About a pound? Uncharted HPA Territory?

churchhaze said:

I don't even make a stock solution with the KOH, but if pH up is needed, I measure flakes with a mg scale.

http://www.essentialdepot.com/product/KOH-2.html

(assuming pH up is needed)

Honestly, people using potassium silicate may as well just switch to using potassium hydroxide.

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Potassium hydroxide falls out when in solutions with pure phosphoric acid.

Carolina Dream'n said:

Potassium hydroxide falls out when in solutions with pure phosphoric acid.

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Incorrect. As you add KOH to H3PO4, first you get KH2PO4, then you get K2HPO4.

Solubility of these 2 chemicals at 20C...
KH2PO4 = 22.6g/100g
K2HPO4 = 150g/100g

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solubility_table

pKa of phosphate buffer



http://www.cable-online.cn/article/values-phosphoric-acid/

This says that between ~3pH and 9pH, the majority of phosphates are in H2PO4- form. (the type plants like to take up)

Or if you won't take my word for it (i mix these chemicals frequently...), do mix them yourself and see what happens. I've been making concentrated stock solutions since 2009... Believe me, I would know if KH2PO4 wasn't soluble..

Not only is it soluble, you won't find better cation for our application to hold phosphate in than K+ ions, and potassium hydroxide is a strong base.

just found this thread to the op throw out the teas and other aspects of organics with your system make it closed loop and watch the fucking thing take off
as or silica its main use really is for pest and disease control you have enough Silica from tap water per percentage to dry mass of the plant
those plants should be twice that size

There has never in history been any isolated cases of silicon deficiency regardless of the levels of silicon. Like B2 and amino acids, growers are simply looking to overcomplicate something that's already complicated enough for them.

Plants need H, C, O, N, P, K, Ca, Mg, S, Fe, B, Mn, Mo, Zn. They don't need Si for anything. If you want to feed your plants, feed them what they eat.. not dissolved glass. (which I think is downright absurd)

churchhaze said:

There has never in history been any isolated cases of silicon deficiency regardless of the levels of silicon. Like B2 and amino acids, growers are simply looking to overcomplicated something that's already complicate enough for them.

Plants need H, C, O, N, P, K, Ca, Mg, S, Fe, B, Mn, Mo, Zn. They don't need Si for anything. If you want to feed your plants, feed them what they eat.. not dissolved glass. (which I think is downright absurd)

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I use potassium silicate as part of my foliar feed recipe, as a surfactant and to raise leaf surface pH as a defense against powdery mildew. Is this useful or am I wasting my time and money?

ttystikk said:

I use potassium silicate as part of my foliar feed recipe, as a surfactant and to raise leaf surface pH as a defense against powdery mildew. Is this useful or am I wasting my time and money?

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I think there is a product called "snow storm" that's meant to be a foliar feed, and it's main ingredient is potassium hydroxide. Does it work as defense against powdery mildew? I'm not sure as I've never had issues with PM before. All I can say there is I highly doubt the silicates sprayed on the surface will make any difference. rather than the fact that it's high pH.

Raising leaf pH may work against PM. It may also clog the pores of the plants and make respiration harder. I have treated PM with two applications of a foliar tea before and it never came back. I had tried azamax and it worked, but it came back.

There aren't any organics in my system aside from the ammonium in the fertilizer. The bacteria are just there to out compete the pythium and or slime. There will ALWAYS be some organics in your system because the plant roots exude sugars and you can't stop them.

I'm throwing in the towel.

First grow try I got stunted growth and lots of problems. Roots stayed white with bleach. Doser kept over dosing from the set ppm. The only scientific explanation I have is that the chlorine combined with the ammonium to form chloramines. Nonetheless, the free chlorine off memory was still way too high for the ORP reading I got, so it could be chocked up to bad equipment too. Not just the pot forums, but also the scientific journals are all full of holes. I think they must be toking up too.

Second grow I got root rot. It really smelled like rot. My reservoir had no stones and temps were in the 80s. No beneficial bacteria, no sterilization.

My third grow I got root rot. I tend to believe it was a fungal infection. The roots never smelled like rot. One day I left the drain valve open and I may have gotten some back siphoning. The root chamber and reservoir smelled musty. The roots turned brown, leaves died. I had res temps under control, I had beneficial bacteria, and I had aeration. I tried using agri-fos as a foliar but it didn't help.

I'm going to cull everything in there and I think I'm going to do top drip drain to waste with rockwool.

RDWC isn't bad, either. Sorry to hear about your troubles...

I really wanted to see your system rock, the potential is there but it tough to get it all dialed in. That's one of the major reasons I ditched active hydro yrs back. With drain to waste using RW cubes you'll only need to water every few days, coco and perlite would be more frequent. If you want to really simplify, I'd recommend going hempy, your table would be perfect for a 2 liter bottle array.

I considered hempy, but it's not feasible with the table being so large and sloped to drain. Ok not hempy, but a few aquavalves on the bottom.

For my moms I have a 4x2 tray I made also with pondliner. 5 gallon bucket houses an aquavalve. The plants are in ~12x12 square pots filled with perlite. I start them in solo cups for ease of use and the dirt helps if you're late on refilling the water. I have one in strictly perlite and almost lost it after I snapped a feed line filter fitting and didn't notice until several days later.

The potential is definitely there, I don't know that the high pressure was necessary at all. I had plants sitting in an lpa cloner doing just as well. the high pressure pump just adds to the electricity use and doesn't help really - unless you're going to run drain to waste or can't have a big reservoir.

Hopefully I'll come back to it at a later date. I'd like to try some other biodegradable sterilizing chemicals when I have wiggle room for some failure again. I'd really like to see it succeed not just for the growing of weed - but for food. It'd really be something to advance in agricultural technology in a sustainable low cost way that produces more, potentially faster, with no need for a medium. Feel free to use my ideas, no patents or credit needed here, just want to make the world a better place.

ShirkGoldbrick said:

The potential is definitely there, I don't know that the high pressure was necessary at all. I had plants sitting in an lpa cloner doing just as well. the high pressure pump just adds to the electricity use and doesn't help really - unless you're going to run drain to waste or can't have a big reservoir.

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The reason why it performed no better than LPA was you should have been misting 3.5 gallon per day, not 3.5gal every misting cycle. To put it into context, its equivalent to a single 800LPH nozzle. A 1min/5min cycle would push about 3,200L through the chamber(s) per day

1 minute on 5 minutes of watering at 190 psi. This should be something like 3 and a half gallons of mist every cycle.

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Atomizer said:

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.

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Atomizer, I was about to use six 5-gallon buckets with one 30um droplet nozzle for each bucket that each do 1.4 ml a second, nozzles at bottom pointing up. HPA DTW 1s/5min

1) Is this bucket too small for HPA with SOG type grow?

2) If I can use these buckets, would it be better to have nozzle mounted half way up bucket wall and pointed horizontally?

below are some shots of the set-up that is still under construction...

I've been debating putting in one giant chamber... but had already done this work


Ahh I see below that perhaps this will work:

Atomizer said:

HPA and AA can operate in 12" depth with the right nozzles, 6" roots wont pose much of an obstruction to the mist. Using large flat chambers for such small plants seems like an inefficient use of the floor space but i guess they`ll have to fit in with the existing greenhouse layout, lighting arrangements etc.

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Wow... not to be a dick, but this has gotta be one of the most epic grow fails EVER! I mean how much money did you throw away on all of those crappy led panels?? More money than brains going on here.

Wow, just wow.....