Adventures in Aero #4 - Sebring's Earth Lover (now Dragon Tongue)

@ReikoX I thought that was triploid instead of diploid plant. when it has 3 main leaves

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That is a common misconception. That is what is called whorled phyllotaxy, it has to do with the structure of the plant. It could be a polyploid, or it could not be. Only genetic testing would tell if it is or isn’t.

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Thats excellent performance for that price, and the noise level is very good. Those dont seem to be available in the US or I would consider one if I need to replace the one I have. They are almost the same price, and that one has about double the capacity. It should do the job easily.

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I’ve just checked on Alibaba and there are a number of options like this with cost around $50-$90. But nobody says how much would shipping cost, it should be negotiated. You can try to search with “oil free silent air compressor” or even with a model from the range (this is from one of the offers, but I believe most of them sell the same product):


The only problem is warranty. And shipping cost might be pretty high because of the weight.

It is pretty weird there is nothing like that on Amazon, I believe we have these models more than a year or two already.

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Yeah, warranty and service parts are a real concern for me. I am usually willing to pay extra for that. Amazon has spoiled me for sure.

Day 14 since sprouting.

The babies have been in the root chamber of death for 7 days now. I dont notice the changes on a daily basis, but when you look back and compare its pretty interesting.

I dont have a similar GIF for the leaf development, but here is a simple side by side. The roots look more impressive to me, but the leaves are starting to take off now.

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One of my kitty’s is obsessed with climbing the shelves in my grow room and really really likes to get up on top of my grow tent.

I walked into the room just now while the room lights were off and the tent light is on and saw that she had made a new hole in the plastic. There was an interesting pattern to the light that was projecting onto the ceiling, but it took me several seconds to realize what I was seeing.

She had created a pinhole camera and I was seeing a poorly focused picture of the inside of my tent!

This is looking down from above my lights.

This is the rotten beast helping me tend the plants. I think she wants to be sure Im doing it right :wink:

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I forgot to post this earlier. The fuzzy’s are coming along nicely.

One interesting thing is the root tips where the air prunning started have not recovered and dont look like they will. It looks like once the root is damaged, it stays shriveled up. Some of them do continue to grow longer though. Im assuming its the non-shriveled parts that are getting longer, but no way to tell for sure.

I think the timing is pretty close for this stage of growth.

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Day 15

I woke up and found this on the smallest plant. Mostly just the one leaf, but a single spot on the edge of two other leaves.

PH is good, temps are good, and the other tow show no signs at all. The VPD and humidity over all are still low, but its always that way. Other than the before lights out droop (which they always have) everything else looks fine.

After thinking about it and looking closer, I think maybe this is a result of the root damage/air pruning that occurred a few days ago.

This plant has the smallest root mass of the three by a large margin. Id guess its roots are maybe 1/4 to 1/3 the mass of the other two. It had similar damage compared to the other two as far as pruning, but when you factor in the smaller amount of roots, the percentage that was damaged is significantly larger. If the other two plants had say 2% to 3% of the roots damaged, this one had 6% to10% damaged. Im just picking numbers out of the air but you get the idea.

Anyway, Ive decided to increase the flow rate slightly. Partly because of this but mostly because all three look like they are wanting to spread out sideways more than growing down. At this point, I want them to head for the floor as they spread wider. The target shape is an inverted cone that gets wider as it gets further down in the chamber.

If they get too wide up top, they will tend to cut off mist before it can get to the lower parts of the chamber later on.

Im now at 1.0/60 and will see how that looks after 24 hours or so.

The spotted baby’s roots. Note that the one long tap root is all shriveled up and a replacement has not grown out yet.

The other two show the regular ice cream cone shape rather than the inverted cone shape I want.

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Minor (mostly boring/LITFA) up-date.

I will post some pics later, after I sober up a bit. Been taking muscle relaxers and narcotics for a few days, so kind of loopy.

Anyway, over all things are going well. This round, the roots are looking significantly better/larger than at this same time during the last grow with the Earth Lover. The plants are roughly similar in size.

Two days ago, I had a scare about root rot on the smallest plant. It looked like it was starting on one of the shoots that had air pruned earlier. I cut off the brownish section on that one shoot. Then I added some extra chlorine to the rez and put another dose in the siphon tank - just to give them a more concentrated shot of chlorine. That seems to have worked. Today, I lowered the root chamber temps from 71F to 70F.

I was bored, in pain, tired of all this LITFA, stoned, and doped up, so at 2 AM this morning I decided to top all three :smiley:

Im sure I made a good decision… :wink:

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Day 25 from seed. Thats roughly two weeks in the chamber.

I had fully intended to do some cool GIFs showing the progress over the last two weeks, but Im too mentally fuzzy and tired, so all you get are just some current pics. Dont worry, Ive included some root porn :slight_smile:

There is some chlorosis developing on some of the older leaves of the big baby. Not sure whats causing that. It could be a result of me letting the PH climb up to the 6.1 range for over 12 hours the other day, but that doesnt seem that far off PH wise. The other possibility is I mis-measured the Calcium and magnesium parts when I topped off the rez last time. The calibration marks are all worn off on the syringes Im using so I could have easily been off a bit. I usually add a little more of those because I always seem to need more cal/mag.

I fixed the PH and added some more cal/mag to the rez. We will see…

These are the roots of the big baby with the chlorosis. They look great to me. They had been the largest mass by a small margin, but the other baby has caught up. They have also reached the floor of the chamber.

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The runt.

I noticed that some of the roots have attached themselves to the ceiling like they have done on each grow. It will be interesting to see if they go wild like last time.

There was some other point I wanted to mention, but my muscle relaxer is kicking in, so rational thought is going out the window… :slight_smile:

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I’ve finally started to receive my packages. The first one:

2 different nozzles and 5 electric air solenoids (I didn’t want to have 5 but… :smiley: )

Hopefully tomorrow air compressor has to arrive. I’ve got it even cheaper than expected: at around $116. But as I don’t have any tubings\fittings except ones which came with nozzles I will not be able to test nozzles yet.

I slightly disappointed with solenoids: they consume 4 A current at the cold start and down to 3 as they become warmer. Too much as for me. But hope they will at least open fast. May be I’ll use a capacitor and dc-dc converter like LM317 to lower voltage till 4 V after opening, but not now for sure.

Still thinking about root chamber; I’m currently considering DIY version with a metal frame and a polyethylene film.

Lovely roots! Perfect ones I would say.

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nice show! I usually don’t post on OG, but noticed your had Sebring’s seeds going too. I also got a male EL, and one female. Also growing Dragon Tongue now too (just sprouted!). and strangely enough, I also do aeroponics, although not on those strains.
cheers brother

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WooHoo! Christmas in January!

The only thing I would be careful of is using any brass parts/fittings if they will be in contact with the nutrient solution. The nutrient solution will be slightly acidic and will attack the brass, which will leach copper into the solution. Small amounts wont do much harm - if any - but too much can be very toxic.

If the flow rate past the brass is high enough, I doubt the copper will be a problem, but the fittings corroding may be an issue over time. For example, you may not be able to unscrew those fittings after just a few weeks, so long term maintenance may be an issue.

In the air lines should be no problem - especially if you use a water trap in the line.

Yeah, 4 amps is a lot. I think the ones I am using are just under 1 amp.

You can see how fast they open if you video a mist cycle. It will work best if you can rig up a light that turns ON when the solenoid gets power and off when the power cuts off - preferably an LED that turns on fast.

If you then look at the video, you can see exactly whan the solenoid gets power. You can then watch the video one frame at a time and see whan the mist starts to come out. You should also be able to tell when it reaches full strength. Then you can see when the light goes out and watch any over spray after the power is off.

My video editing software would only go down to around 17 milli-seconds I think, so that is the smallest time unit I can “see” in the video. IIRC, my solenoids were opening somewhere between 34 and 51 milli-seconds, but the spray lagged well behind - that was with my old HPA hydrolic nozzles.

I have not done this test with the AAA nozzles. I should do that before the next grow cycle.

Just remember that with a non-porous material for the chamber, you wont get any evaporative cooling, so temp control in the root zone will have to be addressed some other way.

I am really looking forward to seeing your results.!

Thank you and welcome! Im glad to see another aeronut :wink:

What type of aero do you do?

Im interested to know how your grow turns out and how you like the Dragon Tongue, effects, etc. Im into seeing what combinations of CBD and THC work best for me, and Dragon Tongue will be my first mostly CBD strain.

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Day 22

Thanks for the compliment! They are doing good I think, but not quite perfect yet.

For one thing, I still dont have that inverted cone shape. Ive been running the flow rate higher than ideal trying to get then to grow down more than sideways, but its not working as well as I hoped. They are spreading out down lower, but at the same time they continue to grow largely sideways in the upper regions. Im not too worried about it at this stage. Im more interested in developing and keeping the fuzzy hairs - which look great up towards the net pots. The lower roots are still relatively smooth.

I still havent figured out why each root mass is so different. It pretty much has to be due to uneven mist distribution, but some of it is pheno related I think. The runt has the smallest roots and they are staying relatively in a relatively narrow bunch, and growing mostly from one side of the net pot. There are some shoots coming out the other side, but they dont seem to want to go anywhere. It looks like that side of the net pot is getting shadowed some how. On the plus side, the fuzzy hairs are pretty evenly distributed through the root mass.

The big girl has a much larger root mass, but the right side has a lot fewer fuzzy hairs than the left side. The lower roots also are staying somewhat smoother - less fuzzy’s.

The other baby has almost caught up to the big girl as far as leaves, and is very close to the same size root mass now. It looks like it has more fuzzy hairs than either of the other two and they are more evenly distributed.

Over all, I am pretty happy with how its going :slight_smile:

I have been talking about all the ways PH can get out of hand in hydro for some time now - biological action from algae or bacteria, root exudates if you are recirculating, alkalinity in the water, and temperature of the water.

I just had a new realization on the subject of temperature. It occurred to me a few days ago that my siphon tank is sitting in a much warmer area than my rez. It sits just outside the root chamber. When the heater kicks on - which is quite often - the temperature in that area can get up into the low 80’sF. Im keeping my rez below 65F and often as low as 55-58F.

So, I decided to check and see if there was any change in PH between my rez and the siphon tank.

Depending on the temperature of the water the PH is anywhere from 0.1 to 0.3 points higher than the rez. The higher the temperature of the siphon tank water, the higher the PH.

The greater the difference between the siphon tank and the rez, the greater the PH shift is.

When the rez is near 65F and the tank water is in the low 70’s, the PH is only about 0.1 higher. When the rez is at 58F and the siphon tank is at 84F, the difference is 0.3 higher.

Im not going to do anything about this for now other than keep the rez PH a bit lower than I have been. I now think at least part of the problem with the leaf color/chlorosis is this PH difference. When I let the rez run hi at what I what I thought was a safe PH of 6.2-6.3, it was probably actually at 6.5-6.9 or higher by the time the roots got sprayed.

I lowered the PH in the rez to 5.6 yesterday, and the siphon tank is now at 5.8 and the plants look better.

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oi Larry, I’m not doing sebring’s in aero, I’m doing the Vault challenge, Passion Fruit, in my aero system,

The Dragon Tongue just sprouted yesterday, 2/3. They actually all sprouted but one of the seed coats wouldn’t release off one sprout. I decided to place them in promix because of prior deficiencies I was getting in coco.

The Earth Lover is turning out. I did this one in coco, but had deficiencies and a few probs earlier on. I will post some new pictures here later tonight.

I need to re-read your thread… very nice show u got going on. I been using RootRescue and RootShield, but it turns the roots brown.

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Nice setup! I dont recall anyone else on OG doing an LPA (Low Pressure Aero) setup at the moment. I like the vertical manifold. Be sure to get some pics of the roots as they develop. Im into root porn :smiley:

I assume those are both beneficial bacteria? I had no luck when I tried similar products, but I was also having major algae, and PH issues at the same time. I stopped completely when I switched to HPA. I read that the shearing action when the small droplets are formed kills them. I have no idea if thats true or not though.

You should start a thread on your LPA setup. I bet there are people here who are interested in trying that or at least will be curious.

Day 24

Well crap again. Im not 100% sure, but this sure looks like boy balls, or nanners.

Other than that, everything is looking pretty good. The roots have grown quite a bit since the last time I took pics and are looking pretty good. All three are now touching the floor of the chamber.

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Well, that one baby is definitely male, so he is now history. I think I can still come close to filling the scrog screen once I get it in place. That wont be long now. This is the risk of only running three plants at a time.

The two survivors are flaunting their female parts.

The worst part about this is that male was growing faster than the other two and the roots were the largest bundle and the best looking.

Pulling the roots up through the hole for the net pot compacted them quite a bit. They stretched out to over 36" long.

I find it interesting the way the large tap root was the same diameter as the stem above, then just exploded into all those smaller shoots. Thats how all three of these seem to be developing at this stage.

I cut off the roots and rinsed them really well under tap water. They are now in my fridge awaiting the time when I can make some root cream. That might be several weeks though. @ReikoX - would it be ok to freeze them? I can fill the baggie they are in with water to help keep them from freezer burning?

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Yes, you can freeze them, or just let them dry and store them dry. I’ve used roots that have been stored dry for months with the same effects.

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