wow your garden has been bumping along this past week! sorry to hear about the unfortunate excess of water on the floor. that’s always fun hopefully you’ve got that settled by now and are on the way to improving your system.
now that i’m back from my trip i will be beginning to set my system up as fast as possible. i just hope i can get that awesome nutrition like you have quickly… but we all know cycling takes a minute. should be fun! maybe i’ll post a couple photos once i have some gold fish in my system.
Still working on the front area… The 3 tubs aren’t draining as expected. They’ll fill up, an inch or two from the top of the tub, and then they’ll drain. I currently haven’t figured out why, yet… There aren’t any air locks that would be holding it back, the drain goes all downhill to get under the “wall” and back up to the grow beds, which are lower… Really, it should just drain.
My problem of the day
Really happy to hear you’re getting your system up and going!! That one has been a little bit coming it seems . I think you’re really going to enjoy it
Sounds like you have to build up enough weight in the water in the tubs to push the water in the drainage tube up to competely fill the tube on the other side.
Then the siphon would flow smoothly, but if it empties through that tube faster than it flows in, eventually the siphon will break, air will enter the exit end of the tube, and you’ll have to start over building up pressure.
The solution might be a valve or bend at the end of the exit tube so that the air can’t get very far down in the tube, then restart will happen quicker.
It’s definitely a weight/pressure thing, for sure, but I’m not sure why it exists now… When it flooded, yeah, my fault, the tube from the buckets went up about an inch before they dropped to the ground, so there was definitely a pressure issue there. I’ve fixed it though so it should just be a simple downhill drain flow.
But you’re absolutely right, when it starts to drain, it is absolutely a syphon, the suction is pretty impressive considering the tube size, lol.
I think I’m going to add a second drain line and connected it to the first but a little higher. Then, instead of a 90, if I connect the top drain line with a T, it should keep everything flowing as a pure drain… Thinking “out loud”, I might just try connecting the current line with a T, I’ll just have to extend the top of the T to go well above the water line… Hmm, project for the day .
There is so much nutration in this water, and I refilled it (both times, lol) from my 180 gallon aquarium that’s right beside my tent… And that thing never gets a proper water change (who could afford that much water? Lol), so it’s full of good stuff too.
Long and short of it, I’m damn lucky. There’s a reason my friends call me Ferris (not my real name).
Hahahaha right on! They work surprisingly well! Lol
I remember going on a road trip with a friend and her finding it in a gas station of all places. She laughed and moved on, I laughed and picked the damn thing up! . The bowl was packed in less than a minute after we walked out, I bought a bottle of water just for it even
Upgrades to the new grow area are in place and working better than I hoped . I currently have 4 water lines feeding 3 bins. I had all 4 water lines in 1 bin while I was working on the 2nd and 3rd, and even with all 4 lines it was just barely overloading the drainage capacity .
(in the style of Jodie Foster’s boss in the beginning of Contact, when he’s reading the reply about the 1932 Olympic games being open)
“I officially declare this grow area, open…?” lol
No pics today… My body is on the opposite life cycle to my plants light cycle, I never seem to be able to get in there while the light is on.
I did pop the light on and have a quick look today.
The 2 older purchased seeds in the tent (Blueberry and GSC) are holdouts on showing any pistils, I could only find a handful between both plants. But both girls look like they could hold a healthy crop, whenever they get there .
Purple Nurple is lean, but that’s my fault for the quick Veg. She has lots of nice lil hairs showing up though. I’ll take a pic tomorrow, she has a cool structure that is a little different.
And the there’s my mystery plant… Whatever she is, I’ve trained her into an absolute bush, and she’s showing up to the flowering task. She has to have 30-50 tops, and they’re all growing nice white pistils. Plus, each branch has 2-5 smaller bud sites… Some of those will just be larf and/or pulled off shortly, but I’m pretty excited about where she’ll grow to .
I have also changed the light schedule. 00-12 is no more, 2-14 starts tomorrow. That should give me an hour after I get up, get the dogs out and eat, to check in on the plants.
Also, the new second light showed up today… Ooohhhhhh stoned buys are so much fun 🤦
Hmm, new light is here, my Mrs took her daughter out to a pottery class and her son is with his bio-dad… I am alone, with the pups. Yes, I believe a new extension cord will be run through wall from the next room so I don’t pop the fuse again, and the new light will be going in today .
Now, where’s that 3-way splitter so both lights will be on the timer.
Hmm, that brings up a question… If I daisy chain these 2 lights and the first one doesn’t have any power, but the second does, will the second stay off until the first gets power? I guess I’ll find out soon
Now that I can barely feel my legs, it’s time for a shower and to get horizontal again
Oh, the line tall shoot in the middle there is Oats x Rolling Thunder#1 stretching right out of the gutter! I tried to take a couple clips, but they didn’t make it, too far into flower maybe?
Oh, need to make a note of this… The new light has the power on the other side… The old light has the power coming out to the left, as you look at the light. The power for the new light comes out to the right. Found that out after I had the first one all setup on the left side and the power cord isn’t long for the new one with it coming out the other side, so I had to switch. Now the new light is on the left of the tent and is controlling the old light on the right of the tent.
It looks like it snowed on Drunken fog dog #1. She’s still looking sickly, her leaves are kind of stiff now even 🤷 bud the buds are still getting fatter
It looks like it snowed on Drunken fog dog #2 too . Her leaves are also kind of stiff, but both plants are sticky out to the tip of every fan leaf even, it’s ridiculous
And finally, purple nurple… She’s showing some nice little bud development, but also a little behind where I expect her to be by now.
I have noticed white spots showing up randomly on plant leaves… Gotta figure out what I’m deficient in and get it topped up. I did add 1 tbsp of potassium bicarbonate and a tbsp of acid pH down to combat the pH rise from the bicarbonate. I need to pick up some potassium nitrate, or similar.
hopefully you’ve got that settled by now and are on the way to improving your system.
