What are waterfalls?

fragileassassin

Well-Known Member
Surely to agitate the water enough to create bubbles you need to have the *waterfall* firing into the rez with some force so im guessing you need a powerful pump for this?
Yes youll need it to come out with some force. If you just have a 1/2 pvc line dump into the water, you wont get much agitation. Thats why I have caps on my 1/2" lines with holes in them. It creates like a shower head effect.

I am happy enough with my 800GPH pump on my 6 sites in the flower system and a 1400GPH in the 12 site veg system. I aimed to keep it above 100GPH per site and it was enough for what I wanted.
You can see how hard it hits the water in the veg sytem at the end of this video.
 

rkymtnman

Well-Known Member
Yes youll need it to come out with some force. If you just have a 1/2 pvc line dump into the water, you wont get much agitation. Thats why I have caps on my 1/2" lines with holes in them. It creates like a shower head effect.

I am happy enough with my 800GPH pump on my 6 sites in the flower system and a 1400GPH in the 12 site veg system. I aimed to keep it above 100GPH per site and it was enough for what I wanted.
You can see how hard it hits the water in the veg sytem at the end of this video.
now i have to go pee. thanks fragile! lol.
 

fragileassassin

Well-Known Member
now i have to go pee. thanks fragile! lol.
It was dead silent in here last night at 3am as I was finally falling asleep and the barrel mixing pump kicked on. The barrel is below half and its a 1200gph pump that just dumps back into a hole in the top of the lid. I ended up having to get up outta bed to go pee after sitting there and listening to it run for 10 mins lmao.
 

GBAUTO

Well-Known Member
Yes youll need it to come out with some force. If you just have a 1/2 pvc line dump into the water, you wont get much agitation. Thats why I have caps on my 1/2" lines with holes in them. It creates like a shower head effect.

I am happy enough with my 800GPH pump on my 6 sites in the flower system and a 1400GPH in the 12 site veg system. I aimed to keep it above 100GPH per site and it was enough for what I wanted.
You can see how hard it hits the water in the veg sytem at the end of this video.
Yep, what I've created is just like using your finger to make a spray on the end of the garden hose.
A nice stream of water into the tote is all that's needed to keep everything aerated.
 

fragileassassin

Well-Known Member
Yep, what I've created is just like using your finger to make a spray on the end of the garden hose.
A nice stream of water into the tote is all that's needed to keep everything aerated.
I built everything out and filled it up and realized the 1/2" dump wasnt going to cut it unless i used a MASSIVE pump lol.
I played with a few ideas but the simplest way seemed to be to just throw some 50 cent caps on them to create back pressure.
 

Keesje

Well-Known Member
The agitation does not have to be huge.
The exchange of oxygen between the atmosphere and the water takes place at the water surface.
As a matter of fact this exchange would also happen with stagnant water.

The agitation is necessary to always replace the upper film of water (which contains the DO) with a layer of water that does not yet contain oxygen.
It is not that with a violent agitation this will happen a 100 times faster.
Just some steady replacement of water layers.... and you're fine.
A normal waterfall, bubbles and even what they call flooming would be good enough.
What more agitation can help with, is getting the DO-rich water inside the rootball when it is too dense.

But there are also scientists who say that too much agitation of the roots, does not benefit the plants.
But I could not find any papers that say that this is the case for all plants.
 
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