Recirculating Ebb & Flow 💦

[SuperiorBuds]

@anon32470837

So, are you using Jacks now? With some additives?

Same Jacks 321 mix, nothing extra added. I have Fulvic Acid and Tribus on hand (the two additives that Greengene uses) but I haven’t added them to the mix yet. So far it’s been straight Jacks between 1.6 and 1.8 EC.

@anon32470837

I was going to ask you earlier about the sprayers but I forgot. So you are spraying the nute water down on top of the hydroton in the buckets? Thats a departure from “normal” flood drain table setup. Im not too surprised you would get algae doing that as the hydroton will be much wetter up top. Im curious why you chose that technique over the more normal flooding method? Is it the extra aeration you get or?

I’ve never really liked flood and drain setups that let the water flow back through the pump, and that’s the main way people flood from the bottom. (Same line for feed and drain.) That style of setup introduces some problems for me. It wouldn’t have let me run the siphon return which I use to “suck” debris out of the grow beds. And it also wouldn’t let me run the inline filters to clean that debris up before it reaches the grow beds again. I am sure I could have worked it out, but I have always fed from the top and since The Bucket Company system comes with manifolds + sprayers it just made sense to continue with what I knew worked. I did switch out the red (360°) sprayers that come with the system with new blue (90°) sprayers and that has given me a lot more control over where the spray goes.

Back when I ran this style before I always had algae grow on top for the first few weeks and never really noticed an issue with it. I did some reading around about this problem and the consensus is not to worry, so that’s my current plan.

@anon32470837

I still hate you because you make me look bad. Awesome stuff!!!

Thanks man, it’s going well so far. We’ll see how the harvest turns out.

One thing to note. Since I have the cameras on in the room 24/7 now I’ve been taking random timelapses to see how the plants react over time. I noticed they are going to sleep about an hour or two before lights out. (18/6 schedule right now.) We discussed this on TheBudLab stream yesterday and the thought is that the plants are reaching their peak DLI and going to sleep early.

The really interesting part of this is that I am only running 4 of the HLG300 v1’s in this room. 1200w over the 8 plants – most people would say nowhere near enough light. But the plants are saying differently.

More data is needed here, so my lighting friends are sending me a Apogee to use so I can gather some more information and compare the 1200w room vs the 500w tent PPFD.

[2K19Starter]

Amazing system you’ve got going here.

Best of luck!

[SuperiorBuds]

@2K19Starter

Amazing system you’ve got going here.

Best of luck!

Thanks!

Things in the room have been going well. I’ve done nothing except add nutrients when needed and stripping fan leaves as they get massive and in the way. The plants have stayed nice ans short (combination of my spectrum and the topping I did early on).

Still hoping the 3 babies get their legs a bit more in the next week. Once they get their footing the plants really take off and I’d like them to get a bit bigger before they’re forced to flower.

Next step is selecting my 4 favorites from this run to pull clones from for the tent. Otherwise we’re still on autopilot here…

More updates to the Twitch stream over the past few days.

We now have a new (totally custom) theme and I wrote a custom bot that connects to everything I have running to provide real-time data and control of the grow room directly from stream chat. You can get room temp/humidity/VPD and the reservoir EC/pH/temps. I’ve also added 2 new cameras with direct chat control to choose the view.

When I’m working outside I can also trigger the system to switch to the workshop camera which has motion tracking enabled and will follow me around as I work. After Christmas we’ll be adding wireless microphones and a monitor in the workshop for Twitch chat, which should provide even more interaction. I’ll be doing scheduled daily garden updates and can also drop the workshop cam over the press for rosin demos.

Please drop by, say hi, and give us a follow. Even if you don’t watch a follow helps – only a few more and we’ll reach Affiliate on Twitch which opens up a lot more capabilities for our channel.

[SuperiorBuds]

Last night MrsBuds and I spent an hour or so in the garden cleaning up the canopy. We trimmed up an entire 5 gallon bucket worth of giant fan leaves and little shoots that were trying to work their way up from the bottom. Chickens are eating good this morning…

We also spread the canopy a little bit by adding more some tie-downs. The rubber coated wire ties work great w/ The Bucket Company system, there’s a lot of holes around the edges to hook to, so that comes in really handy.

The girls are going through about 10 gallons of water every 2 days at this point, and really eating. I’m adding nutrients at full strength still keeping the EC around 1.8 w/ the Jacks.

The torus hydro is still keeping the pH in check, as long as the nutrients are strong enough. If I let the EC slip down to 1.2 or so the pH will start to rise as the torus cannot adjust the pH of straight RO water.

At this point the countdown to flower has started. I am thinking within the next 5-7 days I’ll flip, no matter how little the babies are. I’m planning on pulling clones from my 4 favorites and starting them in the tent so I can repopulate the room after harvest, but we’ll see how it all works out.

[Northern_Loki]

Lovin’ the heads-up display integration!

[SuperiorBuds]

@Northern_Loki

Lovin’ the heads-up display integration!

Thanks. It’s all integrated into the chatbot as well, so you can say “!room” and it’ll swtich to the room view and spit out the current environment stats. It’s been a fun project while the garden is on auto-pilot.

[anon32470837]

I am sooooooo jealous! Awesomeness stuff

[SuperiorBuds]

5 days after our defoliation and the plants have rebounded w/o issue. They are monsters and I’m afraid of what’s going to happen when I flip. Thankfully I have another 10 foot of ceiling height, now if I can just keep getting around these things to do work…

I put up the first of two Nute Tools grow room rulers at the back. I’ll be adding the second one today on the right wall.

The Nute Ruler | Nute

I was gone for 2 days over the holiday and when I got back last night I noticed that the siphon had failed to trigger and left water in the grow beds. I added another 10 gallons of RO, retriggered the timer and everything worked. Looks like the reservoir just got too low and couldn’t pump enough to fire the siphon.

I’ve been talking with The Bucket Company and I am going to change out the siphon in the next week or two with their new return pump. Basically the same thing as a condensate pump, except it has a much larger pump (around 1200GPH). This will let me worry less about the water level and adjust timings to shorter periods if I want. I don’t like another point of failure in the system but I had underestimated the amount of water the 10 gallon pots would need, even when filled with hydroton. This will also let me flip the RO float back on 24/7 and prevent any drops in the water level.

I still need a bit more heat in the tent before I can get clones in there, so I need to work on warming up the lung room today so I can get these cuts taken and the room flipped.

[anon32470837]

Trees! I cant see the forest for the trees!! Very nice

[SuperiorBuds]

The wife and I decided to strip the girls down again last night, this time going really hard at the bottom 1/3rd of the plants. We pulled 2 full 5 gallon buckets worth of leaves and crazy long branches off them before we finally gave in. They look a little bare after the strip, but I am positive it won’t be long before they are full again.

As a side benefit, the chickens ate great again today.

Today I let my RO system run all day filling a spare reservoir, it took quite a while but I ended up with 40 gallons of fresh water. Once I had the new water on standby I went ahead and flipped the valves and dumped the reservoir for the first time this run. I cleaned out the filters of sediment, refilled the reservoir, and topped off with a fresh batch of Jacks 321.

Just about the time I finished up it was time for another cycle, so that means it took nearly 2 hours to complete – even with having the water ready to go. I’ll get that process down better for next time…

Now to decide if I’m going to flip to flower in the next day or so. Thinking it’s time…

[SuperiorBuds]

We’re going into the 3rd week of flower now and these girls have really exploded. I’ve had to clean the canopy a bit more since I got side-tracked with work and things got a bit out of control, but I’ve got most of the useless shoots taken care of now.

Being the first run I wanted to see how the plants were going to grow before I decided where the trellis needs to be – well at this point there are some shoots that have crossed the 6’ mark. (Good thing I have 12’ ceilings!) I need to find myself a better step ladder that will fit in the room so I can reach the tops! I HST’d some of the bigger offenders today, and I’ll be going out for a bit more cleanup later…

While I was downstate visiting my mother I was able to stop by a local hydro store and pick up a 3x3 reservoir and F&D kit for the tent. Last night I converted everything over so now we’re running 3 autos (C4, Blue Dream, and Tangie) plus a single clone from my favorite Roid Rage in there. I also have the system setup so it will flood the fodder tray growing Red Wheat and Barley for the chickens though I need to find smaller trays for this so I can utilize the space better.

We’ve started plans on a new wall that will separate my workshop from the garage, which should allow me to better control the environment and also give me two new 20a circuits. That means I can bring the 2nd tent back up with the Arden EH500. That will give us totally separate clone, veg, and flower spaces – no more forced early flowering of plants.

Remember we’re still live on Twitch 24/7, stop on by, drop a follow, or lurk in the stream if you’ve got the spare bandwidth.

[SuperiorBuds]

The past few weeks I’ve been fighting with the siphon as the girls really began to drink. There was only a small window of water in the res where the system would work properly. Couldn’t do too much water or it’d overflow, and too little would prevent the siphon from firing properly. With the girls going through so much water each day I was waking up to the reservoir empty, the beds filled with water, and the siphon failing. I finally decided to replace the siphon before things got too bad.

The Bucket Company and I chatted about this awhile back and it just happened they were releasing their return pump setup really soon, so it seemed like perfect timing. They needed a tester and I needed a solution.

Basically we’re talking like a boat sump pump with a much larger pump (1100GPH) and a few other little features.

Yesterday the tester arrived and I spent some time on the live stream installing it.

Going to relocate the drain lines a bit today and clean up the install, but she’s working perfectly.

https://instagram.fdet2-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t50.2886-16/86090756_3139841089574406_3794920769024775205_n.mp4?_nc_ht=instagram.fdet2-1.fna.fbcdn.net&_nc_cat=106&_nc_ohc=R0N-YSQ-lTUAX-c1BPl&oe=5E41084D&oh=26ddc0672285343abd4d53aa3f1a42d0

Today is day 42 of flower in the room and the girls are getting huge. I’ll try and get some photos from the room once the lights come on. Or you can pop into Twitch and check for yourself any time of the day.

[SuperiorBuds]

Maximum Yield just posted an article about the Torus Hydro and since I am using it in my system I wanted to share.

Auto Balancing pH Without Chemicals - We Put Torus Hydro’s pH Balancer to the...

From my experience it’s been incredible. Still no ph up or down and I’m running the same reservoir for much longer.

[SuperiorBuds]

I’ve had a bit of a rough few weeks that kept me away from the house (and the plants). Thankfully everything is on auto-pilot so I just let the girls run a bit longer than I had expected.

Wednesday we went ahead and started the chop. We took down 2 Roid Rage and 1 of the JediOG. Those 3 alone practically filled my 4x4 drying tent.

Last night we chopped 2 more JediOGs and getting creative with hangars were able to create a lower level in the tent for them to hang on. All that’s left in the room now is the 3 Clown Slippers from Subcool.

These are all getting a quick 3-4 day dry then will be cut from stems, bagged, and tossed into the freezer. I have been working with Pedro on my bubble hash setup so these will be ran through my new hash washer, filtered through the Rosin Evolution bags, dried in the Harvest Right freeze dryer, and then pressed on my new plates into premium rosin. Very exciting times ahead!

[Tappy]

How have I been missing this?..stellar setup, bro!!! Love the automation!!! Stay green!!!

[anon32470837]

Outstanding job!!!

[anon92385567]

Been watching this for a bit
Do E aquaponics with auto bell syohons and wanna say
Auto syohons suck and you got so many to tinker with
Have you considered just 1 syphon with multiple buckets connected?
Loop syohons?

Bell syohons tend to need specific flow rates to start and stop and you have to get it just right which is hard and with a pumps flow rate constantly changing due to build up and whatever it’s tough

Good luck to you I can see you know a lot more and do better than me… I just fucked around with bell syphons for A year N a half and will never again

[SuperiorBuds]

Sorry, no bell siphons here. I was using a single loop siphon to drain all 8 beds.

I’ve since changed the system around and I am using The Bucket Company’s return pump (look up a few posts). I am also past harvest now and retooling for a run with coco/perlite in the beds and less waterings.

[Northern_Loki]

You have one of the most cool and high tech set-ups that I’ve seen. With the live cast and monitoring.

Next up, an audience controlled camera mounted onto a Roomba so that we can interactively explore the room. … and add a smell transmitter, please

[SuperiorBuds]

Thanks man! Wait til you see the new features that are coming.

With the move to perpetual flowering I need a new way to show which strain is which. The new custom overlays are data-driven and will point towards each plant and identify the strain and day of flower.

Also keep an eye out on Twitch for my live streams. I have been trimming live on stream the past few weeks, but just completed an hour or so ago. I will be taking down the 3 auto’s from the tent soon though and will be live for those seshes.

I also received all of my hash goodies with the exception of the freeze dryer, which should be here any day.

Rosin Evolution wash bags and other goodies.

Five gallon portable washer (modified the drain to prevent hash from getting trapped)

Been taking Pedro’s classes (Pedro’s Grow Room) and will be washing the majority of this harvest live on stream.

Total from this harvest after trimming:

5x Gallon Bags of Fresh Frozen
32x Quart Jars
2x Gallon Bags of Frozen Trim

No idea on total weight, it will get weighed as it goes into the hash washer.