How about using Moving Bed Bio Reactor (MBBR) by it self as a media to sustain the root of a plant the same way that hydroton would in a hempy bucket, it’s Virgin Polyethylene, and it has no pH or any kind or holding capacity at all, which makes it perfect for hempy cups/buckets. I am gonna buy some and try it out, gonna be doing passive hydro with plastic media and force feeding the nutes!
People use this stuff to make a natural habitat for beneficial bacteria to clean the water in tanks/ponds, it’s for a self maintained water filter that never needs to be cleaned, perpetual clean water, but the plastic little thingys i wanna use as a hydroponic media to grow in hempy buckets, you know the way i did it with the perlite or doing with the coco right now, but instead i’ll use plastic pellets as media.
It would be good to re-use and super easy to clean, just pour some bleach water on it for a few minutes and it’s clean, after that just rinse it to remove any traces and VOILA!
Hey mad i really like the idea. It’d def work for a drip aero fog ebb n flow but not a hempy. Hempy works bc the media can transfer water up to the plant. The plastic isn’t porous. So it won’t be able to transfer water up. But you could def put a couple aero heads above the media n work out great or give fogphonics a try.
Edit maybe if they’re really small you might get enough water transfer effect
Not if you wait until the roots reach the bottom of the pot and start feeding off the reservoir. That is why it doesn’t drown, there is only air on the top while the bottom should always be filled with nute pH’d water…
Does perlite utilize capilary action to suck water up in the pot? I don’t think so bro.
I have done it before and am sure it would work perfectly this way. No need to pay attention to pH or EC, only when you feed the plant. Check water levels every other day or so…
So your going to hand feed it till the roots reach the bottom? Youll need to do it very often. Also I disagree on that perlite dosent transfer water from the rez. It most certainly does. I can feel the tops of my 5 gal buckets are still moist days after watering. I don’t see how else to explain that.
IMHO, if you water from the top the perlite might continue to be moist for a couple of days, and it didn’t happen with my hempy cups so i dunno what to tell you. Anyway, grab a chair bro, not this cycle but next i will be doing an automatic grow with hempys using MBBR. Already looking on the web for where to get them in black, don’t want any light going into the roots… Thanks @Skiball.
That is exactly how i am doing with the Dark Devils i got running bro.
Interesting idea. Where do you get them and how $$ are they?
It occurs to me to wonder, if these work, what about other small plastic parts - beeds, etc? Maybe even those nasty foam pellets used in packaging? Hmmm, those probably would not be a good idea - they will absorb water over time.
One difference between these and perlite or hydroton is these will not get “wet” all over like the porous clay or stone will. If parts of the plastic are not directly getting water on them, it wont wick to other parts.
Do the holes in those go all the way through or could water get trapped in the pockets?
Check out the root structure of my plants in this thread, that’s how they work in a hempy cup/bucket, they only populate the area where the water is. All of the other root has air directly in touch with the media. Bottom third is the reservoir and the remaining is just air with the perlite (or in this case MBBR)
The MBBR would be hard to ship from China to here and expensive too. But i got the idea, now comes R&D, to finally pursue the goal after this grow cycle. Got time, it’s alright. It could be glass beads, plastic of some sort whatever kind of thing that i can think of to use for the project at hand.
Feel free to use this post for that purpose my brother, let’s follow up and show the world what to do with all those plastic bottles in the pacific. People say the thing is the size of Texas! WTF!
Plus you save time and money, as there is no effort whatsoever in maintaining a hempy bucket, all you need to do is hand water everyday until the roots reach down (you could use a drip for this) and then after that you only need to make sure the water has the right pH and EC!
Plastic grows man, saving mankind. OVERGROWING THE WORLD!
growing in plastic…
