wondering about trying aeroponics - some questions ;D

I was thinking of trying to go aeroponics, just to try it out.
But I got left with a few question:
1. I got an extra water pump, some hydro nutes (GHE one part total grow and HESI coco. a few more will join them in a few weeks). I want to try aeroponics with only one plant that I want to reach 1m high.
What system do you recommand that I can DIY?

2. if you push air around a feeding solution, wouldn't it change its PH? What can cause PH shifting in the first place?
I had a lot of PH shifting in my watering rez last time and I never realized what could actually do that.

3. I'm probably going coco\perlite on my next run (this run is some coco\perite, a hempy bucket and 4 soil trees) and wondering how different the results are from aeroponics. is there any good comparision someone have?

4. at the time I plan of trying it out the temperture would be around 35C. Would it be fine with water temp. around 30c?



Thanks in advance

Night Claptoman said:

I was thinking of trying to go aeroponics, just to try it out.
But I got left with a few question:
1. I got an extra water pump, some hydro nutes (GHE one part total grow and HESI coco. a few more will join them in a few weeks). I want to try aeroponics with only one plant that I want to reach 1m high.
What system do you recommand that I can DIY?

Click to expand...

Check out my signature grows below and see if that answers this question

Night Claptoman said:

2. if you push air around a feeding solution, wouldn't it change its PH? What can cause PH shifting in the first place?
I had a lot of PH shifting in my watering rez last time and I never realized what could actually do that.

Click to expand...

Most pH shift up is caused by using tapwater.
Disease can cause the pH drop.

Night Claptoman said:

3. I'm probably going coco\perlite on my next run (this run is some coco\perite, a hempy bucket and 4 soil trees) and wondering how different the results are from aeroponics. is there any good comparision someone have?

Click to expand...

Again check out my signature

Night Claptoman said:

4. at the time I plan of trying it out the temperture would be around 35C. Would it be fine with water temp. around 30c?

Click to expand...

You need to keep the rez temp @ 20ºc or less.

tapwater is what i have in hand. will it cause problems?

keeping the rez around 20° would requier a chiller. Can I DIY one?

Tapwater will seldom work with hydro.
Please take a few minutes and read my threads and you can see my home made chiller.

i've shuffled through your threads and found just the pre-bought chiller. should look at it again.

all your aero grows seem to take a lot of space. if there a more compact way to do it?

Thanks a lot for your help
It seems way too expensive for me and way too space consuming.

I think I rather try other methods first.

A question about costant drippers with hydrotron - if I run a bucket of solution with the plant on top, a pump with drippers on costantly like the known model - how to I keep out of PH flanculation? Is RO water crucial?

Dripper will drown the plants.

If you are not able to $gohydro$
then try hempy buckets.

so how should i water hydrotron? without drippers?

I am going coco\perlite on my next run, but using the ml\liter charts and not the PPM charts.

95 degrees Fahrenheit, now that is hot indoor growing temps. You are aware with those temps if growing with anything but low intensity lighting you should use carbon dioxide supplementation.

What is your ground temperarture say a couple meters below the grounds surface. Are you living on a ground floor where you could run a plastic pipe down into a hole with the plastic water pipe then coiled in the bottom and buried. Then just circulate water through the pipe with the pump before the water is sprayed? Is your tap water deslinated water by way of RO filters or is it ground water. If it is desalinated water it has been run through RO filters to desalinate it.

in a few months it will be around 30-35C outside. i got a closet with some serious venting, cool tubes and all that things.
(serious venting means a 60cfm vent for the lights with a 6" cool tube and 280cfm vent for extracting air out, thats for a square meter closet taking in count all the closet, not only the parts that will be used)

CO2 is out of my budget. and I can't believe something will live in my closet if its not vented.

don't know my underground temp, and I live in a building so its not really helping me :X

I don't know what deslinated means, sorry. My tap water are hard water with barely no filteration from an inland sea (more like a lake) with added chlorine. Its really not that stable PH-wise.

Desalinated means that the water has been run through filters to remove the salt. It is commonly done when the water source is the ocean/sea. There are many desalinnaion units used in the middle east where there is little fresh water bodies to draw water from. However desalinated water is not hard water so obviously the water o is not RO desalinated water.

The problem with most pot plants are they grow very little at temps above 80 degrees F (26.7 C) without a higher level of CO2 that is supplied by typical air. At 90 F plus degrees (32.2 C) you would need 1500 to 2000 ppm of CO2 for good growth but ambient air contains only about 350 ppm so that CO2 would be used very quickly. It would be best to only grow during the cool season there if not using CO2. Even a constant flow of air through the closet would likely only produce fair to good growth at temps that hot, definitely not excellent growth. Even evaporative cooling would likely only drop the closet temp about 10 degrees F. Evaporative cooling would mean drawing the air your venting out of the closet from over the top of a pan of water. The water would evpoarte and be drawn out by the fan. The evaporation removes heat. Tho is would mean keeping a pan of water (with as much surface area as possible) above your lights full of water with your exhaust fan pulling air across the surface of that water. In a hot, dry environment expeact to evaporate 5 gallons (18.9 liters) to 10 gallons (37.8 liters) of water every 24 hours with say an 8 square foot (0.74 sq meter) pan of water if of course it never runs out of water.

Thanks for all that information.
I intend to flower some plants over the summer just for practice. I might just grow under CFLs to keep the heat down.
At the peek of the heat I won't be growing anything exept mothers.

But for now - temperatures are great and my plants are thriving

When i'll get to the point it promotes problems, I'll post a topic about it. I'll know much more when the time comes.

Hello everyone! Long time reader, first time blogger. A friend of mine has approached me about designing him a Hydroponic System. He will be growing White Widow on a 10 week cycle. Veg light will be 18/6 or 20/4 and Flower will be 12/12. I have researched and read and I have started the design phase. This is also where I need assistance from the knowledgable folks here. So let me first start by saying he has grown for years in soil but has never done an indoor grow. So this is the system I have designed. I intend to buy as much of the setup as possible from Stealth Hydro.

The Aeroflo 36 will be the system.
The llights are going to be Multi Spectrum Pro 420 (qty 2) with the Deluxe Flowering package bulbs.
A five stage RO filtration system.
An automatic digital pH controller.
EZ-Clone (60 site)
The odor control will be a muffin fan using the Ona & Soilmoist. I saw that on one of the blogs and feel that would be the most cost efficent odor Control.

So I guess my only questions are: What am I missing? I know I need small miscellaneous things like timers and such. But questions like, Do these lights require ballasts?

I have also decided to use Advanced Nutrients and they are listed below. Let me know if some of the nutes are redundant or if I'm missing something.

Micro-Grow-Bloom
Big Bud (liquid)
Bloom Booster Pro (I'm a bit hesitant b/c it's a powder and I'm trying to avoid powder nutes.
Bud Blood (Same as above)
Fulvic Acid
Final Phase
Overdrive
Voodoo Juice

Now I have some questions with basic growing that I'm not familiar with. For starters roughly how much water will I need in the resevoir to get me through each week? Am I going to be going through 40 gallons a week or more like 10-20? How do I transplant the cuttings from the cloner to the Aeroflow? Do I just fill the grow cups half way with hydroton and gently lay the exisiting roots in the cup and cover with hydroton?

And of course the last question. I know this question can't be answered exactly but ballparking will work. How much dried bud should this system produce every cycle?

Thanks for any assistance you can provide.