Need help with nutriens (atypical setup)

Hi everybody,

I tried to search the forums but couldn't find any info that I could use.

This is my setup:

Normal soil grow (Soil: Bio Bizz All Mix)

Automated watering system

• Reservoir
• Water pump
• Tubes etc..

I just built this system and tought I could use my old nutrients (Bio Bizz Grow, Bloom, Top Max) with the system but the grow shop seller said organic nutriens might fuck up my water pump in no time. He recommended changing to Ionic-nutriens but that was all he said..

Can anyone recommend any good hydro nutriens + Bio Bizz all mix soil combo that don't brake my pump?

I really hate the fact that BioBizz dont tell what's inside their nutrients. I have been groing with BioBizz from day 1 and I really like the results. Maybe the brand is little overpriced but who cares.

Im a total noob when it comes to nutriens and now I have a complicated combo (at least for me) so I really appriciate all tips and recommendation.

Thank you for your time,

Ps. If you recommend a brand could you also tell me some kind of schedule that I could follow?

-DreamK

If you're constantly recirculating nutes I could see it screwing up a pump but if it's just on once in a while to water a soil grow it should be ok unless the nutes clump up and plug the pumps intake which could be fixed with a decent filter.

I use a little fountain pump to circulate my nutes from a DWC tub thru the cooling tank on a water cooler and back to the tub. I used a glue gun to fix some window screen around the base of the pump and any bits of roots or debris small enough to fit thru that 1mm mesh will go thru the pump no problem. Magnetic drive pumps shouldn't be damaged even if something jams up the impeller unless they are left like that for days.

OldMedUser said:

If you're constantly recirculating nutes I could see it screwing up a pump but if it's just on once in a while to water a soil grow it should be ok unless the nutes clump up and plug the pumps intake which could be fixed with a decent filter.

I use a little fountain pump to circulate my nutes from a DWC tub thru the cooling tank on a water cooler and back to the tub. I used a glue gun to fix some window screen around the base of the pump and any bits of roots or debris small enough to fit thru that 1mm mesh will go thru the pump no problem. Magnetic drive pumps shouldn't be damaged even if something jams up the impeller unless they are left like that for days.

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Thank you OldMedUser.

I will do some kind of filter to protect my pump. I though that I need to
keep water running all the time (some kind of waterfall) to keep nutrients
mixed.

I guess I try the system with BioBizz nuts and if something bad happens I
just buy a new pump.

The calibration of this kind of system seems to take forever... It's almost
impossible to get equal amount of water to each plant. If someone has a
tip how to calibrate this kind of system I would be very pleased. My goal is
to get 1,5 liter of water to each plant in 3-5 minutes.

Also more recommendations for BioBizz All Mix + nutrient is needed!

Put an airstone in the nute tank to keep it well aerated and well mixed.

You need to put up a pic or three of your system to help folks see what's going on so they can advise you better.

I know next to nothing about BioBizz nutes. I use AN nutes and don't follow their lousy nute schedule or I'd burn my plants down for sure. After 16 years of using them I know what to do.

OldMedUser said:

Put an airstone in the nute tank to keep it well aerated and well mixed.

You need to put up a pic or three of your system to help folks see what's going on so they can advise you better.

I know next to nothing about BioBizz nutes. I use AN nutes and don't follow their lousy nute schedule or I'd burn my plants down for sure. After 16 years of using them I know what to do.

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I will put a pic tomorrow when I have everything ready to go.

This plan started with air pump + air stones but then someone suggested this "waterfall" method. I guess he didn't know I want to use these organic nutrients. I will add those stones into my res if it really keeps the nuts mixed.

Can you suggest how powerfull air stone + pump I should buy? My reservoir is around 120-140 liters (It's also box shaped not typical barrel).

Thx again for help.

Actually..

I'd love to stick with my original plan and just change the nutes. It's a simple long lasting solution. I just need to find some schedules so they will work with soil. At least GHE Flora has schedules for hydro and soil (with exact same nutes) but Im not so sure is that brand good.

I dont care how much the new nutrients cost as long as work well. In Finland we don't have 500 different brands so I need to pick one of these:

Advanced Hydroponics
GHE
Grow Technology (same as Ionic?)
CANNA
Advanced Nutriens

I keep studying and post few pics + info tomorrow.

I dont know what I want anymore.. This thing seems to be way more complicated than I thought. Hydro nutes might fuck up the microbes in soil so its not ideal solution.

I guess its back to air stones and organic nutes for now..

-DreamK said:

I dont know what I want anymore.. This thing seems to be way more complicated than I thought. Hydro nutes might fuck up the microbes in soil so its not ideal solution.

I guess its back to air stones and organic nutes for now..

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If you want to grow in organic soil then hydro nutes aren't the best choice as it will likely screw up the micro-herd that has to be healthy to convert the organic materials into the salts that your plant actually eat. Earth Juice nutes are a popular organic line here but I'm a crappy dirt farmer so stick to DWC, (my fave and way more productive for me), or soilless, peat based, media like ProMix HP that I feed with hydro nutes.

If you are using good organic soil it shouldn't even need nutes for quite a while depending on the pot and plant size. Fox Farms is popular with my American friends but I never see that here in northern Alberta where ProMix is at every store that sells gardening products until about a month ago when they pack it all away until spring. The nearest hydro store to me is a two hour drive and I'm boycotting it so it's 5 hours to the next one. I'm all stocked up on plant stuff for a couple years so no big deal. I'm getting back into DWC for the bulk of my growing so all I need is RO water and we buy that for drinking water anyway and get that locally.

Pretty much any dual outlet aquarium pump and a couple of big airstones will do the job. Get a pump you can buy repair kits for as they need rebuilds every year or less. I just got a nice 8-outlet ECOAIR5 Commercial air pump that uses a magnetically driven piston and cranks out 1300gph. Should last for years and was only $104CAN/$80US. Made in China tho so who knows. I plan to be running 4 DWC tubs ScroG style with 2-12" airstones in each.

Wsup bro i grow in soil, have same setup, sog with watering system. Pump and tubes. If you wanna jump on mineral nutrients just know this basics infos: you dont need for your A+B veg and flo nutes to be high brands. I tried sooo many and there is no diff at all between the cheap nutri+ and Advanced nutrients. So just get the cheaper it will work the same. For booster, i thought for years that getting Big Bug from advanced nutrients would get the maximum of the plants but thats bullshit! I use 25kg pouch of PK powder that cost around 50$ and that give same results as big bud and switched overdrive frolm advanced nutrients to 25kg pouch of K same shit again.

Only things that really make a diff i can testify was cannaboost that is not actually a boost but a catalysor. It work like not possible and bio cannaboost is more effective than the cannaboost but both of them are wayyyyyy too expensive!! Amino bloom from metrop nutrients recently changed name for amino xtreme and this is striaghttttt fire, never seen a booster like this never ever ever over 10yrs of grow. Unfortunately its from europe and you cant find it in north america for the moment. U need to order from uk, france or holland but it will worth every penny!!!

Cannaboost, bio cannaboost, metrop calgreen, metrop amino bloom... Never forget theses words if never u got the chance to try.

Peace

Thank you guys for great tips.

Im running 18 plants in 11 liter (3 gallon) pots so I guess I need to add nutrients pretty often. At least I have been adding them like BioBizz recommends and the results are amazing.

This is my plan:

1. I will add air stones to keep nutrients mixed (like OldMedUser suggested)
2. My main water pump will feed the nutrient mix 1 time / day for X minutes.
3. After main pump stops -> second pump adds "normal water" to system for X time from second reservoir. I want to clean the tubes/dripper so 0,5dl-1dl / plant (pump runs maybe 10-20 secs).
4. I will create extra changable filter to my main pump that sits in nutrients reservoir.

Thx Bombattak for this great nutrient info. I will definitely try suggested nutrients at some point. Im a decent grower but I know nothing about nutes. I live in northern europe and we have very limited selection of products here. Like 2 soil nutes and 3 for hydro lol..

Today I will finish my setup, try this system for the first time and post pictures and more.

-DreamK

You can always put your water pump in some pantyhose to keep out the big chunks.

TCH that's a good tip. I will think about it.

I tried my system and it is not working like it should. Some of the plants get way more water than others (maybe 20-40%). I don't think it's even wise to calibrate this shitty system.

I was thinking about upgrading my system to something like this:

- Main line comes trough air intake channel
- Main line makes a loop with T-Connector to even the water pressure
- There is 9 individual volume knots for each plant so I can control the water flow
- Lenght of each drip tube is same (9 tubes that go to plants)

What do you guys think about this simple design?




EDIT: My previous system did not have individual controllers. It was just 1 main water line (16mm) with random length drip tubes (6mm).

If using a pressured feed then you should make sure that all feed lines are the same length so you get the same output from each. Even different curves in the lines can cause some to feed less or more than others but the difference should be minimal.

I've never actually used a system like that but studied such fluid dynamics while getting a diploma in chemistry almost 30 years ago.

Ever think about just going full hydro and turning that into RDWC?

I did this on my phone. Bear with me on the shitty adaptation of mine. Lol.

I think you would do better with it setup like this to even out all the flow.

OldMedUser "Ever think about just going full hydro and turning that into RDWC"

I should definitely go for DWC, Hydro or something. It just feels that I don't have the energy to master any other system atm. I know it's kind of dumb to build anything like this...

Thank you for your hard work TCH Your design is definitely better than my first setup. I will sleep on this and upgrade my system tomorrow. I don't know yet which design I choose. I'll let you know how my new setup works and post few pics.

-DreamK said:

I should definitely go for DWC, Hydro or something. It just feels that I don't have the energy to master any other system atm. I know it's kind of dumb to build anything like this...

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For me DWC is so easy and way more productive than dirt farming. I've tried all the different soil/soiless organic nute combos going in the last 16 years and was tossing seeds in the dirt back in the early 70s and smoking leaf. lol I could never keep a houseplant alive to save my life but basically discovered DWC in tubs for myself in 2001. I didn't invent it and had read somewhere about growing like that but I had no internet or books about it but was sure it work and it worked way better than soil for me. My wife thought I was nuts. Crazy like a fox!

I can get 2 - 4x the yield with 1 plant in DWC ScroG than I can get growing an identical clone from the same mother in a pot of dirt or soilless feeding the same hydro nutes. Lot less screwing around and a lot cleaner too. Less bugs as well. I'm going to go with 2 plants per tub with a 4'x20" screen above for tying down branches to with 4 tubs in an 8x4' grow space. Lit up with a 1000W EYE Hortilux bulb hanging off a 6'6" Light Rail. Each tub may have a different strain and they will be in different stages of flowering so they will be stand-alone units with no central rez. I have all the lumber and gear but need to get off my butt and git 'er DUN!

Each tub holds 50L when filled to an inch below the net pots so top ups every 3 days is the norm then I check ppm and add more nutes if it's down from my target and walk away. I cut an inspection hole in each lid so can check the levels and roots, add or pump out water, toss in nutes straight and let the bubbles mix it up. Can go the whole grow without ever changing nutes if I'm lazy but try to do a change after the stretch at least. Say what you want about AN nutes but I never think about pH, and they always give me good results. Been using them for the last 16 years and others. Other than the base nutes I just get Big Bud and Rhino Skin from AN. Got a 500ml free sample of Bud Factor X so will be doing some sort of side-by-side grow with that to see if it's worth paying for. Got some Growtech CalMag and use a bit of epsom salts sometimes.

I'll grind up a couple of my zinc citrate pills and toss some in each tub as well as some iron, b-complex and vit C. Grind it to powder in my mortar and pestle and toss that dose in each tub. Zinc is a very important catalyst in a lot of the complex chemistry that goes on inside a plant, and mammals like us too, and I think it's under-represented in bottled nutes so I add more. Not sure how well it works but doesn't seem to hurt so why not eh.

I can rattle on.

And now I got it!

This is my final setup: (at least for now lol..)



So. I started building my system with T connector and loop but decided to test it before the loop. I measured every drip line individually and the results were amazing!

I put 1 cup under every drip line (9 cups in total) and turned the pump on for around 15 secs (the whole tubing was empty at this point). The middle drip lines got little less water that the first and last. The lowest amount was 104g of water and highest 110g. The difference is around 5% so I don't even try to calibrate this anymore. I also think that the difference came/comes in the beginning of water flow and evens up as the pump keeps pumping on...

I'm very satisfied with this and I didn't even need to touch the volume knots. This system is practical in many ways. If you need to feed 1 plant little less/cut it out you just turn 1 knot. If you want to clean up your tent you just grab all the tubes and put them in the corner..

Just wanted to share my last version so someone can copy it or learn from it. With this kind of design it might be good to leave some extra tubing in the end to even up the pressure. I left around 35 cm.

Now I will add second pump to my system that cleans up the tubes after the main feed so I don't need to clean the tubes between grows. I let you know how everything works out.

I will also post "real pictures" soon when I have more time.

Thank you all for helping me out with this.

OldMedUser I gladly hear more about DWC. It would be a dream to leave that 200kg of soil in the growing shop It seems that as you get older you just can't do all this stuff anymore.