for the RO posting! That was a brilliant read
Everything sounds normal. I always have a low pH after A & B. Seeing a low pH to me is like visual proof that all my nutrient salts are in solution. By taking your time between A&B you're allowing all salts to properly dissolve naturally. While increasing pH it's totally normal to see pH want to lock itself in. This is why you're noticing how much harder it is to bring up to 5.7 between stirring. Start adding a second small pump or a wave generator for fish tanks to your resi while mixing. Will speed up process of dissolving and help speed up the pH'ing process. I use a small pump in 5 gal mixing buckets and larger ones for my 20, 40 and 75 gallon resi's. After a while you will get the hang of your individual wait times between all steps. Water purity, temp, aeration and elevation will all effect these wait times. Glad you liked the read. ~HD
Excellent! Thanks for the in depth reply. I found that my old mix was slightly too strong for my ladies. Still drinking and feeding very well but at the end of the day my PPMs had risen slightly from the following days readings. I found myself adding distilled water to every top up just to keep it at my desired PPM. My new mix was slightly less in hopes to hit that sweet spot right on. My concern with going a little lower on my PPMs is that if the mix is far to low and I need to boost my nutes would I be able to mix a slightly stronger add back in another bucket and start using that as my add back? If I allow my add back the appropriate time for the salts to dissolve (add A, wait 5 mins, add B, wait 5 mins) will this new mix disrupt my current mix? You said there was a specific order to mix each ingredient and I feel like adding back nutes to an already mixed soup would disrupt the chemistry.