Large Reservoir or Dosers?

[Minor_Obcession]

Any advice would be appreciated. Here's the scoop: I'm going through 100 gallons of feed a day per room. So, if I go the traditional route of a 600 gallon reservoir for 6 days of feed and then one day of tea, I'm left with a big ass cone bottom tank that will not fit in my space very easily. Does anyone know of other types of tanks that can be fully drained and washed easily?

Second thought: smaller tank, but dosers. No experience, but I like the idea.

 

[billyboat]

I use 330 gallon IBC totes and there is only a few gallons of left overs in the tank and I just shop vac it out.

Dosers are awesome but IMO they can seriously complicate things.

 

[queequeg152]

why is your font so huge?

google wastewater flocculation tank for some ideas regarding your questions about larger conical tanks.

regarding automated dosing.

you can go inline... meaning you inject directly into tap water.

or you can go batch wise injection with analyzers.

the inline injection is far easier, but more difficult to control and monitor. these setups are typically running simple flow actuated injectors such as the dosatrons.

batch wise would require an auto top up mechanism, float valve works fine, as well as a conductivity analyzer. the analyzer controls the injection of concentrated fertilizers by monitoring the conductivity.
you need pumps to do this obiviously. the easy solution is to buy a single double channel bellows pump(a&b fertilizers). these are quite common, and can be had for a few hundred bucks new.
some can be adjusted to various ratios, but id suggest getting a fixed ratio pump.

look up gorman rupp bellows pump. they sell shit loads of them.

alternativly a peristaltic pump can be used, but suffers from maintenance issues, mainly involving the working tubing. as it ages this tubing behavior changes.

bellows pumps are easily serviced, so are peristaltic pumps. bellows pumps should require more infrequent service though. a new set of bellows can cost a shit load though. not sure why.

 

[eighty9concentr]

I use a 500 gallon tank (they come all the way up to 5000g) that has a 2" port on the side wall, right at the bottom. I raise the tank and pitch it towards the outlet and i plumb in a inline pump to the 2" outlet and set up my watering system from there. The tank will drain almost completely. I have a T plumbed in right after the pump with a shut off valve that has a hose on it so i can rinse the tank with fresh water and then use the pump to drain the water through that hose into a drain.

 

[ganjourno]

You need inline injectors - no res needed at all. Check my thread in signature.

 

[Minor_Obcession]

Ha, yeah, sorry about the large text. Falling asleep while using the mobile.

I appreciate the different ideas everyone. I have a lot to work with here. I'll keep my ideas flowing as I dive deeper into the project.

I'm sort of scared of going completely inline, but only because I don't have the experience with it. A smaller tank with dosers and a float valve seem the safest route.

I've been playing with nutrients for way too long and would love to simplify to three parts. This MILLS is killing my bills! has anyone really noticed a difference in quality when switching to JACKS or other dry concentrates? The only reason I'm still in this game has been due to quality. I can't afford to swith to an economical nutrient, but sacrifice quality.

 

[ganjourno]

It's all the same stuff man. Jacks produces great buds.

 

[sarek]

Dosers are easy easy easy but limited to basic nutrients. Many additives gunk lines up.

Also could do dosers 3 waterings a day and one manual watering to put in additives.

Also if dosers burst its a catastrophe.

Ive thought about big resevoirs, probably more work but more control.

But one can do pretty well with A/B nute if environment great.

 

[Bill Bellamy]

Do your 6 day rez then have a tee in your main drip line that can pump from a smaller rez just for your one day of tea. Then you can just rinse that out easy and keep your big rez going without having to clean it

 

[Minor_Obcession]

I've been busy sorting out the specifics of the project. A completely inline Dosatron system seems to be the easiest to maintain and install. I am fine-tuning the design with the man at Dosatron. So far, it's looking like the system that Easy Feed is supposedly selling. Those guys won't return a phone call and apparently don't want my money. Good news, Dosatron will work directly with the customer and build it for you for nominal price.

I want this thing to be adaptable to changes in nutrients. I have a bunch of Mills laying around right now, so it's designed in the following way:

Well pump>home/shop pressure tank>200'of 3/4" pvc to shop>ball valve.

I plan to install the following:
Pressure tank to maintain 50 psi at inlet of first doser>Filter>Pressure gauge>Part A doser>Mixing chamber>Part B doser>Additive doser>PH doser>Mixing Chamber>Compost tea doser>PH/EC probes>Pressure gauge>T to hose or drip manifold>Solenoid for room A or B drip.

I will be using 360 degree c-frame downspray emitters on stakes to cover 15 Gallon pots. The flow pattern of the drip manifold is a winding w throughout the room to cover three rows and then terminates back on itself so that water pressure is even from both ends starting from where it splits. So in a sense it is a closed loop, but can be made to go one direction after installing ball valves to block the loop and make it go one way when flushing out the system (another ball valve on a T right before it reconnects to itself).

I am having trouble figuring out how to maintain >20 psi to all drip heads once it leaves the dosers. Calculating run and bends and compensating by changing pipe diameter is not my strong point. I'm hoping the pressure tank just before the dosers will maintain the minimum 2p psi needed for all drip heads to work appropriately.

Please advise or comment as you wish

 

[Minor_Obcession]

*minimum 20 psi*

 

[delta9nxs]

howdy!

the jack's/calcinit combo works great. approx 3-1-4 ratio when mixed as directed and very stable when stored long periods.

have you considered switching to a system that recirculates in order to save on both nutes and water?

 

[Minor_Obcession]

I will definitely be switching to dry products like the Jack's/Calcinit in the future. At this time, the investment needs to get paid back with a consistent product that I know how to use.

I have ran recirc in the past, but I am constantly battling coco loving bugs. If I lost a crop in the sake of "recirculating efficiency," I would be in bad shape. I also find it easier to do DTW for nutrient consistency. Every plant site is a different strain, so with this, I need to be able to achieve a higher runoff if the salts start accumulating. After all it's only about a 10% runoff loss. After changeouts in recirc, I feel like I end up using the same amount of water/nutes. Also, this is a part biological/organic system and part mineral. Shit goes sideways in my experience in a recirc with these parameters.

I would eventually like to capture the runoff and use it to feed a greenhouse. As producers, we need to continue finding ways to be more efficient. The waste of this industry is disgusting.

 

[Minor_Obcession]

Is the Jack's/Calcinit really all that is necessary? I will admit, that I have been trying to learn from the big guys on here. I recently saw JackMayOffer's new setup on instagram and I saw a lot more dry products. Maybe he is mixing his own stuff now. It looks like there are about 5 dosers at one of his sites.

 

[delta9nxs]

well, in the ppk we don't do scheduled changeouts. i have run one 8 months before with no mass changes only input.

this is possible in part by jack's stability i'm sure but also the system itself keeps the solution stable.

there are other brands of dry nutrients that are suitable as well, total gro, peters (separate company from jrpeters the maker of jack's), haifa chemicals, and others.

what you want is an approx 3-1-4 npk ratio with an all nitrate form of nitrogen. calcium within 90% of the nitrate, and magnesium about half the calcium.

you can make it yourself, icmag member spurr has some excellent info on it here somewhere but there is no way you can buy the base stuff at the price breaks the big companies get. so it's really cheaper to buy from them. a 25lb bag of jack's and a 25lb bag of calcinit from them delivered for under a 100.

usually i run 600 ppm in my recirculating system topped by float valve in a way that doses nutrients into the system regularly. it takes a long time for it to get out of shape.

 

[Minor_Obcession]

Put my order in with Dosateon today. Stoked! Finishing off the round with Mills, then I'll do a rip with the 3-2-1 ratio of Jacks/CalNit/Epsom. I'm pretty sure I can put the Epsom in the same stock tank as the Jacks 5-12-26...? That would leave some space for me to use an injector for some bone meal. I'm not convinced the 3-2-1 has enough phos in the second half of flower. I'm guessing the extra calcium feom the bone meal while running in coco can't hurt either.

For 4k, prebuilt and shipped with check valves, ph and EC monitoring, 4 injectors, a filter, mixers, two zones with solonoids and a programmable timer. Been a pleasure working with Dosatron. I'll be ordering a doser which will inject thicker compost teas at a 1:5-1:25 as soon as everything is up and running.

 

[Minor_Obcession]

You need inline injectors - no res needed at all. Check my thread in signature.
View Image

Hi, thanks for the inspiration. Not only did I take the plunge into dosers, but Im mixing my own stock tanks now as well. Well, about to anyways.

So, if you youse silica, do you inject first in line? I hope you know chemistry as well as hydraulics. So, I have 4 injectors and two mixers. I am making 3 stock solutions. A silica, an A, and a B. From what I understand the silica needs to be fully mixed and first in line before adding anything else. In addition, the part A needs to be fully mixed before adding part B. So, my question is, can I get away with two mixers or do I need three? Im not sure how well the dosers mix the solution by themselves. The way I ordered it was A>mix>B>C>pH adjust>mix>EC/pH meter.

I am in the middle of assembly and wondering if I should order another mixer.

Would I need to change this to Silca>mix>A>mix>B>ph adjust>mix>EC/pH adjust or am I being overly cautious?

 

[hydrodreams]

hello

I also discovered Dosatron a few weeks ago and studied the idea of it (inline without tank) since then and I am very impressed by it....Except for one aspect: Control of water temperature. I personally put a high importance on that aspect and therefore try to supply my plants with water of 22°C (71.6°F). At the moment I am using a tank with an aquarium heater and I do hand watering with it. Since dosatron is targeting mainly professional growers I would expect that there are already solutions out there to coontrol water temperature accurately inline. But to my surprise, I cant really find anything out there....

Thats why I tried to get some informations about it here....

Who knows something about inline water temeperature control?

 

[queequeg152]

hello

I also discovered Dosatron a few weeks ago and studied the idea of it (inline without tank) since then and I am very impressed by it....Except for one aspect: Control of water temperature. I personally put a high importance on that aspect and therefore try to supply my plants with water of 22°C (71.6°F). At the moment I am using a tank with an aquarium heater and I do hand watering with it. Since dosatron is targeting mainly professional growers I would expect that there are already solutions out there to coontrol water temperature accurately inline. But to my surprise, I cant really find anything out there....

Thats why I tried to get some informations about it here....

Who knows something about inline water temeperature control?

what do you mean you cant find anything? whats wrong with a hot water heater?

why do you need to control temp inline? because you can? if your fertilizer rig supposed to be mobile? if so why?

water temperature matters very little in the setup for which the dosatron is designed, and thats inside a greenhouse or car wash... pumping ingrediants in an online fasion directly into the process.

the turn over in a typucal dosatron greenhouse would be more than the volume of the distribution system anyway.

if your water is below 55 degrees id be inclined to agree with you that thats too cold for container plants, but why do you need an inline heater?

just get a 30 gallon hot water heater and replace the 240v coil with a 120v or what ever you need... you dont need 150 degree water obiviously so you can run the thing on what ever power you want.
when you go to water, just fill the tank, valve off the supply, and open a valve to a vacuum breaker and you are good to go. reasonably constant temp water. yes you have temp gradients across the height of the tank, but at the temps were talking about its not going to be huge.

you dont even want a good one... the fancy high r value ruud tanks or what ever.
you actually would want a cheap shitty enamal steel low r value one because when its not in use( say over night) you would let the cold tap water sit over night and equilibrate to what temp.

you could get an "instant" hot water heater, but why? they cost more, and generally are not temp adjustable in the same way as a simple insulated tank.

 

[hydrodreams]

what do you mean you cant find anything? whats wrong with a hot water heater?

why do you need to control temp inline? because you can? if your fertilizer rig supposed to be mobile? if so why?

water temperature matters very little in the setup for which the dosatron is designed, and thats inside a greenhouse or car wash... pumping ingrediants in an online fasion directly into the process.

the turn over in a typucal dosatron greenhouse would be more than the volume of the distribution system anyway.

if your water is below 55 degrees id be inclined to agree with you that thats too cold for container plants, but why do you need an inline heater?

just get a 30 gallon hot water heater and replace the 240v coil with a 120v or what ever you need... you dont need 150 degree water obiviously so you can run the thing on what ever power you want.
when you go to water, just fill the tank, valve off the supply, and open a valve to a vacuum breaker and you are good to go. reasonably constant temp water. yes you have temp gradients across the height of the tank, but at the temps were talking about its not going to be huge.

you dont even want a good one... the fancy high r value ruud tanks or what ever.
you actually would want a cheap shitty enamal steel low r value one because when its not in use( say over night) you would let the cold tap water sit over night and equilibrate to what temp.

you could get an "instant" hot water heater, but why? they cost more, and generally are not temp adjustable in the same way as a simple insulated tank.

Look man....I just perceive a dosatron in line as very simplifying: I don't have to fill up tank all the time and mixing nutrients etc.... I find the attractivity of it very obvious.

If I want, I can go on holiday for 3 weeks, come back, and everything is fine.

Where I live, the tap water in the winter can be as low as 57°F....Thats far too low....Thats why I came up with the posibility of heating inline. But such an inline heater would have to provide me very acurate watertemps, which is something that the flow type heaters you would install in a shower can't.