Lost in the mist, or Twisted journeys in the AAA world (strawberry version)

LOL I remember my grandmother taking the wash water out and dumping it in the garden. I also remember my grandfather saying you never do that with the worm bin because it will drown the worms.

If I wasnt in the middle of changing several variables already I would be very tempted to try a few drops of dish soap in my system. I may do that just before harvest just to see if the roots react in any way. I could add a drop or two to my small siphon tank so I dont risk the entire rez…

As far as a safe surficant - I think yucca would be a safe bet. I know several soil growers who use it. I think @ReikoX?

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I’d be really curious to see how that worked out. Yucca would be fancy, maybe aloe is similar also?

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There is a difference between detergent and soap. Real soap is made with oil and lye. Get something like Dr. Bronner’s Castile soap. Detergent is made with petro chemicals.

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Organic? Wouldn’t it lead to algae development in the solution container?

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Oh oh! I forgot about that. I sure dont want any organics sitting around in my rez or siphon tank.

Hmmmm. I have Potassium Hydroxide/lye on hand - BUT - I use it as a PH UP. It would drastically change my PH. I could adjust it to PH 5.8, with phosphoric acid, but Im dubious.

Ok, after 5 minutes of Googling Im now thoroughly confused on exactly what is or is not a surficant and if lye is or isnt all by itself or if it changes when you adjust the PH or if you need the oil or??? LOL!!

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Potassium Hydroxide (really any aqueous base) reacts with oils and heat in a chemical process called saponification. The result is soap and alcohols if memory serves.

It’s the same as the JADAM wetting agent, so yes would be considered organic. @Tinytuttle shows how to make it in his thread here:
Tinytuttle's Grow Chronicles 2019

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That kills that experiment for me. I might consider using dish detergent after I read the label, but Im not wild about that either.

Thanks!!!

Let me clarify that a bit, I should say it is approved for organic gardening. It doesnt have any humic acids or sugars in it that will promote microbial growth. When was the last time you saw mold on a bar of soap?

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Just a little update, a new pressure controller small overview

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A few pics:

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Nice!
I wish I had your programming skills.

I especially love your enclosure! I am a big fan of Tupperware enclosures for DIY electronics projects and other things! :smiley:

Early version siphon tank and manifold. Ive also used similar enclosures for specialized battery chargers, and other projects over the years.

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Yey! It works! Turns ON/OFF by pressure plus maximum ON time / minimum OFF time, like starts at 250 kPa and then works max 5 minutes and then should rest for at least 5 minutes.

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Seems that I’ve been able to increase compressor start interval from ~16 minutes to ~53 minutes which is pretty good result I believe.

At the same time I’ve made some new - more precise - measurements. I’ve marked them with bright green (lime?) color in the spreadsheet.

I’ve also made a long-run test, I left the system work for the night, like 10.5 hours. Towel test made a paper towel somewhere between “dump” and “wet”. Going to clean some mess I’ve made around over the last few weeks and mount the lights.

Now I’m trying to figure out what to do with nutrients. I have a few formulas but totally forgot all chemistry I had in school so wondering how to make the mix out of available fertilizers.

Is “Making your own solution - Getting started” tutorial available? :slight_smile:

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Excellent!!

Ah - so this is to help with the regulators bleeding air so much? Thats quite an improvement.

I still cant understand why anyone would make a regulator that works that way. None of mine have ever worked like that. Good thing too, because I could never make a switch like that :slight_smile:

Interesting. I would have expected the towel to be soaking wet after that long. Towels dont drink any water like roots would, so it should have continued to soak up water the entire time. I would have expected the towel to holding quite a bit of water. Makes me wonder if you might be running on the dry side? It could also be that the very top of the chamber isnt getting enough mist?

Viewing a laser light from the side might show if thats the case.

Just dont use anything that has any organic ingredients. Im talking about anything that comes from a plant base or things like worm castings etc.

I really like the three part Jacks Hydro mix, but I have no clue if strawberries would like it as much. The Miracle Grow stuff is similar to Jacks and is used on vegies and fruits, so either should be fine. The General Hydroponics line is also good, but much more $$$.

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Actually it seems that they don’t bleed that much. I’ve tried to measure bleeding with a new pressure controller and it is shows like only 0.02 \ 0.04 l/min (depending on pressure).

But anyway, now I can make the compressor to turn on at 2-2.5 bar - this is the main reason the interval has increased that much.

The idea behind of this pressure controller is:

  1. To have more precise pressure control (which isn’t reached as these sensors aren’t precise enough, especially on low pressures).
  2. To be able to control compressor via pressure and time settings
  3. To be able to control power socket(s) and conveniently set ON\OFF schedule (for example, for the lights schedule).
  4. Later to be able to automatically keep real schedule and pressure settings and then somehow to manipulate with this data: make analysis and so on.

I would better go with the main controller but these sensors are analog ones and Raspberry PI which I use as a main controller has only digital input pins.

I thought to make my own solution out of the raw mineral fertilizers. The problem is that they are mostly salts (like CaNO3) or simple mix like N: 13.6%, K20: 46% or even complex mix:
image

but formulas I’ve found look more like: NO3: 141, NH4: 14, P: 47, K: 220, Mg: 24, Ca: 130. So I need to calculate how to make a proper mix out of available fertilizers.

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Here is a laser pointer test video:

Air 0.6 bar, 0.45 bar water, 0.5 s ON, 14.53 s OFF, laser pointer test

No sound unfortunately :frowning:

And two videos of Air 1 bar, water 1 bar, 0.5 s ON, 22.31 OFF

Top down:

Laser pointer:

Seems that mist evenly fills all the chamber in both cases. The second case should produce bigger droplets. Don’t know what is better though.

Misting stopped in a few minutes before the end on all videos to check hanging times. On the first one misting stopped at around 13 minutes I think (not sure for 100%).

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Lovely work.

On fertilizers, I’d suggest starting with Jack’s Hydro or something similar (no organics). They also have a micro-nutrients mix. Once you get things dialed in, start playing with mixing up your own formulation. It’s a lot of work to mix it up and, for that matter, to get the ratios correct. And, there are certain complexities such as buffering that can be difficult to get the right combination of salts.

Once you have something that’s known to work in your system, you’ll have something to compare to. Then try mixing your own formulation. It might be difficult to determine the source of any problem that occurs, otherwise.

I think this is a great idea but I’d opt to get through a successful grow cycle on your new system, first. Just a thought.

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Thats not too bad at all. Far better than what I thought they were leaking.

That is excellent! Very few pressure switches allow that much range of adjustment. Mine only allows me to go down to around 4 bar.

I have no experience with that, so cant help.

Interesting.

Im too stoned to figure out your spread sheet at the moment, so Im have to ask questions :slight_smile:

Remind me - chamber volume and how many ML are you putting into the chamber on each cycle? Im trying to gauge your flow rate to mine and how “full” you are getting the chamber on each cycle.

Im concerned on two points - the mist that fills your chamber seems to take a long time to build up. That suggests that that is mainly composed of the smallest droplets - the ones that can stay suspended for several minutes. I would guess 20micron or less. Probably smaller than that.

Your laser beam also seems very dim compared to mine. You can see when a pocket of mist enters and it lights up brightly, but that condition doesnt last long at all. At least compared to my setup.

You are using very short ON and OFF times compared to me too. Im currently running 1.6 sec ON and right at 60 sec OFF. At 1.6 sec ON, my flow rate is .058 ml/gallon/cycle. That works out to .083 liters/day/gallon. My chamber is aprox 55 gallon.

Those numbers are on the hi side of Atomizers recommendations, but my roots have never been happy at the lowest numbers he recommends. The mist is too thin and the roots just grow sideways with lots of air pruning in areas that dont get good coverage. I always have to start the new babies at rates higher than he recommends and slowly come down from there as they get adjusted to the system.

What that adds up to is - I think you may be running on the dry side. The only way to tell for sure is to put some plants in there and see what the roots tell you. I may be completely wrong :smiley:

Oh - I also noticed some light leaks around the top of your chamber. You will want to block those off as roots dont like light. Its also possible you have air leaks at those same places around the top. That could easily be lowering your hang times. You want a very well sealed chamber. Not 100% sealed though. There needs to be a way for the air you are blowing into the chamber to escape without blowing your plants out the top. I suspect your pots will allow plenty of air to escape without blowing the plants out too.

How soon do you plant to start torturing some baby plants? :wink:

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Thanks for the advice, guys!

I have some formulas dedicated for strawberry and thought to periodically do plants analysis (leafs and petioles) to compare reality with reference data.

The problem with existing mixes is that I can’t find anything close to what I need. For ex., one of the formulas is above, an another one - more detailed - is like this:
6 meq K+, 7 meq Ca2+, 6 meq Mg2+, 1 meq H+, 12 meq NO3-, 1.5 meq H2PO4-, 6.5 meq SO4-, with the following concentrations of micronutrients: 3 mg L-1 Fe2+, 0.5 mg L-1 Mn, 0.1 mg L-1 Cu, 0.1 mg L-1 Zn, 0.1 mg L-1 B

Which is in mg/L: 234,588 K, 140,273 Ca, 72,915 Mg, - H+, 168,083 N, 46,460 P, 104,203 S, with the following concentrations of micronutrients: 3 mg L-1 Fe2+, 0.5 mg L-1 Mn, 0.1 mg L-1 Cu, 0.1 mg L-1 Zn, 0.1 mg L-1 B.

K:Mg balance is pretty important and should be like 4:1 . Micronutrients are also pretty specific to strawberry.
None of the available mixes offers anything like that.

Do you think it is better to go with non-optimal but factory-mixed solutions?

My chamber volume is roughly 420L. I’ve got Atomizer’s MIN/MAX numbers: 1.3 to 2.6 liters per 100L per day (from 5.46 to 10.92 L per day for the chamber). I’m using the lowest value as of yet, so with 1 bar water pressure my flow rate is 1,64 ml per cycle (0.5 sec ON, 23,37 OFF) dirty or 1,5085 ml per cycle without overhead (~0,0136 ml/gal). With overhead it gives me ~6 L of water per day for my volume.

Why? I would assume the particles rather big and have difficulties to climb up… 20 micron particles would easily go up with all that pressure and hang closer to 2-3 minutes, don’t they? :thinking:

I think this happens because particles are pretty big and falling down quickly so nothing to reflect of - which in turn makes the beam look dimmer. Like at the beginning: empty chamber, no visible light beam at all, just bright dot on the floor. Then after some time mist starts to fill the chamber and beam become more and more visible. This is actually tells that particles might be closer to the expected size (0.05 mm) but is that a “correct” size - don’t know.

It is pretty important that camera is in an around a 100 cm from the laser pointer and right next to the one of the nozzles.

It might be but these holes are pretty small. They look bigger than they are and this is actually the only wholes except the tap hole. I’m still thinking about them: foam plants holders sit pretty tight so there will no any gaps around them or around a plant. I don’t want to completely seal the chamber. So I either need to make some other holes or leave these as they are :slight_smile:

A perfect question! I hope my seedlings still alive in a fridge. :slight_smile: They are there for 2.5 months already. But look green, so I hope they are alive.
Actually I’m going to figure out what to do with nutrients solution and try to put one or two plants into the system. I have 30 seedlings IIRC but don’t want to start with all of them at once :slight_smile:

By the way, speaking of nutrition. I have a solution calculator:

It is in Russian, but in overall: it has a small fertilizers database with their composition including oxides (and I can add new ones) which I can use to add different fertilizers into a scheme, set weights and calculate resulting composition in raw elements like K, P, Mg and so on.

And I think is it ok to just mix everything up? Would there be any additional reactions between components? :slight_smile:

UPD: On second thought I believe that it is ok just to mix everything up. The bigger formula is from a hydroponic-based research, so if they’ve used that composition they inevitably mixed everything together into a solid solution. So I’m going to buy components and see what would happened :joy:

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