Airpumpless Sluckets

I’ve been on pause for the DO experiments. I’ve cross posted some DO readings that I took last year into Slain’s thread, here:

Still “in-progress” otherwise, FWIW.

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I have been meaning to ask you how this was going and if you had any plants in the system yet. Im really curious to follow a grow that has this level of data gathering and monitoring. Let us know when you get it growing :slight_smile:

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I read this thread from the beginning, and I must first say , what a dedicated and enlightening bunch of guys you all are.
As a two year old newbee, I jumped in the deep end, I must admit. Being in Africa, I dont have the luxury of buying things online, as and when needed. I researched for over a year, chose the grow style that I though fitted my situation, looked at all aspects of what I would need and ordered EVERYTHING, one time and had it shipped to me, One top up order was needed 6 months later, lol.

So here I am with 3 grows under my belt, 4th in Veg. I have 2 x( 8 bucket13Gal systems) ALL CCH2O Systems in a 10x10x11 tent. Epicenters outside the tent along with 13 Gal top up Res and chiller for each system. 4 spectrum King 600W Leds.
I have learned plenty and I have decided to chill and slow things down.

I have 4 plants in a 35Gal tub in a 8x8 with one 600w led in the centre and 2 x 140w Leds on the sides as side lighting. I built my first SCROG trellis with PVC pipes and fishing line ( I may bolster with 3mm nylon rope) later.
ANYWAY< my reason for joining !!!

This experiment is precisely about DO and ORP !

My theory was about determining the exact amount of 35% H2O2 to keep bacteria down and Oxygenation levels Up.
I got an ORP meter and found out that it is not affected by h2o2 unless deadly quantities was added.
My RO water at 0ppm and 6Ph measured 270mV after lots of h202, it only got as high as 325mV. Intersting note (the drinking water I have delivered to my house measured ORP of 340mV, lol).
So I am currently looking at Calcium HOCL (locally available) and, possibly an O2 generator…to be continued.

On the DO side, though I have an air pump and 12Inch circular micropore diffuser, I was thinking of having a pump take water out from one side of the tub and reintroducing the water back on the top of either the other end of the Tub or in the centre. This is with intention of not using a chiller. The purpose is that I have always suspected the CCH2O system is flawed, my eventual goal is to not take anything out of the 8 bucket RDWC systems but merely add a second pump that will take water from Epicenter and distribute to each bucket as top feed for waterfall effect to supplement air diffusers, and hopefully take them out all together.

Has anything I said, made any sense???

Cheers

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LOL, some may say nutty :smile:

That is awesome and the right way to do it.

Has anything I said, made any sense???

I think I understand what you are doing.

  1. oxidizing chemistry to control bacteria while, potentially, encouraging aerobic bacteria over anaerobic bacteria.
  2. without use of a chiller, per se.

I guess a lot of this comes down to what temperature the solution sits at. And, whether it is somewhat stable. A factor, towards the health of a plant, has to do with the DO within the solution. It is a somewhat hidden factor that is difficult to measure and as temperatures increase, the less DO is available.
H2O2 will have the positive effect of supplying additional oxygen but at elevated temperatures, the oxidation rate due to the H2O2 will increase along with an increased rate out-gassing of the O2.
For ORP, you are measuring the oxidation potential of a solution but it won’t give you a precise O2 indication. Different chemistry will have different oxidizing potential. For instance, your drinking water appears to have some oxidizing chemistry. Possibly chlorine. ORPs potential is good for looking at trends indicating that something is changing in the system (such as an infection) and determining a general range that works for your healthy plants.

I like what you are doing. Being able to run a system without having a chiller would be of great benefit. Obviously with multiple grows you are seeing success. Out of curiosity, would you have a general figure of the min/max temperatures of the solution that you are seeing?

Would like to learn more about what you’ve discovered, do you have a grow log I can read?

In this system, no. :confused: I’m easily distracted, squirrel. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Preview of things I’ve been working on (which this system is serving as the base), related to:

Front-end data graphs:

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haha, I think nutty is implied.

With chiller I get temps down to 68F. I did not get the kind of root mass that I have seen other growers accomplish. Most get full 13Gal buckets of roots. Mine just, are not anything like that though, due to long veg periods the plants were huge but not the roots. In addition to high RH (70rh) in last 3 weeks of previous grow, my buds were very fluffy. I thought to get over the problems up top, I must focus on roots below. Luckily I had no mold or fungus as I used Purecrop1 (awesome product).

Right now with no chiller, water temp is 75F and tent temp is 79F.

What do you think of (dont know the right ratio) using HTH pool schock aka Calcium HOCL for a couple of hours before Res change (or right after res change) sterilise for until the next res change or a little dose long before nute top up?

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I love the name ‘slucket’, and think of this when I read it lol

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@anon32470837 may have some thoughts. I think he was using some pool shock successfully for algae.

Personally, I’d rather avoid overly oxidizing chemistry (as I add H2O2). But, that’s also unrealistic. So, really, I don’t have a very good opinion either way. I don’t understand the potential negative effects and concentrations well enough.

That’s considered within the safe range to control the bad stuff while being “warm” enough to not overly slow growth.

So, do you think it’s the temperature that is slowing the root growth? You can also encourage root growth by tweaking the nutrients. E.g. lower nitrogen, increase phosphorous / potassium. Also, there’s the DO that is great for the roots. Something else may be unbalanced as a contributing factor along with the temperature. Just guessing. Your current temperatures seem reasonable, your chiller temperature also seemed reasonable, and you’ve clearly been thinking alot on this.

Fluffy, in some cases, is commonly attributed to too high of a temperature in the environment. Lights too close (high leaf temp) ,etc. Or, conversely, too little light. Transpiration / humidity problems (as noted), lack of ventilation / circulation.

I’d suggest opening up a topic on your grows, you’ll get some better ideas/feedback (as a thread topic) for your specific scenario from the OG folk. :+1:

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Yeah, start a thread on your grow, then tag me and @Northern_Loki, and we can discuss it. I can get long winded and dont want to side track this thread too much :slight_smile:

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My journals are hand written and evolved overtime, I think I have a good spreadsheet that I road tested during the last grow

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@Northern_Loki Would love to here more on your findings, could you reach out to me off this post. jcarmody@slucket.com

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