POTHEADKATO
Active Member
My first aeroponics grow Well I started out growing out of soil back at my old place, now I got a new place and want to get back into growing I was looking online because I was interested in hydro. I read about aeroponics and liked it. I then checked out ebay and saw the general design of them. I decided I could make one myself for cheap it didnt look sohard. I went to menards to get my shit. I got two 6 tubes 3 feet long. Two end caps for those tubes. I then got two ½ tubes 3 feet long that were going to use as my sprayer rods. I also got two caps for those too. I got some more of the 1/2 tubes so I could connect the tubes for a manifold. I went back to my house and got to work right away. I cut the ½ inch tubes to fit perfect inside the 6 tubes so that they sprayed right at the roots. I found out that they had small lawn sprayers so I picked up some of those and put them as my sprayers. I drilled eight 3 holes in the tops of the 6 tubes so that I can put my 3 net cups. Then I hooked up all my tubing and was set to go. I built a little stand for it, allowing my reservoir under it. Its a 25-gallon tote dark so no light gets through to the water or nutes. I went to pet-expo to get the most powerful air pump I could find. I got a 12 long air band and a 6 air stone in my tote. Well I was there I grabbed a water pump that pushes 2100 gph which seems to work perfect. The water pump is hooked up to a digital timer that goes of every two hours for a half hour. Im not sure if thats too much or what. The only lights I got now are two 48 grow light. They are about six inches or so above the plants. The PH in my water is 5.3. I check it every day some times more. I have 10 gallons in my resivor. I have a nice room for all this in my basement, its got a door on it so I can put a lock on it and keep people from seeing. I painted all the walls white with the whitest paint I could find. The nutes I use is floramicro, floragrow, and florabloom. Im so new to hydroponics I hope im doing everything right so far. As soon as I got my setup all done and made sure it worked fine, I asked my friends for the best seeds they had. I got about ten of them and only 4 sprouted. Im using rockwool as a plug that was soaked in water with a ph of 5.5 overnight. The seeds had about ¼ inch root so I put them in the rockwool with tweezers, roots down. I dont have anything for the rocks for the net pots so I used some fish aquarium rocks that I cleaned with hot water. Im not sure if thats a bad thing and will hurt the plants or if it will work. I put the rockwool with the seeds into the net pots and put the rock around them. I havent added any nutes to the water in my reservoir yet. I want to learn more before I screw anything up.
Thats about all I can say about my setup. I have so many questions that I would like some answers. Its hard trying to figure all this out on my own because Im so new to aeroponics. Some of my questions are my reservoir has a open top on it so the water can drain back into it, should I get on that is air tight and wont let any light to the water. Before my ph was changing everyday when I used tap water. Is that because of the open top. I now got pure water for my reservoir it started out with a ph of 5.0 and had no chlorine in it. My next question is how often should I water the plants and for how long. My sprayers really seem to put out some water because the pump is so huge. Another question is should I be using the fish aquarium rock or should I go to get something, if so what should I get.
