Taking the plunge: HP Aero Drain to Waste

[clydefrog]

80% seriously? I had no idea the savings were so significant. Is there a good thread that could get me familiar with the basics? I am certainly capable of searching for myself, but sometimes it's good to cross promote.

jacks peat lite 20-10-20 always gave me good results, a $40 bag will last years, and it went through my hp nozzles without a hitch. unless you actually get your feeding system to the point you are running 70-100 psi with optimal burst times and no runoff whatsoever, nutrient formulation is a waste of time imo. if you have water dripping off your roots the the plants have more food than they actually need at any one point and will just absorb what they want.

 

[clydefrog]

I hear that. I keep using smaller and smaller netpots so I have to deal with it less and less. The shit gets everywhere. I will cover the RW cubes today.

GTS

go to your local home depot-ish place and buy a neoprene floormat. i used a holesaw to punch out circles the size of my netpots. cut a slit in them and they will support your little guys. its a little work but when you run lots and lots of little plants its worth the effort.

 

[Trichy Bastard]

i have yet to have biofilm being a problem or even any of it really 2 weeks res is crystal clear since first change and little to no odor, and my plants are rocking out hard they look as happy as a plant could be lol i had one mister clog up and it was from a small piece of plastic i neglected to remove from the tubing when i cut it i sure found it in the mister head it fell out when i took it apart i put it back together and still have no clogging, riddle me that one batman im sure it might be more of an issue down the road going on week 5, i am willing to bet good money most issues are from light getting in your reservoir leading to excess growth of something maybe, i would love to do some experimentation with that theory when i can afford it.
i wonder why i don't have biofilm or slime issues and i been letting my res go for longer than others have and it seems great, and i have no algae growth whatsoever, i took great care to ensure everything below the stalk is dark as could be, i would love to hear some feedback from anyone that has some experience with the biofilm and clogging and what type of filtration you use

I got outright root rot without an oxidizer, even with peroxide I did due to it needing to be topped up so often. I use R.O. water however- and use 6 drops of bleach to get it back to municiple chlorine levels now. If you are already using tapwater (not recommended) then that may be why. Also ambient temps have alot to do with it I am sure- my temps are tropical warm year round..

I use a 1 micron filter myself... Post pump, pre accumulator... Also used food grade 35% peroxide which is shelf stable and uses no preservatives- the bleach at 6 drops/gallon doesn't worry me much, but I am sure you can make a pure version with some pool sodium hypochlorite granules diluted down... Atomizer once mentioned using a bleach made for sterilizing baby's bottles with no additives if I remember correctly...

 

[Trichy Bastard]

and remember that's nothing but nutes and bennies, no bleach or peroxide which is known to have toxic substances for stabilizing it for shelf life. hopefully i will go full term and not have issues but nothing is perfect. and from what i understand about microbiology is that a healthy population of good bacteria and fungi are essential to overpopulating the bad ones i fail to see how what i am doing isn't going to work because it sure is and and has been lol have you seen transplanting good fecal bacteria into the colon of an unhealthy population has been the most effective treatment to date to stop bad pathogens from taking over your colon and c diff kills 14,500 people a year. i don't think my proposal sounds too far fetched.

yup, I am a huge proponent of keeping good intestinal microbes.. I make my own kefir from the ancient kefir grains... Contains 40 strains and 1/4 cup contains over 1 trillion cells- more living microbes than a whole bottle of the best commercial probiotic products... Also pickle my own veggies/saurkraut with sea salt water cultured...
I take a differentapproach with my res- I am minimalist, and run completely sterile- no good guys, or bad guys...

 

[GreenThumbSucker]

go to your local home depot-ish place and buy a neoprene floormat. i used a holesaw to punch out circles the size of my netpots. cut a slit in them and they will support your little guys. its a little work but when you run lots and lots of little plants its worth the effort.

In order to stay legal I have to stay under a number of plants. Right now I can grow 45 plants total. That includes rooted cuttings.

 

[GreenThumbSucker]

I got outright root rot without an oxidizer, even with peroxide I did due to it needing to be topped up so often. I use R.O. water however- and use 6 drops of bleach to get it back to municiple chlorine levels now. If you are already using tapwater (not recommended) then that may be why. Also ambient temps have alot to do with it I am sure- my temps are tropical warm year round..

I use a 1 micron filter myself... Post pump, pre accumulator... Also used food grade 35% peroxide which is shelf stable and uses no preservatives- the bleach at 6 drops/gallon doesn't worry me much, but I am sure you can make a pure version with some pool sodium hypochlorite granules diluted down... Atomizer once mentioned using a bleach made for sterilizing baby's bottles with no additives if I remember correctly...

I am using tap water. It is coming out at 25 ppm right now so it is essentially RO water. In the summer it comes out at 30-35 PPM.

 

[GreenThumbSucker]

good, the sooner the better imo... next time try the handwatering option in the aero, it's the best method I've used so far...

What if you put in some drip stakes and just did a slow timed drip until the roots dropped? Wouldn't that essentially be the same thing? I love automation.

 

[GreenThumbSucker]

I noticed a root with a dried spot, like damping off. That tote had a fan blowing directly on the plant. I think the air blew in through the hydroton and dried it out a bit. Either that or it got too warm. I covered the netpots. I have a thermometer hanging in one of the totes so I can keep an eye on the temperatures in the root zone. It is sitting at 74.4 degrees with one 1000 watt burning. When I had two HD going at once it must have been in the mid 80s in the root zone, was very warm, though didnt have a thermometer in there yet. I want it below 72, preferably below 70. Until I get the temps under control, I will burn one light, then the other. I am alternating the two halides, 12 hours each. The dried root is defiantly not from damping off, which is caused by the dreaded pythium. I am using bleach to keep everything sterile.

My solution is sitting at 54 degrees. I think it's time to fire up a chiller. My plan is to chill my solution down to about 40 degrees, then adjust my spray timing to bring the temperatures down. The room gets really warm with two halide lamps running. They are not in cool tubes. The room runs a lot cooler during flowering cuz all three HPS are in tubes.

Right now I am cleaning the chiller, running 1 gallon white vinegar mixed with two gallons water backwards through it overnight to dissolve out all the salt buildup. I will fire it up in the morning and hook it up to the reservoir. I will also double or even triple the insulation tomorrow.

From here on out, my spray timings will revolve around the temperatures in the pods. When I find a combination of timing and solution temperature that keeps the pods below 70 degrees, I will stay there until time to flower. I have done a lot of research on pod cooling, here on rollitup, and on the internet. Seems pod cooling is the holy grail of HP Aeroponics.



Any hints or comments are welcome.

 

[AeroPonicsWizaRd]

i had problems with getting too wet for fine hair growth and increasing the psi helped me a lot increased time for spray and decreased how fast they got wet worked for me the biggest trick i noticed was to ensure saturation until roots established through and then started backing off the length of time for misting and making them indirect to the roots, all i can say is i never seen such interior growth so fast on 4 and a half week old plants they are getting huge fast!!!!

 

[AeroPonicsWizaRd]

tuning tuning tuning

 

[AeroPonicsWizaRd]

lol hell no for tap water and aero, ro or distilled mostly dist distilled water sets the standard for clean, and yeah i know what bleach is and how oxidizers work i just have no need them with inoculated res and air stones, anyways my concern was more for heavy metals and other than sodium hypochlorate, the ones they use to stabilize the products for shelve life, lol if you don't believe me try it yourself sometime i have continued to have crystal clear water,or i must be crazy then lol oh well tesla was crazy but everyone was in awe when he gave the world the ac grid,and then we forgot about him as we all do so well with everyone important to humanity and our future, and sure as hell never forget that fucking ugly stupid fucking snooky, im sure 10,000 brilliant peoples of our past would be doing barrel rolls in their fucking graves if they had the slightest idea of what were doing as a whole with our technology of today and absolutely no cohesiveness to improve. bejing's air pollution is at a costs of our need for cheap chinese shit don't get me wrong i love chinese shit, but nothing comes without a price, everything in life is a double edge sword all i can think is that sterilizing a res all the time could be more costly then to just put something in it to grow that does not hurt your plants and keeps other shit from growing natures doing the cleaning for me , lit. i make sure my res temp and room temp stay within certain range and i don't use my chambers as a res, been a miracle thus far hope it continues to impress me is all i can hope for, might sound crazy but i struggled with this organic or sterile bullshit forever in my mind and man just this seemed like a good idea to me and it works bad ass for cheap, ill show you what i do with it and yall be the judge i got the cleanest res i seen it looks like spring water and i've always had trouble arguing with positive results lol

 

[AeroPonicsWizaRd]

tap has pythium in it! and ten billion other bacteria and viruses and i am a firm believer any pathogen from tap in that harsh environment is mutating to cope with the increased chlorination and in theory is hardening it to survive better in harsher places maybe your reservoir, bacteria do it all the time for antibiotics. and fast ! scary shit, our fear of germs is leading to antimicrobial everything and breeds super germs, google it , it's worth a google.. just pure science, i don't want to hear it as much as the next guy but my mind won't allow me to overlook it.

 

[AeroPonicsWizaRd]

lol my tap is 279 parts per shit grows house plants great lots of minerals and calcium

 

[GreenThumbSucker]

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Very nice. How are your root zone temperatures?

One more thing I will do today is get some insulation tape. Also, I am using black tubing. I have white, that would cool my solution somewhat also.

The pump I am using has adjustable pressure settings. Perhaps I will turn the pressure up further to make the mist finer, allowing me to mist longer. Right now I am using angles sprayers that spray directly on the netpots.

 

[hammer21]

Any progress pics green

 

[Trichy Bastard]

What if you put in some drip stakes and just did a slow timed drip until the roots dropped? Wouldn't that essentially be the same thing? I love automation.

perhaps, but you'll have to put the drip on a timer, and the other thing is if you're outside, the rockwool will dry at different rates each day depending on the sun/wind conditions, but indoors it should remain a pretty stable evaporation process unless your temps/humidity change greatly from day to day. it's a little learning curve with the rockwool, you don't want to overwater, but you don't want the delicate roots to dry out completely either. Perhaps Atomizer's method of using a syringe to inject the nutes near the bottom of the rockwool in the netpot work best as the roots soon learn where the water is and start growing downward into the chamber...

 

[Trichy Bastard]

I noticed a root with a dried spot, like damping off. That tote had a fan blowing directly on the plant. I think the air blew in through the hydroton and dried it out a bit. Either that or it got too warm. I covered the netpots. I have a thermometer hanging in one of the totes so I can keep an eye on the temperatures in the root zone. It is sitting at 74.4 degrees with one 1000 watt burning. When I had two HD going at once it must have been in the mid 80s in the root zone, was very warm, though didnt have a thermometer in there yet. I want it below 72, preferably below 70. Until I get the temps under control, I will burn one light, then the other. I am alternating the two halides, 12 hours each. The dried root is defiantly not from damping off, which is caused by the dreaded pythium. I am using bleach to keep everything sterile.

My solution is sitting at 54 degrees. I think it's time to fire up a chiller. My plan is to chill my solution down to about 40 degrees, then adjust my spray timing to bring the temperatures down. The room gets really warm with two halide lamps running. They are not in cool tubes. The room runs a lot cooler during flowering cuz all three HPS are in tubes.

Right now I am cleaning the chiller, running 1 gallon white vinegar mixed with two gallons water backwards through it overnight to dissolve out all the salt buildup. I will fire it up in the morning and hook it up to the reservoir. I will also double or even triple the insulation tomorrow.

From here on out, my spray timings will revolve around the temperatures in the pods. When I find a combination of timing and solution temperature that keeps the pods below 70 degrees, I will stay there until time to flower. I have done a lot of research on pod cooling, here on rollitup, and on the internet. Seems pod cooling is the holy grail of HP Aeroponics.



Any hints or comments are welcome.

Yes 65-70f max is optimal. Chilling the nutes works ok if your tote is insulated, otherwise the meager sprayings don't offset so much, and once the air in the pod is saturated there is not much evaporative cooling taking place. The best way imo, is to recirculate water through your chiller into an ice chest and run your water lines through some coils of tubing in the cooled water like a "water bath". Then you get cooled nutes, and don't have to run the salts through your chiller nor do you have to worry about getting enough nute flow through the chiller to keep it running properly without freezing up.

 

[Trichy Bastard]

lol hell no for tap water and aero, ro or distilled mostly dist distilled water sets the standard for clean, and yeah i know what bleach is and how oxidizers work i just have no need them with inoculated res and air stones, anyways my concern was more for heavy metals and other than sodium hypochlorate, the ones they use to stabilize the products for shelve life, lol if you don't believe me try it yourself sometime i have continued to have crystal clear water,or i must be crazy then lol oh well tesla was crazy but everyone was in awe when he gave the world the ac grid,and then we forgot about him as we all do so well with everyone important to humanity and our future, and sure as hell never forget that fucking ugly stupid fucking snooky, im sure 10,000 brilliant peoples of our past would be doing barrel rolls in their fucking graves if they had the slightest idea of what were doing as a whole with our technology of today and absolutely no cohesiveness to improve. bejing's air pollution is at a costs of our need for cheap chinese shit don't get me wrong i love chinese shit, but nothing comes without a price, everything in life is a double edge sword all i can think is that sterilizing a res all the time could be more costly then to just put something in it to grow that does not hurt your plants and keeps other shit from growing natures doing the cleaning for me , lit. i make sure my res temp and room temp stay within certain range and i don't use my chambers as a res, been a miracle thus far hope it continues to impress me is all i can hope for, might sound crazy but i struggled with this organic or sterile bullshit forever in my mind and man just this seemed like a good idea to me and it works bad ass for cheap, ill show you what i do with it and yall be the judge i got the cleanest res i seen it looks like spring water and i've always had trouble arguing with positive results lol

Good for you, I'd prefer the Natural method myself too, but my main issue out here is heat, and bleach was the only way to address the issue simply and easily. If your nozzles don't eventually plug up with bio-film or anything, then I would like to try your innoculation... In the end, I always believe that mother nature has things right, and the further man gets away from nature, the weirder things get. I defiantly oppose GMO food (I love technology and am glad we are exploring it, however they are insane to be letting this stuff out into the wild with so little testing... Alas quick corporate profits is always the driving factor...)

 

[Trichy Bastard]

tap has pythium in it! and ten billion other bacteria and viruses and i am a firm believer any pathogen from tap in that harsh environment is mutating to cope with the increased chlorination and in theory is hardening it to survive better in harsher places maybe your reservoir, bacteria do it all the time for antibiotics. and fast ! scary shit, our fear of germs is leading to antimicrobial everything and breeds super germs, google it , it's worth a google.. just pure science, i don't want to hear it as much as the next guy but my mind won't allow me to overlook it.

I absolutely agree... The odd thing is the United States uses billions of tons of antibiotics each year, and 80% of that is used in CAFO animal feed to increase growth- very short sighted. I buy mostly all organic food, because the farming practices are better for the planet, etc. etc. etc...

 

[Trichy Bastard]

lol my tap is 279 parts per shit grows house plants great lots of minerals and calcium

only issue, is you likely don't know the ratio of the composition, which leaves variables. Furthermore, the ppm likely changes throughout the year. Many places have vastly different levels between summer and winter. Lastly, if a good total starting ppm for aero is 150ppm, you already are running hot, and haven't even addressed the other minerals and nutrients over calcium and magnesium... Just some thoughts I had to have back when deciding to go with R.O. water or not...