help with silencing the dripping back to the res, and sprayer ?'s

I just made a 13 site aero setup out of a 31gal rubbermaid tub. I wanted to keep the water level in the main tub real low below the roots so they dont have much chance at sitting in the water, but rather hanging in the air. so I have it elevated with another 18 gallon res outside the tent, but on floor level so I can have almost 6-7 inches deep of water and not have much at all in the 31. I have one 3/4 return line from the botton of the 31 to the 18, then I have the 396gph pumping through 3/4 then stepped down to 1/2 at the 31 gallon to a barb fitting threaded into a 1/2 pvc manifold. I have the pump line coming straight out of the top of the remote res, down to the ground into the tent then back up and through the lid of the large tub to the manifold. travels maybe 5 feet total from pump to manfold, maybe 20" vertical difference from highest point of tube to pump outlet. is that enough to cause a problem?

what could I use to line the bottom of the 31 so that when the water drips back down into the res it doesnt make the waterfall sound? I was thinking some kind of sponge material so that it wasnt dripping back into water but also wasnt dripping onto something solid to make a different loud noise.

also I only have 9 330 degree sprayers tapped in right now. Have green ones, not the red ones because the guy behind the counter told me the red AG sprayers have their own proprietary thread and the greens had standard threads. after searching for the tap I needed, I have the feeling the AG sprayers were just m5x.8 where the greens were #10-32 which from testing the sprayer in each set of threads seem damn near interchangable anyways. question is they dont seem to have a very powerful spray at all. saw a thread where the guy used 24 sprayers(were yellow) and it looked crazy from the pics of it while spraying. I know I only have 9 but my mind sees it as the more I add the less and less impressive each sprayer will be and 24 of them the water would pretty much just drip out them without even spraying the plants. could my pump be faulty? is 396ghp not enough?

at least I got some good news. I just moved up here and where I was before, my tap water showed around 300+ ppm if I remember right, and where I am at now is 26ppm, hope it stays like that. but the ph is 7.7 here, dont remember what it was at the old place but think it was even more alkaline. So Ill have to double check my meters readings and then do something to drop it if they are correct, hopefully i can get away from buying a load of distilled water like last time.

put a sock in it.

PurpleBuz said:

put a sock in it.

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???

Ive only heard that said to me before in one context... not sure how its meant here, you actually saying I should put socks in the res to quiet it down? I got a few more sprayers today to install and Im going to see how it looks. might snap some pics while Im down there.

maddmatt02 said:

???

Ive only heard that said to me before in one context... not sure how its meant here, you actually saying I should put socks in the res to quiet it down? I got a few more sprayers today to install and Im going to see how it looks. might snap some pics while Im down there.

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sorry I was being silly. In aquarium and ponds people commonly use a media sock to hold filter media

http://www.marinedepot.com/Filter_Sock_Mechanical_Filter_Media-FIFMMEFS-ct.html

buy some cheap sponges from a super market then pad the bottom with them, this way the water should drip onto them instead.
Stocky

Kind of on the same line as Stocky said I would float a piece of foam in the bottom res.

OK, thought about the sponge but wasn't sure if I would be just adding a nice, porous, constantly damp area for unwanted crap to grow. Got more sprayers in yesterday, think it's a go I just have to pull them all back out and flush the manifold to get all the little PVC shavings out so they all spray nicely. Just ran it to test for leaks and to get the grow stone soaked/ rinsed.

Question on nutes, I have a few synthetic bottles of tiger bloom, MagiCal, and kangaroots. But I still have about 10 bottles of different general organics stuff from last grow. Is the reason behind not using organic just because of clogged sprayers or will it help unwanted growth in the res? Because holes in the sprayers are pretty big and I think I could get away with it if clogging were my only concern. Might go get me some clones later today. Right down the road I can get some blue rhino, pineapple express, or jack herer.

here are some pics. I am going to string up some netting from corner to corner of the tent so I can get the outer plants of the tub farther to the edges of the tent so they can each have a little more canopy space for themselves.

That bugs me too....makes me wanna pee

maddmatt02 said:

OK, thought about the sponge but wasn't sure if I would be just adding a nice, porous, constantly damp area for unwanted crap to grow.

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In nft you use spreader mat without a problem so you should be ok.
If you're worried use polystrine as its not porous and floats on top.
stocky

If you use organics it is my understanding that a meter is useless for TDS or EC monitoring.

Have you grown using this method before? I am having an issue with my setup where the plants are way big for the area and I only have 6 sites. Are you planning on training the plants? I really have not tried that except when I had to break a couple to keep them out of light opps lol. I grow from seed at 12/12 so its not the height as much as the crowding.

I got some trellis/netting stuff spanning wall to wall so I can "try" and train them and get the perimeter plants closer to the walls and leave the middle area for the center plants to have some more room. the netting I got was all rolled up and bunched into a small pouch so I didnt expect the openings to be so large, its pretty much a 5"x5" grid, would rather have something like chicken wire size so I can be more specific on where I want each branch to go without having to use a bunch of ties so I will probably look for something else. no I havent done this type of grow yet, just dirt before this. I got it all setup earlier, ran my 600mh @ ~450(checking temps but didnt want to waste too much power), had the 6" fan pulling through the hood continuously, and a 4" fan pulling from the tent then blowing through the filter. pump runs 15 on 15 off for now as does the 4" fan (cycle timer isnt here yet so 15 on/off is the best I can do right now). anyways res water is nice and cold, humidity around 55, air around 65, ph is 5.4, tap water was 24ppm and I got some real weak nutes in there now at ~340ppm. also both fans are on variable speed controls and were both real low, I could move a ton more air if needed. also have a pair of 6" clip fans in there to keep a breeze going. I have my dehumidifier set at 55 and have had it on for weeks just testing the room out and Ive barely pulled anything out of the air. that might change now with all the water in the room but at least I didnt have a problem before. was in a small aparment for a while right when I got up here that I could pull over 10 cups out of the air almost daily while at work(no growing), pretty sure something was wrong there... everything here seems to be good though so I might go and get some girls in the morning and see if Ill be able to keep em alive in this system, its really just a test, I plan on using the larger tent later on with an aero setup made out of the square vinyl fence posts, and using this just to clone/veg in this small tent. but this time I am just going to give the clones a week or so and throw em into flower.

I have fence post as well with 4" holes but have not set them up yet and probably wont now that I use totes with 6" pots. Im only on my 4th grow know not alot lol. I bought some of that net as well lol. The shit is on the floor waiting to be unknotted, I tried but wow what a mess and yes to big. I'm looking for a piece of the orange snow fence. I grow from seed so clones would probably work better but haven't found a great candidate yet lol. My room is about 3.5' x 4' and the 6 plants fill it, so no room to even train really.

yeah that snow fence is exactly the kind of thing Im going to look for. how big did you let those get before flower? I grew some lemon trainwreck, white widow, and purple haze and after the first ones from seeds Id pretty much clone under 12/12 (maybe a few days of 18/6) and I could have them finished at only 2-2.5 feet tall. of course I was feeding them wrong, over watering, had a pest problem, etc... so I didnt get much out of that crop at all. I finally managed to get a crop that looked like it was going to be a good yield(for a quick grow)/quality but had to move so was forced to just go hide them in the woods and couldnt go back and visit til late november and most were eaten and the rest were very dry. I actually just put them in a jar with some celery to rehydrate it and gave it to a friend who said it was actually pretty good stuff.

going to the place sometime today to get some clones to put in this, still havent decided which, thinking about doing all the same strain since Im trying to pack so many into a small space, I need them to grow as equally as they can, so might as well not make it worse on myself by packing 3 rows of different strains in there. thinking about doing the blue rhino.

I let them veg for 3 weeks and that was a huge mistake lol. They were 6' tall when done. At 12 from seed and they get about 3' tall depending on the strain. I dont clone due to the plants seem to lose something in the process, could be me lol! I am growing some Pato1 right now that is pretty amazing and may try cloning it on the next run. I have 3 months left before I shut it down for the summer due to heat and people issues. Yes dont plant different strains in the same grow, been there, done that lol. Actually I'm doing that now with 2 different strains in the same tray and the one side is done (pato) and the other still has 2 weeks to go so flushing is posing a problem as well as the dead roots that will be left when I cut the pato, not to mention the hieght difference, oh well live and learn huh. Another strain that I have had good luck with is Mataro Blue. I pretty much grow Kannabia seeds and have had pretty good luck so far with all females and all seeds germinating. At $40 for 5 its a great deal as well. Next tray is critical kush which I hear is also pretty good. You will find that hydro is really easy if you have the proper meters and an understanding of how the nutes and PH levels fluctuate and why. And no more pests livivng in the dirt lol. Watch the CBD content if your growing for the high as I have heard high CBD`s are great for pain but counteract the THC effect, I have no ideal if its true though, I stick to the lower CBD strains cause I smoke to get high lol.

alright, I actually only bought 4 because they only had clones in dirt and I figured there would be a good chance Id kill them transferring them to an aero setup. anyways, first couple pics are of them right after I transferred them on sunday at about noon-1, next pics are of just now, about 33 hours later. All I did was drop the dirt clump out of the cup upside down into my hand, loosly break it up then swish the roots in the water some then roll them lightly between my fingers then swishing around some more til I got all the dirt off, fished the roots through the net pot, filled with grow stone and threw them in the system. now 2 cam in a clear cup so I could see the roots building around it, other 2 came in a solid cup so I couldnt see the roots. these must have been fresh because one barely had a couple 1/4" long roots off the stem, one had about 8 1/4-1/2 roots, neither of these plants roots made it out of the net pots which worried me some but the growstone had seemed to get pretty wet so I knew water was getting in there.

they had about 10 hours of 600w MH yesterday plus whatever they had at the place, plus about 18 hours of it today. pump timer is on a 15/15 cycle, water is nice and cool, ph around 5.5, ~400ppm. pretty incredible root growth in my eyes then again I couldnt watch them like this in the dirt.



now tonights



I know the temps are high, luckily the water has stayed cool so far. and I have an A/C to install tomorrow after work (6k I think), I had cracked the window and ran the lights intake over by it to cool the temps down for a while tonight but had to close them back up for now.
hopefully tomorrow Ill get the A/C in and the window blacked out (behind vertical blinds so wont be suspicious).

of course, last night I got the A/C installed and rerouted the duct's to my liking, so I cranked the ballast up to the full 600W, woke up this morning and the damn A/C had frozen up so it was on but barely blowing anything, water was 81 degrees, tent air space was 86. put it to fan only and had my fiance put it back to cool when she left for work and it had defrosted, so now the tent is only about 70, water is down to 71. think I have to change the setting on the ac so the fan runs continuously independant of the compressor so that it doesnt freeze up. plants still look good though, except a little bit of burnt/faded tips. nutes are still weak, ph a little high but not too bad so I think it might be from the heat. Ill see how it goes now that I have the temp under control.