Is my air pump adequate?

I have ten 5 gallon buckets linked together in a RDWC system I built. This is my first time attempting RDWC, and was given all the equipment from a local hydro shop by me. They gave me a 35 watt/950 gallon per hour commercial air pump and this was the only questionable item that I wasn't sure about. I wanted to ask if this would create enough dissolved O2 in my system? I figured (950gph/10 buckets)= 95 gallons per bucket. Is this enough? I'm leaving out the 11th bucket which is a controller bucket because I figured none of the 11 total buckets will be filled to exactly 5 gallons. I was reading the thread by Illegal Smile and remember reading that you should have at least 1 watt per gallon in your system. Any help would be appreciated.

Yea your good. I use 3 watts per res and the water is highly agitated. Also depending on the size of the netpots you should have anywhere from 2-3 gallons in each res.

Bucees said:

Yea your good. I use 3 watts per res and the water is highly agitated. Also depending on the size of the netpots you should have anywhere from 2-3 gallons in each res.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the quick reply! I'm using 8 inch net pots by hydro farm that fit right on top of the bucket. I was worried there wouldn't be enough dissolved O2 because I have never tried this before. Is there any validity in the 1 watt per gallon suggestion? I know more is better when it comes to dissolved O2, but I figured there must be some saturation point considering temperature, dissolved solids, air stone size, and air pump size. I would love to be optimized for my system capacity without wasting the extra watts. Can anyone else comment on how many GPH (or LPH) their pump is rated vs total system capacity in gallons (or liters) ??? I would appreciate the comparison. Thanks again Bucees.

My 5 gal buckets hold about 4 gals of water. If you fill to a similar leve, that would be 40 gal. 0,87 W/gal is quite close to the recomendation, so I think you'd be fine. I'd probably double that because I like to overkill things...

I don't use any airstones, I use a single aerated powerhead pump to churn the control bucket and the recycle pump drops water through the top of the site bucket lids.

Glaucoma said:

I don't use any airstones, I use a single aerated powerhead pump to churn the control bucket and the recycle pump drops water through the top of the site bucket lids.

Click to expand...

That's awesome Glaucoma. Does this produce the same results in the plants as having an air stone or would you say it's better? I can see there's an advantage to fast moving water, but I'm curious which is better at dissolving O2?

RastaLee said:

That's awesome Glaucoma. Does this produce the same results in the plants as having an air stone or would you say it's better? I can see there's an advantage to fast moving water, but I'm curious which is better at dissolving O2?

Click to expand...

IMO, Watt for Watt, a powerhead outperforms an airstone setup in my buckets. I've always done a 'waterfall' delivery at each site going through the lid even when I used airstones, as well. The only change I noticed was that I didn't have to mess with hoses and having the roots tangle around them, gang valves, dirty airstones and putting more holes in my buckets.

The downside is that they will add heat because they are submerged pumps. Just use a low Wattage pump. The 20 Watt powerhead range is great, I've used a 20W powerhead on a 6+1 bucket setup and I imagine you could scale it up quite a bit further without a bigger pump. I also use a 50W Iceprobe chiller and heavily insulated buckets. The pump that delivers the solution to each site is also submerged. Works great and is cheap to power for a chilled setup.