Bubblers to the rescue!

HydroPower · September 10, 2016, 1:57pm

Hello Overgrowers!
I’ve always loved Bubblers as ultra easy way to do hydroponics. Its easy to build and setup and it has unmatchable grow speed of hydro. There are few critical factors you have to watch but once you do, you can really enjoy low maintenance setup.

Of course everything for me started with the article from Overgrow by HighGrade.

My first attempts looked like this:

As you can see its classical setup:

clay pebbles
12 cm basket for water plants (available in aqua store or handymen store)
40 litre bucket (paints are sold in these)
aquarium airline
elite air pump

HydroPower · September 10, 2016, 2:01pm

After initial compare with traditional soil grows I’ve been used to indoors led to impression that hydroponics and specifically bubblers are

faster
cleaner
easy to build, clean and maintain

You just need to get used to its speed… Everything is faster, it grows faster and also any possible problem (due to pH or nutes) also spreads faster… Luckily there are just few factors that you must watch to be succesful…

nutes temperatures has to be under 25 celsius (if you are bubbling in the hot air, you’ll have problems).
nutes have to be dilluted, because roots are emerged directly into it… I’m using 1/3 original dosage (that is what HighGrade originally recommended I believe)
its better to have more bubblers (one per plant) than one giant system for all of them, because any disease would spread immediately to other plants through the nutes

The speed of hydro compared to classic soil was evident after first few tests…

HydroPower · August 30, 2016, 6:01pm

Revised version of growroom looked like this. These are standard 40 litre buckets but this time covered with black plastics to keep water cold…

You can possibly see that I had some problems with air temps as the leaves curled up… This was actually problem only when plants were young, as bigger plants can through perspiration use massive amount of water to cool themselves down…

HydroPower · September 10, 2016, 1:53pm

Still the results were not so good, as I didn’t have enough experiences with how quick vegetating plants can turn into jungle after 12/12 switch and also the genetics was too stretchy…

First success was possibly 3rd grow space where I finally got hold of indica dominant strains - particularly White Russian and Sweet Tooth #3 (Spice of Life)… Specially ST#3 has become favourite strain and keeper, which have followed me since till nowadays…

It is pretty unique indica with sweet taste, very heavy yielding and it just fits this bubbler small bushes style very well…

First round with ST#3 & White Russian… Still there was not enough uniformity, so it was clear that next step would be to go just with ST#3…

HydroPower · September 10, 2016, 1:51pm

Second round with Sweet Tooth #3

HydroPower · February 24, 2020, 3:43pm

Sweet Tooth #3 was the keeper :)… I tried to share it with everybody to be sure this genetics won’t dissapear… There was features I was looking for:

easy to trim (not many leaves in buds)
above average yield
monstrous colas
very suitable for hydroponics
great taste and strong smoke
indica dominant and not too stretchy
fine for middle sized bushes

Some ST3 close-ups

HydroPower · February 24, 2020, 3:43pm

Look at whole setup:

6 * 3 = 18 bubblers in 40 litre paint buckets

It was little bit messy, but still very well accessible from both sides. Window was covered by taped carton…

Illegal_Smile · June 2, 2017, 2:19am

Temp probes always are a problem for me … best solution I have found is Ice Chest grows , granted I love MDWC rather than hydroton or whatever but man what great results and no issues with light mold limited space for roots or temps, be they hot or cold…

LemonadeJoe · June 2, 2017, 12:53pm

Temps are crucial in hydro…

Have you seen this one?