New Experimental Organic Hydro Technique!

[Citizen024]

Your gonna have to drill holes- seal with silicon sealer and plumbing tape, etc. You can even pretty much calk around the hole too. Multiple levels of sealer.

Use PVC fittings for the drain. Go like 1", maybe larger. It will return clean and quick when you fill.

You could even epoxy that thing in like crazy and seal for all time.

 

[Citizen024]

I was thinking of taking my exsisting 4x4 trays and building up some sort of walled edges inside the tray to make it work. I would build my fill right into that, and have my current drain go to a low lying wide res. Not sure how to do that exactly, but it might be way easier that starting over.

 

[prelude91sir]

that seems like alot 2 high powered 8 line pump pumping into 1 4x4? honesty have know experience with air pumps. Hopefully somebody can help u out with that 1. I will try this in a few weeks. im thinking of putting clones straight into this from cloner and vegging for a week or 2 and then switching to flower? hydroton or lava rocks? i know we both use the same nutes.

 

[Citizen024]

Not really that much if you think about it. DM system is running a good amount of air, and I am talking one stone per square foot. Part if its job is to push the nutrient up into the medium. It's a decent amount of spread for one stone to do. DM might have more wisdom then I on this point.

I think the little 8 liner is a better way to go over a whole bunch of little ones. Just seems more practical. Plus the dividing rod on it has little taps so you can control how much air goes down each line. They are like $70-80 or something like that. I have one. Pimp.
Use 2 per tray.

Given the choice of lava or hydroton, I would say hydro for ease of clean. Bio buckets only run on lava though, so . . I am not sure. Once again, DM may have more insight.

Vegging in place sounds easier. You might want to trellis, it would work real nice. Since i have a veg system set up, I would probably place my 5" pots in the bed empty, then swap out the empty pots for plants from the veg. Veg in coco/perlite in ebb and flow and drop em right in.

Mmm, I am liking this. I was really into bio-buckets, but this is even more user friendly to build with seemingly all the same benefits.

 

[Citizen024]

Know what, you don't even need to build a fill for the flood and drain, simply run 1/2 hose from the pump to the top of the medium in one corner and let it run in, the drain then returning to the res. Super simple. I could convert my trays easily if I can build water tight walls, say 16 inches. The bottom of the tray gutters are perfect for housing the air stones.

I got a homie who is a skilled carpenter. . hehe. . even better if I don't have to build it all myself.

 

[Citizen024]

If the pump shut off the whole thing might try to go back into the res.
Would have to build the fill with a hole somewhere once it is in the tray to be sure no siphon occurred- or install an anti-siphon valve.

More the reason to run the hose down to the top of the medium well above the actual pool so it simply can't reach to siphon it.

Might want to insure drain return by installing drains on both ends of your boxes/trays.

 

[prelude91sir]

i was thinking more than one overflow drain might be needed. I will just have a lil container catching the run off under each table. have no intentions on making it a recirculated system.

 

[Citizen024]

Whatever it is you decide to do please share your info and post your progress, I am most interested. Looks like we are of similar enough minds to benefit one another.

Anything I can do to support please ask- but I am not an expert on this system even though I get its working. DM and LadyLarge seem to have the experience with these things.

 

[SilverSurfer_OG]

Hehe, what an excellent thread! Nothing like an ex lover to stir things up


Well my wee grow is getting near that jawdropping stage... kinda. My Buddah goes from strength to strength. My Blue Mystic is doing ok but seems to have MG/C issues... so do my Grapefruit in pots but they have always been fussy buggers. The Blue Mystic in the pot is very healthy.

I added the drainage hole to the right hand side. When the hole was drilled i noticed quite a thick hyrdo root... thats where the BM is. Its less than a week in new home, do you think it would put out roots that quick? I have a feeling the RB has snuck her roots under the plastic divider and is stealing the nutes?!

That might explain the yellowing on the new growth of BM...



The coco mat sounds interesting. The roots will still get through to the waterbath?

 

[Citizen024]

Late night for me. Sigh . . Mites.. f'ers. Anyhow. .

The mat is not to control roots, but the medium. I am thinking of recircing the whole thing, and want to keep it from getting into a pump etc. Also I think it might help spread the bubbles. Roots should run right through it, per its design.

Going to start putting an experiment/mothers system together real soon here.

What would do you think of it Surfer since you have a system in front of you? How much do you understand bio bucket systems and how they work? Care to experiment with your experiment?

Oww, and if I were you, I wouldn't hesitate to add MagiCal or CalMag+, maybe CalPlex for OMRI. F'it- may as well keep it working right. Your other options seem to be epsom or dolomite. Perhaps the Bath designers have some wisdom I lack, by no means do I know the full ins and out. But I hope to soon.

I wonder how the system responds to dolomite. Could be a best friend, could be a worst enemy PH wise.

If your interest in what I am taking about the only mod would be to what you have built would be to place a real small res under it, and a small pump to pump solution up to the medium in a 1/2 inch tube. Have the tube stop at the perlite layer in one corner. Continuous flow overflow back to the res. For a larger one you might want to T the pump to two corners. Anyhow, it should in theory work a lot like a recircing bio bucket with a medium- and also perhaps even out nutrient distrubution. If it is proven to work in a bio bucket, whats to stop it from working in a bath?

SO open to feedback, as I am seriously thinking of building said device within the next couple weeks. I am replacing a light in my veg room, and I can use it for mothers. This system would be tested for the moms, and if it works could invoke an upgrade for my entire flowering room.

I seriously am believing these basic mechanics can and will be taken to larger scales and kept simple with a little tinkering. . the potential is there.

 

[DrunkenMessiah]

Oww, and if I were you, I wouldn't hesitate to add MagiCal or CalMag+, maybe CalPlex for OMRI. F'it- may as well keep it working right. Your other options seem to be epsom or dolomite. Perhaps the Bath designers have some wisdom I lack, by no means do I know the full ins and out. But I hope to soon.

I wonder how the system responds to dolomite. Could be a best friend, could be a worst enemy PH wise.

If your interest in what I am taking about the only mod would be to what you have built would be to place a real small res under it, and a small pump to pump solution up to the medium in a 1/2 inch tube. Have the tube stop at the perlite layer in one corner. Continuous flow overflow back to the res. For a larger one you might want to T the pump to two corners. Anyhow, it should in theory work a lot like a recircing bio bucket with a medium- and also perhaps even out nutrient distrubution. If it is proven to work in a bio bucket, whats to stop it from working in a bath?

I think that a recirc system could do a lot of good but this it will not do. The strong bubbling creates an upwards wicking action. The OBBTs do not develop nute hot spots or deficient areas. Water soluble nutes constantly bubble and froth around. Water insoluable nutes should have been distributed evenly into the medium before you started.

And I think that is Silver_Surfer's stumbling block. I've seen his nute line-up and its very nice. However I didn't see any long-term insoluable providers of Mg, Ca, S. I get this done by adding something called "fast-acting lime". Its a lot like hydrated lime but comes in stabalized tiny pellet form. I add garden sulfur or epsom salts for S and get my Mg from Bio Tone Starter Plus.

This is why I stress the importance of water-insoluable nutes. The medium needs a strong background of insoluables for the microbes to break down over time to give to the plants. If you do things my way you wil only ever worry about adding Ca, Mg and S ONE time.

If you instead to choose more water-soluable hydro-style nutes you will need to be adding this stuff regularly as needed. Sceduling feeds for secondaries and micros is not something I've ever had to do with the OBBTs.

Silver_Surfer: I beleieve that your take on the OBBT has caused your defficiency issues. As you've already started with soluable hydro nutes why don't you just keep on sticking with them and do what Citizen024 suggested

Oww, and if I were you, I wouldn't hesitate to add MagiCal or CalMag+, maybe CalPlex for OMRI. F'it- may as well keep it working right.

Also there is the distinct posibility that your ice cream devider hasn't been enough. I would not under-estimate the root agressiveness of a cannabis plant in an OBBT for one instant! I have seen root strangulation between seperate plants cuause some of the wierdest and most unpredictable symptoms I've ever come across. You're Reclining Buddha has gotten a BIG head-start. I would not be surprised if her roots had already snuck under your devider to suck all the god stuff from the other side.

This seems like a bit of a strong possibility since your medium is identical on both sides of the devider and yet only one of the plants shows symptoms. All you can do now is attempt to adjust the nute content of the medium on the BlueMystic side in order to compensate. If you can read the plant correctly this should be possible.

The OBBTs may be simple and easy to set-up and all-organic and so-on but it is not a milk-toast grow method!!! I told you guys to fully expect agressiveness from the plant very similar to what is seen with hydro. Heavy drinking, rapid vegging and root-splosions are all typical side-effects of using this techniuqe. I'm sorry SilverSurfer if strangulation does end up being your issue. Sadly the only real cure for it is to cut one of the girls down. See if your BM responds to what Citizen024 suggested before we make any hard conclusions.

oh, Citizen024:

Been reading you and prelude bouncing ideas around. It all sounds like some very good stuff. Your idea of having the recirc system pump out above the water line is a good idea. Something I thought of when I read that:

Instead of having a single outlet and pushing the water up to just one location to trickle down through just a small part of the medium why don't you try do distribute it wide? As soon as I reconstructed what you where suggesting in my mind something popped into my head:

Soaker Hose

Somehow attach the pressurized outlet of the pump to a long length of soaker hose. Bury the hose in the top of the medium and snake it back and fowarth to get good coverage of the whole thing. Actually! Just lay the hose on top of the medium and bury it in pearlite!!!

I think the benefits of this delivery method could be massive. You get the recirculation just like you where talking about but this would even out the nute-water distrobution massively. It would also slow up the overall flow rate a bit which I think would be a good thing. Don't run particularly high pressure or flow rates, just a nice, slow, constant soaking of the entire upper medium. This allows you to run a big-ole remote resivoir and could totally eliminate hand-watering from the equation!

Very exiting ideas gentlemen, Citizen024 I am stoked that you've taken such strong interest in driving the OBBTs to a new level. Can't thank you enough!

Good luck and happy gardening!

-DM

 

[Citizen024]

Thanks DM, I am just a geek for tinkering is all.

I thought soaker hoses when I first was taking with Rorr with is his system. However with any solids moving through soaker hoses are bad. They clog up pretty nice if your moving any sort of organic soup around. The pores don't handle it well. They are made for water, not organic ferts. If they are sitting in medium they can get bound in pretty well too by the plants. Too bad though. I really just want to recirc the pool, and use the air pumps to push it up.

I am thinking that for a larger style the nutrients will get sucked up fast. I don't see how ultimately 25 fast growing plants in a 4x4 won't deplete it. There is no way they are making it 8 weeks. It's just like making soil mixes, you can only make em so hot to start with, and sooner or later you gotta add back in. i can see that the starting mix is going to be very specific though to keep it balanced.

Do you use any rock phosphates or other "hard" minerals? The lime sounds absolutely critical. I happen to have prilled dolomite. Have you had any success with that?

Thanks for the encouragement. The multi plant thing does make it more challenging. I think it could be done for sure. Plant competition sounds like its just part of how it rolls.

 

[DrunkenMessiah]

Hah! I can totally identify with tinkering geekery!

Dolomite is a close relative to hydrated lime and should work well. People like to add Epsom Salts for both Mg and S but this is a really stupid idea. Epsom is MgS4, so 80% S and 20% Mg. This is exactly the opposite ratio of what we want. In reality for cannabis you want about 4 times as much Mg as S, not the other way round!

So to do things right Epsom must be considered a provider of S only. It will suppliament Mg but it is not enough! An alternate source of Mg must be provided as well. I get mine from Bio Tone, your mileage will vary.

You certainly can't add all of the nutes in upfront but I maintain you can get enough secondaries and micros to last you the whole way through. The trick is water insoluble additives. Garden Sulfur, Fast-Acting Lime and the Mg in Bio Tone are all slow-release water insoluables. It is possible to add lots of these in upfront because they won't solute into solution and that means the plants won't 'see' them. Time, osmosis, and biological action of the microbes will liberate them from their delivery substrate and pipe them up into the plants eventually.

But this isn't something you have to do. I could see adding water-soluable nutes only to the OBBT. This is just gonna make it higher maintinence is all. But if you're running a recirc system you're just gonna change up the mix of the bath every 2 weeks or so. When you do that you could add new micros and secondaries with water-soluable organic hydro nutes. That should all be A-OK, its just not how I would do it!

Good luck and happy gardening!

*EDIT*

P.S. DON'T under-estimate the issues of strangulation in a shared medium. I'm sure it wouldn't be quite as bad with clones of identical genetics but I am still very wary of shared mediums. Root competition has caused some of the most baffling and irritating problems I ever faced as a cannabis cultivator. In my opinion a shared medium is not worth the convenience when it has such a negative impact on yields. I think dividers will be necessary but as we've seen with Silver_Surfer's grow its possible that they might not be enough either. This could be the single biggest stumbling block in getting this whole en-masse OBBT grow off the ground. However I have faith in your experience Citizen024 and can't wait to see the results of your coming experiment!

 

[Citizen024]

Fully feeling you on the mixes, thats why I asked about "hard" mineral sources since they do exactly like your saying and release slow.

Thanks for spreading the knowledge. I too have beat my head on how to keep beds even.

Gonna have to ponder how to keep em seperated. I could see filling basket bottomed 1 gallon containers maybe???, but .. I don't know. That moves it in a whole other direction. Set them on top of the mat, on top of the rock- filled in all the spaces with medium and add the perlite layer? Let the roots run out the bottom and into the rock bath.

I could see this really f'ing with the whole concept though.

Another option would be short square containers (maybe 9") with the bottoms cut off. Place on top of the mat, and then fill in. Not that different then first idea, not too sure it's any different then Surfer's set up. The mat may end up being very helpful for keeping seperation at least for the start, as it gives a nice even surface to put spacers onto.

All speculation.

There is something almost like a giant NFT about this thing too in this respect.

Owww, and we can't even be sure that Surfer's problem is a root issue, it could be some other factor. Just trying keeping it clear as I can.

 

[Citizen024]

My general thinking on res is to NOT change it ever. And to have it be small- most of the solution is in the bath. We only need a small one for the purpose of circulation, monitoring and fertilizer additions; most of the time the solution needs to be near the microbes and plants.

Straight up bio bucket style. Only add water and nutrient as it goes. Put the res on a float valve from the tap. Tap is preferred for it's minerals and chlorine (believe it or not). No PH adjusting, just monitor and maintain plants.

Organic hydro nutrients (thats the way bio-buckets run), and possibly powdered to all hell amendments are my thinking for feeds- in addition to pumping the medium up when mixing.

What do you do if you try to reuse the medium round after round? I would imagine running enzyme's in, but what of being able to replenish the solids? At some point it would have to become powered more by liquid nutrient.

I am pretty sure Big Toke got more then one round off of a single res a couple times, but general thinking is to start fresh each time.

I agree on getting most the mirco's in solid form from the start. I would head your advice, and of course add considerable kelp meal to the medium, and definately liquid kelp plus foliar treatments. Great calls on all the micro balancing by the way. You definately have the amendments down solid.

 

[Citizen024]

Sounds nuts, but dividing could be as simple as cardboard. Let it get soaked and eaten by the mircobes after awhile, it only need work for a week or two while they get established.

One draw back: cardboard is treated with anti fungals. Grrrr . . . but something liken to it might work, something that is easy to set up. I would ultimately want a 5x5 grid that fits inside a 4'x4' tray.

 

[DrunkenMessiah]

*nods*

it is a bit of a puzzle. Now granted all of my experience with crappy results from shared root zones came from grows with a wide variety of genetics. Growing a biologically homogeneous set of clones may minimize this issue

When I said "change the bath" I meant to add a new nute set, not to drain the whole thing and replace it! I figure you will add nutes as strong teas or as solids in a mesh sock with an air stone trapped in it. The benefit of these two techniques is that you leave the old solution, and therefore the pre-existing microherd, alone.

Glad we're on the same page when it comes to secondaries and micros. I'm sure there is some happy medium to be had between solid powdered water insoluble organics and water-soluble organic hydro nutes. Experimenting will yield the perfect recopy. This is still sounding very do-able.

Good luck and happy gardening!

-DM

 

[SilverSurfer_OG]

Yeah i think my Buddah has broken on through to the other side!

I do have some high quality dry ferts mixed in from the beginning. Organic Link which has all kinds of goodies like lime, blood n bone, zeolite, soft rock phospate, silica, potash and gypsum. Also i use Dynamic Lifter which is 100% organic slow release fert with composted seaweed, fish and blood/bone. I chucked in one good handfull of both these plus one of composted chicken shit. I also put in about a cup of dolomite lime for good measure.

Sooooo... i reckon i have enough mg/cal in my medium

I am also using Seasol which is derived from bull kelp and some mollasses tea. I should have all my micros covered. One of those liquid ferts i have is an organic source of calcium and phosphate derived from ancient bird shit and heaps of benificial microbes. Its 28% calcium, 12% phosphorous and available to the plant in micronised form.

You reckon i should just pull out the BM and maybe stick it back in the 2 litre square pot? Or just cut er out?

I like all your grow ideas but i reckon i am gonna keep it as simple as poss for now. Not sure of what benefits there would be in a recirculating system?

 

[Citizen024]

Well my friend sounds like your all over it. Hmmmm. Maybe then something isn't being converted to an available form by the microbes. It could be a lockout or excess, but it seems unlikely for that to occur in bio's. Or the range of the PH is making it unavailable. If it has shifted high this could happen (a most ideal range is upper 5's- but I think it becomes available again real high too, need to consult the chart)- and your biggest hungriest baby is going to be the first to show if that's the case. If you start to see it in the others, then you know for sure something system wide is happening. If it's only her. . well . . damn'd if I can figure it right now.

Try checking your ph for the hell of it when you add water next, get a little run out.

Could be she is just a hog and ate up everything in her pen Your other plant not doing so hot might be her at work, or it could be a symptom of the same nutrient problem.

The benefit I am looking for it to be able to do large trays, and have it most self regulating- watering etc. as well as being able to monitor the system. By having a small res on recirc the water level will stay at the flood depth at all times, but the res will slowly drop, and I can keep that level with a float valve. This I think it becomes more valuable if your taking about having several large trays. Any of your input would be graciously taken in.

You guys rock for sharing all this info! I feel blessed! THANKS!!!!!! The net seems to be the only place people even have a clue about bio systems, the shops and other growers seem to be totally clueless.

I get to build my own mock up soon. After I get the other 1000 things done. . )

 

[DrunkenMessiah]

Hm, tis a bit of a mystery.

You sound covered on pre-loaded secondaries Silver_Surfer. Sorry for under-estimating your ingredients!

Fluctuating pH could be a possibility. You snagged fungus from the wilds so they may be tuning the medium in a way that is unsuitable for cannabis. I've had experience with the established Mycorrhize buffing the pH in an undesirable direction. I had cannabis-tuned spores in an OBBT that ran tomatoes. The pH zeroed in 6.5, perfect for the ganjas.

My tomatoes on the other hand wanted 5.5! I couldn't do anything about it! They didn't take up Mg/Cal fast enough and got BER (Blossom End Rot). Managed to slow down the growth and coax them out of it later but it was much less than a desirable situation. Go ahead and run a soil chem test. pH of medium or runoff.

OR

The more insidious/perhaps desirable option #2 is that your RecliningBuddha has had taproot growth and exploration so aggressive that it has indeed rapidly conquered it's neighbor's bath. In this case there could be little to do other than nix the weaker neighboring plant, pull out the devider and let the big RB go at it.

Either way we will wait and see. Good luck and happy gardening!