excellent! all there is to do is wait and see. report back with your findings if you could! algae also really swings pH so you might want to check that if you can. ~6.4 is our ideal target
Did you not have any air stones in the buckets before? Or did you add a second air stone?
From your pic it looks like you could still use more air in the bucket. You donāt want any ādeadā spots.
I like to see the entire bucket bubbling (and the entire surface of the water bubbling + looking like a rolling boil (like when you boil water)).
What air pump are you using?
If you need a more powerful one, Iād recommend watching for the EcoPlus ECOair1 to go on sale on Amazon. Itās $55 now (which is what I paid for mine when I bought it years ago) but it goes on sale for $25-30. You can use a site called āCamelCamelCamelā to check the price history and set price alerts (for products on Amazon)
Rubixone isnāt running a single-bucket DWC, thereās probably plenty of oxygen to the roots, as theyāre not submerged in the first place. The addition of an air stone probably isnāt bad, but it doesnāt need to be overkill.
I think the 70f figure comes from waters ability to hold dissolved oxygen falls of a cliff around 70f, so being above that would be fighting an uphill battle to get air into the water.
Howdy @Igor, water holding oxygen is different than surface agitation adding oxygen to the root zone.
Like @TeddyNuggets says, a rolling boil look to the surface of the water will provide adequate oxygen. It may not be dissolved but itās still oxygenating the root zone. Many blessings and much love
Ah, ok. I was thinking it was DWC or RDWC from the pics. So that pic above is just the reservoir then I am assuming?
Ok, so I finally read the whole thread. Sorry about the wrong advise!
Looking back at his earlier pics in the thread, it looks like the drain tubes are maybe an inch off the bottom of the bucket? So thereās probably a small amount of standing water in the buckets but probably not enough for an air stone in each bucket. Hopefully that water is getting slowly recycled too.
So In that case Rubixone -
I would add a live or sterile additive to your reservoir.
I saw the pic of hydroguard. Iād get the Southern AG bio friendly fungicide instead. Itās the same active ingredient but much, MUCH more potent. Works way better than hydroguard and you only need like 1-2ml per gallon.
Or go sterile and use the pool shock or hypochlorous acid.
Since you are still running the same plants that were in the system with the plant that had root rot, itās possible you still have root rot fungi in the system. So Iād get some type of additive into the reservoir.
It does not tell you the other 27%, we looked it up best we could, just looks like oxidizerās doesnt really say, any thoughts on the bioguard.
No specific thoughts, but thatās basically what mine is. Based on stuff Iāve read, I went with .75g/gallon for the 73%.
I have an ORP meter, but honestly, I noticed a correlation between the orp going down and the vague pool smell going away. So considering the higher concentration that someone mentioned they use up above in the thread, there seems to be some room for leeway. So just adding more when it smells not like a pool probably is reasonable.
This is not entirely an exact science. At least in my scope of knowledge!
Good luck with it!
Do you use a scale to measure yours. Or a plastic scoop. Sorry for the questions im sure there is a thread on this.
I use a scale and get close enough. If you can do grams, just round it up or down, whatever makes the most sense.
Since youāve had specific issues, you might round up.
Itās nice that thereās some leeway, so you donāt have to stress toooo much.
Can you provide some more detail why you did not like Southern Ag Garden Friendly Fungicide?
I have a weird setup that means thereās a small bit of water left in the heat of my tent that doesnāt go back to the reservoir. I was originally planning to run HOCL, but had to initially have the whole res inside the tent at higher temperature when I was getting my system running. Since it was a higher temp, Iād read that the Southern Ag/Hydroguard was better for that situation, so I picked some up.
I found more residue/film left in that tray with the Southern Ag that I didnāt like, vs when I tested the HOCL (at that point) which left things very clean.
Decided that Iād rather not have to clean the film off things, and the southern ag has stayed in the closet. In retrospect I think it also felt less stressful in any chance of a leak. Because āsterileā or āas sterile as is reasonable to achieveā water that leaks anywhere is less likely to grow unwanted anything than āfull of bacteriaā water. Maybe thatās simplistic or not actually true, but after having a bit of a leak, I felt better about a pass of HOCL to sanitize things vs probably feeling like Iād need to do more with āmore bacteria than absolutely necessaryā water.
I think for many people itās absolutely the right choice! For my setup and my preferences, the HOCL/pool shock was the way to go. The added oxygenation was a side benefit.
Thanks for the comprehensive answer @C_in_CT!
Sorry to clog your thread with my questions @Rubixone.
I believe accurate solutions to your problem have been identified above.
Only thing I can add is a chart for dissolved O2 vs Temp.
Maybe interesting to understand the relationship.
.
Fish in the wild live and die off of this theory, they dive deep in the winter here where it gets cold, and the lake holds more oxygen. Sorry avid fisherman too.
I went thru the Same thing but instead of changing to soil I went to Coco.
@Rubixone
ābrown slime algae. Given time, the proliferation of bad bacteria (cyanobacteria) in the system can create brown slime algae.ā- From somewhere on the internet
I had a nasty battle with this in d w c. eventually it transferred to all buckets. Even the systems that were independent and in different tents. Reproduces with spores. Spores will get into the air And spread everywhere. Nearly impossible to get rid of the spores. I had run DWC for 5 years straight.0 issues. Iāve come to believe that itās in my tap watter. something changed somewhere along the line. I Believe itās now in all of my cityās tap water.
Good luck. I hope you find a solution. I will be following
Might be time to change ro filters in my case. Now that you say your tap water.