My first attemp at aeroponics.. Grapefruit Kush

I would lift the plants slightly while the sprayer is on to ensure that water is spraying. Sometimes on new units you will get bits of pvc clogging the sprayers. It's still possible to unclog the sprayers early-on in the flowering process. Are you using R/O water for your water. What is your PPM starting. I like to go light initially on the nute strength 900-1200 ppm.

Unfortunately I am using plain old tap water my ppm is 450 right off the bat!!! I am following the fox farm feeding schedule to adjust my ppm. It is funny you say to check the sprayers because just before I read this I did just that. The nozzles at the very end were not spraying so I removed the spray bar and unclogged them, but the sprayers for the two that are lagging behind were spraying just fine but I pushed a paperclip in to each one just to be sure. Thanks for the help. I am now going to check and clean the sprayers if necessary at each res change. will it be OK to pull the spray bar out and clean later on during flowering, I figure that as long as I am gentle it should not be problem?


Just a random piece of info... the apostrophe key on my keyboard opens up a small search bar at the bottom of the screen does anyone know how to fix this?

After the plants are deeply rooted, 3 weeks of flowering or so, you wont be able to pull the net cup out. You also will need to get large zip ties, I got the 22" ones for my 5" fence posts, to tie down your net cups, otherwise they will pull themselves out and cause water to leak. You might want to get a couple of gallons of distilled water from walmart and supplement your hard water, that will bring down your ppm and let you exchange that crud with real nutrients. good luck.

Would pulling out the spray bar be OK to clean the sprayers instead of pulling the net cups? I could just slide out the spray bar and unclog the sprayers and rinse it out. Are you saying that you strap down every net cup or are you talking about strapping down the channels to the frame? I am looking into getting some 5 gallon jugs of purified H2O from my local water store Im not sure if it is RO water but I can find out, it is only like 25c a gallon, can I use only the purified water or should I just supplement my tap water like you said?

santeelocal said:

Would pulling out the spray bar be OK to clean the sprayers instead of pulling the net cups? I could just slide out the spray bar and unclog the sprayers and rinse it out. Are you saying that you strap down every net cup or are you talking about strapping down the channels to the frame? I am looking into getting some 5 gallon jugs of purified H2O from my local water store Im not sure if it is RO water but I can find out, it is only like 25c a gallon, can I use only the purified water or should I just supplement my tap water like you said?

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I guess you could pull the sprayer bar out and clean out the sprayers. I wouldn't pull out the spray bar if it has roots wrapped around it. My spray bar stays put because I seal the endcap where the water comes out with silicone sealant.
I normally just pull the net cup out and grab hold of the pvc through the 2" hole and just twist the sprayer out with my finger tips. Then I ensure that the bits of pvc are out of the sprayer. I normally don't have to do this more than once and then you don't have to screw with it.

Sounds like you got access to cheap purified water. I would just supplement the water in your res until your starting ppm is less than 200.

You want to strap down your netcups to the fence post. You can usually get by with one zip tie per net cup, sometimes big plants require 2 or the cup will tilt. good luck

Yeah I wouldn't pull that spray bar out. You will probably tear some roots and dead plant matter causes major problems in aero. And the sooner you can tie those pots to the posts the sooner you can put some wind on them and build some serious stalks to support some sweet sticky meds!

So I found RO water at my local water store for 33c a gallon I will be mixing it half and half with mt tap water so if my tap is 450 mixed with half RO at a ppm of 7 then I should be looking at a ppm of 225 .

Subscribed. I also built a StinkBud setup. Though I won't beable to use it till I finish getting ready for outdoor 2010.

Here's mine

I'll definately be splicing in a union so I can seperate the pump when cleaning time comes.

Looks good! All I did was I didn't glue the down pipe to the pump to the spray assembly. I just twist and remove to change reservoirs, I left ou the ball valve to save on a little space. Here are some new pics. I am at exactly two weeks since I planted the clones in the system. I topped the back two clones because they are growing so much faster than the others.

Looking nice, what size light you running?

santeelocal said:

Hey everyone I just started my first aeroponics grow 5 days ago. I built the aero system myself with the help of Stink Buds plans for the Stink Bud Jr. The whole system only cost me $86 to build. I am using the full line of Fox Farm nutrients. I purchased 6 Grapefruit Kush clones from my local CoOp. The unit is in a 4x4x6.5 tent under a 400W MH-HPS. I am going to continue to veg for another week or two then I will switch to 12 on 12 off. I have my pump on a 30min on and 30 min off, but as soon as I can afford a cycle timer I am going to get one. I will keep you posted on the progress.

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Ahhhh. answered my own question.

Gotta get that timer Santee. Those roots should be white. And I wouldn't top them that small, or ever, looks like you have the room. Bend them over when they are young to promote branching. Slows the top enough to let the branches catch up. Otherwise, keep it up

hi santee.
your grow looks good. quick question, why is your pump set 30 minutes on and 30 minutes off? In my opinion you are allowing your roots to dry out too much. my aeroponic pumps run 24/7.
also, once you are well into flowering you are going to have quite a root mass in there. this is going to give your sprayers a tough time. another design thought would be to remove the sprayer bar from inside the pipe, set it up externally and drill holes to insert the sprayer heads into the top of the pipes. point them into the opposing pvc wall. that way as well, you also have the advantage of gravity.
i use GH flora series as well. i have used only the three parts so far with no additional supplements and have had great results.

oh, one more thing. ditch the tapwater. your reservoir is not that big, so buying large bottles of water would be worth the cost if you don´t have a reverse osmosis filter. our tapwater is like yours with very high EC levels. it wasn´t until we switched the water that we began to see faster growth and healthier plants.

I just purchased a bunch of RO water so from now on I will be supplementing my tap water with the before mentioned RO water. The timer I have only does 30 min intervals so that is what I am using, I am going to get the C.A.P. art-dne cycle timer as soon as I have some extra cash. I thought about the sprayer clogging also but at this poit it is too late to try to rebiuld the set up, I am going to see how it goes this grow and I will make changes next time so I can see all of the flaws at one time, and according to Stinkbud hes doesn't really have issues with them clogging very offten. Thanks for the advice though I really appreciate it. This whole thing is a learning experiment for me if I took everyones advice I wouldn't een know where to begin so I am tryning to K.I.S.S(keep it simple stupid).

Hey everyone I am noticing these weird whitish spot on the leaves on some of the leaves. They don't look like mold or anything maybe the early signs on N def? It doesn't look serious but I would like to stop any problems before they start, anyone have this happen before.

Temps are 63-78
%rH is 25-41%
ppm is 1220
pH is 5.8-6.2

Looks like they are coming along. You will start to see some amazing growth really soon. The biggest growth spurt is when you just put them into flowering. I started 6 in my new fence post design a couple days ago, I vegged them a little longer so they are going to be bushes.

I am going to veg for at least another week then I will decide if I want to flower I want to get as close to a pound as possible. How much bigger do you think they will get when flowering is induced?

santeelocal said:

I am going to veg for at least another week then I will decide if I want to flower I want to get as close to a pound as possible. How much bigger do you think they will get when flowering is induced?

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Depends on the strain, some double.


And about the spots, are you spraying your plants?