Rainforest 66 / Rainforest 318 grow

Greetings,

Setup is a rainforest aeroponics unit, i have the 6 inch and 3 inch net cup trays.
Light is just a 400 watt HPS
couple fans is all really
keeping PH right below 6 aiming for 5.8
nutrient reservoir temperature is the only thing that sucks, gets really hot in the room like 90F, sometimes the temperature in the res gets close to 80F.
I heard this is because there is not enough oxygen in the water, so I put four air stones in there, that run off two cheap pumps.
I got a CO2 bucket with a tube running down and blows it around the room.
Res is filled to 12 gallons of water.
Mixture of Hollands Hope and Purple Power. But outdoorsy strands from what I understand.
All started from seed in rock wool cubes.



Day 1 - Put rock wool cubes directly into the net cups and surround them with hydro-ton. Used a mixture of 3" and 6" for net cup size. I'm using the GH nutrient line.

http://www.generalhydroponics.com/calculator/index.html

I use the above link to administer nutrients and have basically just been using everything on the expert chart, except I substituted floralicious plus for floralicious grow and bloom.

Other nutrients added are great white shark sub-culture and super thrive.

Day 7, all alive and healthy

Used mild growth column on calculator again, basically more leading up to grow stage.

Day 14, Vegetative growth

Full go grow stage, this was my last week of adding the subculture, and I don't think I need the super-thrive anymore. My PPM after using the calculator was just below 900 for growth stage of nutrients.\

Pics of day 14 are actually of day 16, sorry...

Oh btw really shitty camera hahahaha

Plants look great, nice setup shitty pics and all. Good Luck... Is this your first run?

nah 3rd run heres pic from day 20, res got low had to change early, will have more info later.
THANKS FOR RESPONDING FINALLY MY EFFORTS GO NOTICED =)

Looking good. I've been looking into this little aero setup myself. Looking to expand beyond my soil experience and this seems like the right fit. I have a few questions for the OP. Is this system on it's first run or have you had experience with it before? How large can your plants be in here? Since I grow soil, I'm used to needing large buckets. These aero systems reduce the need for big root systems so would it last the lifetime of a photoperiod strain in the 6" net pots?
I was thinking of a closet system with about 50" of space above the system itself. I have a lot of photoperiod strains and would like this to work for me. If this is not new to you, please enlighten me about this specific system. Thanks a lot man, good luck with everything!

The system has been used, this is my 3rd grow on it. You can basically start a bunch of seeds in the combination of all the trays, or eventually clone with a mother that I would take a clone off the healthiest looking plant in the bunch.

I have grown sativa on it a northern lights x blueberry and that could only support 2-3 at most. You could in all respects and I've seen it, just grow one huge monster plant off of this, it is really hard to fuck this up because there is no tubing for shit to get clogged in, you basically just have to worry about the reservoir level, that's what restricts growth in this type of unit, as you'll see from the picture below.

The pump just constantly aerates and mists the shit out of that thing inside, its just get blasted with nutrients, a really really really fine mist, and I have four $1 air stones running in there to help put I'm hoping more oxygen in the water.

The reservoir if you look in the picture below is way down, that was with a bunch of plants in there that eventually got weeded out. I saw a couple males in there, so I got rid of them. This should make the next reservoir last longer. I think I can get two huge plants off of the system, its what I'm aiming for. Last time I used it it was sativa and it really started to get too tall. I got strains with very heavy indica in them. The one has just so much freaking inter-nodal activity, I'll have to get a picture. Tallest one is 14", very bushy, I'm digging it.

Even though the reservoir got that low, alot of the plants just had the roots soaking in the nutrient solution so they didn't wither away or anything. But this is the biggest issue with the system.

Hypothetically if you had the time what I'm planning on doing is topping of the system with just the 3 part flora series from GH, like the staple of there diet at 50% nutrient level for that grow stage.

Put the nutrients in a five gallon bucket of 3 part flora series and set at lil under 6.0 in PH before you put it with the rest of the water. I think this would fix it and might open up to grow more.

Nice, sounds great. I have a lot of genetics, but was thinking about trying to interbreed some autoflower strains and use this as the base system. If they don't get over .75 meter then shouldn't I be able to run all 6 in the 6" pots? I guess I'm the kinda guy that wants to know exactly what he's getting into beforehand. This setup looks great. I'll be following so be sure and keep us updated!

I just ordered this system and I am curious how you drain it when you change out the water. Are there any other little tricks or annoyances with this system?

The top lid removes from the top.
Deep into the grow cycle the roots get tangled into the lid so you have to remove the whole top lid as one piece.
So using cinder blocks or a couple 5 gallon buckets you set the top lid on them and I put a big tupper ware tote underneath and the roots lay on them.
After that clean all the gunk out of the reservoir, fill it up with 12 gallons of water, mix your nutrients in, balance your PH and your good.
Takes me and a buddy about an hr to do it, we clean everything in the reservoir like the airstones, rootguard and wipe the pump down.
It does have a drainage tube on the side you can siphon water out of it too make it lighter if its just you but we usually just beast it out dump and clean.
Do the above once every 7 days.

Also you will probably have to start topping your reservoir off near day 15ish as this system has beast blood and grows faster than a baby injected with steroids. I'll post more info later if u got questions my girl bitching at me blaahhhhhh...

Day 27, flipped over to 12/12

Ive had my eye on this set up how much space does it take up? If I could get some measurments that would be great, also are you happy with this it looks like your grow is goin pretty good