Quick question on my upcoming RDWC build.

Budley Doright

Well-Known Member
When i was growing under extra hot conditions in RDWC i used bennies (beneficial bacteria) such as Real Growers Recharge, or a substitute and i had no issues. As someone already mentioned. If you have a good bacteria colony and can keep it alive, they'll make sure you don't get infected with malefics such as pythium... Even in hot conditions.
Even when I was running Bennies I was getting slimed if my temps got above 75. I cant get any of the proven beanies here now so I gave up trying and added the chiller. The things I have noticed is more consistent water chemistry, slightly less plant vigour (could be all in my mind lol) as when running beanies, I did love my hydroguard :(. But like I said, they’ve banned most of the proven products here, or they’re wildly expensive :(. I’ve actually pretty much given up on flooded systems and concentrate on my outdoor grows now, I run indoor for mostly clone stock now. Setting up a DTW system when temps drop in the fall ;).
 

JSB99

Well-Known Member
Could you post a pic of your manifold, JSB? You have updated a few times in your thread. Do you notice a difference in your plants that are farther away from your pump comparatively to the ones that are closer?.
There's no difference in the plants based on their position. This is because of two things. One, because I have a powerful enough pump and the correct setup to keep things even. And two, I use an air pump, along with the water pump, to help bring dissolved oxygen to the center of each root ball. My water pump alone isn't enough to do this, because I originally got the water pump for a much smaller body of water. To qualify as an "under current", my water pump would need to be around 1200 gph. If I wanted, I could increase the pump size and ditch the air pump, but I like the redundency. If either the water, or air pump goes out, the other will keep things running until I get a replacement.
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Return manifold
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Feed manifold
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Water pump manifold
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JSB99

Well-Known Member
Excess pump capacity just heats things up and fucks with water balance.

Undercurrent has the single waterfall in the only bucket you DON'T put a plant in- how fucking stupid is that?

Max DO is easy to achieve and it's usually not the cause of problems. You have to break up the surface to keep any kind of floating scum layer from getting established.
Like you said, easy to create DO. Another tricky thing I'll add, is getting the DO to the center of the root mass.
 

Budley Doright

Well-Known Member
Like you said, easy to create DO. Another tricky thing I'll add, is getting the DO to the center of the root mass.
Ya I’ve seen many root balls looking great on the outside but if you look in the Center it’s a mass of brown. My setup seems to form a square mat that basically fills the tote and doesn’t seem to suffer the same as some round pail balls I’ve seen. All I use is two water fall pipes into the main res.
 

TIMtoKILL

Active Member
Ya I’ve seen many root balls looking great on the outside but if you look in the Center it’s a mass of brown. My setup seems to form a square mat that basically fills the tote and doesn’t seem to suffer the same as some round pail balls I’ve seen. All I use is two water fall pipes into the main res.
Can you post a picture of it? I would love to take some notes on it if you don’t mind?



Like you said, easy to create DO. Another tricky thing I'll add, is getting the DO to the center of the root mass.
Have you experimented with the waterfalls/sprayers shooting into the root mass?

Also I got 3 of the same tubs that you use, they say 27 gallons on them but in your opinion what do they hold?
 

JSB99

Well-Known Member
Can you post a picture of it? I would love to take some notes on it if you don’t mind?





Have you experimented with the waterfalls/sprayers shooting into the root mass?

Also I got 3 of the same tubs that you use, they say 27 gallons on them but in your opinion what do they hold?
I keep about 50 gallons total. A few weeks into flower I drop down to about 40. Use this volume calculator to figure out your gallons. Make a dipstick to mark the gallons.

I made my dipstick out of a piece of pvc. I smeared a layer of aquarium safe silicone over the marks so that they don't wear.

PSX_20180616_190309.jpg
 

TIMtoKILL

Active Member
Did you use aquarium safe silicone to seal your whole system? I’m used to using pvc weld but I don’t know if that’s safe.
 

ttystikk

Well-Known Member
Did you use aquarium safe silicone to seal your whole system? I’m used to using pvc weld but I don’t know if that’s safe.
Speaking only for myself, I use barbed fittings and flexible hose. Everything can be disassembled and reconfigured in minutes.
 

JSB99

Well-Known Member
Did you use aquarium safe silicone to seal your whole system? I’m used to using pvc weld but I don’t know if that’s safe.
Just on the dipstick. The bulkheads seal themselves, and I either welded the pvc, or used threaded w/Teflon tape where I wanted to be able to disassemble the parts.
 

PetFlora

Well-Known Member
more from written info, fa from conclusive, but...

Super-oxygenated water was created using an Oxygen Research Group LLC, Minneapolis, Minnesota, "Water Dog" machine. This machine uses an electrolysis procedure to separate water into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen is released, thereby increasing the percentage of oxygen in the water. (2.5 ppm oxygen in untreated water vs. 12 ppm in treated water) A weak 20-10-20 fertilizer solution was incorporated into the drip irrigation water. Tensiometers were used to monitor the soil moisture. When soil conditions indicated, tunnels were supplied with approximately 50 gallons of water in a one hour period. Plants were watered daily in hot weather, decreasing to several times per week in September as temperatures cooled, and then further decreasing to weekly watering in late September and October, based on tensiometer readings.

Summary & Conclusions
Tomato crops showed an increase in yield when plants were treated with super-oxygenated water, while fruit size was unaffected. Cumulative yields were positive for super-oxygenated treated plants throughout the growing season, although individual harvests varied. The difference in total yields was most positive for treated plots thru mid-September, reaching nearly 16%. Since day-length and heat were decreasing after mid-September, plant growth and yield declined as did the differences between the treated and untreated plots. The difference between treated and untreated plots narrowed as growth slowed as expected since less water was being applied to the plants. Irrigation amounts dropped from nearly 50 gallons per day several times per week to less than 25 gallons one time per week as temperatures cooled. Total yield through mid-October, including all good, imperfect, and green fruit, showed a significant advantage for treated plots (8.2% with 84% confidence level). This yield advantage was maintained even though differences were narrowing between treated and untreated plots as growth slowed and much less water was supplied to the plants in the later part of September and in October.

One caveat for this study is that the plants were installed in the high tunnels somewhat late in the season, due to the cold spring growing conditions in zone 3b
 

Budley Doright

Well-Known Member
more from written info, fa from conclusive, but...

Super-oxygenated water was created using an Oxygen Research Group LLC, Minneapolis, Minnesota, "Water Dog" machine. This machine uses an electrolysis procedure to separate water into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen is released, thereby increasing the percentage of oxygen in the water. (2.5 ppm oxygen in untreated water vs. 12 ppm in treated water) A weak 20-10-20 fertilizer solution was incorporated into the drip irrigation water. Tensiometers were used to monitor the soil moisture. When soil conditions indicated, tunnels were supplied with approximately 50 gallons of water in a one hour period. Plants were watered daily in hot weather, decreasing to several times per week in September as temperatures cooled, and then further decreasing to weekly watering in late September and October, based on tensiometer readings.

Summary & Conclusions
Tomato crops showed an increase in yield when plants were treated with super-oxygenated water, while fruit size was unaffected. Cumulative yields were positive for super-oxygenated treated plants throughout the growing season, although individual harvests varied. The difference in total yields was most positive for treated plots thru mid-September, reaching nearly 16%. Since day-length and heat were decreasing after mid-September, plant growth and yield declined as did the differences between the treated and untreated plots. The difference between treated and untreated plots narrowed as growth slowed as expected since less water was being applied to the plants. Irrigation amounts dropped from nearly 50 gallons per day several times per week to less than 25 gallons one time per week as temperatures cooled. Total yield through mid-October, including all good, imperfect, and green fruit, showed a significant advantage for treated plots (8.2% with 84% confidence level). This yield advantage was maintained even though differences were narrowing between treated and untreated plots as growth slowed and much less water was supplied to the plants in the later part of September and in October.

One caveat for this study is that the plants were installed in the high tunnels somewhat late in the season, due to the cold spring growing conditions in zone 3b
I’m not sure I’m getting the concept. Is all this just releasing the the oxygen that is present in the water anyways? How is it actually increasing the content? I just watched a vid and the thing that made me laugh was the statement “as you can see, our bigger models contains lots of computer stuff” WTF.
 

redi jedi

Well-Known Member
I don't know how much of the O2Grow Emitter system is hype, but this sure looks interesting. University studies on their site

https://www.o2grow.com/store
There has been a couple salesmen on here pushing these things. Never able to answer questions like what happens to the hydrogen? How long would it last in solution with nutes. Will it effect the PH?...and so on.

And the price... only 200$ for a 10gal model! Lol...
 
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