Aeroponic Seedling Starter/Cloner

Hey everyone,

I'm new here, and am currently growing some tomato and pepper plants to get some experience with aeroponics until I get a place where I can grow some of the more profitable herbs. I apologize in advance for not having some of the more exciting plants that you other guys have, but I am working on that currently. For now, I want to get as much experience with aeroponic growing as possible, and I figured you guys were the experts so hopefully you won't mind pointing me in the right direction.

I came up with this simple 7 unit aeroponic system to start seedlings in, and possibly to clone, and just wanted to see what you guys thought. It's worked well so far- I've got 3 buckets of plants going, and I started two of the buckets about 10 days ago (the plants on the right side of my room) and one bucket was started about 5 days ago (the one on the left). The plants have been growing under a Tek-5 fluorescent, but I will be switching a MH in a few weeks.

The aeroponic set up I've got is a 400GPH Hydrofarm pump connected to PVC that houses 11 misters. This bucket becomes completely saturated with a fine nutrient mist the instant the pump is turned on, and the misters are angled to shoot both sideways and upwards to cover the entire volume of the root space.


I have the pumps running 15 min on/15 min off, but I have noticed that the reservoir gets a little warm...anyone have any suggestions on how to fix this? I can't have any open spots on the bucket for air flow because nutrient mist will shoot out of it and drain my bucket within 24 hours or less.

The heat problem is going to cost a good chunk of change to correct. If it were weed I'd say start them in perlite and then spray off the roots when they're ready to be transplanted, but those "veggies" are probably a lot more sensitive than Mary Jane.

Thanks for the reply...I actually did some research and found out I could probably switch my timer to only run the pumps15 minutes every hour...I did that today and it seemed to make quite a difference in the heat build up. I also realized that I could probably switch to a 250GPH pump might and get adequate spray, which would also help the heat since it's a smaller motor. I'm going to do some more experimenting and see what happens.

TheFaux said:

The heat problem is going to cost a good chunk of change to correct. If it were weed I'd say start them in perlite and then spray off the roots when they're ready to be transplanted, but those "veggies" are probably a lot more sensitive than Mary Jane.

Click to expand...

You would probably have better results w/ a 1 min on 4 off cycle.
this will keep ur pump frm heatin up ur rez, and not alow ur root zone to dry out while @ the same time allow max oxegenation in the root zone.

they sell special times with 1 min on and 4 min off at my local hydro store check your area

Thanks for the info guys, I'll look into getting one of those timers today.