Grow Room design-RDWC questions and ideas

[Cool_Beans]

Same one on Monday

 

[Cool_Beans]

My 12 yr old son has been asking a lot of questions about all this as you might imagine, so I got thinking how I could bring him in to the mix. We have a 32 gal aquarium we are going to set up for a small aquaponic bed to grow culinary herbs and greens in. I'm gonna leave it up to him to research nutrients and testing the water etc. I'm not sure who is more excited lol.

 

[Cool_Beans]

We decided on a Rubbermaid bus tote with divider for our rig. Small chamber will be the "wetlands" where the water will enter from the bottom and seep up through mechanical and biological filtration before spilling over into a hydroton bed in the larger section.

 

[Cool_Beans]

Delightful little nuggets. They grind up so nice..

 

[Cool_Beans]

Today is the end of week 2 in the system. The leaves are hung out over the lid even though it's just ~6" tall, so nice bushy plant developing. pH stabilized at 5.82 and stayed for a couple days before drifting back the other way to 5.84 now. Down 50-60ppm for the week and accelerating, drinking about a half quart per day now, give or take.

I ordered some armor si and a stocked up on calibration and cleaning solutions for my monitoring gear. I'm really not doing much at all except fill my tiny ass humidifier(c'mon ACI). I think my bacteria are doing ok too because it smells like cycled aquarium water. Son is off school for the week so we're gonna dive into the aquaponics project and see if we can't make us a fish shit farm that grows lettuce. Cheers!

 

[SweetLeafGrow]

Looking killer bro! Great times with your son, enjoy!

 

[Moe.Red]

That's a very happy plant. Is it hard to get a shot of the roots? Just curious how it looks underneath. Pretty soon she is gonna be too big to move!

 

[Cool_Beans]

Here you go. Off colored older roots were from it being in the aerogarden a little too long as a seedling but hasn't progressed in here. This was from a seed.

 

[Cool_Beans]

Here's the white widow seedling. Really took off this week.

 

[Moe.Red]

Here you go. Off colored older roots were from it being in the aerogarden a little too long as a seedling but hasn't progressed in here. This was from a seed.

Doesn't look too bad, as long as you don't have a bad colony forming a little hygrozyme will clear those right up to pearly white in front of your eyes. Not necessary, but nice to have in your back pocket.

 

[Cool_Beans]

Thanks Moe. I appreciate the feedback and support. You guys are the real mvps.

I'm hoping w more grow space now available to me there will be less chance of plants being mishandled or held longer than necessary in growing conditions that arent ideal. This white widow will be a pioneer for me in that regard. Takes a minute to wrap your head around it as an entire process and then of course how to translate all that to your particular setup. Sure is fucking fun though lol.

 

[Cool_Beans]

@Moe.Red this is what I got for running cables in and out of the res. I'm gonna use a smaller bulkhead than that banjo but the 1 inch grommet seats snug in a 3/4" -female thread. They also sell a 3/4" grommet that I think would fit 1/2" female threads.

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[Cool_Beans]

We got our little aquaponics setup running if anyone wants to check it out. Nice having a little tank in here.

 

[Cool_Beans]

White widow seedling growing away in its paint bucket.

 

[Cool_Beans]

These snips I took yesterday have perked back up nicely this morning. I like how you can see the moisture gradient in the medium when you pull it back and use it to set the plug depth.

 

[Cool_Beans]

Topped this one about 3 days ago, really kicked the lower nodes into gear, I love how it is growing. She doesnt really wake up until around 10am or so. Nice life.

 

[Cool_Beans]

The filter bed is working very well so far. Fish are happy happy. They love the downspout. Once the bed is decently cycled we're going to tear the tank down and redecorate a bit to include some small aquatic plants and moss and try to replicate the river and stream beds up near our camp, which is all beautiful blue slate rocks and pebbles. The tank is oversized for the planter so it should have some nutrients to spare.

 

[GrumpAzz]

The filter bed is working very well so far. Fish are happy happy. They love the downspout. Once the bed is decently cycled we're going to tear the tank down and redecorate a bit to include some small aquatic plants and moss and try to replicate the river and stream beds up near our camp, which is all beautiful blue slate rocks and pebbles. The tank is oversized for the planter so it should have some nutrients to spare.

This is a new goal of mine for when my youngster grows up a bit and I get a few seasons under my belt. I love planted aquariums! Never pulled the trigger on one, but I love em.

 

[Cool_Beans]

It's not easy to come up shit more interesting than video games and tik tok but it can be done.

 

[TheTwistedOne]

Hello all, going to be starting a new grow room from the slab up soon and would like to give hydroponics a shot. I'm working on layout and before I got too far, I had some questions about bucket size and design for RDWC after looking at what is commercially available as well as what people are using for DIY solutions. I'll have two 6x8ft rooms sharing a middle wall, one flower one veg/lung room.

I can build the space out however needed and have about 12ft of available height to work with. My general plan since I have vertical to spare is/was to raise everything up off the floor about a foot or so and start there, so I don't have to bend my happy ass over so far. Also like to design it to drain down completely without leaving significant water in the system (sanitation).

This all got me thinking about experimenting with a single 3" drain in the bottom of the bucket instead of two in the sides and bringing the feed line in above the water line, or perhaps up from the bottom on a riser. I have only experience with high pressure water systems, balancing low pressure flow is new to me, so I don't know if this will work as well for general flow dynamics in this sort of system. Any thoughts on this would be appreciated before I start experimenting.

Cheers!

I’m probably one of the few licensed medical cannabis growers in Oklahoma that DOES grow hydroponically. I’ll let you ponder my buckets a spell before showing you how we grow. And yes. Lowe’s buckets are food grade materials, stamped on the bottom of each bucket. You’re welcome Lowe’s….