daveroller
Well-Known Member
Here's the basic system:
I put river stones in the bottom of the yellow bucket, an idea that PetFlora gave me. They'll keep some of the tiny Perlite chunks from draining out the holes in the bottom, or clogging them, and they'll make water drain out better, since they don't absorb any.
First I put in the big, round rocks...
and then covered them with smaller stones.
100% Perlite on top, filling up the bucket the rest of the way.
Here you can see the water ring on top around the little seedling, fed by a 1/2" tube attached to a water pump submerged in the res.
I chose the Critical Kush seedling. The roots were about 8" long already. One leaf got damaged when I accidentally let the Rockwool cube get saturated with water for a few days. She's doing much better now.
I set the water pump timer to water the plant for 5 minutes every hour, using an ART-DNe interval timer. Doesn't water during lights out.
Here you can see water draining out the bottom of the bucket while it's getting pumped in at the top:
I used that silver Reflectix stuff to cover the cracks in my shelf, so that light doesn't get into my res.
Here's the whole system with a little PC fan blowing on the plant to make it stronger:
The res holds about 5 gallons of water. For tonight I just filled it with pure water. I'll add 1/4 strength nutes tomorrow.
- yellow bucket on top that will get filled with Perlite
- 5 gal res below
- in between there's a strong shelf that's reinforced with sheet metal on both sides:
I put river stones in the bottom of the yellow bucket, an idea that PetFlora gave me. They'll keep some of the tiny Perlite chunks from draining out the holes in the bottom, or clogging them, and they'll make water drain out better, since they don't absorb any.
First I put in the big, round rocks...
and then covered them with smaller stones.
100% Perlite on top, filling up the bucket the rest of the way.
Here you can see the water ring on top around the little seedling, fed by a 1/2" tube attached to a water pump submerged in the res.
I chose the Critical Kush seedling. The roots were about 8" long already. One leaf got damaged when I accidentally let the Rockwool cube get saturated with water for a few days. She's doing much better now.
I set the water pump timer to water the plant for 5 minutes every hour, using an ART-DNe interval timer. Doesn't water during lights out.
Here you can see water draining out the bottom of the bucket while it's getting pumped in at the top:
I used that silver Reflectix stuff to cover the cracks in my shelf, so that light doesn't get into my res.
Here's the whole system with a little PC fan blowing on the plant to make it stronger:
The res holds about 5 gallons of water. For tonight I just filled it with pure water. I'll add 1/4 strength nutes tomorrow.
.......safety first fellas
