Enjoy
. Be sure to use air-pots or fabric pots. The blumats will keep your medium wet, and without ample air flow, you'll get root rot. That's my experience at any rate.
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Blumat auto watering
- Thread starter sunnydog
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- blumat drippers irrigation watering
Enjoy
. Be sure to use air-pots or fabric pots. The blumats will keep your medium wet, and without ample air flow, you'll get root rot. That's my experience at any rate.
H
Harley420
I have bought 3 gallon fabric pots..
Smaller may be better depending on your medium. I'm growing what will finish as 2-3 oz plants(I hope) in 5l pots. rives says he's done an 8oz plant in the 5l. I started with 13l pots, then 8l, now 5l. The plants grew better with each downsize, and way less gnats too. I now use ReadyGro Aeration Mix by Botanicare, and I'm very happy with it.
luxcultivars
Member
Enjoy
Curious why you don't just adjust the bluemats so the soil dries out more in the pot?
Why would I do that? The blumat won't work if you let the soil "dry out". I've had way better results with small pots that are always wet. Bigger pots are a PITA with blumats...unless you're grow very large plants. I figure i could grow an actual 6' christmas tree in a 3gal air pot.
luxcultivars
Member
Pardon my inexperience. Why is that? Everyone else here seems to get them adjusted to mostly dry out each time before releasing water again with no problems. Am I missing something?
I thought you were trying to avoid root rot, and since you can adjust blue mats... one would assume they can be adjusted for less moisture? That being the entire point of using blue mats and all. I have zero interest in my plants having wet feet 24/7.
That is my thoughts too because I use regular plastic containers, both square and round, and I never have issues with root-rot or the media being too wet due to the container being plastic.
Ezrider, how many months or years of experience do you have with Blumats at this point? I would encourage you to tweak your adjustments more. You can have pots that almost feel too light when lifted, yet the plants are growing vigorously with strong white fuzzy rootballs. One would think by the weight, they might need more water, but nope they're perfectly dialed in for me, especially if you came from hand-watering. I imagine my other blumaters may have experienced this too.
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Blumats have a pretty tight "dead-band" in that they try and hold a given moisture setting rather than drying out and then watering heavily. I've had the best success when keeping the plants near, but not hitting, runoff. I've never had any problems with root rot, but have been using air pots for a long time.
Only been with blumats for a little while, 6 months or so. I have tweaked them quite a bit. Keeping small pots(5l) fairly wet seems to work best for me. I had way more problems using peat in larger(13-8l) pots and going for wet/dry cycles. I mainly switched to coco because I find it easier to use the blumats in a "wet" medium, and the coco likes to stay wet. I have admittedly modeled my system after rives' to a large extent...
Other people, with different systems, will undoubtedly have different results.
luxcultivars
Member
I'm using 2 parts Sunshine #4 and 1 part Ocean Forest, so I guess I'll probably be okay. I don't mind constant moistness, I just don't want constant wetness, especially with certain phenos I have that hate wet feet.
First run of 14 will be installed this week. Hope it works out.
Good information, guys. Thanks.
sanjuan
Member
I continue to be amazed at how little water needs to be retained in a one gallon Smartpot with 100% cocoa. The plants were somewhat neglected in the veg room and I just transferred them to the flower room two days ago. I do worry about going into drought condition but that has only happened when mold clogs the 3mm line. (Mold also caused my only runaway.)
Aurora Indica, seven weeks from seed being planted, vegged under fluorescent:
Ten gallon resevoir feeds the nearest three plants. Each line has a Blumat shutoff valve at the end for bleeding.
Twenty gallon reservoir feeds five plants. I will probably install 3/8" split loom tubing over the transluscent orange lines.
Below the res are 3ml and 1ml disposable pipettes from amazon. The plants are on the small side because I was underfeeding.
Aurora Indica, seven weeks from seed being planted, vegged under fluorescent:
Ten gallon resevoir feeds the nearest three plants. Each line has a Blumat shutoff valve at the end for bleeding.
Twenty gallon reservoir feeds five plants. I will probably install 3/8" split loom tubing over the transluscent orange lines.
Below the res are 3ml and 1ml disposable pipettes from amazon. The plants are on the small side because I was underfeeding.
Sanjuan, I love the pics. You got a very nice grow going. Do you care to share what the ec level is of your res? Ive just been hand-feeding and using osmocote in the media to supply nutrient needs as needed, but Ive not ran nutes in my res for a good bit. Maybe you can provide me something to help establish a baseline.
Ok, kinda shitty drawing, but a general idea. Basically want to know if anybody sees a problem with this setup... Also, what fittings are people using to go from mainline to the feed lines to blumats? Is it ok to terminate rows without making the system a complete loop?
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