You can see alot of work mental and physical very nice and clean !
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@NoCal I share several of the concerns. I watched some reviews of the system on the way into work.
Draining reservoir to wash it seems easy enough if I elevate it slightly - maybe 4". The level indicator tube rotates to drain it and I can use a transfer pump from there. I also looked at different pump options I think that is a tractable problem.
It’s all a matter of deciding which set of compromises to make. I guess that’s life. I don’t think there’s anything that gives me the capability to run at least 9 plants without a little ingenuity and DIY. If it isn’t obvious by now, neither bother me 
@Thetravler thanks man!
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Found a few posts from years ago about it. 
SOG seems to have given way to ScrOG and LST with fewer plants for higher production. Not sure if these sort of systems fell off because of that (moving towards fewer plants and lower plant count density) or because of drawbacks with the system topology.
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Beginning of a Garden Update 23 December 2023
There’s gonna be a lot of rambling in here, just a warning.
I’ve got the tent all kitted out. I ordered the Hydrofarm Megagarden picked up a new, low-profile pump.that’ll let me use all the 9 gallons the small reservoir has to offer me. I’ve got all the hardware I’ll need to use it - 25’ of braided line and fittings, quick-connect for my sink (so I can control the temperature of the fill water). I’ll sit the whole thing on some foam to elevate it and make it easier to drain when I exchange the reservoir contents. Waiting on some wicking mat material for the veg-side. I’ll cross that bridge as I get there over the next few weeks. I’d like to have a small reservoir wicking into the veg trays for my moms.
Long story not exactly short I spent about an hour at the hydro shop talking to the guys about the plan and the 2x2 flower chamber. They shared the opinion of most here that phenohunting in a 2x2 with a tiny table isn’t realistic. I’ve decided I want to try anyway. Perhaps, likely even, that ambition will shortly bite me in the ass. But I’m ready for it, and will proceed anyway. I find solace in knowing I can readily accomodate 1-2 plants with the same setup. For whatever combination of reasons I’m used to my crazy ideas working. I constantly fear Dunning-Kruger is behind most of them
My half-witted logic tells me there is little harm in SOG’ing many plants and picking the best ones. Will the expression be different when I take that clone outside? Sure. But it seems to me that picking the best inside probably isn’t going to hurt me outside. Picking something easy to trim, nice look, smell and effects I can’t see wildly backfiring outside. I mean, for the last two summers there has been NO selection really, just whatever I get from the bean. Almost random, although I picked the vigorous ones last summer. But - if it does, fail that is, I’ll post it. As I am wetting these seeds I worry perhaps a solid humbling is forthcoming. So it may be.
I’ve decided to attempt to pop some of my crosses made last year. The 907 Blue Genes Mom crossed to pollen I received: Shiskaberry (@SHSC-1 ) and AKBB NL#1 (@Klyphman)
Decided to do 18 beans total, assuming 50% make it through to flower (females) and I can fit all these somewhere for a few weeks. I’m also guessing some of them won’t pop, who the fuck knows maybe none of them pop. I’m running a few less-ripe beans just to see what happens. Dash of H2O2 and warm water on the towels.
A note to myself about the seed prep: Dried branches to crisp, sifted seeds, non-sealed ziploc for a month or two, sealed and tossed in chest freezer for a few days. Came out yesterday and thawed in drawer until now.
6x 907 Blue Genes x Shiskaberry (2 left):
I wish I had more of the Shiskaberry cross but bud rot crushed that branch outside. 8 total collected seeds that I’m SURE are the Shiska. There’s several seeds I found trimming but they are bastards this plant got quite a few male donors.
12x 907 Blue Genes x NL#1 (11 left if they are good I’ll send 'em to @Klyphman):
Ready to go:
Into the veg chamber. I stuck them under the tray, the heatmat is off because it’s about 80F in there when it’s running. You can see the veg-side ventilation control adjacent to the veg exh fan on the far side. It’s always on and constant speed. Near side you can see my environmental monitor, I really like these Inkbird WiFi thermometers/hygrometers. I had used them to monitor my shed/dry box all the way out in the shed, now they are all in or around the tent. I’ll probably buy another set, they’re less than $15 each.
I adjusted the lights essentially to the “ceiling” and turned them to 400ppfd at the height of the tray. Anyway that warms things up nicely. I’ve been playing with fan speeds attempting to get an idea of where I want to be and run things once I have plants in there. Just getting a feel for things.
I assume I want high 70s-low 80s when lights are on and 65-70 when they are off. We’re flirting with that now. I have the primary ventilation nominally running at 2 and it kicks to 6 when the main flower chamber gets to 77. I’m liking the ACI Controller 69 Pro. I picked up another outlet to run my water pump with a splitter. I think I can run all my switched outlets from 1 port (Flower light, veg light, flood pump), which leaves me with a spare port if I need it. Exhaust fan is port 1, outlets will be port 2 and 3, and my fancy circulation fan will be port 4.
Cheers guys, hope your holiday weekends are fantastic!
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24 hours in, none of the beans have yet cracked. Perhaps pointless update but noting to myself no germination yet. Looking back at last summers seed popping 2 days seemed to be the timeframe. We shall see tomorrow, Christmas. What a perfect day for the birth of NL and Shiskaberry crosses.
This is the first time I’ve tried to germinate a seed that I deliberately produced myself. So, my curiosity level is much higher than if I were hatching a pack of beans I purchased. I have an intrinsic skepticism of my own work. I think that’s why I post so much.
I haven’t gotten a shipping notification from groindoor.com about my MegaGarden shipping. Had really hoped to have that arrive so I could get it setup this coming week I have off. Guess it’s no big deal, I won’t have plants to shuffle in there for another few weeks at least.
I was looking into getting an RO Buddy 100 GPD 3-Stage RO Buddie Reverse Osmosis System – aquaticlife.com or something similar I could use to keep a few 5 gallon buckets of clean water around. Normally a single one for top-ups and fill 2 at my leisure for res changes. My water looks like this:
The last few, because they are last in the water were intermittent in the picture. I redid 3 tests and just kept score on that image. Fairly confident in pH around 7.8-8.2 according to this test, and carbonate 180-240ppm although leaning toward the former.
From what I’ve read I can just run it the way it is, adjust pH down when I fill the res and offset my ppms by my starting levels. Or I run RO and start from nothing. I don’t seem to have absolutely crazy well water (I’m municipal) or something where it’s almost mandatory I run RO. Any thoughts?
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Damn it start to be pretty neat over there ^^
On your water rates, it look like turned in one direction : dirty delivering “plumbery”. A flush can be salvatory i guess (even for the humans living there ^^). Just to give an idea.
Neutral + PH, hard water, carbonated, high QAC (enemy of CEC) … it look like you have dirty delivery plumbing. So the water wait inside dirt before being delivered to the house and carry some funks.
It’s possible to operate a flush of the house and from the house, but depend mostly on how it’s build, no generic solution.
I mostly used it for motherplants but Ebb&Flow and coco is the most efficient combo for the level of retention and it’s fastness. By laziness i often used GHE tables (1sqm ones) but they have their flaw : the tank volume necessary that i find quite stupid, specially in plain summer.
If you can limit the volume of water that need to stay in the pot’s table for a cycle, it will be better overall. And the tech being quite simple, it’s possible to build it in various way. There is one quite compact overall here :
Now you have to think about the medium and to dodge the usual traps, IT HAVE to possess a good water retention for good cycles and perfs. Rockwool is good on this point by example but give far better results with very oxygenated setup and letting the roots live their life : 15% NFT, DWC, Aero, drippers … PH is also quite low and your water isn’t specially playfull for this atm.
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My thoughts would be to use something like a Boogie Blue Plus filter along with some sort of Bacillus beneficial in the water to help neutralize that quaternary ammonium that stuff is nasty:
If you wanted to double it up and really filter hard without the expense and waste of RO you can plumb something inexpensive like this upstream of the Boogie and use the cheaper filters as a sacrificial first line of defense:
https://www.growerssupply.com/prod/gs1-water-filtration/pg103547.html
https://www.growerssupply.com/prod/gs1-water-filtration/wr1665.html
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… i just assumed this would happen eventually anyway? may as well skip ahead. 
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I have a relative in the water utility company, I’ll be seeing him for Christmas dinner. I’ll chat with him about a flush.
I’m also looking at different RO solutions. I’d use it for coffee and drinking water too, may as well do it right once. Classic situation for me, aim to do one thing somehow 5 different things get handled
I entertained a simpler solution but I’m not going to wind up saving money long-term so I’ll just bite the bullet.
Still reading about it all and pondering all the advice. Appreciate the input @Fuel @Dirt_Wizard @noknees
We have hatchlings 
I’ll get them into Root Riots in a few hours. It worked! I shouldn’t be surprised but it’s exciting to see these dubiously produced beans sprout roots!
Merry Christmas guys.
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We remodeled our kitchen during COVID quarantine. We installed an iSpring RO500 tankless system under the kitchen sink. It’s great! We drink it, make ice cubes, and feed the espresso machine. I don’t use it in the garden though. My municipal water is decent enough (it just needs some pHdown), and I don’t want the hassle of hauling buckets up and down stairs, plus having to rebuild the water chemistry since the RO water is so stripped down. I always have the option of using the filtered water if the municipal supply encounters fluctuations…
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We had built a DIY RO system awhile ago. It worked OK. But it was still a slow producer to me. So, as time went on we made modifications and purchased high pressure pumps to improve the membrane efficiency. Then, buffering the output with a diaphragm storage tank. And so on.
Tradeoff is that the membranes needs to be flushed more often, keeping the system sanitary took time, lots of manual intervention … but we were producing more product.
Although, with little being automated, waste was high and it just became a real PITA over time.
We ended up purchasing a larger and self-contained RO system at auction. It’s the type of system used by laboratories, photographic development processors, and so on.
We set-aside some space in a basement corner and ran a couple of poly lines leading to taps. This allows us to use the RO for consumption, gardening, cooking, and whatever else.
The RO system has a couple of loops. A generation loop and the consumption loop. The generation loop dumps the output product into a 30 gallon buffer tank. A distribution pump pressurizes the output line/ The pump turns on whenever there is a pressure drop (someone opens a tap). The regeneration loop turns on whenever the RO tank level drops below a predetermined set-point.
The system also has a bunch of automation to include automatic flushing and sanitization cycles. UV-C lamps in several locations within the system minimization/eliminates biological infection. Etc.
With that in place, we don’t really have to do much of anything beyond replacing filters every so often, doing a system sanitization, etc. Workload is reduced to checks and maintenance a couple of times per years or thereabouts.
With a the non-automated system, technically we should be doing membrane flushes regularly (daily) even when the RO is not being used. That’s not happening. Automation helps that.
I forget what it cost but it was around 1K (used). Then add another ~700 for LTL delivery. Plumbing maybe 100-200 dollars in parts. So maybe a couple of thousand invested. It was used and there was a risk there but every thing was working in the end. We had probably spent as much cobbling together a more manual and less capable DIY solution. Such commercial systems still have a costs associated but the expensive membrane elements are much better protected.
The reason I mention this is simply because RO is slow, slow, slow. If you have a system that needs a larger quantity of water, the consumer grade systems can become frustrating. At least it was for me.
Here are some thoughts when figuring out your system:
- Do a paper exercise to estimate demand usage. E.g. 30 gallon demand need. Or, 1 gallon demand need, etc.
- Using a conservative regeneration metric (specifications sheets will be optimistic), determine how long it’ll take to generate the demand. System pressure and temperature is key.
- Consider a buffer tank and distribution pump. And, consider how to keep that sanitary.
- Consider if you need to pressurize the water between the source and the membranes to >80 psi. That would require another pump and plumbing that can handle that. Membranes exist for low pressures but their efficiencies are not great … unless you are willing to give up some RO purity, increase the waste product, and/or increase the time element.
- From the above, figure the level of pain to include time to generate the demand, maintenance needs, sanitization, flushing needs, amount of automation, costs/time.
There is going to be a huge difference in pain depending if there is a demand need for 1 gallon vs 30 gallon. We had made several attempts in the DIY space and eventually could have built an equivalent system but, turns out, taking a risk and investing in a used commercial system has worked out pretty well so far.
Here’s an image of that particular system in the basement. The blue distribution tank in the back also has a UV-C cycle that runs once per day:
I wouldn’t necessarily suggest something like this for most unless there is a regular high demand load. E.g. when you want 20 gallons now, it’s available now.
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Got them into the starter plug things. They’re actually a generic version bought in bulk by the hydro shop and repackaged for retail - a combo of coco and peat moss. Alien texture of those things but I like them.
I don’t know why I have been messing with the expanded coco pellets that are frustrating and kinda a mess, these things are sweet. Nice springy texture. The seed and little tap root fit just perfect down the little hole, but there is plenty of residual resistance to tug on the shell of the seed. Never again am I using those expando-pellets. This is fantastic. Looks like it’ll plug right into a rockwool cube when the time comes.
Now, I wait…“patiently”
-------------------------------------------AS FOR WATER-----------------------------------------
@BarefootAndBlazed and @Northern_Loki Great. What a writeup @Northern_Loki, much appreciated!
In this house, which we’ll be in for another 2-3 years I’m pretty much limited to the 2x3 tent. It’s not like in 6 months I magically find space for a 10x10 and full-on indoor setup. I’m looking at a couple gallons per day total useage. Filling the res is going to take 10 gallons or so depending on how much I rinse. I can’t imagine using more than 2 gallons per day total with the plants, and I drink about a gallon from the refrigerator plus coffee (1/2 gallon ) each day.
I had thought I could get away with an undersink solution like the RO500 or a more primative unit. I think it’s more likely I’d install this in our laundry/utility room which is behind the fridge, so we can have nice ice and fridge dispenser water. This gives me some more room to play with but not much. The other half has been “strongly suggesting” that I tear out the old cabinets and install tons of shelves. I’m off this week so this may get folded into that operation. I can feed the fridge with RO, and have a seperate tap to fill the buckets for my garden.
The 100GPD derates to about 60GPD pessimistically assuming my 50-55F “cold” supply temperature drops a bit. I’d rig up an autofill bucket using a float valve to fill a 5 gallon when we go to bed or just during the day doing stuff around the house. I can wait a few hours to fill a bucket especially when I need to do a res change (2 buckets).
I could totally see doing something like you suggest above if I had more room, which I eventually will. Looks nice 
it’s a beautiful setup and I love getting your lessons learned before I do anything!
I have to go to the doctor today so I’m sure I’ll be sitting around reading quite a bit. Thanks for the good directions to investigate.
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Thanks Loki this is the single best RO post I’ve ever seen here, very educational and bookmarked.
Dude! They’re amazing, I can’t believe I messed with Jiffy pellets for my cannabis before finding Root Riots and the like, I haven’t tried any of the other brands yet but they seem like a basic concept, pretty interchangeable. They came recommended to me for cloning, and have been great for that with Techniflora RootTech gel, but I get them in a huge bag and just pop seeds in them too, much better germ rates than anything else I’ve tried for seed starting. I now don’t crack or soak seeds, just scuff hard and rinse for ten seconds in 1:1 H20:H202 and then a fulvic and kelp water soak and stir for a minute or two. I pre wash the plugs with a 1:5 H202 solution the day before to make sure the field is sterile-ish, and the plugs are moistened and expanded fully. I find that they stay moist a few days under the dome and then when I vent it I water them with some fulvic and kelp a tiny bit. They’re so good man, make me feel a lot more confident about starting rarer and older seed packs.
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Those spongy rooting plugs, the root riot brand at least, are almost $1 each (cad). I’m too cheap. But I’m starting to hate peat/coco pellets.
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@Nitt I got you my Canadian brother, look for iHort Q-Plugs, they run about $35 CAD per hundred and come in two sizes:
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Few updates:
Ordered an RO system that will be integrated into my pantry/laundry room renovation. Simpure T1-5 100GPD I picked this for several reasons, cost, reviews, tank, fridge compatibility. The small tank will ensure the fridge works properly, there was some concern with the tankless units that there would be problems doing that with a modest unit. I’ll put a tap for filling my buckets in the pantry and devise some sort of clip-on float valve system for that. Pantry has been stripped, old furnace ducting removed and re-drywalled, old cabinet sawn apart and removed (HUGE PITA), repainted and ready for new shelves and stuff to be installed. Kitchen is now a nightmare of pantry contents today will be picking up all the supplies to get the pantry back to functionality. RO will arrive this weekend/next week and will be installed then. I brought the fridge plumbing out already so it’ll hook right up with minimal fuss.
I think I may have been scammed for the first time ordering the MegaGarden from this groindoor.com place. It was one of the few places it was in-stock, the website is really comprehensive for a scam, but the address seems to be a mail forwarding one.
Edit: Order received 1/4/2024. Only complaint was lack of communication regarding delays
Anyway, there’s a few alternative places I’ll try to call today. I sent them an email asking for an update since they claim it is something that should be shipped in one day. I haven’t heard anything since placing the order 12/19. Who knows. Maybe it’s legit, they just have the holidays off, but I have a funny feeling. I can always file a charge-back. The irony is that I ordered from groindoor thinking it looked more legit than the other places 
Agrigulture Solutions - looks wholesome like a one-man-band sort of online business, can’t find any reference of scams:
Cultivate Supply - up in Denver, these guys look legit and current:
https://cultivatesupply.com/products/megagarden-system?variant=44525489815829¤cy=USD&utm_medium=product_sync&utm_source=google&utm_content=sag_organic&utm_campaign=sag_organic&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIsc-h9JiygwMV_s_CBB3ROQWqEAQYASABEgJbTvD_BwE
I’ve got green appearing over the root plugs. We’re cookin’
Cheers everybody. Life is beginning here, hopefully 
life
Hope those Q plugs fit the economical bill for ya @Nitt. I think I picked up mine for about $10 per 25. I’ll be buying more I assume bigger bags are cheaper.
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Probably not a scam just unmotivated employees and Christmas, hope so at least. Either way that’s annoying. At least credit card companies have your back with online orders.
Did you decide on a grow medium yet?
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