Fogponics. As good or better than Hydro?

[Moe.Red]

I'd really like to see that - not because I don't believe you - but rather because I'd like to look at the stuff under the microscope myself now - just to know what all that stuff there looks like ☺️

As I said, I can get a lots of inspiration from you - I need a much better microscope 🙂

Yeah this came up a while ago, Aqua asked me if I could take a look. Hydroguard is almost all water. I have quit buying that and am just using what I have on the shelf until it is gone. The other products are clearly life bearing in qty. I can already see the mycelium starting. That I can show you digitally very soon when they are fully established. Bacteria not so much, too small and need to be back lit, sometimes with stain to see them. Old school microscopes are cheap, that's what you need to see them. I just can't show you the images until I get that direct neural link installed.

 

[Moe.Red]

Enter player 2

Courtesy of @Oldsog

Hells Angels OG crossed with Chem Dog. These are Fems. Seeds cracked in less than 24 hours.

 

[Moe.Red]

Video update - plants in.

 

[Aqua Man]

Video update - plants in.

View attachment 1287656

Looking fantastic man

 

[Moe.Red]

For the hackers out there

 

[Moe.Red]

Looking fantastic man

Thanks brother. Welcome back.

Now the nute tune begins. I am running 4 different reses here so I have some control. What's interesting is I don't care about PH any more. RO water - add GH nutes - PH is 5.8. The res is so small in the tote and there is no plant matter in there to change PH. so one less thing to worry about.

 

[Moe.Red]

 

[Aqua Man]

Thanks brother. Welcome back.

Now the nute tune begins. I am running 4 different reses here so I have some control. What's interesting is I don't care about PH any more. RO water - add GH nutes - PH is 5.8. The res is so small in the tote and there is no plant matter in there to change PH. so one less thing to worry about.

Yeah kinda has me thinking that the sap PH is what you want to know in actually all grow systems as the plant can somewhat control the ph right at the roots. But the nutrients can effect how the plants react (specifically the roots) something to think of later down the road… just putting the seed out there

 

[Aqua Man]

How are the root’s developing?

 

[Moe.Red]

Yeah kinda has me thinking that the sap PH is what you want to know in actually all grow systems as the plant can somewhat control the ph right at the roots. But the nutrients can effect how the plants react (specifically the roots) something to think of later down the road… just putting the seed out there

You bet. Got that brix meter now, probably time to start looking close at these:

 

[Moe.Red]

How are the root’s developing?

 

[Aqua Man]

View attachment 1287666
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Nice anount of root hairs forming… very good sign

 

[SweetLeafGrow]

Wow! Super impressed bro! So much fun to watch.

 

[OntarioGoldenHash]

So if there ever is a geek like me that tries to do some form of fogponics, here is some pertinent info:

Timers:

const int FogInterval = 30000; // number of millisecs between fog cycles
const int ResFanInterval = 10000; // number of millisecs between Res Fan cycles
const int PowerHeadInterval = 10000; // number of millisecs between PowerHead cycles

const int FogDuration = 20000;
const int ResFanDuration = 30000;
const int PowerHeadDuration = 10000;

This results in 80.1*F in the res, holding about 10 gallons, and using a 5 disk ultrasonic fogger.
I have upped the res fan and lowered fog on and fog duration to accomplish a 20*F drop in res temps.


The 2 most vital parts to making this possible is the res fan and the software timing control. You would never find an appropriate off the shelf device to control to this level. I even looked into smart switches and stuff, the shear amount of on / off kills any of those options.

*pics removed to make it easier to read.

I only see this working well if the room your fogger is in does not change and the environment is constant all year around, sure you can adjust the timers depending on the time of day and season etc.

Personally I will be going for environmental control, so I don't have to tinker with timers to fall in-line with what the room environment is it, plus I feel it would be easier and cheaper in the long run.

Yes, you are correct there is NO off-the-self solutions with what you (and many others) are attempting to do...HOWEVER, as we know there are toys devices which we can used to build our own solution to monitor and adapt to our requirements.

I am opting for pre-build power switches like this: https://www.pishop.ca/product/iot-power-relay/ controlled by an IoT device with inputs from RH and Temp etc, this avoids having to rewire and play around with power cables directly, a lot safer in my books.

 

[Moe.Red]

*pics removed to make it easier to read.

I only see this working well if the room your fogger is in does not change and the environment is constant all year around, sure you can adjust the timers depending on the time of day and season etc.

Personally I will be going for environmental control, so I don't have to tinker with timers to fall in-line with what the room environment is it, plus I feel it would be easier and cheaper in the long run.

Yes, you are correct there is NO off-the-self solutions with what you (and many others) are attempting to do...HOWEVER, as we know there are toys devices which we can used to build our own solution to monitor and adapt to our requirements.

I am opting for pre-build power switches like this: https://www.pishop.ca/product/iot-power-relay/ controlled by an IoT device with inputs from RH and Temp etc, this avoids having to rewire and play around with power cables directly, a lot safer in my books.

I'm feeling like you have missed a lot of what I am doing here. When you say the room my fogger is in, do you mean the tote? or the tent?

The tent is fully controlled in every respect. Temp, RH, Light, C02, wind, etc.

The totes and the tiny internal res are being O2 saturated. I am simply trying to optimize the res conditions. There is such a thing as too much fog, and getting the timings right has the side benefit of lowering heat in the tiny internal res.

Not trying to take away from what you are doing, I'm just looking at this differently than you I guess. But clearly it is already working, so, not sure what to say here. Right now I am focused on optimization.

 

[Moe.Red]

Wow! Super impressed bro! So much fun to watch.

Pretty fun to do as well. Today all the rest of the electronics get installed with any luck. Printing the bracket to mount the LCD box with the Pi and other electronics which measure and manage the grow. Pretty exciting time for this geek.

 

[OntarioGoldenHash]

I'm feeling like you have missed a lot of what I am doing here. When you say the room my fogger is in, do you mean the tote? or the tent?

The tent is fully controlled in every respect. Temp, RH, Light, C02, wind, etc.

The totes and the tiny internal res are being O2 saturated. I am simply trying to optimize the res conditions. There is such a thing as too much fog, and getting the timings right has the side benefit of lowering heat in the tiny internal res.

Not trying to take away from what you are doing, I'm just looking at this differently than you I guess. But clearly it is already working, so, not sure what to say here. Right now I am focused on optimization.

Your setup is insane, those roots look amazing. Yes, I missed a bit, oops.

Makes sense that you are using timers as the fogger is in a controlled tent.

Your results gives me great hope for mine, I am in awe of your setup.

 

[Moe.Red]

Yeah kinda has me thinking that the sap PH is what you want to know in actually all grow systems as the plant can somewhat control the ph right at the roots. But the nutrients can effect how the plants react (specifically the roots) something to think of later down the road… just putting the seed out there

@Aqua Man do you think I can test plant PH by squeezing sap and diluting it with enough RO or distilled water to get my probe submerged and get a reading? I'm thinking that water would dilute things like TDS, but PH seems like it would be ok for this method.

 

[Moe.Red]

Your setup is insane, those roots look amazing. Yes, I missed a bit, oops.

Makes sense that you are using timers as the fogger is in a controlled tent.

Your results gives me great hope for mine, I am in awe of your setup.

So for example, right now all 4 totes sucked over 1 gallon of water out of the nute res in 1 day. To me, that is too much for these tiny plants, and what happens is the fog just collects or drips off surfaces and collects in the bottom which is waste. I need to be able to tune all that and adjust it up throughout the grow as the plants develop. I'm learning as I go thru experimentation.

 

[OntarioGoldenHash]

Pretty fun to do as well. Today all the rest of the electronics get installed with any luck. Printing the bracket to mount the LCD box with the Pi and other electronics which measure and manage the grow. Pretty exciting time for this geek.

View attachment 1287809

I decided to mount my pi and LCD touchscreen within one case as it sits on my desk: . FYI, tent is currently empty.

If you are interested and are using IoT devices for remote monitoring I do have sketch code which can be updated remotely, along with python code running as a cron to feed into Grafana or something else if you wish.

Loving the progress of your setup, its giving me so many ideas :D