Bottomfeeding: no drain, no waste

[tejashidrow]

What nutrients are peoples using??
How much??
I read somewhere that as long as you keep the PPMS below 1100 you wont have a problem

 

[2000pm]

I'm really enjoying bottom feeding this round. You can see my grow here. The ease and time saving is great and I hope to use this bottom wick style for keeping mothers and cloning as well. (excuse the low temps - having some issues in the house)

Had a bunch of maxi left over so I'm still doing lucas (not 6/9), and top-flushing with plain ph'd water once a week. They seem to be liking it.

Just cleared out a male and one female c99/diesel fire which didn't make the cut.

 

[whatthe215]

i think ill be setting up my veg for bottom feeding. thanks for all the great info guys.

 

[thesloppy]

Lovely looking plants, 2000ppm!

 

[ELuminated]

Just might give this a try.

I like the idea of filling a 4x4 tray with bags under a 600 and bottom feeding like one dude said.. Being that I have alot of newly started seedlings this sounds perfect to find which one is tough and worthy of less work to equal production levels.. I love this since it follows my KISS methods of choice...

 

[justnuts]

Bottom feeding really is the easiest way. And no problems if you use preventive measures.

My bottom feeding set up involves:
2x trays 120cmx55cm in a 150cmx150cm tent (600W HPS and 400W MH)
1 autopot aquavalve in the centre of each tray with 4x 11ltr pots per tray.
2x reservoirs 100L with 13mm pipe to feed each tray (2 reservoirs so that I can feed 2 strains differently.)

The aquavalve keeps the water level about 2cm in the trays (assuming the trays are completely level).

My final 15ltr pot mix is as follows:
60% Coco, 25% Perlite, 10% Worm Humus 5% BioBizz Premix.
Bottom of the pot is the root control disc from autopot and clay pebbles (1 inch) with an airdome kit (like airstone).

Notes:
* I keep a pump in each reservoir to keep the nutrients well mixed.
* Use Canna D Block to keep the pipes clean.
* After every grow clean the valve and make sure it works well before you start the next grow.
* I use Plant Magic nutrients (amazing stuff really).
* Each tray has an overflow pipe at the top leading to a drain, in case of valve malfunction.

Will upload pics as soon as I figure out how!

The above is easy and cheap to set up. Should work for everyone. A little bit of research and experimenting will help to set up the above.

 

[tdlf!]

hello people
i normally use dtw with great success, ec never getting above 1.4/1.6 depending on plant/pot size and frequency.
i recently set up a bottom feeding room and tried running similar ec levels, after a day i returned to find some water still in the trays so out of curiosity i took ec reading from tray and it came out at 0.0 (comes out of the tap at 0.3)!!
so i think the plant took the minerals from the solution and left the water it thought eccesive?
would this count as over watering ?
and also would this mean that the ec level and amount of feed water is relavent ? would a higher ec with less water would be more desirable?
im asuming myself and have also been told that a much higher ec is acceptable with a passive set up?
thanks for any thoughts

 

[njrmutcd]

Has anyone tried bottom feeding with fabric pots like Smart Pots?

 

[thesloppy]

Has anyone tried bottom feeding with fabric pots like Smart Pots?

Yup, I've done it. It works fine, but the results weren't remarkable enough to make me switch from what I'm used to, for whatever that's worth to you.

 

[njrmutcd]

Well if there's no benefit then I might as well use plastic for the convenience. Thanks.

 

[gloryoskie]

Much valued information in this thread, will try the method
on half the grow and see the benefits. If all goes well I will
apply the bottom feed to entire grow, with modifications
for flushing, as am growing perpetual.

Thanks to all for the posts!

 

[thesloppy]

Much valued information in this thread, will try the method
on half the grow and see the benefits. If all goes well I will
apply the bottom feed to entire grow, with modifications
for flushing, as am growing perpetual.

Thanks to all for the posts!

Good luck, gloryoskie! Just to reiterate what I've said in this thread before, don't expect to see any benefits to yield or health, as the only real benefit to bottom-feeding is simply saving time and effort vs. hand-watering all your plants from the top....but if that's what you're looking for, then I think you'll be satisfied!

 

[gloryoskie]

Good luck, gloryoskie! Just to reiterate what I've said in this thread before, don't expect to see any benefits to yield or health, as the only real benefit to bottom-feeding is simply saving time and effort vs. hand-watering all your plants from the top....but if that's what you're looking for, then I think you'll be satisfied!

Yup, I hand water every day, not having to move
all the containers in and out of the box all the time
would be the benefit, natch.

My yield and plant health is okie dokie. Just want
to avoid a decrease in those aspects, lol.

 

[StoopheadFred]

Just wanted to update ya'll with the results from my bottomfeeding experiment.

Things went south for me right around the end of flowering in my first run. I'm thinking it was a combination of 2 things that caused problems for me:

1) I used coco "pilth" which is the finely ground coco particles that look similar to regular soil. I believe the problem here was that this type of coco holds too much water and not enough air.

2) I didn't allow enough time between waterings

The result of this was a root fungus/bacteria/rot problem which rapidly spread throughout the flowering plants. Since I was using clear water bottles I could actually see the problem progressing. Started as spots of green and progressed to a nasty orange color. Not good! Resulted in me having to chop early and severely decreased yields.

So... not having learned my lesson I loaded up for another run. The problems started much earlier and ended up getting to my mother plants and killing all the younger clones I had. Luckily I removed my mother plant and a few larger clones and was able to save them.

Having learned from my mistakes and reading about coco hempys I've got a few suggestions.

1) Don't use coco pilth. Duh! Coco chips / mixed coco is best because it doesn't retain as much water and provides more air for your roots to breath.

2) Use a layer of perlite or hydroton in the bottom of each container that is slightly higher than your water line will be. I stole this idea from a coco-hempy thread. This will ensure that your coco isn't resting in standing water and should help prevent the root rot problems I encountered.

 

[thesloppy]

Hey Fred, sucks to hear that your batch went bad.

Sounds like you may have had some algae growing in your pots, which can starve the oxygen from your plants. Make sure to wash out all your pots, and let them dry thoroughly to get rid of any nastly leftovers/bacteria. Algae loves light, so the clear pots could be contributing to your problems too.

 

[2000pm]

Fred that almost got me too once it got really hot. Now I remove the plants and wash the trays every couple of weeks and add aquashield each time I fill the trays. That did the trick for me anyway.

 

[StoopheadFred]

Yea temps and clear containers most likely played a part as well. It wasn't all bad, we were still able to harvest and I didn't lose my strains.

Handwatering now I realize how good I had it when I was bottomfeeding. It's just so damn easy that I'll definitely be going back to that method once I get things straightened out.

 

[Chloemobile]

What is the difference between bottom feeding (plants just sitting in the rez ) vs a PPK where you have a media filled tailpiece sitting in the rez? I know it probably has to do with the perched water table etc. - just curious if the difference between the two similar methods causes significantly different results? PPK without the tail piece? you could still run the pulse pump and rez tank etc but just no tail piece...?

 

[thesloppy]

It's probably just a matter of semantics, in terms of whether you want to label something bottom-feeding or not.... hempy buckets, (some) PPKs, autoPots and ebb-and-flow systems all feed the plants from the bottom. The laziest of bottom-feeding methods doesn't really involve much of a reservoir, so much as a pool/puddle that the plants will eventually drain in a day or two, which can have it's own benefits & problems versus something with a standing reservoir, like a PPK or a hempy bucket. If you're not running a reservoir you still need to feed somewhat regularly, and your plants can dry out and/or have issues with irregular waterings/feedings, but it's dead simple, and you also never have any problems with clogging/flooding, and your PH is less finicky than when using a recycling or standing reservoir.

Personally I think PPKs, Hempys, autoPots and Ebb-n-flow systems are all more advanced than what we're talking about here (just dumping a tub of water in a tray), and will probably offer better results in terms of yield. I'd say that the only real advantage that this 'system' offers is simplicity...but for some folks that's enough, either as a starting point for learning how to use coco, or a solution for the watering blues.

 

[Chloemobile]

Oh no doubt about it. It is nice and easy and there really isn't much to talk about in terms if bottom feeding without a rez or something that hasn't really already been mentioned in the thread.

I was just trying to get into the detail of the different bottom feeding methods... It's all still bottom feeding. Not necessarily the with or without a Rez discussion but more of a discussion about the benefits of a tail pipe. Because essentially you could do that and sill water the same way and it all be the same concept as letting the buckets sit in the Rez without a tail pipe.

I'm all about being lazy but I'm trying to be lazy in the best possible way


=D