First aero start-up

[cloud_]

Noob to areroponic
Will you need to upgrade the pot size later?

 

[Keesje]

Noob to areroponic
Will you need to upgrade the pot size later?

First check wat aero is, and then come back.
People will be more then willing to answer questions.

 

[JacFlasche]

If aero would give better yields, or more harvests per year, or be an easy system, it would be used by commercial growers of herbs, plants, vegetables, flowers.
But they hardly use it.
It is used sometimes when there is a lack of space or a lack of water. And with some specific plants (I do not know too much about this)
But even the commercial growers who do use it, say that the big downside of the system is technique.
The more technique, the more stuff than can fail or can brake down. Commercial growers don't want that.
They want a system they can rely on and gives them a constant yield.

I followed some threads of people who use High Pressure Aero and they come up with claims that their waterdrops are so fine, that it better for the roots. BS. Roots just absorb water. It is more on a molecule level.
Also I never saw a yield that is way better with HP Aero then with other hydro systems. If you are a shitty grower, you still will be a shitty grower with HP Aero.
I even think that when you are a shitty grower to stay away from HP Aero anyway.

If you like technique, then go for it.
But otherwise I would not know any reason to use it.

NASA claims that 50 microns and below are ideal. I sort of take their word for it. Yeah that seems to be the consensus. I can see what you mean about the timings. I know I have them too wet now and have to cut back a bit, I've been running wet because the two plants in the very opposite corners are not doing nearly as well as the rest. But I think it is mainly a light thing. I have been using a very small spyder farmer and moving it by hand a few times a day. I have a pretty big root chamber. A 75 gallon hd tote. I am running 19 plants in it and intend to center it under my Geek Beast 650 pro when it arrives and trellis them out to a 5x5 SOG. I have learned a lot about this by playing with it. I am now running my system between 100 and 140 psi. And since I got the accumulator online the pump only runs about three times a day for about five minutes. I have a 160psi aquatec pump installed on top of swimming noodles and held down tight with bunggies on a plastic milk crate and it is almost silent. I may modify my chamber and only run a row of plants in the center in the future and train them to alternate sides of the space. I am presently designing a new system with dry fog compressed air heads. My sticking point is the air compressor. I can silence a compressor to a certain extent pretty easily but it is best to start off with something quiet. There are some very quiet compressors out there but most have a pretty small capacity and would be turning on much more than my present system. On the other hand almost all dry foggers run continuously and that would not be the case. It's an interesting problem. I think ideally the fogger head would not even be in the same chamber as the roots but the fog would just expand into it. I think the tefen mist heads I bought put out too much volume. They are supposed to have the smallest droplets according to some independent tests that are on youtube, but I think the guys methodology for measuring droplet size was questionable. They claim that you can really dial in the droplet size with an ultra sonic compressed air setup. I am about to try to look up the posts by atomizer and just checked here to see how long it's been since I put those seedlings in the aero. It's been two weeks. The Malangi hybrid and the Ultra White Amnesia Haze are growing pretty fast. When I grew landrace Malangi outside in fabric pots it was almost uncontrollable. It grew taller than my roof out of a 12 gal fiber pot and it only got sun a half a day. It had an absolutely frightening high, that reminded me of the wacky weed in the seventies.

 

[Anothermeduser]

I ran high pressure for a bit, I settled in to low pressure, I love low-pressure aero or whatever closet nerds call it I produced steady for 15 yrs doing that running 12 lights. lots of benefits, be happy to help, don't want to waste folks time if no interest though. I found low pressure just way easier, also on high pressure when you hit the right points, crazy root growth, so thick and heavy the inside would die as it wasn't getting the fog in there, crazy thick roots, the low pressure would flow, roots would act more like Dwc some 15 feet long, crazy thick Matt's in my tables 4"-6" deep, tables were 10" deep. I quickly went to 1hr off to, stretched it to a few at the end of flower, I wouldn't run 5 min cycles except to root myself, blah blah I could go on and on. Love aero

 

[Anothermeduser]

I started packing 64 under a light, then 32, then 16 and ran like that for yrs then down to 6 and that was the magic number, I'd do a few days of veg and into flower

 

[JacFlasche]

I ran high pressure for a bit, I settled in to low pressure, I love low-pressure aero or whatever closet nerds call it I produced steady for 15 yrs doing that running 12 lights. lots of benefits, be happy to help, don't want to waste folks time if no interest though. I found low pressure just way easier, also on high pressure when you hit the right points, crazy root growth, so thick and heavy the inside would die as it wasn't getting the fog in there, crazy thick roots, the low pressure would flow, roots would act more like Dwc some 15 feet long, crazy thick Matt's in my tables 4"-6" deep, tables were 10" deep. I quickly went to 1hr off to, stretched it to a few at the end of flower, I wouldn't run 5 min cycles except to root myself, blah blah I could go on and on. Love aero

Well initially I was going to go with low pressure. I am sure I will use fewer plants in the future. I have a lots of components for high pressure so will stick with that for now. One thing I am gonna change is my chamber. Thankfully that is the least expensive part of my system. I think I payed less than twenty for the 75 gal tote I bought at Home Depot. I am going to look for some very tall rectangular trash containers. I used to use them outside on my patio in CA and they were great because I could spread them out and then if anyone were to care (which never happened) I could have pushed them all into a 100sq ft space. But I am going to put just one clone into each of them and use six tefen heads per container. 'Cause I want to keep the roots separate. One fogger on each side one on the bottom facing up and one on the top facing downward. I want to set up separate servo to control the side, top, and bottom fog heads. I am thinking that this will allow me to control the manner in which the roots grow and give me added flexibility in scheduling the fog. Such as I could have the bottom one go on for two seconds every six minutes and those on the sides kick in every 15min for 1 second, and those on the top -- every seven minutes for one second. Or whatever the roots themselves tell me is the best way to do it. Also the fact that I will only have one plant per container will allow me to really inspect the roots of one plant without disturbing them all, or ditch a particular plant without pulling the roots out of other roots they are tangled up with.

 

[Anothermeduser]

Well initially I was going to go with low pressure. I am sure I will use fewer plants in the future. I have a lots of components for high pressure so will stick with that for now. One thing I am gonna change is my chamber. Thankfully that is the least expensive part of my system. I think I payed less than twenty for the 75 gal tote I bought at Home Depot. I am going to look for some very tall rectangular trash containers. I used to use them outside on my patio in CA and they were great because I could spread them out and then if anyone were to care (which never happened) I could have pushed them all into a 100sq ft space. But I am going to put just one clone into each of them and use six tefen heads per container. 'Cause I want to keep the roots separate. One fogger on each side one on the bottom facing up and one on the top facing downward. I want to set up separate servo to control the side, top, and bottom fog heads. I am thinking that this will allow me to control the manner in which the roots grow and give me added flexibility in scheduling the fog. Such as I could have the bottom one go on for two seconds every six minutes and those on the sides kick in every 15min for 1 second, and those on the top -- every seven minutes for one second. Or whatever the roots themselves tell me is the best way to do it. Also the fact that I will only have one plant per container will allow me to really inspect the roots of one plant without disturbing them all, or ditch a particular plant without pulling the roots out of other roots they are tangled up with.

Cool stuff, that's what I did is ran many different configurations, ran at high pressure for awhile, it's fun stuff doing things a little different that most dont do or have knowledge about. I found a sweet spot with a few different aero set ups, got some crazy explosive growth with them, I'm running coco right now due to water quality, dirty well water, coco loves it, spray system doesn't, might get a water system one day.

 

[JacFlasche]

I am an engineer, I like to tinker with things too. I had been growing for about 20 years w/ an ebb and flow system that "just worked" but when I moved into the new house I decided to go all-in on high pressure aero. I loved the science behind it and I really thought it would be fun, as long as I could get near the same yields I'd be happy.

There is a fully documented thread on my HPA build-out over on OG, as well as a few different grows. After 3 harvests I realized a few things...

1. You need a bigger root zone than you think. You don't want to directly spray the roots directly so it takes a much larger volume of air per plant in order to keep spacing proper so that the nozzles don't soak the roots or walls of the chamber.
2. It is annoying to have to play with settings constantly. The plants slowly need more and more nutrients as they grow. You can't over-saturate or you won't get root hairs and you can't let them get too dry or the hairs die off. This leads to constant adjustments of the timings or you eliminate the entire benefit of HPA. (A much larger root zone helps with this, but is not practical.)
3. Not having a medium to stabilize large plants is a pain in the ass. Build a trellis, and make it strong since it will be supporting the full weight of the plant and the root mass.
4. Roots will grow directly towards the source of the mist, even horizontally. They will overtake your nozzles if you're not careful, prepare for it.
5. HPA cannot feed large fruiting plants. You can grow small plants but do not expect to pull 1lb yields.
6. Too many points of failure. Any failure in HPA can be catastrophic since it doesn't take long for the root zone to dry out and the hairs to die back. Then it's back to square one with your timings and feed schedule. Have backups for your backups.

When things are dialed in you can get some impressive growth, but as things compound it ends up being way more work for way less end product..

Thankfully when I built my system I had prepared a backup plan that allowed me to convert back to ebb and flow w/ minimal changes. I've since repurposed all of my HPA gear into other projects.

Hey. Lots of good info here. I have loads of modifications I will make for next HPA grow. Don't know if I will be able to go the full ultrasonic compressed air route, but I am getting a big kick out of the whole thing. My system is so simple and so far so good. I think if I want to grow big plants I would be outside. I have the notion at this point that whatever container constelation that will allow the fastest route to a saturated SCROG will be my next attempt. I have been bending my plants over under a fishing line net. It is hard on the plants if I have the fan blow to directly on them. I just bent all the tops over and under the nearest warp or they would be sticking though it. I think another week and they will have spread out to cover the net then I will let them come through and pinch the tops then let them flower. It's been three weeks since my original photo, so they are about four weeks old in this one.

 

[JacFlasche]

Cool stuff, that's what I did is ran many different configurations, ran at high pressure for awhile, it's fun stuff doing things a little different that most dont do or have knowledge about. I found a sweet spot with a few different aero set ups, got some crazy explosive growth with them, I'm running coco right now due to water quality, dirty well water, coco loves it, spray system doesn't, might get a water system one day.

It is three weeks since I posted the first photo of my first aero. I finally got the GeekBeastPro and no longer have to move my tiny spyder farmer QB twenty times a day. I had it for couple of days now and the plants are perking up real well. So the plants are now four weeks maybe a few days older. I keep bending them over under a net I made and will do that until they fill up the four by space, then let them come through and pinch them in that way that causes four buds. My object right now is to sex them. I took two to four cuttings from all of them and labeled every one with what plant it came from. The plan is to cut any males off at the stem and graft them with female clones. Just to see if that can work to fill in any space left by the missing males. Anyhow if they keep the roots of these tranny plants from dying I will consider it a success. If they produce any worthwhile bud that would be nice too.
I think In the future I will attempt to play to the strengths of this system and go for an even distribution of clones, each in its own container and attempt to fill out a scrog as quickly as possible.