Bubblesnake TeaLab brewer revealed

Richard Drysift

Richard Drysift

Well-Known Member
Hey now our bubble snake has just arrived along with a commercial air pump and mesh bags. Ready to start brewing up some tea. Will be updating with fresh pics of all this cool new equipment we have and then plan on doing a run of fungal tea just to start the party rockin.
IMG_0571.jpeg
If ya didn’t know this is a stock photo of a Bubblesnake compost tea brewer. Made in the USA by TeaLab; sold on EBay and elsewhere online by Ron Wallace of WowWallace organics who btw is a 2-time Guinness World Record holder for the world’s heaviest Pumpkin. Seems legit…
Just trying to grow some nice big juicy buds here and hoping this brewer will help with growing veggies this summer. It works like this:
IMG_0572.jpeg

A mesh brew bag is attached to a metal ring that suspends it right above the air holes. The hose is somewhat flexible and sectioned for easy cleaning. The snake sort of stands up coiled to strike like a fucking cobra inside a 5gal bucket. Bad-ass. Appears already to be much easier to clean than an airstone. Just a quick heavy rinse and it’s ready to store away for next time.
You also need a fairly powerful pump to push the volume of air needed to make a gazoodle of bubbles. The main part of the hose assembly is a stout 3/4” diameter. Ron recommends a 900 GPH pump that connects to a 3/8” air tube. Should be very bubblywubbly.
You can toss your compost in the bucket loose but for easy cleanup I prefer a mesh bag. In the past old panty hose would do for a compost tea bag but sturdy nylon mesh bags are infinitely reusable. Easy AF to dump the contents into my recycling soil once fully spent. You can find mesh compost tea bags but some sellers try to charge more for them than they should. Look for nut milk bags at a few dollars each; same thing for a bit lower cost. Stay tuned for unboxing pics coming soon
 
natureboygrower

natureboygrower

Well-Known Member
Looks cool. I haven't brewed a tea in awhile due to the pia of cleanup. This looks easier.

1 gallon paint straining bags work great for compost. They have an elastic at the top to fit around a paint can, so they're closable. Super cheap and reusable. Any hardware/paint store should carry them.
 
Richard Drysift

Richard Drysift

Well-Known Member
The Bubblesnake comes semi-assembled with a 3/8” airline. It has 2 sections that can be elongated for a deeper barrel if a 5g bucket doesn’t suit your needs. Cost of this set up: $85 minus that bottle of NH liquid fish.
TeaLab has a similar starter set for $90 with a 715GPH pump; not sure I made the right choice here….
IMG_0574.jpeg
 
Richard Drysift

Richard Drysift

Well-Known Member
For the first run I want to brew up a fungal dominant tea. It’s as simple as it gets:
2 cups fresh ewc
1tsp molasses
2 tsp kelp meal
3 tsp Mykos xtreme fungal inocculant

Started with the molasses by adding it to the bubbly water directly. Added everything else to the nut milk bag. This is a shot of the ewc I get from a full tray from my worm factory 360:
IMG_0578.jpeg
You can see there’s just a few eggshells that haven’t been broken down; they will finish decomposing in the recycling soil bin. My preferred method of harvesting ewc is to dump the whole tray on top of a tote bin full of soil and turn on the light above it. The worms burrow deep and I scoop a cup or 2 of black gold into the bag.

IMG_0581.jpegIMG_0584.jpegIMG_0583.jpegIMG_0582.jpeg
 
Budzbuddha

Budzbuddha

Well-Known Member
Richard Drysift said:
Hey now our bubble snake has just arrived along with a commercial air pump and mesh bags. Ready to start brewing up some tea. Will be updating with fresh pics of all this cool new equipment we have and then plan on doing a run of fungal tea just to start the party rockin.
View attachment 5361851
If ya didn’t know this is a stock photo of a Bubblesnake compost tea brewer. Made in the USA by TeaLab; sold on EBay and elsewhere online by Ron Wallace of WowWallace organics who btw is a 2-time Guinness World Record holder for the world’s heaviest Pumpkin. Seems legit…
Just trying to grow some nice big juicy buds here and hoping this brewer will help with growing veggies this summer. It works like this:
View attachment 5361857

A mesh brew bag is attached to a metal ring that suspends it right above the air holes. The hose is somewhat flexible and sectioned for easy cleaning. The snake sort of stands up coiled to strike like a fucking cobra inside a 5gal bucket. Bad-ass. Appears already to be much easier to clean than an airstone. Just a quick heavy rinse and it’s ready to store away for next time.
You also need a fairly powerful pump to push the volume of air needed to make a gazoodle of bubbles. The main part of the hose assembly is a stout 3/4” diameter. Ron recommends a 900 GPH pump that connects to a 3/8” air tube. Should be very bubblywubbly.
You can toss your compost in the bucket loose but for easy cleanup I prefer a mesh bag. In the past old panty hose would do for a compost tea bag but sturdy nylon mesh bags are infinitely reusable. Easy AF to dump the contents into my recycling soil once fully spent. You can find mesh compost tea bags but some sellers try to charge more for them than they should. Look for nut milk bags at a few dollars each; same thing for a bit lower cost. Stay tuned for unboxing pics coming soon
Click to expand...
IMB_4BM89Z.gif
 
Nizza

Nizza

Well-Known Member
the bubble snake looks nice!
have you looked into air lift systems?

Heres a great thread on it. I think air lifts are so cool. someday I might get into brewing teas maybe this summer who knows. I got the worm bin going so I might as well. I'll be following your thread, it looks like you got a great product there.
Its getting cold out where I have my worm360 I was thinking about adding some heat mats. Thanks for sharing your worm bin it is an inspiration, nice looking castings!! Do you have any tutorial information on how to run the worm bin and harvest just the castings?

Ive been adding coco coir as bedding, with perlite, and trying not to overfill it. We throw away alot of scraps so It got full pretty fast. lots of coffee grounds, I add in addition to vegetable /fruit scraps stuff like diastic malt powder, coconut extract powder, aloe vera extract powder, fresh aloe, grokashi, oyster shell, glacial rock dust.. ect

I gotta do more research on how to maintain them but they have seemed happy so far. Just never sure what to do with the bottom bins like is there a way to seperate the bedding from the castings?
 
Richard Drysift

Richard Drysift

Well-Known Member
Nizza said:
the bubble snake looks nice!
have you looked into air lift systems?

Heres a great thread on it. I think air lifts are so cool. someday I might get into brewing teas maybe this summer who knows. I got the worm bin going so I might as well. I'll be following your thread, it looks like you got a great product there.
Its getting cold out where I have my worm360 I was thinking about adding some heat mats. Thanks for sharing your worm bin it is an inspiration, nice looking castings!! Do you have any tutorial information on how to run the worm bin and harvest just the castings?

Ive been adding coco coir as bedding, with perlite, and trying not to overfill it. We throw away alot of scraps so It got full pretty fast. lots of coffee grounds, I add in addition to vegetable /fruit scraps stuff like diastic malt powder, coconut extract powder, aloe vera extract powder, fresh aloe, grokashi, oyster shell, glacial rock dust.. ect

I gotta do more research on how to maintain them but they have seemed happy so far. Just never sure what to do with the bottom bins like is there a way to seperate the bedding from the castings?
Click to expand...
Yes I was looking at building a vortex airlift brewer once but never got around to actually building it. Even had a water cooler type bottle set aside for the project but the cost of PVC piping at the time priced me out of doing it. The Bubblesnake is fairly cheap in comparison.
The bedding should become compost if it is colonized by worms for long enough. I mostly just add raw spent soil and straw mulch for bedding. I put most of my organic inputs into the mix directly; I feed the worms with mostly veggie and fruit scraps along with coffee grounds and microwaved egg shell.
If you want to harvest the castings but leave a majority of worms inside the worm bin take off the lid and shine a bright light on the tray. The worms hate that and will slowly go deeper into the tray underneath; wait like an hour or so for them to get down there. They might take their sweetass time; just be patient. Once the tray is visibly worm free you can dump it into your soil or use the castings for whatever. I just dump the whole thing right into my recycling soil bin because the bin is chock full of worms.
 
Nizza

Nizza

Well-Known Member
Richard Drysift said:
Yes I was looking at building a vortex airlift brewer once but never got around to actually building it. Even had a water cooler type bottle set aside for the project but the cost of PVC piping at the time priced me out of doing it. The Bubblesnake is fairly cheap in comparison.
The bedding should become compost if it is colonized by worms for long enough. I mostly just add raw spent soil and straw mulch for bedding. I put most of my organic inputs into the mix directly; I feed the worms with mostly veggie and fruit scraps along with coffee grounds and microwaved egg shell.
If you want to harvest the castings but leave a majority of worms inside the worm bin take off the lid and shine a bright light on the tray. The worms hate that and will slowly go deeper into the tray underneath; wait like an hour or so for them to get down there. They might take their sweetass time; just be patient. Once the tray is visibly worm free you can dump it into your soil or use the castings for whatever. I just dump the whole thing right into my recycling soil bin because the bin is chock full of worms.
Click to expand...
Thank you so much for the advice! I forgot about drying out the eggshells. I don't own a microwave but I do have an oven and a mortar and pestle. Seems like a cool way to make some additives from my waste. Having a worm farm is such a cool concept it feels great not wasting (certain) scraps. I might start putting my egg shells in the freezer in a freezer bag so I can bake them in a dutch oven inside my oven, and then fine grind them into a powder from now on. Ive just been kinda mashing them in. I agree with the bubble snake being simpler and probably easier to manage, excited to try out some organics this summer and I'll be following along. Thank you again !
 
Richard Drysift

Richard Drysift

Well-Known Member
I opt for nuking the eggshells just to kill off any pathogens that may be in the raw egg left over. Raw egg shells are probably fine for an outdoor compost pile but for my worm bin in the basement I try to cook them in the microwave and then freeze in a bag for storage. Once my gal freezer bag is full of organic scraps I let it thaw for a day or 2 and then dump it on the worms. The more you smash em up the faster they will decompose. They do take a real long time otherwise but the benefits of eggshells are so worth the extra time/effort. I find that the worms like to lay eggs inside the broken shell pieces like baby worm nurseries. I try not to disturb them too much when I toss them in my recycled soil bin. A rusty old shovel does the rest.
If anyone out there is looking to get a Bubblesnake, mycorrhizal innoculant, or compost tea bags check out this link:
Wallacewow.com

The Bubblesnake is so choice… highly recommend getting one if you have the means
 
2cent

2cent

Well-Known Member
Richard Drysift said:
I opt for nuking the eggshells just to kill off any pathogens that may be in the raw egg left over. Raw egg shells are probably fine for an outdoor compost pile but for my worm bin in the basement I try to cook them in the microwave and then freeze in a bag for storage. Once my gal freezer bag is full of organic scraps I let it thaw for a day or 2 and then dump it on the worms. The more you smash em up the faster they will decompose. They do take a real long time otherwise but the benefits of eggshells are so worth the extra time/effort. I find that the worms like to lay eggs inside the broken shell pieces like baby worm nurseries. I try not to disturb them too much when I toss them in my recycled soil bin. A rusty old shovel does the rest.
If anyone out there is looking to get a Bubblesnake, mycorrhizal innoculant, or compost tea bags check out this link:
Wallacewow.com

The Bubblesnake is so choice… highly recommend getting one if you have the means
Click to expand...
I do the same , brown them in a pan and drive the mrs nuts with the bone smell ,, then powder em up in a blender ,
found a lot of peeps soil recipies I though a joke at first adding full raw eggs to their soil for aminos and other stuff lol not dared myself but in the garden where I burried 13off eggs from bad incubator run is the only patch where it’s sprouted tomato seeds all winter , they die and re sprout due to the cold but how they germinate must be compost heat , there was a tomato bush there previously lol, but it’s only happened where the eggs was buried , kids said it’s like lion king and the tomato plants are the chick spirits hehe so now we have tomato plant’s rescued on the window sill named after the chickens ..face palm

fungal teas are good and a lot don’t realise submerisble pumps break hyphae up and kill them , it’s fine for bacterial circulating water but for fungal air lifts and such are better suited , this snakes interesting is it like bluemat hose ? Micro holes allover ?
looks really good but gentle in a good way do you have a microscope to analyse the fungal ? Would be interesting micology is cool, Tim Wilson does some on yt on the vortex brewers Which seem violent too but work under the scope massively I bet the snake would beat them being softer can’t wait to see the pics , what made the plants so bad ?
 
Richard Drysift

Richard Drysift

Well-Known Member
No I’m not analyzing my tea; just gonna hope it works. The Bubblesnake is just vinyl hose with small strategically placed holes in it. They must use heat or something to train it into the standing cobra shape. Ron Wallace designed the bubblesnake for all organic gardening applications; he sells fungal innoculant tea bags on his site but I made my own. I also use mycorrhizal innoculant on the root ball directly at each transplant so I’m sure the pots will get real fungal even if the tea doesn’t do shit. I usually just do microbe teas sometimes with liquid fish added in sometimes not.
Plants looked bad because they were in a small size pot for way too long. Likely also a PH imbalance. A few rounds of tea usually helps green everything back up. They already started looking better after transplanting. I’m not expecting much of a change just wanted to get the soil active again with fungi. I have a microbial tea on the brew now. It is the same recipe as the fungal dominant tea minus the innoculant:
4 gal water
2 cups ewc
1 tblspn molasses
3 tblspn Kelp meal
Fresh pics coming soon stay tuned
 
Richard Drysift

Richard Drysift

Well-Known Member
glassaye said:
Started this last season, happy with the way the plants responded.
Worm castings, mico, black strap and a shot of brewers yeast...never used a 'bag', just threw the solid stuff in the bottom onto my raised beds.
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Yep I also used to just toss everything loose into the bucket but honestly the bag is sooo much easier to clean up after making a tea. The “chunks” in my tea used to clog up my watering can; with a nut milk bag it is much clearer… virtually no chunks. Plus you can milk nuts in it … talk about a win win.
 
Richard Drysift

Richard Drysift

Well-Known Member
So here’s what the plants look like a week after getting the “fungal” tea; full disclosure they were also transplanted into 10g pots along with organic spikes, fertilizers, and granular myco. They were recently placed into the bloom room to start flowering. They got a round of microbial tea last night as well…IMG_0606.jpegIMG_0605.jpeg
Still have more recovering to do but they do look slightly better. Hoping they will green up a bit more before they start throwing pistils. The ones in the back need another week or so; both are my own cross of NY Sour Diesel x White Rhino S1 hybrid.
 

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