Please help with Deep Water Culture pump question

Hey guys, this is my first dwc and at a grand total of 5 days! everything is seemingly going good. I started with 40 litre tub and 2 plants, now I have built a 100 litre tub with six pots. So I've transferred four more 5 day old seedlings over from soil. I got a little external 150litre/hour pump for the first tub, now I'm thinking I definitely need a new pump. There is a 1050 litre/hour submersible pump I am looking at. How do they work? I know they sit in the water, but can they sit at the bottom of the tub and I just plug in the tube and stones from it like the external one? Also, how much heat will this 18w pump produce? Also the plants are outside until I get my light in a few days, can they go from outside to under 400 mh without too much trouble? Thanks for your time and assistance

...with DWC you won't need or want a pump inside the reservoir, ...first because you don't need that kind of pump, all you need is an air pump to deliver oxygen to your rootzone, and second because submersible pumps can add heat to your reservoir and too much heat can cause problems you'd rather avoid.

...something like this will probably work for you pretty well but if you think you may expand then get something bigger than you think you need. (that second pic is a link to where you can source that pump and if you get that it may cost more up front but in DWC you can't have too much air and this pump is big enough to allow you expansion if and when the time comes)





AAPA110L HYDROFARM 112 Watt 110LPM Active Aqua Commercial Air Pump w/ 12 Outlets


...keep in mind that that link is just to the first link in my Google search to this kind of pump and if you search around you may find it for less than this place sells it for.

peace, bozo

thanks for the link , it looks really good if I expand, but do you think this might be overkill if I just stick with the 6 plants? if so, what wattage/ litre per hour external pump do I require for 6 plants that won't make the pump work too hard. Thanks

steveng said:

thanks for the link , it looks really good if I expand, but do you think this might be overkill if I just stick with the 6 plants? if so, what wattage/ litre per hour external pump do I require for 6 plants that won't make the pump work too hard. Thanks

Click to expand...

either of those 2 pumps i pictured above will do the job for you and like i said before, with DWC there is no such thing as too much air so no way to 'overkill' with oxygen, believe me, the more air you pump into your water the happier your plants will be.

...so buy a bigger pump than you think you need and get extra, good quality air stones in case of clogs.

peace, bozo

ok thanks mate