Questions about my home made brewer and tea

Looks like a great DIY setup.
That's a lot of fuckin tea man lol

I have some rather large and hungry girls waiting for feeding. I am brewing 6 cups of compost and have added 6 tbsp of molasses. Looks and smells pretty good so far (20 hours). My questions got left off of the initial post: does it look like enough aeration? and any suggestions on additions to the tea. Happy Growing.

I dont know what kind of compost you are using but I normally use worm castings/vermicompost for my teas and I run that at 1 cup per gallon of water and 1tbs of molasses per gallon of water; unless its a late flowering tea where I'll use 1tsp per gallon of molasses.

Awesome setup though, you a plumber? I am myself, and it just looks like something I'd build...

As far as additions to your teas, thats up to you and more importantly what your ladies need/want...

Veg tea ingredients differ greatly from flowering teas, at least they should anyhow. Veg teas should be bacterial dominant and flowering teas should more or less be fungal dom (past week 4 on a 8 week strain anyhow)...

Personally as far as what I put in my teas, I use a lot of "the revs" TLO teas, I know I'll be shat on by the grass clipping crew for saying that but I've grown some dank nugs using TLO methods and teas, as well as subs supersoil and I've come to a mixture of both methods actually that I'm figuring out at the moment... But his veg/bloom/all purpose teas are on the $.... Google TLO teas and you should be able to find them pretty easily... Aside from that there is 10billion tea recipes floating around on here but remember one thing, if your adding amendments or anything else besides compost/vermicompost.... add all ingredients including molasses/sweetener, brew for 24 hours THEN add your compost/worm castings and brew for another 24 hours, then strain, dilute, apply...

I used teas a lot in the past, but now only really use them when I see my plants need something and top dressing with supersoil or something else is too much in late flower and a nice worm casting tea will usually carry them through... Or most importantly when you piss off the soil, or the soil is off for some reason, a tea puts things back in balance usually..

Edit:
One other thing I forgot to mention, by the looks of the pics where the tea is moving around... its looking a little turbulent in my opinion. Maybe cut down the pressure, you definitely dont want all sorts of agitation like a wave pool, air needs to be introduced and more is better but the bene's cant handle serious agitation... I use 2 or 3 small aquarium pumps (time to upgrade for sure) usually hooked up to 3" walmart air stones.... I can most certainly physically blow harder through the tubes but it would be too much if that makes any sense...

I'm far from an expert on such things. But I would assume as long as all your water is moving you are getting enough air. Certainly looks like it from the picture.

http://www.microbeorganics.com/#So_You_Wanna_Build_A_Compost_Tea_Brewer

pretty sure if you look around on that site, should be in that section but I don't know. There should be some maths to help figure out how much air you need for how much tea.

From Microbeman:

The outcome of this research was, the estimation, that the minimum flow required from an air pump to make compost tea while maintaining the DO2 at 6 PPM, is 0.05 CFM per gallon while the optimum flow is 0.08 CFM per gallon or greater. (the only exception was when utilizing airlifts). This means that most aquarium pumps will not work with a 5 gallon ACT maker, no matter what a couple of guys from Texas say. Two gallons, perhaps.

It's all about your brewer efficiency amount of air, how many solids you add to the water, altitude, temperature, etc.

P-

Pattahabi said:

From Microbeman:

The outcome of this research was, the estimation, that the minimum flow required from an air pump to make compost tea while maintaining the DO2 at 6 PPM, is 0.05 CFM per gallon while the optimum flow is 0.08 CFM per gallon or greater. (the only exception was when utilizing airlifts). This means that most aquarium pumps will not work with a 5 gallon ACT maker, no matter what a couple of guys from Texas say. Two gallons, perhaps.

It's all about your brewer efficiency amount of air, how many solids you add to the water, altitude, temperature, etc.

P-

Click to expand...

Thats why I use 2-6 aquarium pumps.... They arent enough, but.... with certain air stones (less plastic, more stone which are harder to get to stay at the bottom...) you can get more air into the tea than with say those POS walmart ones I use...

I think the OP has the better idea using something like an air frame (not a plane but I dont know what to call it).. But with some fine tuning and appropriate air pressure will be a pretty decent tea maker... I've seen other versions where the makers wouldnt let you see the exact way it was piped up because you wouldnt be buying it from them if they showed you, but it contains larger 1.5 or 2" piping (in a 5 gallon bucket) with a cross tee in the bottom with 4 branches coming up to wye fittings, after that I couldnt figure out what else they used. I believe it had a single barb fitting in the cross tee to let the air in but after that things stopped making sense to me so I dont know but if I come across it again I'll post a link...

I've been on the lookout for one off those air mattress fillers, not the cheapo battery powered, use it once and loose it, I mean the plug in ones with a 3/4" - 1" hose on it... I want to try something like the OP made with that type of pump...

I would look into airlift brewers. This is what I use to brew 8-10 gallons of tea with:

http://www.amazon.com/EcoPlus-Commercial-Air-Single-Outlet/dp/B002JLCDHQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1405528290&sr=8-1&keywords=EcoPlus+Commercial+Air+3

I find the power consumption is less on the eco plus vs the active air.


P-

I got the 65 watt hydrofarm model. Thing moves an insane amount of air and it was fairly cheap here in Canada. Same price I paid for my Tetra pump for an 80 galon tank.

I have it hooked up to a speed controller it moves so much air I can turn it down to half and it still makes water jump out of the bucket.

Long story short buy a commercial pump don't waste your time money and patience on those pet store garbage's. They aren't even that much louder then the original pump I had that I got from the pet store.