Dabbert Globberfield
Active member
Heyo, so love growin... hate some of the behind the scenes stuff.
The things that take me the absolute longest to do, as part of maintaining my system, are dealing with transferring water around and mixing nutrients.
A little background on what I'm working with --
I have a mixing reservoir outside a tent that holds 40 gallons, but I fill with 30.5gallons and mix nutes into that.
Then I pump out 26-28 gallons, between 4 smaller individual reservoirs in the tent, any extra is bottled and used if ppms drop throughout the week
But to get water in I have to get water out. So I have to pump out the water in the reservoirs first. I used to do that into gallon jugs and that took sooo long filling and pouring. Now(I say that like it's a thing, really as of today) I am just pumping half of the tent at a time into a separate reservoir than the mixing and tent ones. It's halfway between the drain and the tent. Then pump to the drain. Omg I'm hating myself as I type this cause it sounds so stupid. I guess I could pump to the drain if I got longer tubing... but the drain is the toilet ok. Fuck.
Anyways, I have a few things that I use to accomplish my goal of doing all this. At first my worry was, 'how am i going to get all the water out of a reservoir if I cant move it', because the plants are entangled in trellis net so tent reservoirs cant move and neither can the plants. So I wanted something close to zero level water pumps.
.
..
...
I settled for this pump in a stick.
Lol, that made me crack up hard as fuck. But yea, it's a pump in a stick. It's actually called a fluid transfer pump and is for syphoning fluids. It works pretty well for my purposes and is quick. but it's unwieldy and clunky with short reach. It works well, for what it is, and I can tilt the reservoirs just enough to get a lot of the water and only leave what I consider an acceptable amount of spill over.
It's usually just a small amount of untreated tap water cause I spray out the reservoirs when it's time to switch. That's another thing -- is everyone really cleaning out their DWC reservoirs every week? Like good cleaning? How is it even done? I mean... I have a lot going on with this grow. It's my first one and I'm all over the place fixing issues and causing them. My system was ebb and flow but I had to switch to DWC and I didn't know any thing about DWC. It's a whole thing.
Back to this tho, to get the water into the reservoirs in the tent, I just use a pump that I used to be using in my ebb and flow system and some irrigation tubing then pump the water into each res. This is probably the quickest part.
I would LOVE to improve in any way on this. I need to know a better way. How do you all deal with fluid transfer or feel free to roast me cause I am doing dumb shit. Cause damn. Really, I am in week 4 of flower, (but week 19 of the grow), so I can see the finish line and then I will redesign everything based on what I learned.
Part of the problem, I don't know a lot of helpful things exist. Like I'm not a plumber or have any knowledge of plumbing or how it could benefit me in a design. So I don't know what a better way could be or some simple like 7 dollar thing fixes everything. But I thought a good way to highlight my lack of knowledge would be to build a completely water dependent system with no experience in plumbing, containing and directing the water.
Really wat screwed me was the volume and quantity of roots. An issue I hadn't planned for. But that's another story.
Then, if you're still here, I would like to talk about how people are mixing their nutrients as well. Are you pouring into something like a beaker or graduated cylinder to measure or what?
I only have these 10ml tubes
and let me tell you, adding 200 ml of something just once is annoying. Let alone doing it for a bunch of other bottles. Like I, not thinking about having to mix one at a time, went with advanced nutrients and I'm like a chemist over here.
This is the stuff of my nightmares right now.
I have been thinking about getting a graduated cylinder and a funnel. That way I can at least pour measure and fine tune with the pipette.
Maybe using a different gallon water jug to put the measured nutes in with water. then shake that up and pour in to the reservoirs. i don't know.
How are you mixing your reservoirs?
I am adding the nutes, then mixing with a stirring .... device. ok, its a tube, i fucking stir the water with a short piece of irrigation tubing. I was using one of the bars from the tent but when I put the trellis net in I put it back. I need a paddle or like an oar cause I'm mixing 30gallons.
I have been thinking about just running a pump or two in the water like, not hooked up to anything to mix the water around so i could just put nutes in and give the water the finger. Any one try that?
I am so sorry, if you read all this you are my hero and I have frosty rewards below. If you respond I love you now. Tell your family.
So here's a peek of the girls, they don't get out much.
The things that take me the absolute longest to do, as part of maintaining my system, are dealing with transferring water around and mixing nutrients.
A little background on what I'm working with --
I have a mixing reservoir outside a tent that holds 40 gallons, but I fill with 30.5gallons and mix nutes into that.
Then I pump out 26-28 gallons, between 4 smaller individual reservoirs in the tent, any extra is bottled and used if ppms drop throughout the week
But to get water in I have to get water out. So I have to pump out the water in the reservoirs first. I used to do that into gallon jugs and that took sooo long filling and pouring. Now(I say that like it's a thing, really as of today) I am just pumping half of the tent at a time into a separate reservoir than the mixing and tent ones. It's halfway between the drain and the tent. Then pump to the drain. Omg I'm hating myself as I type this cause it sounds so stupid. I guess I could pump to the drain if I got longer tubing... but the drain is the toilet ok. Fuck.
Anyways, I have a few things that I use to accomplish my goal of doing all this. At first my worry was, 'how am i going to get all the water out of a reservoir if I cant move it', because the plants are entangled in trellis net so tent reservoirs cant move and neither can the plants. So I wanted something close to zero level water pumps.
.
..
...
I settled for this pump in a stick.
Lol, that made me crack up hard as fuck. But yea, it's a pump in a stick. It's actually called a fluid transfer pump and is for syphoning fluids. It works pretty well for my purposes and is quick. but it's unwieldy and clunky with short reach. It works well, for what it is, and I can tilt the reservoirs just enough to get a lot of the water and only leave what I consider an acceptable amount of spill over.
It's usually just a small amount of untreated tap water cause I spray out the reservoirs when it's time to switch. That's another thing -- is everyone really cleaning out their DWC reservoirs every week? Like good cleaning? How is it even done? I mean... I have a lot going on with this grow. It's my first one and I'm all over the place fixing issues and causing them. My system was ebb and flow but I had to switch to DWC and I didn't know any thing about DWC. It's a whole thing.
Back to this tho, to get the water into the reservoirs in the tent, I just use a pump that I used to be using in my ebb and flow system and some irrigation tubing then pump the water into each res. This is probably the quickest part.
I would LOVE to improve in any way on this. I need to know a better way. How do you all deal with fluid transfer or feel free to roast me cause I am doing dumb shit. Cause damn. Really, I am in week 4 of flower, (but week 19 of the grow), so I can see the finish line and then I will redesign everything based on what I learned.
Part of the problem, I don't know a lot of helpful things exist. Like I'm not a plumber or have any knowledge of plumbing or how it could benefit me in a design. So I don't know what a better way could be or some simple like 7 dollar thing fixes everything. But I thought a good way to highlight my lack of knowledge would be to build a completely water dependent system with no experience in plumbing, containing and directing the water.
Really wat screwed me was the volume and quantity of roots. An issue I hadn't planned for. But that's another story.
Then, if you're still here, I would like to talk about how people are mixing their nutrients as well. Are you pouring into something like a beaker or graduated cylinder to measure or what?
I only have these 10ml tubes
and let me tell you, adding 200 ml of something just once is annoying. Let alone doing it for a bunch of other bottles. Like I, not thinking about having to mix one at a time, went with advanced nutrients and I'm like a chemist over here.
This is the stuff of my nightmares right now.
I have been thinking about getting a graduated cylinder and a funnel. That way I can at least pour measure and fine tune with the pipette.
Maybe using a different gallon water jug to put the measured nutes in with water. then shake that up and pour in to the reservoirs. i don't know.
How are you mixing your reservoirs?
I am adding the nutes, then mixing with a stirring .... device. ok, its a tube, i fucking stir the water with a short piece of irrigation tubing. I was using one of the bars from the tent but when I put the trellis net in I put it back. I need a paddle or like an oar cause I'm mixing 30gallons.
I have been thinking about just running a pump or two in the water like, not hooked up to anything to mix the water around so i could just put nutes in and give the water the finger. Any one try that?
I am so sorry, if you read all this you are my hero and I have frosty rewards below. If you respond I love you now. Tell your family.
So here's a peek of the girls, they don't get out much.
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