True HP Aero For 2011

konagirl420 said:

Hell yeah go Tb!!!!!! We have a plant wahoooo!!!!!

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Well, it's just a test, and I don't expect much considering it was a soil transfer, and my chamber temps are likely too high without some sort of intervention. But hey- gotta start testing somewhere!

Trichy - I didn't look to see how many nozzles you are running and space. But looking at how small your roots are and condition, I would highly recommend getting your roots going before worrying about getting fuzz.

I would go 2-3 seconds and 1:30-2 minute off until you get some roots. Then slowly lower your time to get the fuzz. If you do not have the roots to support the plant, the roots will try up and you will get leaf wilting. Which obviously stresses the plant. Now if your just testing it doesn't make that big of a difference...

Trichy Bastard said:

Well, it's just a test, and I don't expect much considering it was a soil transfer, and my chamber temps are likely too high without some sort of intervention. But hey- gotta start testing somewhere!

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I solved this 3 ways

1. Raised the light higher as the radiant heat was penetrating my flimsy Rubbermaid lid
2. Put a layer of heavy duty foil on top to reflect heat
3. Make a vent: depending on the size hole cutter you have, get an elbow ~ 2". You can then use a small fan to blow air from behind the opening to suck the hot air out. The elbow keep light out

chennemann said:

Trichy - I didn't look to see how many nozzles you are running and space. But looking at how small your roots are and condition, I would highly recommend getting your roots going before worrying about getting fuzz.

I would go 2-3 seconds and 1:30-2 minute off until you get some roots. Then slowly lower your time to get the fuzz. If you do not have the roots to support the plant, the roots will try up and you will get leaf wilting. Which obviously stresses the plant. Now if your just testing it doesn't make that big of a difference...

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Thanks Chennemann. The roots are 8 inches or so, but who knows if I killed them or how much damage occurred while trying to wash off the soil... Mosty I was just interested if I could get them to fuzz, and don't mind much if I kill em in the process, but of course I would be happier to keep em going. I really don't have much clue as to how much to mist, so this was my starting point. I appreciate your inputs as it gives me am idea of what others are doing. At 1 second mist, the roots looked quite wet, so backed to .7 seconds or so, and they look about right I think, however it was night-time, and I would expect them to need more water in the daylight heat.

PetFlora said:

I solved this 3 ways

1. Raised the light higher as the radiant heat was penetrating my flimsy Rubbermaid lid
2. Put a layer of heavy duty foil on top to reflect heat
3. Make a vent: depending on the size hole cutter you have, get an elbow ~ 2". You can then use a small fan to blow air from behind the opening to suck the hot air out. The elbow keep light out

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Appreciate the input, only issue is my pod is outdoors, so somewhat different beast. I imagine the hottest air can escape through the rockwool in my netpots in lieu of the snorkel vent. I need to put a reflective material, but don't want the setup to be glaringly obvious with the shiny stuff.

TB
theres always hope. these sick roots came from a bubbler and in 2 weeks in a AA test rig looked like this. not perfect but i was changing the settings every day trying to figure out what would work the best. Ended up putting her back into dirt to finish her as i didnt have time to mess with the AA rig at the moment. she turned out huge after i stuck her back into dirt. so these weeds can be made to grow in almost anything no matter how bad they start out or end up in.

Tree farmer is the man!

Great to see you around and about Tree Farmer. I loved reading your Journal. Hope to see around to help us rookies out.

I think this thing ate my post! But anyhow, Great to see you around and about Tree Farmer. I loved reading your Journal. I hope to see you around to help us rookies out.

I have a couple of leaks to fix and I think I will be ready to fire this mother up. I used 1/2 ss pipe around the tank, prv, pressure switch. I used teflon tape to seal but still have had some leaks. I have managed to stop most but still have three I need to fix. I don't know if pipe goop would be better or not. Funny that everywhere I have a JG fitting I have no leak. Learned a lesson there!

Thanks TB for the info on the silica. I am going to check out what you said you were going to use. Hope to get my left handed tomato's started in clone this weekend. I built a cloner that has ZZ Top roots in about a week, my fourth re-design. Works great.

Thanks as always for all the help!

TB, I ordered the Dyna-gro Pro-tekt it was even .05 cheaper than what I was looking at on ebay. I reads to be better stuff also. How much are you going to mix per gallon or litter?

re: silica

I understand what benefits you are trying to get from the silica but is there a reason you don't just use SiO2? It's cheaper and you won't get the extra K you get from Pro-tect.
It seems to me like every supplement we add skews our nute profile.

kmbud said:

TB, I ordered the Dyna-gro Pro-tekt it was even .05 cheaper than what I was looking at on ebay. I reads to be better stuff also. How much are you going to mix per gallon or litter?

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Not sure, I'd usually use 5ml/gal for normal circumstances, but probably cut it way back considering how low all the other nutes are in aero. Right now I'm just eyeballing about 4 squirts with a rubber/glass eyedropper for every 5 gallons or so. Since the silica part is not a salt, (basically sand) I don't think overdoing it is much an issue because it won't cause osmotic nute burn. (and also won't measure on an e/c meter).

R0m has a point, although I wasn't aware pure silica could be bought, figured there was a reason it was always bundled with another element. I don't think overdoing the P a tad will ruin anything, if anything I believe extra P causes more vertical growth and will likely counteract some of the tighter internodes associated with HPA. Tight internodes are good, but I figure since HPA has an opposite effect as P in that regard, they will balance out. I've read the great P myth, which is scientifically sound, but have witnessed high P growing very nice plants in hydro and soil.
I still have so much to learn about nutes, but it seems so does the rest of the world hahaha.

Hey tree farmer- I would guess the roots on the right were when you first put them into aa, and on the left is after a couple weeks in it? It's true these weeds are pretty resilient - but so delicate if you do the wrong things too.

The leaves are curling down a bit on my test subject and the plant is in a little shock, leaves still nice and emerald green, hope the roots kick in and start some new growth. They are about as wet as boiled and strained spaghetti is all I can compare them too, I'd assume that''s about what I want right now?

Edit: Bumped mist timings up to 1sec/2mins

kmbud said:

I think this thing ate my post! But anyhow, Great to see you around and about Tree Farmer. I loved reading your Journal. I hope to see you around to help us rookies out.

I have a couple of leaks to fix and I think I will be ready to fire this mother up. I used 1/2 ss pipe around the tank, prv, pressure switch. I used teflon tape to seal but still have had some leaks. I have managed to stop most but still have three I need to fix. I don't know if pipe goop would be better or not. Funny that everywhere I have a JG fitting I have no leak. Learned a lesson there!

Thanks TB for the info on the silica. I am going to check out what you said you were going to use. Hope to get my left handed tomato's started in clone this weekend. I built a cloner that has ZZ Top roots in about a week, my fourth re-design. Works great.

Thanks as always for all the help!

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id advise against using pipe dope if that shit gets in your pump its toast! if ur using it id use it sparingly. try wrapping your fittings clockwise with the teflon for 5-7 wraps per fitting!

dickkhead said:

id advise against using pipe dope if that shit gets in your pump its toast! if ur using it id use it sparingly. try wrapping your fittings clockwise with the teflon for 5-7 wraps per fitting!

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Yeah, and the worst part on top of the leaks is that those stainless steel pipes can't be cheap. I gotta say, the John guest stuff is pretty damn cool. KM- did you use those pipes for some percieved benefit, or did you just already have them lying around and decide to put them to use?

Hehehehehehehehehe nice roots Treefarmer )))) Glad to see everything going good!!! GO TB!!!!!!!!

Wasn't aware you can buy SiO2 Silicon Dioxide straight, I am aware you can get, potassium silicate, and sodium silicate from Crop King, and other single nutrient sellers for greenhouse/farming

Of commercial products Yellowbottle Silica is the most concentrated, but has limited availability. They use Potassium Silicate

if you use potassium silicate, you can use it as a pH+ but this is wasteful and expensive, using this to add P is also foolish, you'd be better off with a straight PK booster, as the plants don't need Si by the time they're into flower.

Trichy Bastard said:

R0m has a point, although I wasn't aware pure silica could be bought, figured there was a reason it was always bundled with another element. I don't think overdoing the P a tad will ruin anything, if anything I believe extra P causes more vertical growth and will likely counteract some of the tighter internodes associated with HPA.

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This company sells it for sausage making. http://www.americanspice.com/silicon-dioxide/
It's just over $16 (including shipping) for a pound. pro-tect is 7.8% SiO2, without doing all of the math for titration that works out to about 1.25oz per gallon ((16 * 8 ) * .078 ) or $1.25 a gallon.

I don't disagree that the extra P may be beneficial, I just hate that you have to add "extras" to get the benefit you are looking for.

Trichy Bastard said:

Yeah, and the worst part on top of the leaks is that those stainless steel pipes can't be cheap. I gotta say, the John guest stuff is pretty damn cool. KM- did you use those pipes for some percieved benefit, or did you just already have them lying around and decide to put them to use?

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Well I figured that I was going to have to adapt the JG to pipe size to mount the PRV, pressure switch, anti hammer, tank ect. Then after all that figure out a way to mount them to hold then in place. So in my very small pea sized brain I thought it a positive to use ss pipe and solve those problems. I ordered from Grainger, and they are very proud of that stuff as far as price. It looks good and I can pick it up as a assembly and move it around without unhooking a bunch of stuff. So it has some benefit to it.

kmbud said:

Well I figured that I was going to have to adapt the JG to pipe size to mount the PRV, pressure switch, anti hammer, tank ect. Then after all that figure out a way to mount them to hold then in place. So in my very small pea sized brain I thought it a positive to use ss pipe and solve those problems. I ordered from Grainger, and they are very proud of that stuff as far as price. It looks good and I can pick it up as a assembly and move it around without unhooking a bunch of stuff. So it has some benefit to it.

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That's cool man, in the end I'm sure it will work, and perhaps your point of difference will show another way that works well for certain people in certain situations. Keep us posted.

r0m30 said:

This company sells it for sausage making. http://www.americanspice.com/silicon-dioxide/
It's just over $16 (including shipping) for a pound. pro-tect is 7.8% SiO2, without doing all of the math for titration that works out to about 1.25oz per gallon ((16 * 8 ) * .078 ) or $1.25 a gallon.

I don't disagree that the extra P may be beneficial, I just hate that you have to add "extras" to get the benefit you are looking for.

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I hear you there... I think for simplicity, I'll test the Pro-tekt, and also without. If I notice any benefit or negatives being either attributed to the silica or extra P I will post. I don't know how many decades a pound of dried Si02 would last me... hehehe Plus, wouldn't want my flowers to smell like sausages- hahahhaa. ( I know, it's probably used as a preservative similar to sulphur dioxide or nitrates).
EDIT: I clicked the link, guess it's an anti caking compound. Do we know if once it's bonded to the oxygen that it's still available to the plants? Perhaps there's a reason they use other elements to mix with it for plant uses... It's still not pure silicon, yet I agree oxygen sounds like less of a worry in terms of skewing the nute ratios. But I'm not exactly a chemist.

Today the test subject looks pretty wilted in the leaves. There is some new leaf growth, but the old leaves look like they might all die off. I haven't noticed any new root growth. There are a few variables, heat being my biggest worry. I think the roots are pretty wet with the new cycle, matter of fact I burned through 5 gallons of nute water in 15 hours for a single plant. The stems seem firm, so perhaps I should have dialed the mist down. I think I probably hurt the roots too much by taking them from soil, but as mentioned, the pod reaches about 98 degrees each day, and that sounds like the biggest issue.

TB you may have to think about your chiller or adding some ice to the bottom of the pod. white paint?