The OBBT Grow Show!

[RipVanWeed]

Hey ScrubNinja,

If you look closely you can see the neoprene cork stuffed up the Overflow elbow.

On occasion, when I may have overfilled the reservoirs, I just pull that little plug and let the excess dribble into a cup. Found out that if you blow hard into the air supply, the excess will drain quicker.

Respect,

 

[rrog]

It was asked if my buckets lose air through the sight gauge or the overflow. The answer is no. Because they both have openings that are at the absolute bottom of the bucket, all air bubbles have risen and have no chance to crawl sideways to the pipes

 

[ScrubNinja]

Thank you guys, now I get it. You know what we need? An index! It seems like everything has been covered, and usually in enormous depth by LL or DM in individual posts, but it's like..."where did I read that?". I know you guys are too busy but I hope one day when I understand the whole thing, I can try getting all the links together in one place. Imagine the first posts with supplementary links to the extensive breakdowns that have invariably been provided at some stage, in some thread or other.

Well, just my suggestion. I picked up an airpump today:

 

[rrog]

I had intended to do this more thoroughly on my Build-a-Bucket thread. It's a good idea, for sure.

Love the pump. What's the output?

 

[h.h.]

I thinh it's better summarized here...
https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=137656
Shame the thread keeps getting buried.

 

[ScrubNinja]

Thanks rrog, it's 45 litres per hour. I'm going to brew an aerated tea with it tomorrow and be amazed I'm sure. It's a lot quieter and cheaper than I expected, and I remember LadyL banging on about this type, so I made an impulse purchase.

It's a Hailea ACO-208. I have no idea why, but my specs are different to that link. Sticker on the machine itself says 25W, 45L/min.

HH, cheers, but imagine that one too, with the supplementary links. I mean direct stuff - I'm sure you would have seen any number of posts where LL breaks down JUST the air factor, or JUST the microbe factor, etc etc - in posts every bit as long as the first posts on either of these threads. This thread alone is full of them but this thread is 22 pages long. I just figured it would cut down on dumb questions by newbninjas. Like me, I coulda just gone to the air link and avoided looking like the typical "hey guys won't air come through the hose" guy.

 

[h.h.]

When I was in college starting a new class I would always make a point of asking a question right off the bat. The dumber the better. It got dialog and interaction with the class started. Sometimes it's the "dumb" questions that are most important.
Twenty two pages? As well as all the different threads. Wow! I guess I was lucky to start from the beginning. Perhaps this can be cleaned up once again, (Club Bio was the first attempt or second after DM), then made a sticky with perhaps a second thread for questions and side comments such as mine.

 

[SilverSurfer_OG]

Woo-hoo! I'm glad my sumurization of Bio Char wasn't too far off the mark. I knew its absorptive properties came in handy.

I thought you where being a little on the quite side SS OG, glad to see you've been keeping busy through this time! Love the sound of your experiment. Bio Char is supposed to be a powerful tool when at the disposal of Myco Fungi, I'm betting that it makes a difference. Also sounds like our ole pal RipVanWeed has set a trend what with this 1000 watt vertical HPS OBBT business. Can't wait to see that run, makes me even more excited for the coming months!

Yeah i have been a busy little bee! Lots going on and stuff to prep.

I have the pots set up and bubbling now. Purchased a 25w airpump. Its a noisy bugger all right! Hoping it will wear in like you say. Plus the room its in is kinda empty at mo.

I am basically copying Rip Van Weeds setup... kinda Was going to go 2 x 600w hps vert but there was a stuff up with my order... wanted digi ballasts and they were all sold out... so i have opted for a big momma 1000w hps with lumatek digi ballast! Better all round for amperage and possible heat issues i reckon. Plus i have always wanted to see how fat i can get my buddage under (next to) one of these suckers!

I have 24 litre square buckets and have adopted the excellent clear tubing concept for the airline/res level. Still just using 19mm, 3/4" L shaped connector that is for garden irrigation. With the water level visible and handwatering i see no need for an overflow. I just need to add the drain at bottom. This will be 19mm, 3/4" hole too. I will use the bung for home-brew barrels which can easily be screwed in or out. This means my rig uses no glue or even rubber seals and is totally air and water tight!

My two mediums have been in the pots for couple of days. I have chucked in heaps of goodies including coco, vermiculite (the largest stuff i can get) alfalfa (lucerne), kelp, dynamic lifter - citrus with extra oomf, organic link (all round awesome), worm castings (complete with live worms), azomite, mychorz tea bags, and the bio char. I soaked it in seasol, my lovely urine and my worm castings. I also have the best organic soil i can purchase which is made locally and contains sea greens! I think that may just be the fancy name for composted kelp... can remember offhand!

I can officially say this is the most arse-kicking medium i have ever mixed up!

So to recap. Half my tubs will have the bio char mixed through the medium. Half without. Simple!

Heres the pics:

 

[Dis]

This is a very interesting concept, and one that I have never heard of before. Thanks for sharing your wisdom!

- DIS

 

[rrog]

Surfer that is looking so great. So great. The one hole system.

6.3 gallon black square pails! Didn't know they existed. Could you tell us the dimensions? Length, width and height?

Curious about the air supply. What air volume do you expect per pail?

Wow, and worms!

I love your system thinking. I also thank you for sharing

 

[DHF]

Love the Happy Happy Joy Joy from Ren and Stimpy Surfer...........Ya`ll pullin some shit over here with all this fungus and bacteria............

Major respect.......Teach me ............

Peace....DHF..........

 

[SilverSurfer_OG]

Ya thanks i like it too

As far as the one hole system goes that was my original intention. I figure i could just pop off the thick plastic hose and unscrew the pipe... this would only be done 2 or 3 times a grow. But i reckon it would be bit easier to have seperate drain. Less fiddlin around in the long run.

Those black pails are perfect size for what i am planning. Found em in ebay for only $7.50 each! Not sure exact dimensions offhand but they about 45cm high.

I think its overkill with the pump, it puts out 45litres per minute... should give me plenty of room to size up if i feel the need.

Worms are just too damn small and numerous, especially the tiny baby ones to get out of the castings. They will have a good life munching on kelp flakes and alfalfa!

Yeah happy to share info mate. Its how i learn and what makes this community so great!

Ren and Stimpy rule!!! Havta see if i can find some episodes to download...

Cheers!

 

[rrog]

Surfer, if you could sometime measure those bad boys that would be great. I'm laying out a room for someone, and looking at round vs. square.

I also love Ren and Stimpy!

 

[MrGreen]

Surfer, if you could sometime measure those bad boys that would be great. I'm laying out a room for someone, and looking at round vs. square.

I also love Ren and Stimpy!

Or even a link to an ebay auction? I tried searching and couldn't find anything. I'm leaning towards square buckets myself so these would be perfect if I could find em.

 

[rrog]

Yea, I'd like to see if if they fit better than round 5 gal pails. Seems like they would

 

[LadyLargely]

Hey everyone! Love the discussion and I'm gonna delve into the subject matter that's been brought up in a little bit. But first; I'm WAY behind on my updates. Much has happened since I last posted, so let's have a look at...

Today's Lesson

Organic Starve



The OBBTs where designed around the idea of a starve schedule!

Dump valves, clog-resistant plumbing, fast-draining baths and mediums, they've all been adopted for good reasons and one of those reasons is the need for reliable starvation.

Starve cycles have a very powerful positive impact on Yield and in aggressive organic scenarios like our OBBTs it is the difference between sparse, leafy "flarf" and tight, dense, bud formation. It unlocks stored nutrients in old fan leaves and starchy root material. It makes fast-growing plants hungry for more nutrition and really spurrs on a good budswell.

Aggressive Starve Cycles are one of the most powerful tools in the classic salt nutrient hydro techniques. Its what allow dutch-pot maniacs to swell up those unbelievably fat colas.

Trouble is for those cats: the nature of chemical hydro means successful flush/starve cycles are a science. You have to push out all the used up salts, the E.C. of your res plummets and the chemistry goes mad. The plants sit in clean water and they starve. But not only that, the 'empty' water that they sit in leeches material back out of the roots. The nutrient delivery chain crashes to a halt as gently and subtly as a train de-railment. pH needs to be re-buffed after its all over and a brand new root chemistry is introduced as the nute program resumes.

This can work well, but it is a delicate balance.

Starving with the OBBTs is much simpler

Open the dump valve.

That's it. Open the dump valve and let anything that was in the bath out. Leave the bubblers on, leave everything as it was. Unless you are finishing DO NOT FLUSH!

The medium will gradually go dry. The fungal network slows to a stop as water goes scarce. As the whole thing goes fully dry the mycelium network will actually give up a lot of its water content to the plant. The soil chemistry is stabilized and everything goes dormant as the system settles in for a nice long drought. The results:



Yellowing started to rapidly take over on my 4th day after emptying out the baths. Purpling on the fan leaf stems intensified and spread around to the thicker main stems:



The fan leaves yellowed and curled one at a time as opposed to all at once. Hour by hour they went yellow, then fully pale, then curled up to an impossibly thin brown wisp. Only when they have become fully withered to they readily come off the plant:



Old sugars and starches are burned off. You can see the plant prioritize. Fan leaves that get less light seem to be deemed less useful and curl up first. Things slow down as the first batch of leaves curl off and the plant is forced to use bigger, more useful ones. The plant literally will curl off the tips of a big leaf while it keeps the inner bits green.


These images come from the bottom of starve. They show how the plants look right before I finally gave them water and nutes. Keep in mind with organic starve they continue to yellow and curls off fan leaves a day or two into recovery. The whole ordeal is 'slower' and and lower tolerance, lazier.

Late on the fifth day I put the girls out of their misery simultaneously. A potent tea made up of all this:

1 gallon concentrate to be diluted down to 3 gallons:

7 Tbsp bat guano
1 Teaspoon soluble seaweed extract
6 Tbsp flower fish
3 Tbsp molasses
1 Pint hot kelp extract made with 1/3 cup kelp meal

Was fed to them. At the same time, before the plants had recovered from the starve, I hit time with these:



Yes rrog, its finally time for the bad-ass Ultra Violets! You could see their deep purple light contrasted against the red P&As in a couple of the pictures.

The UVs and the new tea have been working hard an the girls for 4 days now. I'll be updating a bit later today to show you guys how they've reacted and to give you a sneak peak of my first stage of budswell.

 

[LadyLargely]

Ya thanks i like it too


Those black pails are perfect size for what i am planning. Found em in ebay for only $7.50 each! Not sure exact dimensions offhand but they about 45cm high.

I think its overkill with the pump, it puts out 45litres per minute... should give me plenty of room to size up if i feel the need.

Worms are just too damn small and numerous, especially the tiny baby ones to get out of the castings. They will have a good life munching on kelp flakes and alfalfa!

Yeah happy to share info mate. Its how i learn and what makes this community so great!

Ren and Stimpy rule!!! Havta see if i can find some episodes to download...

Cheers!

Haha, this is sounding really good! I am interested to see how the worms do in the crazy low-density high-oxygen environment. My understanding is that the whole reason big fat night crawlers come up on rainy nights is because they need to breathe when the ground is all flooded out. The forced oxygen injection from your Bio Box execution should see to that need no matter how much water gets dumped through. HRrrrrmmm, I am intregued to see how that pans out, if the worms can successfully become a part of the mega-aggressive OBBT ecosystem and make it to the end. I wonder if one of your OBBT variants turns out to be a better worm home than the others.

I've been a proponent of the square tubs over round pots/buckets for a long time. Cube-ish containers are more space-efficient, fitting more contained volume in themselves when you have to fit them together.

I also like how DEEP those cheap black containers of yours are. They should host a nice deep bath while still having room for tons of medium. They'll set up a nice stable perched water table very readily.

Overall, very clean-looking setup. I'm in love with the ingredient list, I swear you OZ kids have some amazing raw matirials to work with. 25 kilogram sack-o-bull kelp, now that's what I'm talking about. That medium sounds like the shit and if those worms kick off it should play host to the most biologically complex OBBT ever made. Got any deets on how the experiment is gonna go? Are you going to use clones from the same breed or something to keep results super-scientific?

I hope you document this one closely SSOG, I would love to watch regular updates on that grow. If you dedicated a thread to it I would be the first lurker to pull up a chair, but you're welcome to just be lazy and post the results in here and in Club Bio Box.

 

[Citizen024]

Very nice! Great info LadyL, filled in a lot of details on starve cycles. I ran mine through one (more because of need to flush medium for a couple days) and saw the same results with my coco as the nutrient levels dropped away.

It can happen really quick in an aggressive garden.

 

[LadyLargely]

*nods* it sure can. But I think your organic coco style will tend to starve a little faster and more severely than OBBTs anyway. Your lack of soil and strong fungal presence (and an overall lack of water-holding capacity from the coco) means the medium will dry out a lot faster, and once it does it holds no moisture in 'reserve' like the OBBTs tend to.

Not necessarily a bad thing. A 4-5 day starve cycle is 'quick' for an OBBT, and that's about twice as long as typical for a hydro starve. Being able to put your girls under pressure and make them hungry more quickly lets you spend more time growing and less time waiting around for leaves to turn yellow. Granted OBBTs reach critical starve much faster than, say, a typical pot of good organic soil. Starve cycles in traditional organic setups take so long (2 weeks+) that they are hardly worth the trouble.

The combination of factors makes the starve cycle for OBBTs one of the simplest out there. No need to closely monitor anything. Fudging an extra day or two will not be catastrophic like it would be in hydro. The tolerance for error with OBBT starvation is wider than the margin for absolute failure in most rigs. Combine that with the fact that any flushing is unnecessary along with the self-balancing pH and you have the most easy-going starve cycle imaginable.

Like so many aspects of OBBT gardening, the starve cycle is seriously difficult to fuck up. My maintenance schedule has wound way down, I barely have anything to do now. The next two weeks will consist of making sure they don't dry out too much and resisting the urge to microwave myself a premature nugget as they get all fat and sparkly

 

[rrog]

I like the "for reptile use only" ! Haha