HP aeroponics tips n tricks

Basic Growing Info
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Hi, so I’ve been growing for just a few months but I’ve studied up for years prior. Mostly soil and some hydroponics studying. But I decided to do aeroponics and figured I’d make it high pressure to atomizer the mist as good or better than using a unreliable fogger as most do for “fogponics” or using low pressure misters. I came to find that what I was doing wasn’t entirely new. Nasa had done their own variant using dual nozzles and 0.4mm + 0.3mm nozzles for humidity + nutrition. But they used very long on times with their 5min off times… And likely not clay pellets.

I have seen others use the air/water sprayers and will likely do that once I get an air compressor to cut down on components and crappy nozzle issues (clogging or malfunctioning )

What brings me here today though is water timing. I’ve had so many issues with timing and random occurrences of every disaster that could happen. Everything from algae, root rot, mold, super dry roots and bugs… I started with H2o2 and that failed so I started using orca and tps billions combined with waste away. It definitely cleaned my water up and my roots exploded in white for about a week. Then stopped and started turning light brown the moment my new clones got added.

I came to find mold after using tps billions to transplant a few new clones… So never again will I use tps on anything but Reservoir water. As it had Ill effects on literally every plant I used it with. As a foliage spray and transplant booster… Don’t do it… It promotes mold and bad bacteria while the Good bacteria takes 2 weeks to show up… By then the bad bacteria is killing the plant. This happend on cannabis and standard flowers around the house… It killed 4 of them.

So as you can tell I’ve been through a lot and it’s a steep learning curve going from Nothing to HP aero, as I expected.

Currently I have 2x 0.1mm nozzles on a 100psi pump in clay pellets and I spray 2seconds per 5m 45sec. I used to do 5min and one of the plants started to dry out its roots… While all others roots were tiny and fragile and dripping wet… So Instead of extending the dry time I added a little more spray time… (1 second). I had 0. 4mm nozzles before which atomized better by a different brand but I didn’t have enough and so I am waiting for more nozzles to come in. I got 0.1,0.15,0.2,0.3mm. I’ll likely try 0.2mm next.

But honestly I’m shooting in the dark. The plants look like they have a K deficiency, so I added 5% more K yesterday so we will see if it helps. The ppm is 164 and the plants are finicky as sometimes they want 200 and other times they only drink water and make ppm go up to 240…then other times they eat a ton and don’t drink water…

I saw some white and green growth on some of my pellets but it could be anything. Bacteria, mold… It could even be beneficial fungi but I have no way to know if it’s good or bad… All I know is new white roots are popping up that look fuzzy like hp aero is supposed to look… But my pellets are getting covered in green and white mold or something…

Everyone talks well about drainage with pellets but this garbage drowned 3 clones because it kept water in the pellets at the bottom of the netpot and stopped drainage somehow.

If you have advice aside from abandoning ship I’d like to hear it. I more than anything just need advice on knowing spray times and off times. How do I gauge when a root is dry or not? Some parts are super dry and others are dripping wet. It just depends on the way the roots are spread out.

On a side note I use neem oil to kill pests, it works pretty well. I see it kills fungi but seeing as it’s on the moss the plants came in, I don’t know if my plants would like neem oil directly on their root ball… Any experience with hydrophobic Clarified neem oil?

Right now I don’t have root rot, just this surprise fungi and K deficiency symptoms. But I’m mostly here to figure out watering. Any help is appreciated.

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Any pix of your set up?

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Industry standard is 20-30 seconds of delivery every 3 to 4 minutes.

Most home setups start at 30/3 as a baseline.

It is the aspect of aeroponic requiring the most trial and error…

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Also, true aeroponics is extremely ratio sensitive…
These seem to work best.
Ca:Mg 3:1
NO3:NH4 9:1
ph is 5.4-5.8

Using RO and mixing nutrients before adding it to the system will help prevent precipitation and nozzle blockage.

Avg droplet size 50 micron (30-80 range) to concord with roots hairs tubes

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I put one up for ya. It’s a Dutch bucket setup that’s modded

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That’s for LPA from what I’ve read. Mine is HPA, so I’ve heard avg there is 1-5s on and ~5m off.

But at 2s+ my roots are drenched and get susceptible to rot. So I am doing 1s and 5m15s as of today. It seems like the clay holds too much water and 5m isn’t enough for them to let go of the water, the roots mostly have droplets at their ends but the bottom of the net pot always has a puddle that never leaves.

Is there a way to get rid of this small puddle? I was thinking of putting a funnel backwards to keep clay from touching the bottom of the net pot and maybe this would help.

I think the hardest part is that each plant requires something different… Next time I’m going to use 3 of the same plant… Because I had 6 originally and it was impossible… 3 strains is still too much I think.

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Interesting.
I’m currently using “Humboldt’s secret” pre mix made for hydro etc. I use their a and b then add their Calmag formula. I do it all at a 30% of the min dose and the K ingredients (tree trunk + golden tree) I do 35% of minimum. I’m not sure I trust this company though… It’s been hard to dial in and I always have good plants for a week and suddenly a deficiency hits. Magnesium or K or N were the main culprits.

They have a plant enzyme as well which they say 1ml/gallon so it’s what I add since it’s not a nutrient I don’t feel I should lower the ratio, am I wrong?

Ph on my system is always 5.8 due to a device I use to keep it there. It does pretty well. Triggers at 5.9 and may drop to 5.7 for a short time and settle at 5.8. Probiotics helped stabilize it too… Before both of these it was insane how much of a jump I’d see after just adding nutes. But not anymore.

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On paper you are exactly right. But short sprays would require a solenoid as close as possible to each nozzle to function as intended…

Say you have 4ft between the solenoid and the nozzle, stagnant water in that length of tube isn’t pressurized. The short bursts only spit on the roots, droplets are too fat and leading to many problems.

The longer run time pushes that water out and give some spray duration within correct droplet size range.

Some run foggers 24/7 to rinse root exudate on top of regular nutrient rich bursts. None claim roots are too wet. Is it possible droplets could be outside of range?

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Correct. I do have a solenoid. On plant 1 it is inches from the nozzles and all nozzles have springs and seals in them to keep pressure below 100psi from spraying out. Also the furthest nozzle is maybe 2ft. Thus pressure pre nozzle never drops to 0 and my solenoid is always between 96-120psi, I have a gauge showing me this.

I am thinking of relocating the solenoid / inlet to the center bucket instead of the end to increase the uniformity of pressure as well. Instead of stoppers at the end I have a loop nylon line to hopefully further help with this. But I’m not sure if it helps or makes it worse. It’s trial or error.

Based on spec sheets the average seems to be 30-100microns which is what Nasa stated would work. This is utilizing 0.4mm nozzles and 80psi min.

Mine are using 0.3mm dual nozzle and I may add a 3rd to accommodate the roots in the center. If I do I’ll likely switch to smaller nozzles to reduce water volume. So I’d be running 0.15-0.2mm vs the 0.3mm I have right now. These nozzles should have 30 to <100micron sizes. The only issue arises from debri. It’s very common when I tried 0.1mm. As getting jammed makes the nozzles squirt a stream vs fine mist. I noticed this and addressed the issue yesterday. While I wait for my replacement to come in with an online mesh filter I’ll replace with 200mesh aka 74 micron.

But since I run 3x 200mesh filters Inline with each pump (one for recirc, one for high pressure spray and one for chiller) I have minimal debri now. As long as I wash the filters weekly and add waste away. I find that adding waste away based on the Reservoir may work but since it is being applied to the entire system I have to add 8gal vs 4gal.

Regarding fogger, that’s an Interesting observation. I had the bottom of my Buckets with water and the roots would drink from there before. I’ve since blocked that area with mesh and now force them to rely on mist only.

If what you say is right maybe it’s not the nutrients but the humidity in the Buckets that is causing issues.

I added a pellet humidity sensor yesterday so maybe I’ll use this to keep watering in check and I’ll have to get a humidity sensor for the Buckets…?

Another way around this all is to use the nozzles that rely on air pressure too. Those are more uniform and take care of the humidity issue since they have a broader spectrum of humidity vs nute absorption. Vs these nozzles which have mostly a range for nutes to be absorbed.

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The hardware all seem sound… Clever thinking on the “check valve” nozzles by the way.

You mentioned using 3 pumps, one of which being a recirc pump. Do you mean recirculating as in “agitator” or literally recirculating water to be sprayed again?

The idea behind mentioning foggers was to make a point that high humidity shouldn’t be a problem, but also that those using this method of flushing root exudate insist on draining to waste.

Adding nozzles should be kept to minimum as each already installed get more traction than most would assume.

.

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Thanks. So far the Chinese nozzles I have gotten were over or under the range I wanted so I’m hoping this new batch is appropriate. Currently the springs are weaker and letting some out below 30psi which isn’t good but at least it can “help”. I had a check valve prior but those let anything over 10psi over which is worse. So these should theoretically be better.

The 3rd pump is one that grabs the water from the bottom of the Buckets, filters it and then sends it back to the Reservoir. My agitator is a air pump, which also keeps the bacteria aerobic.

Yea I figured. My source of humidity aside from 5min sprays from 2 nozzles is the aerated pool at the bottom of the Buckets. As well as whatever is captured by the clay pebbles. I also have an above ground sprayer in my tent keeping humidity up that may minimally contribute to humidity as clay pebbles suck it up along side the leaves and such.

I manually flush my system (25%) weekly. I do this to prevent salt build up and inroduct new probiotics and prebiotic and nutes into the system.

It used to come out nasty and I found out that I was introducing anaerobic bacteria and combining the nutes with bacteria also boosted this issue. I did some experiments to prove this since nobody online seemed to realize this combo was actually promoting root rot.

Well I read somewhere that there is a way to calculate how many nozzles you need but it was a discussion with out sources… I believe I saw it on this site somewhere. So I couldn’t really look into it to apply it to my own setup.

Nasa states using 1 small nozzle to use the solution for humidity and not necessarily for the roots. But if it’s not spraying more often than 5min…I don’t know if I’d bother… My pool at the bottom attracted the roots… But I didn’t want the risks of DWC so I blocked them… But now I have to figure out how to seperate the roots so they get evenly sprayed… This would likely help me avoid using a 3rd nozzle. Maybe I’ll glue some zip tie holders to the ends of the Buckets and loosely put some looped zip ties to organize and seperate the roots into small groups… Unless I find a trellis type setup for roots… Or make one.

The water at the bottom is sent back to the res every 30min but due to the output, some water will always stay behind to bubble.

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I’ve dabbled with HPA yrs back. I bought my equipment from a company called Multiponics. Basically it was just a pump, silicone stopper plugs and the spray heads. I supplied everything else to complete the system but what I’m getting at is a very key component, and that is an accumulator tank. I didn’t see in the above posts any mention of one. Also each spray head had its own stainless steel solenoid. This allowed immediate atomization of the nutrient solution without any ramp up lag. When your cycles are only 1-2 seconds long any amount of distance between the head and solenoid will cause a delay. The accumulator tank kept the nutrient in the lines pressured to 125psi and ensured each head was supplied equally.

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Have you tried running it drain to waste, fresh nutrients only?

Recirculating with smaller volumes and maintaining perfect health can be nothing short of miraculous…

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I thought I put that out there. I definitely use an accumulator. Without it this system would be trash. But a solenoid and accumulator go hand In hand.

I set it up so the solenoid is feeding 6" away from 2 nozzles and in either direction is now a max of 12" now. So it should be pretty good. These nozzles work well (o reverted to the 0.3mm nozzles I’ve compared eveything to… Not sure why but they’re amazing n cheap… Everyone else is just cheap and looks good but have bad atomization.)

As far as 1 solenoid per line, that’s hardcore, I don’t know of it’s necessary since the accumulator is always ready at a moment notice without ramping being a factor.

One thing I’m considering doing is testing water Temps at nozzles vs Reservoir since it sits in the accum and in black lines, it likely warms up… So I’m going to thermally coat everything like I did in my race car for fuel.

Then I’ll test it and compensate for it in the Reservoir.

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I’m striving for perfect equilibrium. I found out the fungi I see… It’s actually very likely to be beneficial fungi… So I should stop trying to kill it lol… “Mycorrhizae” was added to my system, I just had never seen it do anything (since its only been 2-3weeks)… On my weaker plants it likely suffocated them… But on my older plants it should help them…

Drain to waste sounds good but it would be wasteful. Plus the humidity in Buckets would drop and the drain plugs aren’t set at a level that would fully allow them to empty anyway… So I don’t know what benefits I’d see from doing that.

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What size accumulator? Does it have a EPMD bladder in it that has its own psi rating? I went with water worker. It’s a 2 gallon steel and has a special coating inside to prevent any oxidation from the salts in the nutrient. The rubber bladder also has to be maintained for counter pressure, just filled with air.

I wound up having temp issues as well. My root chamber got way too warm and invited the wrong microbes despite me using bennificals. However looking back now I see where I went wrong with all of that. HPA plants were much more sensitive than LPA plants. Ultimately I came to the conclusion that microbes had to go and ran a sterile system. Once I changed to DTW things got much better. That and I had to make a new root chamber and better insulation to control those temps.
I take my hat off to you sir, HPA isn’t easy by any means but it can be very rewarding, ultimately it was the final straw for me to drop hydro entirely and go living soil.

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I knew you’d say that :slightly_smiling_face:

Aeroponics already being the least wasteful of setups, and seeing how most problems you describe seem to be associated with the recirculation part, I’d run dtw for a few weeks to get the nutes right and try to figure out what they are eating, to eventually make your way back to recirculating but knowing what needs to be added back to come close to stock solution.

Having some water at the bottom is not that much of a problem as long as its not stagnating, (someones) dtw vertical aeroponic setup continually have about 2" of water at the bottom

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I ran hpa for a few years but quit due to issues with clogged nozzles. I would lose the clay pellets and just use 2 in net cups with neoprene collars. And don’t use orca or any other beneficials. Sterile res only. If I were you, I would check out the nutrient line by Cultured Solutions. You should also get a hypochlorous acid generator, or use pool shock. This will drastically reduce the algae on the hydroton that you shouldn’t be using. Seriously, get rid of the hydroton and scrub and sterilize your entire system with pool shock, rinse it, then run h2o2 through it, rinse and start with a clean sterilized system. Then add HOCI or pool shock to your res every 3 days and change out your solution at minimum every 7 days. Your root rot problems will disappear.

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I fixed all the issues. Most were due to spray times, nozzle atomization and I believe precipitation issues. I’ve addressed all of those issues for the most part and now my plants are growing quick and green.

I’d never recommend a sterile grow to anyone. It’s so hard to balance H2o2 with roots. The plants aways hates H2o2 and it evaporates Eveey 4 days, which leads to bacteria growing in the Buckets between full ups and sprays.

I use beneficial bacteria and stuck with it since it’s natural… Sterile growing is unnatural. But now I have pretty decent success. I’m sure it will only get better as I learn the Ins and outs and develop my own system.

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I would never recommend using h2o2 either. There are plenty of ways to run sterile without using h2o2. And while a sterile environment may be unnatural, so is high pressure aeroponics.

And to anyone else who plans on utilizing high pressure aero- run a sterile system. Use a product like Clear Line to avoid clogged emitters and many other common problems. And always sterilize all equipment between runs. You’ll be glad you did.