My OBBT Bucket Build

RipVanWeed · Jan 25, 2010

Yesterday when I flushed mine the starting Ph was 7.2-7.8. After running 2.5 gal of 6.0 water through it most of the buckets were around 7.

EJ for me today, will keep Ph in check for sure.

Keep at it Rrog.

Mucho Respecto,

rrog · Jan 25, 2010

From DrunkenM:

"I've hand-watered every iteration of my bubble bath tubs. The 70/30 mix was more hydro-ey. It went dry quicker and its PH fluctuated MUCH more than a 50/50 mix. "

He's saying that a heavy 70% coco had bigger fluctuations in pH.

"As you can see, I wring everything I can out of feeding and watering cycles. The bubble-bath tubs allow for this kind of aggressiveness while maintaining super-active micro life. I swear that the mycylium network of the beneficial fungus actually helps the flush-starve-feed regime. The 50/50 mix is incredibly low maintenance, PH of the runoff never wavered further than between 6.6 and 6.9 without any adjustment on my part. I was so paranoid about these results that I got a PH soil testing kit and took samples of my medium from various locations. I got identical results. This was actually a bit irritating because for tomatoes you want closer to a Ph of 5.5, whereas 6.8 is bang-on for cannabis. I had used a mix of Mychorrhizae spores from a specialty grow store (worm's way) that was tuned to buff the Ph for cannabis. It worked. I added Epsom salts and then in desperation some garden sulfur. I burned the plants from too much S before I could get the Ph to budge."

He has a resulting "res" pH of under 7.0. I assume his recipe is what LadyL defined as well. I can only assume that my pH issues were the hard lime in the water building up in the system, still buffering the pH up on me. That's the best answer I can come up with.

rrog · Jan 25, 2010

RipVanWeed said:
Yesterday when I flushed mine the starting Ph was 7.2-7.8. After running 2.5 gal of 6.0 water through it most of the buckets were around 7.

EJ for me today, will keep Ph in check for sure.

Hey RVW. I sure appreciate your continued postings. You're far and away the most experienced person with all of this now that DM and LL have flown the coop for good (it seems).

I'll just keep it up with the low pH watering and see where that gets me. I would have thought I'd be down in res pH by now. Seeing a pH over 8 this AM was disappointing...

rrog · Jan 25, 2010

mental note to me:

I'm using Phosphoric Acid (Ph Down) which becomes a source of P. I have to take care not to be adding too much Phosphorus sources or else I risk making the performance of the fungus suffer.

ROOTZ · Jan 25, 2010

rrog:
Digging your grow brotha :smokeit:

AND, thanks for the replies fellas. I just finished up my OBBT buckets and next, I plan on mixing up the medium.

I hope you don't mind me posting a few pics on your thread rrog, but since my inspiration came from you guys what better way to so my appreciation by posting what I've learned.

#1: Here's a completed bucket with all the attaching hardware :biggrin:

#2: The over-flow and sight "gauge".

#3: The air pump inlet and valve.

#4: The fill port w/cap and drain valve

#5: Inside shot of the bucket showing the 6" bubble bar, fill/drain ports and over flow/sight gauge ports.

#6: All four buckets grouped together. They'll be going in my Growlab GL80 tent which measures 2.5' x 2.5' x 6'.

I'll be stocking the OBBT's with these for the first go-round:

GHS great white shark fem.

Pure power plant, un-sexed.

I'm working on a DWC/OBBT cloner which I'll be trying out on some strawberry haze cuttings.

Again, thanks for the detailed info. Couldn't have done without you guys :smokey:

rrog · Jan 25, 2010

Man what great looking buckets! Post them here, that's great. I think you'll like the grow technique. And thanks for the props. This is my second grow, but I was able to tap into "the collective" experience of people here.

ROOTZ · Jan 25, 2010

rrog said:
Man what great looking buckets! Post them here, that's great. I think you'll like the grow technique. And thanks for the props. This is my second grow, but I was able to tap into "the collective" experience of people here.

Thanks rrog.. This will actually be my 2nd grow as well. Hopefully we can keep this thread going. A lot of GOOD "collective info" here :biggrin:

rrog · Jan 26, 2010

Cool,Rootz. I'm really curious about the moss medium.

RipVanWeed · Jan 26, 2010

Rootz, Rrog, Rip,

we're all noob's, the plants that are finishing now are only my 3rd!

Learnin' together on the IC. Making some of it up as we go,eh?

Thank you both for sharing.

The Earth Juice plan was delayed as the closest "dealer" isn't open on Mon.

Talk at ya later,

rrog · Jan 26, 2010

Funny. The three Rs. Hadn't noticed that.

ROOTZ · Jan 26, 2010

What's going on?

I finally got the medium mixed and in the buckets. I ended up doing it like this:
- 5gals Coco Coir Mulch (the big block from Ace Hardware)
- 2.5gals Ready-Gro
- 2.5gals Enriched Sphagnum Peat
- 1 bail of long fiber Sphagnum Peat
- 5gals Mushroom Compost/EC's
- 5gals Vermiculite/Perlite

The amendments are as follows:
- 2cups Plant-Tone
- 2cups Blood Meal
- 1cup Bone Meal
- 1/3cup Starter

I added Cal/Mag Plus & Maxicrop to my RO/DI water and fired everything up. Now I'll just kick back and wait, hoping I've crossed all my "t's" and dotted all my "i's".

#1 I'm only starting 2 buckets for now to see how everything goes and grows :biggrin:

#2 Here's the floor plan of the tent. If all goes well I can't wait to have all 4 of these babies going.

Ciao Fellaz!! :smokey:

rrog · Jan 26, 2010

Very Sweet! Is that an airleaves pump?

When I started My medium was right up to the brim. Now it's settled about 2". I think filling and slightly compacting is a good thing.

I like the concept of placing the starter cups in there. I started from seed and used the little organic peat pellets. In my mind, and based on encouragement from LadyL, it was a good thing to get the roots in contact with this bubbling medium as soon as possible. Not a big deal, I'm sure.

Curious on your overflow... there's no place for the overflow to flow. So you're really using them as a sight gauge, then? That'll work, especially with the valve on the bottom. You can always get rid of excess.

Personal note: Ph at 7.75 today. Down from 8.2 yesterday.

nine7oh · Jan 26, 2010

ROOTZ - Looks good man, a few of us so far have been having great results it seems. With our state laws, I have numbers to stay within, so I need a few huge monsters! On the left was OBBT, right soil:

Your setup looks pretty clean, I dig it. The only thing I noticed was you have a 6'' air stone at the bottom of each bucket. I did that as well and when you harvest and check out the root ball, the circumference of the bucket had root rot. Then, around the air stone they are bright white and happy. It didn't affect the grow very much, but its something that could be improved - I went with 2 and 3 6'' air stones in my current buckets. The best option would be those circular airstones that fit in the base of a bucket. Regardless, just watch the ph and you'll grow some monsters! Good luck.

RROG - Its funny the amount of resistance people have to this idea, I was reading the coco ph thread ha. I've been reading a bunch of gardening forums and this stuff is standard!
OBBT Build
EarthBox Tomatoes

Also, I think I found my organic nutes/bio herd for my next round of buckets, all in one package. Check out Bountea

"Winner of 9 World Records for Giant Vegetables, 18 State Records and over
400 awards for Quality Vegetables" - UMMMM YEA.

rrog · Jan 26, 2010

Nine7, How are you, man??! That's a great side by side. Curious. Are they the same strain grown in the same conditions?

I have to check out your links... Thanks much for posting and adding to the collective...

RipVanWeed · Jan 26, 2010

Nine7oh,

Thanks for the side by side. That ease's my mind, sometimes I wondered how much the supercharging helped. I guess that pic highlights the advantage.

Much Respect,

xmobotx · Jan 26, 2010

fuck yeah nine7oh your side by side is both an incentive for us trying this method and vindication for when we've defended the method

nine7oh said:
RROG - Its funny the amount of resistance people have to this idea, I was reading the coco ph thread ha. I've been reading a bunch of gardening forums and this stuff is standard!
OBBT Build
EarthBox Tomatoes

i think this is psychological. there are some people in this community who literally have 10s of thousands in their grow facility. when someone comes along and says "yeah, i just spent $36 and got a free bucket and here's 4 oz," they get that vein in their forehead.

ROOTZ · Jan 26, 2010

rrog:
Yeah, that's a Sunleaves pump. Had it for about a year and it ran my first DWC grow. Works pretty decent but I suspect it'll need a tune-up soon. Definitely plan on upgrading to a 40watt Danner AP-40 pump.

As far as the overflow is concerned, the method behind my madness when I put these buckets together was to alleviate any possibility of O2 leakage. In other words I wanted all the O2 to have only one place to disperse and that's thruh the medium.
I'll use those ebb&flow fittings for the refill points. If I go a little over I can just drain thru them to level off.

nine7oh:
Thanks brotha... I'm really glad I found these threads, as I really wanted to stay somewhat organic (as much as possible :biggrin:

) but have the efficiency of hydro. This is strictly for personel use so I definitely wanna opt for quality over yeild. Your plants look GREAT and that's an awesome side-by-side.

Thanks again for the compliment on my set-up. I'm a bit anal when it comes to staying uncluttered.

6" airstones noted.. :biggrin:

Actually I really want to use these: Rubber membrane air diffuser. They're 9" in dia so it'll pretty much take up the whole bottom of a 3.5 or 5gal bucket. Only thing, they're about 20 bones each!!

RipVanWeed · Jan 26, 2010

Heads up on the 6" airstones,
when I emptied the harvested buckets the airstones were broken.

I think the weight of all the material above deforms the bottom of the bucket slightly. Without the solid flat support from the bottom, the brittle stone cracks.

Just throwin' in my 2 c

rrog · Jan 26, 2010

WOW ROOTZ! Where did you find those air diffusers????

As a side note, I've placed a glass with water up my overflows and noted no bubbles. That's because on the inside of my buckets, the overflow pipe goes all the way to the bottom of the bucket. The air would have to travel sideways to the bottom of the overflow pipe before rising. Small point. As I said, with a waste valve and sight gauge, the overflow isn't even necessary.

rrog · Jan 26, 2010

I've need using the big barrel shaped airstones. Two per pail.

My OBBT Bucket Build

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