Three types of hydro in a small tent on one airpump?

Indoor Growing Hydroponics
85

end cap, 1M flat bottom marley flowline guttering (better than hunter squareflow), gutter drain end. Make 12 of them. (I run 11 due to a ventilation duct in the way of number 12) Do not mix and match gutter types on 1 length or you will get leaks.

place three, one above the other on a wall and run a square downpipe from the top gutter end, into the middle gutter end below. then from the middle to the bottom one, fit a 45 then downpipe to go back to your tank. That is one wall.

Four of those in a square, 3 x 600W sodium hanging in the centre in cooltubes.

22mm pipe from tank to Grundfos Alpha 2l pump on floor. 22mm pipe to halfway up the wall where second pump is. 22mm pipe to ceiling T. run 22mm pipe in square around top. 15mm pipes running down from corners with 2 x T and 1 elbow positioned at the gutters with red handled stopcock valves on, (15mmT, 15mmpipe, valve, 15mm pipe, corner, pipe outlet)then a 15mm corner to drop into the gutter. Individual taps lets you make all outlets flow the same.

Now water is pulled into the first pump, up to the second, then to all four 15mm downpipes where the same flow enters each gutter, runs along then waterfalls down the downpipe, gutter end combo to the tank.

rinse repeat.

Get some of that tray topper stuff with the square tubes in it and cut some gutter tops, then some holes for your babies to be put into. Also some holes for the square downpipe and the 15mm inlet pipe. Cable tie them down.

For a more scroglike colosseum, get some wire based garden fencing, the green stuff with rectangular holes, then cut the rectangles into squares with some tin snips, the standard holes are just a bit small. Hang 4 sheets of that about 25cm from the gutter front to support your plants, which will want to pull themselves out of the gutter.

On week 3 of flower, check for roots growing into the main tank and whether they will flow towards your pump inlet. If they will, trim them often.

With my clone, I need 9-12 days veg, 60-64 days flower. More veg time than that and the roots outgrow the guttering and you get leaks and runaway humidity. You may find it takes a couple of cycles before you find the best method for your particular plant in this system. I would not recommend changing plants often because of this but to find a good mother instead to take clones from and get used to the system.

I just run a chiller to keep the roots the right temp, I highly recommend one.

Also, a small rootball in the right environment will produce more than a large rootball in the wrong one. Concentrate on your environment and the roots will just happen. If you think you need root stimulants and boosters, what you actually need is to look at your environment and see what is wrong.

Any questions just ask

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86

Sorry for the late reply - too much ‘life’ in my life the last several days.

Thanks for the info on your setup. I Like it!

About the root ball size - I agree with your comments, but given clones and identical conditions, wouldnt the plant with the larger root ball do better? My idea is to maximize the space roots have to develop.

Have to run off to do more ‘life’ crap, but more questions later…

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87

On another note… something seems to be buffering the PH in my hydro setup.

Its been running full time for over a week with just ph’ed water and nutes - no plants. Everything seems to be working fine but the PH climbs drastically over night in the rez. I PH it down to 5.5, and the next day its back to 6.2 - 6.5.

I kept some of the nute water aside to feed the clones by hand, and that water stays pretty close. I checked the ph 2 days ago and it was 5.5. Today its 5.6. My meter could be off that much.

Im assuming it has to be the lava rock or the perlite, but not sure what to do about it. Im thinking maybe try adjusting the PH down to under 5 for a day or two and see if that helps?

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Not likely to be the perlite, it’s always seems quite stable and i cant see how lava rock could change the ph either. What are you using to adjust it?

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I love projects like this. I like watching the tinkering and experimenting and seeing what people come up with. Kudos to you for undertaking this. I’ll be following it for sure.

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Yeah, Im surprised at this. I tested the perlite and the lava rock by soaking both in tap water for several hours, and I saw no change in PH, but my tap water is normally 7.1-7.4.

I dont know what else it could be. The entire setup is the usual plastics found in pipes and totes. I have a very small amount of marine grade sealant in contact with the water, but Im sure thats not it. Its of a type often used in commercial marine fish tanks.

I went ahead and lowered the PH to 3.9 by dumping in a bunch of distilled vinegar. Ive been using General Hydro’s PH down, but Im almost out of that, so today I switched over to try some vinegar. It takes a lot mre vinegar to make the same PH change, but it works.

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Yeh vinegar does work but as you found it takes quite a lot of the stuff and it wont hold the ph down for more than about 24hrs before it starts to rise back up to where it was after about 3 days. I also found it could leave a gunky residue. Lemon juice does much the same thing too. Your GH stuff should have done the trick and it don’t go off so it’s unlikely to be that, probably just leaves the nutes or your pen, cant think what else it could be bro.

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Im sure its not the nutes. I set some nute water aside to feed the clones and it holds its PH. I also checked the pens calibration and its fine too.

It has to be something in the system somewhere. Maybe something got mixed into the lava rock or the perlite thats doing this? I doubt its the fabrics I used - they are all poly and no natural fibers, so just more plastic - plus I washed them very well before installing. I used some small amounts of hot glue to tack down the fabric in some places. Guess I better test that.

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93

If both plants had a rootball which was not large enough for the plants to express fully then yes, the larger rootball would produce the higher yield if all other factors were the same.

What you want though is the right size rootball for your plant. Not too big as well as not too small. No point having more rootball than you need to feed your plant well, excessive nutrients are not great. Also you want your plants to be the right size for your space, which dictates the size of rootball needed to feed that plant, which in turn tells you the size of container/tray/whatever you need for your roots. This in turn tells you the reservoir size you need as a minimum.

The room and number of plants dictates plant size which dictates rootball size which dictates container size and suggests reservoir size. The room also dictates lights and other environmental aspects.

One of the worst crops I ever had was when the plants grew too tall and crowded the light many moons ago. The top was burnt and the bottom was straggly from lack of light. The overall yield was around 10% when compared to normal…

Bigger is not always better.

Given clones and ideal conditions what you want is a rootball capable of sustaining vigorous growth to allow your plant to fully express (and maximise yield) within the limitations of your room and environment. Wasted energy used making a rootball that is larger than you need could be used to make leaves, stems, flowers and more importantly trichomes. Either more of them or the same amount in less time.

If one of the clones puts it’s energy into making a rootball which was larger than it needed then it may well produce less than the clone which has a rootball the right size to allow full expression and vigorous growth (which is also limited by many factors : light, PH, EC, RH%, nutrient temp, day air temp, night air temp, also the plant itself can only process so much light per sq/ft, feed etc so there is an absolute limit on the benefit that tuning any of these factors will bring)

It will most definitely produce a lower yield per week per sq/ft. Either it spends too large a portion of a limited amount of time too focused on roots thinking it could grow for longer, or it is allowed to grow longer and would outstrip the space but not yield more.

Any clone has a maximum it can yield in a fixed space when all aspects are perfect. This is why growers talk of maximising yield, instead of trying to constantly get more yield. If your environment is perfect, the only thing a change will do is make it worse.

As such, you want the right amount of roots, not the most you can get.

Sorry for the huge wall ‘o’ text. Brain is a little free flowing at the moment :wink:

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94

Those are very good points - thanks!

The question remains though - how big is optimal?

It seems to me that question is going to be difficult to answer. I see many folks reporting great results in DWC and they show pics of huge root balls on each plant.

Then I see reports of great results from an NFT setup similar to yours - long narrow channels - where each individual plant looks to have a much smaller root ball, but the results are still excellent.

Or is the root ball really smaller? Maybe yours is just longer and has the same aprox total volume/plant?

Another question is - will the plant grow more roots than it needs, if there is extra room, or will it stop when the root ball is “big enough” to support the plant? I can see a plant NOT growing roots if there is no room or inadequate nutes, environment, etc. But, will it just grow excess roots even if it doesnt need them?

I seem to remember reading somewhere about plants root balls only spreading to match the size of the canopy.

I think you are correct about the environment being the main thing to concentrate on. Part of that would be to have enough room for roots, but I think you are absolutely right - trying to have tooooo big a root ball is almost certainly going to be wasted effort.

Thanks for the thoughtful and detailed reply!! It helps my thinking on this :slight_smile:

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95

OK, so the rootball has to match the canopy. The canopy has to match the room. Too big and you get a lot of leaf and not much else. Too small and you get a larger amount of very nice bud. Just right and you get the maximum amount of very nice bud.

I always like to say 5% under=95%. 5% over=50%. Far more complex than that but it is a good way of thinking about nutes, light and everything else. A good safeguard. Better to have a little too little than a little too much (except for carbon cans, get one a little larger than you need)

Of course 100%=100% and this is the ideal we all aim for. As close to maximising as possible. This is a trial and error process done by each grower for their own room.

This is why I say that the room, and the number of plants in it dictates the size of each plant. The rootball has to match the canopy so that shows you the ideal rootball size. When you know this, you can get the right size container and so on.

Look at your room, imagine plants of the size you want in there and then, visualising the canopy of each gives you an indication as to the amount of root you will need to support each canopy.

What I would say at this point is that a plant in a nutrient solution which is static will not pull up as many nutrients as one that is in a nutrient solution which is being cycled with the same amount of root.

This is why I say that sometimes, depending on the hydro system and environment, a plant with a smaller rootmass can outperform a plant with a larger rootmass. Like plants grown in still air will use up the CO2 surrounding each leaf and need fans to refresh the air, so plants in hydro need moving water to refresh the oxygen + nutrients and will benefit from it.

The plant will want to grow to larger than you want to it’s detriment because the room is a fixed size. Your job is to make it grow to the size you want, no further, so you can maximise quality and yield (the plant cares nothing for either, it just wants to get as big as possible and produce seeds)

I honestly do not know how my roots compare to the rootballs of other systems. I know they can support vigorous growth and allow my plants to express fully to the limits of the room. The high oxygenation of the waterfalling really aids rapid growth to my mind. I run 9 days in veg and 64 days in flower. As I have said, the roots get to 7-9ft long and have been a problem with pumps n stuff. I too would imagine they make up in length what other roots have in width :wink:

To the question of the plant growing more roots than it needs, when you put them into flower, root growth slows down and the plant concentrates on producing flowers (because it knows roots are wasted energy at this point). If your container is larger than you need it will not negatively affect the plant but you are wasting space with a container you do not need :wink:

This is why I run specifically 9 days veg, much more than 11 days and the roots grow too much by week 5 and cause nute solution to overflow the sides of the guttering and the plants end up too big for the system. In the system I run you need to restrict size by initiating flowering.

Anyway, I have filled up enough of this thread,

Happy growing =)

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96

Thanks again for the detailed reply. I find myself agreeing with all your points.

If you have roots 7 - 9 ft long, that has to be at least on par with the largest DWC root balls Ive seen.

And, no - you have not filled up enough of this thread. Your contributions have been excellent and very helpfull!!!

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Should be there tomorrow!

Post up pics when you get them please

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98

Hey @h3y4rnold, I got the seeds today! Thank you sir!!!

Unfortunately, they arrived a little too late to use in this grow, but I will keep them in mind for this fall when I start back up.

Here is the pic you requested :smiley:

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Oh wow they would have been perfect these are all the same pheno

A perfect 75-25 (Chem sis to TPK) this is the most uniform your going to get over having 2 or 3 of the same cut

a serious shame

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Yeah, but like I said before, Im up against some time constraints and they just got here way too late. The weather is rapidly warming up and it just wont work for me if I cant finish this grow before it gets too hot. Plus, Ive now spent way too much money on these clones to toss them out unless there is no other choice.

Unfortunately, I may have to do just that. If these clones dont start to bounce back in the next few days, Im going to have to just put this whole thing off till next fall, when it cools down again, and just write off the loss.

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Show some pics of the clones I may be able to help

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Thank you! Here is the history on the clones. I didnt want to clutter up this thread. You can reply in either place is fine with me.

Here is the short version: Bought 5 clones of Blue Dream - 6"-8" tall. They looked pretty good but had some droopy leaves. I was paranoid about bringing in bugs, so I completely dunked them in a waaaaay too strong batch of neem oil and nearly killed them all. After rinsing a couple of times, they started to come back and are sloooooowly recovering. They are in small rock wool cubes and all were showing some degree of nice white roots in the beginning. 6 days ago I put them into dixie cups of perlite with small holes near the bottom of the cups and have been bottom feeding them with 6.0-6.1 PH water and low dose nutes. Lights are at 20 watts/sq ft. Ive been removing the dead leaves every so often if they were dry and crumbly or totaly yellow/white and easily plucked off. The new growth looks ok but its going slooooow.

However, after 6 days I only see one single small new root on one plant showing in the cups. Id like to pick the best three and start them in the hydro totes, but if its going to take weeks and weeks just to grow roots that wont work.

Here is what they looked like when I first got them.

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A few hours after the neem dunk

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Today:

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103

They’ll bounce back within a week or so would be my guess, just wait for them to de shock and start new green growth again

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104

Ah ha! I am willing to bet you are a charter member of the LITFA club! :smiley:

I was afraid you would say that, but I think you are right.

These stupid things are bound and determined to mess with me. I just checked them over and that one small root has doubled in length since this morning! Plus, there are some more small ones showing on the top of that cube.

Ok, I guess I will wait some more. Im not very good at LITFA :slight_smile:

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