Looking for a good and reliable pump for reservoir for two 4x6 ebb and flow tables

Sam&Max

Sam&Max

Active Member
Hi,
I need a good and reliable pump for my ebb and flow setup. Got two tables each 4x6. I calculated and found out the reservoir should be around 300 liters? Is that true?

Anyways, I need a quality pump for pumping the nutrients in the tables. Price doesn't matter.

Which one can you recommend? Is there any commercial grade stuff?
 
Sam&Max

Sam&Max

Active Member
Ask the pump manufacturers which pump they would advice me to buy? Surely everybody would say, that their pumps are the best. And then I buy some crap :-D
 
HydroRed

HydroRed

Well-Known Member
Sam&Max said:
Hi,
I need a good and reliable pump for my ebb and flow setup. Got two tables each 4x6. I calculated and found out the reservoir should be around 300 liters? Is that true?

Anyways, I need a quality pump for pumping the nutrients in the tables. Price doesn't matter.

Which one can you recommend? Is there any commercial grade stuff?
Click to expand...
EcoPlus have always been very reliable for me. I use 4 185's at any given time. Reliable, priced right, and if you keep em clean they run forever.
Also, how deep are you planning to flood the 4x6 table?
 
Sam&Max

Sam&Max

Active Member
ok. Thanks. But seems like the EcoPlus pumps are difficult to get here in europe.

I am not completely sure yet about the height. I was planning to do rockwool only. I guess I will cut some slabs and lay it in the table, and put some cubes on it. I aim to a total height of the rockwool (the cubes + the slabs) to something between 4" - 6" Then fill it up till half the height of the rockwool (2" - 3").
 
HydroRed

HydroRed

Well-Known Member
Sam&Max said:
ok. Thanks. But seems like the EcoPlus pumps are difficult to get here in europe.

I am not completely sure yet about the height. I was planning to do rockwool only. I guess I will cut some slabs and lay it in the table, and put some cubes on it. I aim to a total height of the rockwool (the cubes + the slabs) to something between 4" - 6" Then fill it up till half the height of the rockwool (2" - 3").
Click to expand...
Figure out how high you plan to flood. Get the cubic measurements of your flood table (LxWxHow high you flood) and convert that into inches. Multiply the total inches x 0.0043 for gallons.
(eg.) 48" x 72" x 4" = 13,824" x 0.0043 = 59.4432 gallons. So (1) of your 4'x6' flood tables flooded to 4" will require approx 60 gallons.
Keep in mind you have to have some in the res while all of the tables are full, so you will want to exceed this number of required gallons for a safeguard against running the pumps dry. How much more to exceed will be depending on the shape of your res.
 
Sam&Max

Sam&Max

Active Member
Ok. This formula just gives you the volume you need to fill the table? Not the reservoir size you really need...

So if I calculated right and I want to flood two tables to a height from 2" to 3" then I need between 60 and 90 gallons (which is 225 to ~340 litres).

As an alternative, so the pump doesn't run dry and to compensate for liquid loss, I think I could flood one table and after the nuts came back to the res, I would flood the other.

If I do that, I would be good with a 300 litre barrel. If I do that, will I run into ph fluctuations?

My situation is a bit delicate, as I can work only with rainwater filtered through osmosis. I am not sure, if I will have enough water to fill a 500 litre barrel with 400 litres (or whatever amount I would need to balance out any fluctuations of the nutrient solution) every one to two weeks when draining the nutrients.
 
HydroRed

HydroRed

Well-Known Member
Sam&Max said:
Ok. This formula just gives you the volume you need to fill the table? Not the reservoir size you really need...

So if I calculated right and I want to flood two tables to a height from 2" to 3" then I need between 60 and 90 gallons (which is 225 to ~340 litres).

As an alternative, so the pump doesn't run dry and to compensate for liquid loss, I think I could flood one table and after the nuts came back to the res, I would flood the other.

If I do that, I would be good with a 300 litre barrel. If I do that, will I run into ph fluctuations?

My situation is a bit delicate, as I can work only with rainwater filtered through osmosis. I am not sure, if I will have enough water to fill a 500 litre barrel with 400 litres (or whatever amount I would need to balance out any fluctuations of the nutrient solution) every one to two weeks when draining the nutrients.
Click to expand...

Yes, stagger the pump timers to only flood one table at a time.
The larger the res, the easier to maintain pH in my experience. Your going to encounter some "pH drift" but you want this to hit the peak zones that your plants use certain nutrients.
You should be just fine with 300L and if you run a sterile res and keep decent temps, you can likely get away with less frequent res changes. Just top off if you feel you may not have enough to supply res changes every 2 wks. Personally, I run a sterile res & I change mine 2 times in an 8 wk run. I "top off" the rest of the time.
 
Sam&Max

Sam&Max

Active Member
Ok thanks.
Forgive my english, but what does it mean "Your going to encounter some "pH drift" but you want this to hit the peak zones that your plants use certain nutrients." ;-)
 
HydroRed

HydroRed

Well-Known Member
Optimal nutrient uptake is achieved at different pH per nutrient. By having a "pH drift" from 5.8-6.4, you achieve the optimal pH range for almost all nutrients across the board. Heres a chart to help you understand:
nutrient-uptake-ph-chart - Copy.jpg
 
GBAUTO

GBAUTO

Well-Known Member
Sam&Max said:
Ok thanks.
Forgive my english, but what does it mean "Your going to encounter some "pH drift" but you want this to hit the peak zones that your plants use certain nutrients." ;-)
Click to expand...
Like HR posted above, nutrients may not be fully available at a single pH-it's a good idea to let the pH drift in the 5.5-6.5 range. That ensures that all of the micro-nutrients are available to the plant to use.
 
Sam&Max

Sam&Max

Active Member
Ok thank you very much. I will keep that information ;-) Finally I also found a slightly bigger tank. Which I can put also under the table...

Actually, I am still wondering about it.... If you have an ebb and Flow table and a reservoir which is a big rain barrel, which is not under the table. How can you drain your nutrients back into the barrell? Do you need two drains in the table... one for overflow and one which drains slower than the input (so when the nutrients get pumped in the table will still fill... but obviously also drain)? Then both of the drains need to go into a reservoir with a pump, which gets activated when this small reservoir fills and then pumps the nutrients back into the main reservoir barell. Any other way to handle it?
 
HydroRed

HydroRed

Well-Known Member
Sam&Max said:
Ok thank you very much. I will keep that information ;-) Finally I also found a slightly bigger tank. Which I can put also under the table...

Actually, I am still wondering about it.... If you have an ebb and Flow table and a reservoir which is a big rain barrel, which is not under the table. How can you drain your nutrients back into the barrell? Do you need two drains in the table... one for overflow and one which drains slower than the input (so when the nutrients get pumped in the table will still fill... but obviously also drain)? Then both of the drains need to go into a reservoir with a pump, which gets activated when this small reservoir fills and then pumps the nutrients back into the main reservoir barell. Any other way to handle it?
Click to expand...
Yes, thats one way to do it, but it seems overly engineered.
Pretty much any conventional F&D table is fed by a res that sits underneath it. Sure you can do it with the aid of pumps and valves etc, but why? By the time you get the pumps,valves,fill valves, pvc etc you have negated the savings of using your rain barrel. You can just get a large short res that fits under your table and skip the mechanicals. In my opinion, the more stuff you got involved, the greater the chance you have for equipment failure and/or leaks.
 
HydroRed

HydroRed

Well-Known Member
Nice find. Its one of those buy it once kinda things though so dont fret on the $$$. Buy that and set it up like a conventionasl F&D table and you eliminate the unecessary risk of leaks from valves,pvc connections,stuck floats etc.
 
Sam&Max

Sam&Max

Active Member
Yeah... Hadn't the time yet to research much about that topic, but can I use hoses for everything? Or do I need pipes... I am worried that the hosing rubber will be damaged by the nutrients or will give hormones or some stuff into the hosing...
Also will hoses get brittle by UV radiation???
 
HydroRed

HydroRed

Well-Known Member
Sam&Max said:
Yeah... Hadn't the time yet to research much about that topic, but can I use hoses for everything? Or do I need pipes... I am worried that the hosing rubber will be damaged by the nutrients or will give hormones or some stuff into the hosing...
Also will hoses get brittle by UV radiation???
Click to expand...

They make black rubber hosing. That way algae wont grow in it since no light gets through it. Hoses will be pretty much well hidden from light under the tables anyways. I personally replace the hoses on every run, but they have never felt brittle by any means and I wouln't imagine them to deteriorate like that....at least not very quickly. Usually piping things with pvc means permanancy. Not much room for "moving" things around or adjustment once you go that route. Black tubing is a bit more forgiving in that aspect and rather inexpensive at like .89 usd per foot for 3/4' in my neighborhood.
 
HydroRed

HydroRed

Well-Known Member
Its just long enough that I cant really clean it properly on the insides of the tubing. I use a total of 16' every time I replace it. I can handle $18 every couple months haha
 
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Sam&Max

Sam&Max

Active Member
HydroRed said:
Its just long enough that I cant really clean it properly on the insides of the tubing. I use a total of 16' every time I replace it. I can handle $18 every couple months haha
Click to expand...
Several wharehouses big high profile operation ;-) ;-)
 
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