About a pound? Uncharted HPA Territory?

ShirkGoldbrick · Mar 16, 2015

Atomizer said:
If they are in rooters check they`re not soaking wet.

They are and they are, looks like someone's going to need a timer after all.

What times do you recommend per hour? Keep in mind it takes about 10 seconds to just build pressure and the lowest time I can do is about 1.5 minutes.

Atomizer · Mar 16, 2015

I`d turn off the mist and let them dry out a bit. Use the lowest time you can manage as long as its enough to fill the entire chamber with mist. Cover or remove nozzles firing directly at the rooters, the residual mist will keep them damp enough until the roots clear the netpot.

ShirkGoldbrick · Mar 16, 2015

The mist is off for now. I'll have to look into getting a timer. You did confirm my suspicions though. I was kind of like...well the tips are getting burned juuuuuust a little but they're yellowing like they're hungry. Well, 1.0 EC might be just a hair strong for them but I've definitely seen that kind of yellowing before when you over water dirt.

None of the misters are aimed at the plants. I was afraid if I put them too close that the roots would clog them (they still might). The deepest is ~16" and the shallowest is ~12".

The plants are equidistantly spaced with 12" between each plant except for those on the edge where there is only 6" of table. The front edge of the table has a water line, and there is another line in between every row of plants from front to back, but the back row does not have a line. The misters are set to spray at 45 degree angles towards the back of the table and placed in between the rows of plants horizontally. I set it up like this to try and ensure I don't dry anyone out and also to try and prevent roots from growing into the misters and clogging them up (we'll see).

The water lines start halfway up the table on the reservoir side and slope down towards the bottom to the other side. The table itself slopes the opposite direction, bringing the water back to the reservoir (it has a front to back slope too as it's 6' deep).

There is an automatic drain valve at the end of every water line. I wanted the ability to drain them out just in case I decided to add a timer at some point in order to try and prevent clogging as well as for cleaning purposes.

I know the previous picture I posted was kind of bad but at near 200psi the entire table is filled up with mist once I build pressure very quickly.

I didn't want to go the "true HP" route because honestly the plants I've seen just weren't that impressive and I think it's due to the fact they're under watered. They just never seem to get a good gpw. I admit it's hard to judge though because in all these grow journals probably aren't running CO2, or they're running a single 90W UFO, flushing for two weeks and lollipoping, etc.

Edit: That didn't post right originally.

ShirkGoldbrick · Mar 16, 2015

Another question,

I've been using hypochlorous acid but it's evaporating much too quickly. I think the stuff is just evaporating out of the water in the misting chamber. I'm going through about 100g of the stuff a day and by the next day I've got 1ppm total chlorine, 0ppm free chlorine, and an ORP of 350-400mV.

I know that chloramines don't readily evaporate so much and I could try DM Zone instead for injection but the stuff is kind of expensive especially if it also ends up evaporating in the mist as well.

I could try making a solution of physan 20 to use too but there's no "dose" for it as it's banned for agriculture (kills fish if it hits them before it breaks down into nitrogen in 7 days, but this wouldn't prevent its use in a recirculating system).

I could also try using ozone, even though it degrades quickly it could be manufactured on site as necessary. At close to 200 psi though I couldn't put it in after the pump so it would have to be venturi injected prior to the pump, but it would need to last long enough to make it back to the reservoir to register on the ORP meter or I'd just be dumping more and more in and hurting the plants.

I could use peroxyacetic acid but you can't buy the stuff retail and it breaks down back into hydrogen peroxide and acetic acid over the course of a few days.

Atomizer · Mar 16, 2015

didn't want to go the "true HP" route because honestly the plants I've seen just weren't that impressive and I think it's due to the fact they're under watered.

As you`ve discovered its just as easy to drown plants as underwater them using hp mist. Neither extreme produce impressive results but the blame lies with the grower not the method

ShirkGoldbrick · Mar 16, 2015

Well, I actually think it's much easier to under water them. Water uptake depends on A LOT of factors..lights, humidity, temperature, nutrients, anti-transpirants, etc.

Instead of using a timer I think if you really wanted to go HP (and I saw this in an actual agricultural journal on a reputable database some time ago) you need to mist by humidity not timing. In the experiment I read they had a humidity sensor(s) in the root chamber and it would release mist based off the humidity. Except I don't know of any retail humidity controllers except for the ones from China on ebay for incubation chambers.

Plus, unless you had a small chamber it would probably be best to have several spread out that took an average overall humidity.

I think humidity alone wouldn't grow the plants, but the sprayers would saturate the plants and say when the chamber drops to 95% humidity it sprays them again for a second or two, or 80% or something..you'd have to experiment around with it but it would take variations in water uptake out of the equation.

Atomizer · Mar 16, 2015

Using humidity to control mist comes up every now and again. It doesnt work for 2 reasons, measuring water in is gaseous form is fruitless when plants are using liquid water. Even if using chamber RH was useful, when you deliver the mist there`s a time lag of minutes before the chamber RH peaks and it drops back so slowly that the roots will run out of water. It may not drop to where it started before the misting so automating it would be difficult. The results of some tests i did are in one for the hpa threads but i`ve no clue which one as it was a couple of years ago at least.

ShirkGoldbrick · Mar 16, 2015

Atomizer said:
. The results of some tests i did are in one for the hpa threads but i`ve no clue which one as it was a couple of years ago at least.

Good to know.

Well guess what I just found? Yup, thrips. These may have been contributing to the leaf issues. I found them on a few of the plants.

Naturally I sprayed the leaves tops and bottoms with azamax at 60mL per gallon for both the main table and the mothers. The thing I can't figure out is when I'm supposed to respray.

Here's a close up of one of the little buggers. I carefully pulled him off the leaf with the edge of the sticky card.

I suppose now is as good a time as any to actually finish sealing up my room lol. I still have one opening and it's right behind my fan.

ShirkGoldbrick · Mar 17, 2015

Day 6

Well I went out and bought a timer today at the hydroshop. I'm currently running 1 minute on every 30 minutes. Here's an update of the trays with the LEDs off.

They're growing, but all and all still not happy. I'm not sure where the blame lies: over watering the rooters with the small roots or the thrips. It seems like every plant had a few on it but they're really hard to spot. The ones I found tonight are dead, I'll spray again in a couple of days to make sure I got them all.

As you can see a few are extra droopy. They'd been standing up fine in the rapid rooter tray without the humidity dome. That means the cause is: over watering the rooters, thrips, heat, low humidity

The room was set to 80 but checking the temperature at the canopy it was getting up to 85 so I turned the room down to 75 and now the canopy is 78-80.

I also have now been able to get humidity up to 70% from 40% with a humidifier, I don't wanna go too high but I'd like to give the weaker ones a bit of an easier time. They're still under almost 40 watts per sqft.

The half a dozen that are drooping have gotten makeshift humidity domes.

ShirkGoldbrick · Mar 18, 2015

Day 7

Just a short update.

Well the rapid rooters seem to stay soaked thoroughly so I've stepped down to a minute every hour One minute of misting I think is ~2 gallons of water in the chamber.

I also found a single live thrip while inspecting, so I sprayed them again with azamax. This time I made sure I sprayed the tops of the trays too not just the plants. I sprayed the floors and the rails for mounting the netting. I may have to get another product to take care of these little buggers if they aren't gone by a third spray.

Since I have to move my table in order to get to the back side I used one tray of rooters on the front and another on the back. The first tray had a lot more failures to root, and it's the one with all the sickly plants. The back of the table doesn't have a single problem and they're growing a lot better. It's because of this that I think the one tray must have gotten the thrips while perhaps the other didn't and so I think they had thrips while rooting and that's the cause of all my issues. Maybe they came in the rapid rooters??

Atomizer · Mar 19, 2015

With 2gal per minute theres no danger of undermisting

The soaked rooters (and thrips) are slowing down growth, causing stress and costing you in time. At some point it may not be worth persevering with these and easier to start over.

hydroMD · Mar 19, 2015

ShirkGoldbIick said:
Day 4

Well today we learn about Calcium hypochlorite and the crappy solubility of store bought stuff. A "mud" will form on the bottom of your ORP injection bucket.

Disclaimer: Calcium hypochlorite products come with a warning that it's a violation of federal law to premix, kind of like how it's against federal law to grow MJ

The fix to this, I presume, is to put the intake for ORP injector several inches from the bottom of the bucket so at least you don't suck up pure mud. I have adjusted accordingly.

Old filter:
View attachment 3372945

New filter for comparison:
View attachment 3372946

I'm struggling with humidity right now. It seems a dehumidifier is actually completely unnecessary. Running 4k LEDs seems to make the minisplit run in cooling mode so much that it dropped the humidity to 38%. I turned off six of the lights in order to assist them with the shock from transplanting as well as to reduce the cooling load and hopefully raise humidity a little. I also put in a small bedside humidifier. Doing these two things has raised humidity to 50%. The poor little things barely have roots coming out of their rooters.

Since I changed the filter I also decided to change the reservoir for shits and giggles to see how the numbers actually add up one by one.

Reservoir: 50 gallons
RO water treated with UV - 0.1 EC
Adding in 250mL Silica blast and the last two tablespoons of superthrive I had - 0.47 EC

I had the ORP controller turned off and set pH to 9 and EC to 1.47 (so pH adjustment wouldn't affect EC - it's stupid how they run at the same time by default since nutes lower pH anyway)

After achieving equilibrium I set pH to 6 and turned on the ORP controller. I achieved a pH of 5.98 and an ORP of 700mV at 2.6EC. For those of you who struggle with math that accounts for 1.2 EC.

So in order to maintain an EC of 1.0 for nutes with ~.47 being silica it's necessary to set target EC to 2.6.

Such small girls, if i could add any inputit would be to cut that down to .7ec until you see some rebound.

Let them get established and slowly work up to 1.2-1.5 at your peak feeding

ShirkGoldbrick · Mar 19, 2015

Atomizer said:
With 2gal per minute theres no danger of undermisting The soaked rooters (and thrips) are slowing down growth, causing stress and costing you in time. At some point it may not be worth persevering with these and easier to start over.

Well the problem with starting over is I'd likely be right back where I am (minus thrips). I've tried using a smaller aero setup to create aeroclones and it buried close to 160 of my babies before I took it down and went to rooters. I know heisenberg and them swear "the slime" is brown algae but I took some scope pictures of it in another thread and it looks like iron bacteria to me. Beneficials couldn't stop it.

Unless I wanted to get a second ORP controller and pump I'm stuck with rooters lol. It took me about a week to root them but only a few had really robust root systems. I think in the future after 1 week I should just put slightly nuted water into the rooter tray and wait for them all to have roots popping out the bottom not just the sides.

Since I added the timer they've darkened up and all new growth is fine, no new yellowing leaves. I'm REALLY confused about that though because one of the most successful aero grows I've seen is on ICMAG by a guy named pirate I think and the thread was something like, "supercharge your growth with aeroponics".

Anyways he used LPA something like 5 minutes on 3 minutes off in 2" netpots with clones started in rooters. He didn't seem to have any issues with over watering but I suppose most of the low pressure mist missed the rooters/roots and fell right back down to the bottom of the tray. Although I think he also had the neoprene pushed into the net pot too and I can't figure that one out either because I just have to set mine on top or they'll squish the rooter.

It's really hard to say if any of it was caused by over watering. Under 60x magnification I could see damage on the yellowed leaves.

I may start some more clones just in case but I imagine the 2-3 weeks to get them with robust root systems I should be able to nurse (almost) all of my other ones back to health and be farther along. I imagine I'm going to lose 2-3 of them but since I'm scrogging I'll just weave their neighbors in over their spots. It's kind of the same deal with my mothers lol....one on the bottom got eclipsed by it's neighbors and is barely there...the others are beasts and hog all the light.

hydroMD said:
Such small girls, if i could add any inputit would be to cut that down to .7ec until you see some rebound.

Let them get established and slowly work up to 1.2-1.5 at your peak feeding

I actually did lower the EC which I forgot to mention yesterday. There was maybe 2mm of burn on a lot of the tips and so I had decided to lower it.

I also forgot to mention that with the timer I'm:

A) not evaporating off all my chlorine so fast and so it's lasting a lot longer
B) have reservoir temps down to 64 now with the chiller which also may contribute to the chlorine lasting longer as there's less of a biological load to fight, but the temps in the chamber are at 72.

Also since I haven't mentioned it anywhere on this thread either I'd like to try (on an isolated few plants) triacontanol and chitosan. I have some chitosan oligasaccharide (sp?) and once they're more established I'd like to try 1ppm tria and 125-130ppm chitosan as a foliar spray once a week to see how it affects growth.

hydroMD · Mar 19, 2015

ShirkGoldbrick said:
Well the problem with starting over is I'd likely be right back where I am (minus thrips). I've tried using a smaller aero setup to create aeroclones and it buried close to 160 of my babies before I took it down and went to rooters. I know heisenberg and them swear "the slime" is brown algae but I took some scope pictures of it in another thread and it looks like iron bacteria to me. Beneficials couldn't stop it.

Unless I wanted to get a second ORP controller and pump I'm stuck with rooters lol. It took me about a week to root them but only a few had really robust root systems. I think in the future after 1 week I should just put slightly nuted water into the rooter tray and wait for them all to have roots popping out the bottom not just the sides.

Since I added the timer they've darkened up and all new growth is fine, no new yellowing leaves. I'm REALLY confused about that though because one of the most successful aero grows I've seen is on ICMAG by a guy named pirate I think and the thread was something like, "supercharge your growth with aeroponics".

Anyways he used LPA something like 5 minutes on 3 minutes off in 2" netpots with clones started in rooters. He didn't seem to have any issues with over watering but I suppose most of the low pressure mist missed the rooters/roots and fell right back down to the bottom of the tray. Although I think he also had the neoprene pushed into the net pot too and I can't figure that one out either because I just have to set mine on top or they'll squish the rooter.

It's really hard to say if any of it was caused by over watering. Under 60x magnification I could see damage on the yellowed leaves.

I may start some more clones just in case but I imagine the 2-3 weeks to get them with robust root systems I should be able to nurse (almost) all of my other ones back to health and be farther along. I imagine I'm going to lose 2-3 of them but since I'm scrogging I'll just weave their neighbors in over their spots. It's kind of the same deal with my mothers lol....one on the bottom got eclipsed by it's neighbors and is barely there...the others are beasts and hog all the light.

I actually did lower the EC which I forgot to mention yesterday. There was maybe 2mm of burn on a lot of the tips and so I had decided to lower it.

I also forgot to mention that with the timer I'm:

A) not evaporating off all my chlorine so fast and so it's lasting a lot longer
B) have reservoir temps down to 64 now with the chiller which also may contribute to the chlorine lasting longer as there's less of a biological load to fight, but the temps in the chamber are at 72.

Also since I haven't mentioned it anywhere on this thread either I'd like to try (on an isolated few plants) triacontanol and chitosan. I have some chitosan oligasaccharide (sp?) and once they're more established I'd like to try 1ppm tria and 125-130ppm chitosan as a foliar spray once a week to see how it affects growth.

Very nice. Beautiful setup brotha

GrowUrOwnDank · Mar 19, 2015

ShirkGoldbrick said:
Grow Day 1

Room:
-4 Kw LEDs
-Dehumidifier
-Minisplit
-Carbon filter
-CO2 controlled by small water heater, run at 1500ppm

View attachment 3370879

Table:
-Steel sprayers being run at 170psi, no timers - I'll be interested to chart growth rates..anyone running high pressure always ran timers and I'm not sure it's necessary.
-Reservoir hooked up to a chiller
-UV light in reservoir

Water:
-Run through reverse osmosis and stored in a holding tank with a UV light

pH/EC/ORP
-ORP controller is connected to maintain 600-700mV by utilizing a solution of calcium hypochlorite
-pH/EC controller are set to maintain a pH of 6 and variable EC, all solutions I've mixed myself.

View attachment 3370878

Note: The calcium hypochlorite will raise the EC reading - It's going to be trial and error getting it set correct EC based on how the plants look.

And now, for what you've all been waiting for:
View attachment 3370877

Holey mudder of badebus son, you take this shit way seriously. Nice job mang.

thenotsoesoteric · Mar 19, 2015

So you're having trouble getting clones to root? Can you fit net cups with hydrostone in the system so the clone stem is exposed to water without the rooter plugs? I normally root the clones in rock wool first since I hardly ever lose clones to slime in rock wool.

I know the only problem I ran into with homemade cloner buckets is high water temps. I run what's basically a NFT, just a 6 inch PVC pipe with sprayers/mister inside and have not had too many issues other than water at 72 or higher. Then I got slime so I used calcium chloride or what ever pool shock is and that cleared up the slime.

ShirkGoldbrick · Mar 19, 2015

thenotsoesoteric said:
So you're having trouble getting clones to root? Can you fit net cups with hydrostone in the system so the clone stem is exposed to water without the rooter plugs? I normally root the clones in rock wool first since I hardly ever lose clones to slime in rock wool.

I know the only problem I ran into with homemade cloner buckets is high water temps. I run what's basically a NFT, just a 6 inch PVC pipe with sprayers/mister inside and have not had too many issues other than water at 72 or higher. Then I got slime so I used calcium chloride or what ever pool shock is and that cleared up the slime.

I had a LP aero system that I had problems rooting clones in. Temps were an issue. I had probably 5-6 feet of head from pump to sprayers as it was the only way I could fit it in my tent and I was using a utility pump with just the bottom submersed in water 15 on 15 off. I still got temps up to 80-85, the reservoir was outside the tent and sitting on a cement floor. I'd heard you could run higher temps with EWC tea and I tried that too but I still got the slime. I have some scope pictures of the stuff in another thread and I believe it to be iron bacteria, the only way to guarantee a win against it is with an ORP controller and calcium hypochlorite as you mentioned.

In rapid rooters I had most of the clones root, but I suspect one tray had gotten thrips, they're the only ones I've had any issues with - the other ones aren't growing tall but are like little balls of bush. The ones from the suspect tray have a few that are droopy, a few not really showing any roots, and more leaf damage. I presume this to be a problem of the thrips.

I was looking around at all the extra parts I had on hand and I realized I have everything I need to build a bubble cloner. I think I'll put one together today and start it outside the grow where temps wont be an issue. Once they have nice roots I can then look at the ones in the main table and decide whether or not to switch.

thenotsoesoteric · Mar 19, 2015

ShirkGoldbrick said:
I had a LP aero system that I had problems rooting clones in. Temps were an issue. I had probably 5-6 feet of head from pump to sprayers as it was the only way I could fit it in my tent and I was using a utility pump with just the bottom submersed in water 15 on 15 off. I still got temps up to 80-85, the reservoir was outside the tent and sitting on a cement floor. I'd heard you could run higher temps with EWC tea and I tried that too but I still got the slime. I have some scope pictures of the stuff in another thread and I believe it to be iron bacteria, the only way to guarantee a win against it is with an ORP controller and calcium hypochlorite as you mentioned.

In rapid rooters I had most of the clones root, but I suspect one tray had gotten thrips, they're the only ones I've had any issues with - the other ones aren't growing tall but are like little balls of bush. The ones from the suspect tray have a few that are droopy, a few not really showing any roots, and more leaf damage. I presume this to be a problem of the thrips.

I was looking around at all the extra parts I had on hand and I realized I have everything I need to build a bubble cloner. I think I'll put one together today and start it outside the grow where temps wont be an issue. Once they have nice roots I can then look at the ones in the main table and decide whether or not to switch.

If you sprayed them for the thrips, that may have caused the extra stress that put the hurting on those clones. Glad to hear it was only a few. Good luck and hope shit gets going well for you this run.

ShirkGoldbrick · Mar 19, 2015

Day 7

thenotsoesoteric said:
If you sprayed them for the thrips, that may have caused the extra stress that put the hurting on those clones. Glad to hear it was only a few. Good luck and hope shit gets going well for you this run.

I hope so too, but looking at them I'm doubting it. I think atomizer may be right about the wet rooters..the rooters are constantly soaked and I keep losing leaves. It's probably a combination of the wet rooters and thrips. It's a few that are really hurting, but about half aren't in great shape. The ones in the back are doing the best, they came from a different cloning tray. Here they are today.

Just in case they don't make it I've pieced together a bubble cloner. I've never made or used one before so I hope I've done it right. I'm using an under bed storage tote ~70 quarts and I'm using a 300 gallon tank air pump with 5 12" stones arranged like you'd see the number 5 on a domino. I put clonex on them but it just washed right off, so I just let it dissolve into the water and poured the remainder of my shot glass in too.

Here's a couple shost of the new clones, it's pretty packed in there lol.

thenotsoesoteric · Mar 19, 2015

Don't feel bad, I've never had very good success with rapid rooters or the rooter plugs. I've found that a simple bucket style cloner with just a pump and a sprinkler head have been the best for starting clones to run in these systems but requires full attention 24/7 or the plant could dry out if there is a problem. Water temperature has to stay below 72 to avoid root rot, also.

Rock wool cubes have been the easiest and most efficient way for me to start many 20+ clones at once, just remember to water daily! I actually always just clone in rock wool. Easy peasy, cut clone stick in rock wool and you're done. Just water with ph'd water and you're cool. Maybe get a heat pad if it's chilly.
I've never cloned in a bubbler before, but I do veg in them and they're great so should be cool.

Cheers.

About a pound? Uncharted HPA Territory?

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