This is a really cool setup! Very impressive! I had a question about your nutrient bottles. You mentioned the sediment. Are the bottles agitated or shaken up before the nutes get pumped out? Just curious.
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Growing with the Borg
- Thread starter XYZVector
- Start date
XYZVector
Member
@Boo yes I understand it is a Rube Goldberg machine. Unfortunately it has too be. Yes I am using cal mag. The ph in the res is drifting up, I keep putting 5.6 ph nutrients in but my res refuses to drop below 5.9. I am on the other side of the country visiting family for Christmas so I can’t just add PH down to the res. If I didn’t do it this way I wouldn’t be able to grow. I have to be able to leave my grow at a moments notice, and stay gone for up to a month at a time.
XYZVector
Member
@Smoke Creek Cannabis I do gave some mag stirring system I used on a grow about a year and a half ago and well they work they weren’t really necessary.
XYZVector
Member
Yes I am using cal/mag unfortunatly I am having a hard time maintaing the correct ph in my reservior. It likes to stay at 5.9. @Boo Yes it is complicated, and there are a lot of things that can fail. Unfortunatly for me I could not grow any plants without this system. I travel for work so I have to be ready to hop on an airplane at a moments notice, and not be able to come back to my plants for a month. It is a Rube Goldberg machine like you see Tom employing to catch Jerry the mouse. That is why I have Tom chasing Jerry as my Avatar, since it represents the difficulty of catching the mouse. I can make things happen but I don't have absolute control over my grow as if I was present for it. I can effect change but it takes time for that to happen like adding amendments in soil. Right now I am mixing the nutrient infeed at 5.6 to drop the ph from 6.4 to 5.8 it takes about a week for it to actually happen. I can push buttons but that is not like walking up to the bottle of PH down and adding it manually. It is a different way to grow, but for me it has been working for a couple years now. I am getting better and learning how to grow this plant alot better. Still learning and adjusting the machine, software and interface to get the most out of it.
XYZVector
Member
@Boo I think it looks like a mess of cables and tubes. I know I can do a better job organizing it. I appreciate the compliments, This is a project that I have been working on for years. This incarnation improves on one big issue my last system had and that is the noise footprint of the entire operation. The last system was large loud and way oversize.
I ran it for a year and a half. It was bulky, and hard to work on. It was a good system just a pain to own and clean.
Ca++
Well-known member
Some need shaking, some don't.
A know a few methods. With a conical base like your top tank, you can pull feed out, and put it back in the top. With 5L bottles, you can fit a pump in easy enough. Aeration offers some agitation. I'm not sure which mag stirrers you speak of, but Ali have been trying to flog me fish tank wave makers, that work the same. Only the inside bit is a sealed unit, so you can't see if it's a micro-plastics issue.
I have mixing just run as the tank fills and through the following dosing stage. I failed in the past, putting a pump in a 5L bottle with humic substances stuck to it like it was a humic magnet. So I favour conical bottomed cylinders now, with external pumps, from bottom to top. Though so far that project is still a pile of parts, I think the car syringes will do nicely, for a budget cylinder.
