Capulator
likes to smell trees.
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ah, i just looked at the first couple of pics you put up on page 1, Cap, and that shows the air lines more clearly. also, it appears as if you've still got drippers on this rig, which i thought you had eliminated (that's the second pvc pipe on the above pic)?
for others: many of us experienced stem rot issues with the top feed component that DD ran continuously. my solution is to top feed by hand when i put the plants in, the high rh coming up from the bucket typically has the roots reaching into the water four days later. i let the roots establish for a week or so and then uncover my rockwool cube and gently pull off about the top 1" of rockwool so that my lower stems can stay dry from that point on.
EDIT: LOL, and it appears as if you can post pics much faster than i can type Cap!
Yeah the drippers are there, but there is no pump attached to them anymore. I prefer to handwater for the first week or two, and after that I no longer need to water. The roots wick the water up. I will feed tea to the crown as well once a week, and that seems to be more than enough to keep the top bucket moist.
I think I want to try only having holes on the bottom third of the bucket, and raising the water level to above the holes at all times. After reading through some of heaths posts, it seems that the best bet is to have the roots going straight to the water with no air gap at all, to avoid large cord roots and promote only small feeder roots. I actually think that this is one of the secrets to heaths success, is all of the roots being fine feeder roots.
I have suddenly begun to encounter issues with stem rot myself, and so my experiments with using the substrate as the bio filter may have to change.
One big drawback to using a high mounted drain as the only egress point for water to leave the site is that you're nowstuck with that water height. By contrast, having an outlet port down low gives the grower this option. I know it's a big deal to alter water levels in the UC, maybe it's a universal issue that mpb's are susceptible to?
I'm not pointing fingers, I'm thinking out loud here. Please point out where my thinking is incorrect or incomplete!
Since switching to chow mix in the upper bucket I have not had any stem rot. Heath said on another thread that the secret was to have the water level high and keep it there. this encourages feeder roots as opposed to fat cord roots, which are the key to growth.
In an MPB you can have your drains come up from the bottom and you can adjust the pipe height to adjust the water level in each individual bucket.
Do you think my 1/2" lines waterfall through tee fittings will suffice, or not?
I haven't run anything but chowmix in years; mine is about 50/50 coco/expanded clay pebbles and if I had it to do over I wouldn't get the fine grade, as it lives to clog my pumps!
What about O2? Do you think my 1/2" lines waterfall through tee fittings will suffice, or not?
Put a filter on your pump intake.
IMHO 1/2" isn't enough.
why did you offset that bucket?
Hey Cap do you have any input?Put a filter on your pump intake.
IMHO 1/2" isn't enough.
Hey Cap do you have any input?
HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM IM LOST:banghead: I don't get the benefit of this unit it looks far to complicated far to many moving parts that are un movable and so on now I understand the yield benefit but it seems like a 20/80 chance of success can someone tell me what I am missing here
Sorry this is so late man. Just saw it. See post #36 of this thread.
No media really so just throwing out roots in between runs.
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