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Blumat auto watering

Canniwhatsis

Canniwhatsis

High country cat herder
Veteran
Hhhhmmmmm,..... well,... if you drained your return down thru a canister containing bioballs....... It'd be more an issue of getting the right bacteria growing in the bioballs and not just the pink slime crap.



Almost a moot point, I topped my res with fish tank water today, probably 15 gallons of it...... Guess I'll see if that was a good idea or not in a week or so! :eek::
 
G

greenmatter

has anybody who is using the maxi's tried not pushing them all the way into the soil?

i'm trying to figure out how to top dress/mulch and still be able to see the dial without digging for it if i need to adjust
 
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ak-51

You push it all the way beneath the soil, past the dial?

I use the regular ones, but I put them no deeper than the bottom lip of the cap. I still want to see the drip, it's the easiest way to tell if one is open too much.
 
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greenmatter

ak-51 said:
You push it all the way beneath the soil, past the dial?
Click to expand...

no ...... i push them into the soil just like everyone does, but when you top dress and or mulch after the blumats are in they get buried.

i thought about shoving a 2'' piece of hose onto the dial itself so that the hose would still be above the mulch, but i have not gotten that far yet
 
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ak-51

Oh, my mistake, I failed at reading the 2nd line of your post. I'm not a soil guy so the phrases "top dress" and "mulch" did not really stick in my brain.

I would say with the maxi's you could probably just leave them high enough above the soil initially to give yourself room to do that right? How much height does doing this top dress usually add? You might be able to make a little wall out of PVC or that black flexible drain hose stuff.
 
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greenmatter

not a problem ak! i didn't really explain my question that well


my main concern was light getting to the water inside the maxi. i don't know if algae could start growing inside the blumat with the light being diffused through the green plastic but i am sure it could cause problems if it did.

the thickness of the mulch/topdress is always different AND it fluctuates. the stuff breaks down if you are doing it right and when you water with an ACT or something you can move things around with the water

IMHO blumats are hands down the best thing i have ever added to the grow room ....... i don't want to push them in a direction they are not designed for and shoot myself in the ass.
 
rrog

rrog

Active member
Veteran
Green- I have left my maxi-carrots up a bit. No worries. Then I top-dress, usually followed by a manual drench. I have also adjusted the carrots mid-grow, and I simply drenched the area around the carrot to re-seat it and get the soil in tight against the carrot.
 
sunnydog

sunnydog

Drip King
Veteran
rrog said:
Green- I have left my maxi-carrots up a bit. No worries. Then I top-dress, usually followed by a manual drench. I have also adjusted the carrots mid-grow, and I simply drenched the area around the carrot to re-seat it and get the soil in tight against the carrot.
Click to expand...

:scripture:
 
D

Demilanceata

New member
Hello fellows,

Long time lurker and blumat user here with micro setup (400/600w hps in a tent). I bought my first blumat-pack like 5 years ago as a holiday watering system, and since then I've been using them on and off for a random periods of time, especially when I've needed the watering for times I'm not around my plants. Now it seems that they're going to stay for good.

I've experienced the setup fairly simple every time, never had a problems with serious run-offs etc... allthough I feel like I'm too demaning about the weight of container, and I end up tweaking carrots all time, still trying to learn not to micromanage them :) As my plants seem to thrive as long as the blumat drips. I haven't personally noticed much difference between different weighted containers during vegetation period, cannot say same about flowering, as my containers get impossible to lift when plants have grown to nets and supports.

I encountered this thread again like half a year ago when I started running blumats perpetually again, and I've been reading this ever since. It took me like three months to finish the whole thread with thoughts and comparing things to my own experiences, during which time I also learned a craploads of new gold-worth information, big :thank you: for EVERYONE contributing, I'm really lousy with remembering nicks, so apologies for not mentioning whoevers ideas I've stolen, haha :) :ying:

Since I encountered the thread again, my tent has finished one flowering with Blumats, and the second one is doing its fourth week now. I've messed around with different kinds of setups, and currently I'm having self-topping reservoir with 55 liter bottom container on floor, and ~10-15 liter container - at height of about ~1,6 meter above carrots, almost at ceiling - with two blumat outlets connecting as U-loop, one line going in the tent from both the left and right sides, and they connect at the tent floor with one straight line with 12 blumat T's, from which comes one ~25-35cm 3mm line for each coco/perlite-filled Airpot container. This makes varying the number of plants easy, just using knot-tied 3mm lines for the T's not currently in use. I also have ~25 liter tent floor sized gardening tray in case of small run-offs.

My biggest problem with blumats since start has been clogging of lines and rez with algae or other microbes, becouse my rez and lines used to be in the room temperatures or higher (24-28C). And the clogging has been one of the reasons I've been using these on and off. I've never liked the idea of dead rez, even though I really don't have anything against it. I had no idea how I could control the crap growing in my water systems, since then I started reading about root temperatures and water temps of full hydro systems, and I started thinking that maybe a water chiller could be the answer for my blumat rez problems. After which I ordered a water chiller, and I've been using one now for like a bit over month. My rez temps stay now at 9-14'C all the time (chiller takes a break every now and then), and the water smells and looks clean, the low temperatures seems to have eliminated the microbe growth almost totally, and I've had no issues with clogging ever since. The container temps are around ~20'C, becouse the water remains in the lines enough for warming up before entering Blumats. I can also use the same chilled water as a cooler for the tent by circulating the water through a radiator at the air inlet to the tent.

Ok, its been only a month now with a chiller, but it really does look promising, and easy, once setup. :blowbubbles: I'm really looking forwards to see how clean the res is going to stay the following weeks during the rest of flowering. And also hoping that I could just rinse and wipe the res and it would be good to go for next round, without bigger fuss about cleaning. Also the lowering of tent's temperatures using the radiator seems like nice bonus, the girls do seem to enjoy a bit cooler temps. Before I usually couldn't get tent temperatures below 29-30'C, now with chilled water it is possible to lower them all the way below 25'C when needed.

Has anyone else used chiller with their blumat reservoirs? Any thoughs? Chillers are a bit costly, but I'm hoping that it will work for a years and by easening my job it will pay itself back many times.

Sorry for the lenght of the story, maybe someone finishes it and gets something out of it. I might even post a picture or two if someone would find them useful...
 
A

ak-51

I have oftentimes considered running a UV / germicidal light in the reservoir. I think it would be definitely worth a try if you are having problems with growth in there. I think it has a good chance of either knocking out the problem all together or greatly suppressing it. And you would be accomplishing your goal without adding more chemicals or products to the solution, which is always a good thing in my book. The simpler the nutrient solution the better I think.

I had always thought about going with an exposed germicidal lamp instead of a pond clarifier. The pond clarifier pumps water through an enclosure that has the lamp inside it. No UV-C light escapes the enclosure. Since you can get germicidal lamps in standard fluorescent sizes, the cost to set up and maintain would be less. Hopefully the UV-C light from an exposed lamp would also reach all parts of the reservoir. With a pond clarifier it would sterilize the water running through the enclosure, but would not reach cracks and corners where buildup is usually found.

I do not do this right now because growth in the reservoir has not been a problem for me.
 
skyview

skyview

Active member
Demilanceata, thanks for the very interesting post!
Would you please write more details about the water chiller you're using?
 
D

Demilanceata

New member
Heya,

The chiller is Hailea HC 500 A, which is ridiculously oversized to my needs (I think), but the shop I bought it was out of the smallest models, and I suppose larger one will work for longer as it should have more off-time. The 500 model is designed for 500 liter fish tank or so I suppose, my rez system holds around of max. ~70 liters including the tubes etc. The noise is allright. You do hear it when it is cooling, if you dont have any doors/walls in between, but with one wall its barely noticeable, definetly not disturbing.

At the moment the room which holds tent is very chaotic(which is understatement), and the chiller currently stands in the very middle of entrance to room (box very front in pic), but it does its job. Usually the tent door is closed, and air intake comes from bottom, where the radiator also resides with the small piece of intake pipe, they're just barely able to be seen in the picture. My bottom rez has total of 3 water pumps, one which keeps topres constant, one which pumps the water through chiller, and one very small one for pumping water through radiator.... and Lots of tubes.. :peacock: :laughing:
picture.php
 
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ak-51

I need some forks like that to hold up the end of the drip line. I always just end up making little coco mountains between the carrot and the end to prop it up, with mixed results.
 
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