Fogponics. As good or better than Hydro?

JerzeyMike · Oct 1, 2022

When I was infusing olive oil in a crockpot in my shed years ago, my bro used to call me heisenburg. What you guys are doing is off the charts cool!!! As a relative newbie, I am staying in soil for a bit, but am enjoying watching and learning. Keep up the great work and thanks for sharing it with us!!!

Moe.Red · Oct 1, 2022

OntarioGoldenHash said:
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

Really nice man. A grower after my own heart.

You about to start a grow?

Moe.Red · Oct 1, 2022

JerzeyMike said:
When I was infusing olive oil in a crockpot in my shed years ago, my bro used to call me heisenburg. What you guys are doing is off the charts cool!!! As a relative newbie, I am staying in soil for a bit, but am enjoying watching and learning. Keep up the great work and thanks for sharing it with us!!!

We all start somewhere! My first purchase was a magical butter machine. Now I primarily use a press a rotovap and a short path distillation process.

Ultimately I will get this tuned and packaged for someone else to try it if they want.

Based on projections this setup should produce at least 10% faster than everything else available. @Aqua Man thinks it could be higher. I just need to figure out the sweet spots for everything and simplify. But that is all happening behind the scenes. My kiddo is on the way over to work on the Pi software which is the killer app here really. You aint seen nothin yet my friend. Since I can measure stuff at home that most people can't (cannabinoids, Oxygen levels, crap like that) this system will be fine tuned. And I'll figure out the exact best nute solution as well. This grow space was essentially set up as a controlled test chamber.

JerzeyMike · Oct 1, 2022

Man every one of your posts make me feel dumber and dumber

like is he talking about? I have always been interested in making distillate, I like using it for my eddies! Heres my four girls, six weeks today from seed. Not quite the lab like you have going on, I am in a 112 yr old dungeon.

OntarioGoldenHash · Oct 1, 2022

Moe.Red said:
Really nice man. A grower after my own heart.

You about to start a grow?

Many thanks.

Soon (again), I have decided to attempt to use fogponics for my cloning project in a stealth box (hence my reason to have to control the environment), I have a mother 3x3tent ready to go up, and will be using my 5x5 setup for late veg and flowering, again using soil. I suppose I best setup a diary rather than inject into your thread.

Aqua Man · Oct 1, 2022

Moe.Red said:
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.

Im thinking strips would allow you not to dilute sap… or could start with trying to increase brix

Moe.Red · Oct 1, 2022

OntarioGoldenHash said:
Many thanks.

Soon (again), I have decided to attempt to use fogponics for my cloning project in a stealth box (hence my reason to have to control the environment), I have a mother 3x3tent ready to go up, and will be using my 5x5 setup for late veg and flowering, again using soil. I suppose I best setup a diary rather than inject into your thread.

Tag me in when you do I'll follow along.

Moe.Red · Oct 1, 2022

Aqua Man said:
Im thinking strips would allow you not to dilute sap… or could start with trying to increase brix

Good idea. Just ordered some.

Jay13.aka.DutchStuff · Oct 2, 2022

Hey guys,
first of all, that I just have to keep saying: I love what you're doing, Moe - I've never seen a hemp lab like this before. I don't know if we have anything like that in Europe

To my thesis from the beginning also to that from Aqua with the hair roots:
I had a happy coincidence in the small tent. The drain in the catchment was not removed and a root grew in water.

Here you can see very clearly the hair roots.

I looked at the whole thing under my (cheap) microscope.

1. Upper part with thin hair roots
2. and 3. the part direkt over the water

On the third pic one can see the sticky hair roots - water settles here and forms a film as suspected
Take a look at the part directly unter the water level. Much less hair roots - but you can see the parts were new normal roots will grow out of this root - what you called "hair roots" @Aqua Man

deeper in the water: No hair roots visible. A water root ("Wasserwurzel" like we call it in our german forum)

I know the look very well from my cuttings.
With the RootRiots very many fine hair roots form in and around the cube. Further down in the Seramis the roots look different (if you leave them too long in the greenhouse like me..)

Sorry for the spam, but maybe this will help you a little bit @Moe.Red - I finally have to start with my report, then you can have a look at it all- actually I'm just waiting for a answer from @Aqua Man

Moe.Red · Oct 2, 2022

No doubt grow style impacts the way roots grow. At the end of an RDWC grow I have what are essentially rope. Roots in an aeroponic cloner are completely different. Soil too. Medium you grow in steers the plant.

peep · Oct 2, 2022

Very interesting read and discussions

I've been planning automation hackery for an rdwc setup when I stumbled upon this thread. Gonna wait a bit to see if I should go with aero instead. Most of the sensors and accessories will be the same anyway and really like the idea of fogponics.

What sensors are you using for atmospheric O2 measurement? Having that high o2 concentration does sound.. exhilarating?

Would using fogging nozzles (instead of misting disks) clog up too fast, or did you consider that as well?

I'm which part of the system so you cool down the mixture? Do you keep track of the mist temp as well?

Was thinking about having the nut mix in separate containers with possible recirculation of the mist that isn't taken up by the roots. Good or bad idea you'd say?

Are you planning and backup system in case of power outage or of the mist maker goes out?

Moe.Red · Oct 2, 2022

peep said:
Very interesting read and discussions

I've been planning automation hackery for an rdwc setup when I stumbled upon this thread. Gonna wait a bit to see if I should go with aero instead. Most of the sensors and accessories will be the same anyway and really like the idea of fogponics.

Why thank you.

RDWC has been my go to for years. I'm running another RDWC tent along side this fogponics for comparison. It will be months before I have all the data I want to claim victory or defeat for this fog tech.

peep said:
What sensors are you using for atmospheric O2 measurement? Having that high o2 concentration does sound.. exhilarating?

I am not actually adding O2 to the atmosphere, just the root zone. What I am doing is pulling O2 from the top and moving it to the bottom. Running high O2 in the atmoshphere would actually be detrimental to plant growth, in a perfect world I would like to lower atmospheric O2, but once the whole tent is bushy and photosynthesizing O2 production will outrun my ability to remove it.

I'm using Atlas Scientific DO and O2 sensros.

peep said:
Would using fogging nozzles (instead of misting disks) clog up too fast, or did you consider that as well?

I'm which part of the system so you cool down the mixture? Do you keep track of the mist temp as well?

Was thinking about having the nut mix in separate containers with possible recirculation of the mist that isn't taken up by the roots. Good or bad idea you'd say?

Are you planning and backup system in case of power outage or of the mist maker goes out?

I did look into an aeroponics option using nozzles instead of disks. I still have the parts here waiting to be assembled. With a pressurized system like this, there are additional challenges that I hope to outline in a future grow.

Cooling happens in the internal res via a 120mm fan. I have just received the radiator that bolts on to it, but I just don't see it as necessary now that my fog on times are much lower. The mixture feeding the fogger goes in at 66*. There is only about a quart in there, so it just seems to work without cooling now.

Recirculation was something I considered hard too. For this grow, I decided against it. We will see what I ultimately do, I am not certain at this point. I'm engineering on the fly.

No backup. But none of these are vital if I loose something. It's all personal use. If my livelihood depended on this grow, I'd just stick with RDWC and not color outside the lines.

Moe.Red · Oct 2, 2022

peep said:
Very interesting read and discussions

I've been planning automation hackery for an rdwc setup when I stumbled upon this thread. Gonna wait a bit to see if I should go with aero instead. Most of the sensors and accessories will be the same anyway and really like the idea of fogponics.

What sensors are you using for atmospheric O2 measurement? Having that high o2 concentration does sound.. exhilarating?

Would using fogging nozzles (instead of misting disks) clog up too fast, or did you consider that as well?

I'm which part of the system so you cool down the mixture? Do you keep track of the mist temp as well?

Was thinking about having the nut mix in separate containers with possible recirculation of the mist that isn't taken up by the roots. Good or bad idea you'd say?

Are you planning and backup system in case of power outage or of the mist maker goes out?

BTW, welcome to the farm. Posting is more fun than lurking, dive in!

peep · Oct 2, 2022

Thanks! I'll try to get a build blog going once I get started. Have been putting the build on hold in wait for some Thread enabled mcus to be released (wanted to combine this with some offline wireless sensor hacking) to be able to easily setup parallel grows/strains controlled by the same master.

Need to put constraints on myself not to over engineer this, just as you this is just for personal use, but I like the idea of expandability and being able to scale up and out to other things as well.

Moshmen · Oct 3, 2022

Wow life got busy ! Sux I missed alot here I will have to reread for sure !

Man Red so much good info here I can’t take it all in thanx for sharing ! Even if some contain a damn cardinal! Lol

Moe.Red · Oct 4, 2022

Hey Mosh - Can't touch this. Hammer Time!

Moe.Red · Oct 4, 2022

Gotta say I’m digging these roots in this system. This is a friggin seedling. Wow.

EDIT: Went back and checked, this is exactly 1 week and 1 day from when I got the seeds wet. I don't remember growth like this before.

EDIT EDIT: @Oldsog here's some fodder for your insta feed.

Aqua Man · Oct 4, 2022

Thats an amazing indication that once the roots establish your growth uo top will be extremely fast… really looking forward to seeing them take off.

its incredible to see a seedling that small with that kind of root system

SweetLeafGrow · Oct 4, 2022

Wow, beautiful work Moe! You are really knocking this one out of the park, wow. So much fun to watch your process and success.

beluga · Oct 4, 2022

What's impressive to me is how the aerial part of it looks on par with most other 1week, 1day-olds. Talk about maximizing resources, I bet the photosynthetic efficiency is bonkers.

Fogponics. As good or better than Hydro?

Fogponics. As good or better than Hydro?

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