It's A Fuct World

Rick Ratlin

Rick Ratlin

Active Member
Al hope all is well. Long time reader of your knowledge. I use your cooltube/ AAW diy combo for a 1k hps in the flowering room, love it. I use a light diffuser for hot spots, my lamp is about 14" above the canopy. Do you use a light diffuser? I feel like it shades some areas too much, but don't want to risk burning my plants.
 
RyanTheRhino

RyanTheRhino

Well-Known Member
Al B. Fuct said:
* Organic hydroponics: Is complete nonsense. The 'organic' buzzword is overused and largely misunderstood by the general public. 'Organic' doesn't mean 'good' or 'better.' It means that the material in question is sourced from a biological system. Organic nutrients are, in actual fact, mostly shit. Compost and manures themselves are not assimilable by plants; it's the breakdown components, N, P & K, which plants eat. There's no difference between the N, P & K obtained via organic matter breaking down and that obtained from "chemical" aka inorganic fertilisers. However, inorganic nutes allow you to precisely and CONSISTENTLY control the amount of N, P & K presented to the plants. With 'organic' nutes, you never really know what the precise amounts and ratios of N, P & K your plants will actually get. Moreover, inorganic nutes are not affected by the use of H2O2 in hydroponic nute solns. Inorganic based hydro systems are clean, tanks are clear and such systems are much easier to maintain, especially for the newbish. Now, before some holy organic evangelist upbraids me for not knowing what I'm talking about, know ye this: my veg patch out back is run on organic principles; my cannabis plant waste, lawn clips and kitchen veg cuttings are composted and incorporated into the garden soil after spending about a year breaking down in the compost bins. It works pretty well- outdoors, where I don't give a damn how many bugs & microbes are hanging about. In my indoor hydroponic grow-op, I want to have only ONE living organism: cannabis plants.

So, wut up, dawg?
Click to expand...
Are you telling me people have actually been telling others to throw compost into their rez for nutes? WOW. That sound like trouble
 
K

kstampy

Member
Al B, first off you have taught me a great deal in the past so thanks very much for your efforts to help our community. Thanks for taking the time to come back around and help out some more, hopefully you don't waste your time repeating yourself over and over haha. My best wishes to your family as well buddy.

A couple of things I have picked up over time since reading all of your insight on growing years ago.

Where to get Fytocell in the states? ehydroponics.com.

Physan20 - Seems great for disinfecting, what do you think?

Powdery Mildew? Eagle 20 EW. USE WITH CAUTION !READ!- 2ml/Gal + spreader/sticker spray every inch of the plant top and bottom, lights out for 3 hours, crank the fans for 30-60 mins and lights on. (systemic for 25-30 days give yourself at least 55-60 to be safe, to be even safer do it before flower) - huge thread on this on ICMag. It has absolutely STOPPED PM. Spray your clones just before flower and forget about PM. Remember not to use as an excuse for poor environment. Also one bottle should last you a life time since the mix rate is so low. Try to use this in some sort of rotation as there are other products such as this, we don't want some super strain of PM forming and floating around. Wear a respirator and long sleeves and pants and gloves etc. BE SAFE! This is heavy duty stuff but more than worth it because I have had a personal battle with PM for a very long time and have tried just about everything I could read about on every single canna forum, aside from starting from new plants and sterilizing everything with bleach this is the way to go. I believe it is used on golf courses lol. Al I am confident if you throw this in to your rotation as a preventative you will never have to burn sulfur ever again, personally sulfur was like a long term band-aid for me and was a PITA that smelled like ass.

I tried Fytocell + RW Cube clones and just could not get it to work so maybe between batches again I will give it another go, clones just wouldn't root in to the Fytocell. The RW cube the clone was in would be dry yet the Fytocell around it and below it was wet, the plants would just droop and die a week later. Clones were healthy and bursting with roots as I have rooted hundreds in RW now with about 99% success with your methods (some times I miss one when watering or plug it in wrong in a bad cube eh it happens). I only had to flood about once a day a few inches up to make the Fyto not too wet. Working on my ez cloner again and that should eliminate that issue, stupid brown algae actually lives and thrives through H202, another huge thread on that at ICM by richyrich. That's all I can think of for now.

Hope all is well for you, I can not stress how much I learned from you when I started and really appreciate it!

P.S. You have no idea how much I have searched for SWT#4 with no luck, I thank all the ridiculous hype about "OGs" around here lol. I did end up with Blockhead, LUI (3 diff. mothers) and Dutchgrown's SWT#3/Bros Grimm C99, all Wonderful hybrids so thanks for turning me on to a strain that relieves me medically as well as being easy to grow.

Just so ya know Kootenay has taken the steering wheel for SOL with Steve's oversight and is currently remaking SWT#3 which should be out in the coming months since he has already chosen parents from around 110 seeds ;).
 
S

Swiezy

Active Member
Kstampy,

I read that you got some notes from Al. B's thread. Maybe you could share it with us via rapidshare or something?
 
L

ldachosenonel

Member
Question about toping off the rez's, when plants start drinking alot do I just add ph'ed water to the rez or does the water need to have nutes also?
 
BluBerry

BluBerry

Well-Known Member
I have seen this question asked several times. IMO it will be hard to try to mix nutes to the right PPM by mixing in small amounts. So it's prob best to add pH'd water back into the res. Then when you do a weekly res change you should add nutes back and adjust accordingly.
 
L

ldachosenonel

Member
Question Al bleach or H2O2 for my reservoir. Half the people I ask say bleach is fine half say dont use bleach under any circumstances and to use H2O2. Whats is you ropinion and at what concentration should I use either at?
 
BluBerry

BluBerry

Well-Known Member
im a noob but everywhere i have read i have not read any bad things. 6-8 drops per gallon i believe is adequate ratio. everyone has their own opinions tho. I have washed many homes and roofs with sodium hypochlorite which is pool chlorine and stronger than bleach and it would soak the outside plants with the bleachy water and i never had any problems with the plants dying. i know thats a little different but bleach is bleach and a plants a plant. city water has chlorine in it and we drink it. i have well water and not sure of the chlorine level but i still add a small amount of bleach to my res. but who am i to say? my first round with dwc.
 
PetFlora

PetFlora

Well-Known Member
RE: MUNICIPAL H2O: Perhaps you forgot that when using an indoor rez, with certain nutes, at least, you can have too much Ca-Mg. But let's go one step farther.

We are no longer drinking our father's Municipal water. Much is recycled, and now contains a cocktail of prescription medications that were flushed. Google it. Knowing the issues with chlorine (bleaching agent I do not want in my body, and Flouride, a known toxin, and Ammonia- used as a buffer because they use so much chlorine), I have been using either a distiller or RO for 30+ years for cooking and drinking. If it's good enough for me, it's good enough for my rez.
 
Al B. Fuct

Al B. Fuct

once had a dog named
Hiya.

I don't have a lot of time at the moment, but I thought I'd drop in and suggest that I'm not dead. Much.

A few quick notes...

It isn't necessary to use enhanced spectrum lighting for flowering cannabis. It wants a yellow-red accented spectrum at that time and HPS suits ideally. You can veg your mums with MH if you like, but I use a 400HPS over mine and it works great.

Don't use laundry bleach in nute solutions. Ever.

If you must top up your tanks, use plain tapwater then adjust the pH of the solution. Don't pH adjust the top-up water.

I'm not a fan of customised nutrient mixes i.e. Lucas. I prefer to rely on the expertise of the mfr and use their mixing instructions. You can be well assured that mfrs have some time & trouble in testing the stuff- or growers wouldn't buy it twice.

Yes, seeds from a hermaphroditic plant will wind up either female or hermaphroditic. Thanks for covering that one, mindphuk.

H2O2 remains effective (primarily) as a steriliser and (secondarily) as a root oxygenator for several days in nute solutions. The amount of time varies dependent upon several factors; the amount of pathogens in the system which will react with the H2O2, the size of the tank and the concentration maintained. Flood systems with plants in pots of absorbent media which are watered generally once a day benefit significantly from H2O2 maintenance. Other types of media (such as pellets) and watering systems (i.e aeroponics) which allow multiple cycle/day if not continuous watering have much better root oygenation just by their very natures. However, they're also a pain in the ass in terms of handling old media and system maintenance. I am a stoned slacker, can't drive that point home quite enough. Plants in pots of absorbent lightweight, disposable media are mobile within the op, flood systems are very low maintenance, and lightweight media like rockwool and Fytocell are relatively cheap and easy to dispose of.

Chlorine and fluoride in the amounts as applied by municipal water treatment plants are harmless to humans and plants. There's ample evidence that the use of them has significant benefits at negligible risk. If you have water paranoia, you can filter your water through a goat's bladder and have it blessed by a homeopath for all I care- but it's utterly unnecessary.

I'll try to get back on more often, but duty in the op calls and I'll be stacked up for a day or two.
 
M

medicine21

Active Member
Al, great to see you back! On the topic of oxygenating, do you know how much air pump power is sufficient to oxygenate each 100L of reservoir? I would guess the more the merrier, it's just the industrial ones can be quite loud. There is this GH Air Pump rated at 20L/min, but I am not sure how to apply that to reservoir sizes for best results.

Any drawbacks of having too much air, maybe H2O2/nutes bubbling out?
 
homebrewer

homebrewer

Well-Known Member
medicine21 said:
Al, great to see you back! On the topic of oxygenating, do you know how much air pump power is sufficient to oxygenate each 100L of reservoir? I would guess the more the merrier, it's just the industrial ones can be quite loud. There is this GH Air Pump rated at 20L/min, but I am not sure how to apply that to reservoir sizes for best results.

Any drawbacks of having too much air, maybe H2O2/nutes bubbling out?
Click to expand...
It doens't matter how long you oxygenate or how much power you use, you're only going to get to about 8ppm of dissolved O2.
 
M

medicine21

Active Member
homebrewer said:
It doens't matter how long you oxygenate or how much power you use, you're only going to get to about 8ppm of dissolved O2.
Click to expand...
Yes, that is true, although depends on the water temperature. At sea level:

Temp Fresh Water mg/l
°F °C
50 10 11.3
59 15 10.1
68 20 9.1
72 22 8.7
75 24 8.4
79 26 8.1
83 28 7.8
86 30 7.5

I believe the ideal water temperature we should shoot for is 17-20 Celc, so let me rephrase the question:

How much air pump power measured in L/Min do I need to maintain max oxygenation of a 100L reservoir?
 
M

mihjaro

Active Member
Al B. Fuct said:
You say heat is a concern. You'll want to be able to run your grow op lighting at night when the air you have to draw in for cooling is cool as possible. I don't know what sort of a room you're planning to use for your op, but to be useful, the cooltube will need to draw air from outside the grow room airmass and dump it outside of that airmass as well. The ventilation for the op should vent to outside the op as well. If you're using a spare bedroom, dumping warm air into the attic is a good way to go. Putting ballasts in the attic is also a smart move.
Click to expand...
I can agree with everything above, except for the emphasized sentence. For odor control reasons, it's a good idea to maintain a negative pressure differential between the grow area and the rest of the building, creating a negative pressure differential between the building and the outside is not. Unless the outside are temperature is above the setpoint when heating or below the setpoint when cooling you are bringing air which will need to be conditioned. For instance, if it's the middle of summer and the nighttime temperatures are in the 90s your are replacing 75 degree air from the grow area with air that is much warmer. I think it's better to take the hit and cool the grow room air in the summer and get the benefit of some extra "free" BTUs in the winter. In temperate climates, it's mostly a wash in terms of cost.

Running an isolated ventilation pathway for the lights is probably the easiest way to boost the cooling capacity of a given ventilation system and is the best advice I've ever heard. With a little work, it's really easy to build a system that captures the heat from the lights in winter for heating the building and dumps all of the heat from the lights in summer so as to not add to the cooling load.

ETA: The whole quote is italicized so, to be clear, here is the sentence I refer to above.

If you're using a spare bedroom, dumping warm air into the attic is a good way to go.

 
S

Swiezy

Active Member
Nice to hear you Al.

I still got hope that you will answer to my post
HTML: 
https://www.rollitup.org/hydroponics-aeroponics/399206-its-fuct-world-25.html#post5225382
Peace
 
Al B. Fuct

Al B. Fuct

once had a dog named
medicine21 said:
Al, great to see you back! On the topic of oxygenating, do you know how much air pump power is sufficient to oxygenate each 100L of reservoir? I would guess the more the merrier, it's just the industrial ones can be quite loud. There is this GH Air Pump rated at 20L/min, but I am not sure how to apply that to reservoir sizes for best results.

Any drawbacks of having too much air, maybe H2O2/nutes bubbling out?
Click to expand...
A plain old fish tank air pump and a large bubble-curtain type airstone running continuously will do the job. The bubble curtain 'airstones' I use are not really stones. They're a tubular foam material with a stainless steel tube inside which keeps them from floating. The compressed/glued sand sort of 'airstones' are not tolerant of acidic nute solutions are thus not useful in this application, They will disintegrate into a pile of sand in a few weeks.

While I've not tested the effect of raging amounts of air bubbling through the nute solution, I don't think that there'd be any effect other than being noisy. An ordinary fish tank air pump is sufficient, though.

homebrewer said:
It doens't matter how long you oxygenate or how much power you use, you're only going to get to about 8ppm of dissolved O2.
Click to expand...
Yep, but that's generally enough. As long as you're getting and maintaining bright white roots, there's enough oxygen.

mihjaro said:
I can agree with everything above, except for the emphasized sentence. For odor control reasons, it's a good idea to maintain a negative pressure differential between the grow area and the rest of the building, creating a negative pressure differential between the building and the outside is not. Unless the outside are temperature is above the setpoint when heating or below the setpoint when cooling you are bringing air which will need to be conditioned. For instance, if it's the middle of summer and the nighttime temperatures are in the 90s your are replacing 75 degree air from the grow area with air that is much warmer. I think it's better to take the hit and cool the grow room air in the summer and get the benefit of some extra "free" BTUs in the winter. In temperate climates, it's mostly a wash in terms of cost.

Running an isolated ventilation pathway for the lights is probably the easiest way to boost the cooling capacity of a given ventilation system and is the best advice I've ever heard. With a little work, it's really easy to build a system that captures the heat from the lights in winter for heating the building and dumps all of the heat from the lights in summer so as to not add to the cooling load.

ETA: The whole quote is italicized so, to be clear, here is the sentence I refer to above.

If you're using a spare bedroom, dumping warm air into the attic is a good way to go.
Click to expand...
I agree that a grow room should be maintained at a negative pressure. This is something that I covered on a few occasions in the original 'Get A Harvest Every Two Weeks' thread when talking about ventilation system design. In that thread, I suggested using an axial blower (or blowers) for intake and a centrifugal for exhaust, with the CFM rating for the intake blower/s about 5-10% lower than the CFM capacity of the exhaust.
 
Al B. Fuct

Al B. Fuct

once had a dog named
Swiezy said:
Nice to hear you Al.

I still got hope that you will answer to my post
HTML: 
https://www.rollitup.org/hydroponics-aeroponics/399206-its-fuct-world-25.html#post5225382
Peace
Click to expand...
All sounds good. The only change I'd make to your notes is that you really only need about 25mm of tightly packed rockwool floc in the bottoms of the pots to keep the Fytocell crumbs from washing out of the pots. Yes, a carbon filter is fine for scent control. In fact, since the writing of the original bit, I have eliminated the ozone generator from my flowering room and am using a large carbon filter driven by a centrifugal blower.
 
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