High flow RDWC air/water pump size advice for 6 tree bins?

I'll be using 25gallon rubbermaid tubs for ea of 6 trees in a high water flow rdwc setup, 2" of water in the bottom of ea tub with 6 gallon buckets inside that holding 12" net pots with lava and drip system to start them. 2 airstones per tub, 100 gallon res per six plants.

Vertical bulbs 6 1kw open hps

Plants/lights arranged
xoxo
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xoxo

What's a proper enough water pump, and air pump(s)? (not too loud would be nice, but whatever)

I'd like to even go 2-4x as big as necessary, hell maybe use a big hot tub pump I don't know. I could bleed off any extra power with a simple bypass and use that to circulate in the resevoir. (100 gallon res)

Air pumps can't really be too big, but what would be right for 6 of these size bins with that much water in them or for 12 or 24 bins if I decide to expand?

I'm thinking water pump should be maybe 1400gph just for 6-12 bins does that sound about right and maybe an 80 size air pump per 6 bins with two airstones ea bin?

Best airstone these days is another question on my mind, what would be right for this two 6" stones or need bigger?

pondmaster ap-100 air pump. Lots of air and not too loud. It's quieter than those industrial/sunleaves ones all the hydro places sell and puts out 10x the air.
I've got it on 12 buckets but it could probably do 20, maybe 30?

commercial air pumps...cheap and effective...thats what i use.............sorry for double post

I had been thinking about a similar design for someone who wanted a build done with 10 gal brute trash cans, 1800 gph pump, 2 danner 100s and one danner 40 air pump, and 3 inch pvc pipe running through the bottoms.. would basically be like the undercurrent but larger scale and set up for vertical growing..

check it out

the bucket with the lone air pump is the aeration bucket where water is drawn to the rest of the system.. the bucket to the left of that with the blue square is the drain bucket where the 1800gph pump will suck water from the rest of the system, pump it up through a pvc pipe an into the aeration bucket for the waterfall effect. water will be drawn from the aeration bucket through the sides of the system and back up the middle to be recycled. each bucket will have an 8 inch round air stone and a shit ton of air going through it lol

Hi Flo thanks for stopping by. You always set up some nice stuff I've watched your grows before.
I really like your plan, can't wait to see that hydro setup in action. But you're showing only half the lights that's usually thought to be best in this type of layout. All the plants around the outside only get direct light on half the plant even where they have two lights near them, but the center plants have 4 lights. The center plants will grow nice and fat, but then they will prevent you from spacing everything else optimally for all the others so what you'll end up with is two really nice plants and a bunch that really only got half lit from too far away.



Maybe I'm wrong and maybe you're on to something, but I'm just not really seeing it working out as well as if it were all laid out evenly just 6 plants if you can only swing 6 lights.

Thanks man much appreciated.

I feel what you are saying but here is the rationalization that I came up with LOL

the 4 in the middle no doubt would grow nice and fat with 4 light sources, but the only ones that get light from only one bulb are the 4 corners.. all the others get light from 2 bulbs which would help out a little bit.. My theory is that since plants for the most part are taller than they are wide, lighting them from the top means you are having to penetrate a farther distance to cover the whole of the plant.. when lighting a plant from the side, you are still lighting the entire height of the plant, as well as penetrating deeper into the interior, so overall it is a more efficient means of lighting.

also when doing lighting like heaths critical mass grow, you are still wasting a large amount of light to enable lighting all sides of the plant.. for maximum yield you need to surround the bulb with plants.. however you will still get a greater yield because of what i was saying earlier: lighting from the side will cover more of the mass of the plant than lighting it from the top.

so in short, i agree that some trimming would be in order on the corner plants to maximize efficiency, but overall i think you would get a better result in terms of weight surrounding the bulb with plant matter, than surrounding the plant matter with light.

im still curious to hear what other peoples thoughts are!!

Oh I'm all about vertical lighting these days, I won't go back to flat again after the results I've seen.

As long as you know the troubles you might have with the different sized plants and set up with some wiggle room to adjust things I'm sure you'll do just fine.

I hope you'll choose a crazy high yielding strain and we see some stuff like this old pic attached. I think you'll have the ability to come close to that.

Have you seen the "med patient bins" grow? Google it, it's on thcfarmer. Sounds similar to what you plan.

Edit: the site won't let me post a pic, it's broken. I'm sure you've seen the pic before anyway, the old krusty grow...

"texas Kid" dude, he has the same shit yu got all up and running along with a few others on thc farmer. the two sites are vastly diferent so I dont feel bad about the info. There are apparantly some bugs yu need to read about. gl

finally found it LOL its med patient bucket not bins haha... his system seems really complicated comparatively speaking... lots of feed lines and drains n stuff... i dont know maybe its just me.. but damn 20k lol thats sickness. i do like the lighting arrangement and the concept tho. just needs to be simplified IMO

Yes that's the one... Sorry about the wrong info, I should know better I've posted to that thread too and it's one of probably only a dozen posts I have on that whole forum.

20k is just one room of his Flo, in just one house. I don't think simplicity ever came into the picture setup wise.

jesus.. wish i could run 20k LOL!

im trying to find the perfect "tree" setup so i can run about 50 or so plants when i get my land and 40k genny setup hehe

I am thinking just running drips into five gallon buckets with 10 inch net pot lids. Just drill holes on the bottom so they drain onto a cheap craigs list table I got stashed. Either that or keep em on milk crates and run hoses back to a reservoir. I noticed this seems a pretty popular alternative latel to the hassle of a huge dwc. Plus drips get a lot of air. I arrived at the same conclusion as one of jorge cervantes gardens in "five easy gardens" that vegging in an ebb system and then moving to drip buckets seems pretty nice to stay legal.

FLoJo said:

jesus.. wish i could run 20k LOL!

im trying to find the perfect "tree" setup so i can run about 50 or so plants when i get my land and 40k genny setup hehe

Click to expand...

Perfection:

I thought you might want to see this.
.
42 pounds from 10 trees, another of that guys grows. I know you said his setup looked overly complicated but I think there's something to it as is.

http://www.thcfarmer.com/forums/f131/42-pound-10-plant-tree-grow-14877/

thats just incredible.. cant even comprehend that

No kidding...
I think I've decided on the system I'm using. 14x1k's, 8x400's half for veg probably ,2x250's clones , 1k's on flops.

looks like his system is coming out spring of 2010.. guess ill have to pick it up haha

squirrelfooker said:

pondmaster ap-100 air pump. Lots of air and not too loud. It's quieter than those industrial/sunleaves ones all the hydro places sell and puts out 10x the air.
I've got it on 12 buckets but it could probably do 20, maybe 30?

Click to expand...

I got the same air pump running throgh the diffuder danner sent into 12 1/4' air lines with remaining diffuser nipples open to atmosphere and into 2x4" Sunleaves cylindrical stones and have no bubbles at all???? Are you running a manifold or what am I doing wrong.. Thank you in advance.