So I want to report what i have seen in the last month regarding the water pump and no water pump.
If anyone was reading in the Advanced Bubblepoincs thread (Which a lot of recent people on this thread have), I was experiencing some plant issues with some well know strains. I could not ever find the root cause of the issue, but one of the things that I did do was remove the water pump and tubes because the plant was looking underfed/overwatered. I was running the standard 6 gallons of water in the tub (Bubblepoincs style system). It brought my res temp down a couple of degree's, if I remember correctly about 5 degree's (F). Also two of the 3 sick plants recovered. Both plants where able to grow new roots out of the net cup and into the water, with out a water pump. There is no doubt in my mind that this was slower, than if I would have had feeder tubes running to the plants, but I think that the lower res temp, and not having a pump (less equipment running in my case for many of reasons (failure, electricity, clogging,etc)) was better for my situation.
Last week I just built a new test chamber. I went to the local big box store and got a small plastic tote box thing, next to all the other plastic totes (reservoir). It was the smallest I could find. I taped the entire container with aluminum tape so it is light tight. I cut a 3'' net cup into the top. I used a very small air pump, and one small air stone. I put a germinated seed (Super Lemon Haze)in rockwool, and used hydroton. I ph'd water to 5.8, EC @ .7. The water was maybe 1/2 inch from the bottom of the net cup. Within 20 minutes all the dry hydroton was wet, and the lid was dripping with mosture, I would say that is almost 100% humidity. Today (3 or 4 days later) there is a root popping out the bottom of the net cup, plant is start to make it second node of leafs. There was maybe 20oz of water (not 100% sure, but it was about a 1/8 of gallon), I'm going to try to see how long I can veg it in this small container. I will then move it to a larger 6 gallon reservoir.
They make the same container, but a little bigger, looks like I could get those small EZ-Cloner pucks to fit right into it maybe get six or eight of them, or three 3'' net cups, but the idea would be to use a shallow reservoir, a high powered air pump, make the conditions in the chamber very humid.
My thought is this, loose the water pump and the excess water from starting small cuttings or seedlings, which means saves nutrient solution from going to waste. I can easily replace the nutrient solution, and it will not be a choir while starting out cuttings or seedlings.
I have a sunleafs 950 GPH air pump on order. I'm going to put this into the 6 gallon bubblepoincs system and see if it makes any difference from the pump i'm using now. I'm also going to make a new lid, which only 3 or 4 openings, and see if that will help keep the humidity under the lid.
