New Experimental Organic Hydro Technique!

[DrunkenMessiah]

Pictures, Weeeeee!

Very nice installation Rip. I must say your rendition of the OBBT is much cleaner and more professional looking than any I have yet constructed myself. The sight tube seems like a no-brainer to me now, I'm solving that same problem with a perhaps more complex floating level indicator. The sight tube gets that job done in a much more elegant way. Sneaking the air line in through the sight tube though is a stroke of genius.

I also like the idea of using the empty pots as spacers to drop your girls in. I believe user plumbum was agonizing over a way to make space to drop his mature clones in without disturbing the medium which has finished incubating. I had no advice for him as I've always started OBBT grows with the tiniest of seedlings.

Impressive build overall, and that is coming from someone who would much rather build his own gear than have it made by someone else. Now, on with my concerns:

Your pre-loaded nutes are a bit sparse. Lots of nitrogen which is good and a touch of potassium from the kelp but I see no source of phoshpate whatsoever. Obviously its not flower and the plants won't need much but they do need some. I don't know the details on the old soil you used to mix up the new medium and I am sure there is some of the necessary nutrient content in there, but unless it is particularly rich I would look for a mild organic source of P. There are many sources of fish emulsion out there ranging anywhere from 1 to 4 percent P providing material by mass. They tend to carry a nice load of nitrogen as well and usually comes in liquid form making it convenient to use as a tea. This would be my recommendation for sneaking a wee bit of P into the medium background. I'm sure your girls would make it through veg with the nute mix you've got already but I think a bit more vigor could be had with a small addition of P.

I am extremely pleased to see more grow pics and am excited to watch your progress. You've made excellent first steps Rip, we'll see what you can do as a grower when armed with supercharged micro-life. Good luck and happy gardening!

-DM

 

[RipVanWeed]

Could you recommend how much f emulsion if I get you some specifics on what I buy?

Otherwise I'm watching for the water level to go down. Should I add ro to keep it at least 1/2 way up?

RVW

 

[DrunkenMessiah]

Sure, but I would just go by the recommendation on the label. 2-4 Tablespoons per gallon of water usually.

The water level is gonna fluctuate a lot at first. Before the microbes take over and before you get the pearlite cap on there moisture escapes from the buckets pretty quickly. Just top them off for now.

-DM

 

[SilverSurfer_OG]

Hey folks.

Nice setup Ripvan mate! So how does that visible tube thingo work? It shows the water level?

My babies are coming along nicely. Box is going well and plants on 12/12.





I have 2 Reclining Buddahs in the box, different phenos i think... i have a slight worry the small one might be male but hopefully not. In my other square tubs i have 1 more Buddahs, 3 C99's, 2 Blue Mystics and 2 Grapefruit.

The growth rate of my big plant in the box is impressive.

Feeding them a range of organic ferts plus Cannazyme and Nefarious coco A+B

Excellent advice DrunkenM I will endeavor to get a drainage hole and try out the starve and feed schedule... sounds good

 

[DrunkenMessiah]

Woo-Hoo!!

Impressive pics SS, those Reclining Buddahs look great! I see you plan to ScrOG them, personally a favorite technique of mine. Glad to see clones getting along well in an OBBT, I had not tried that yet myself. All I've ever put in them where brand new seedlings. Looks like a nice and complete organic nute regime. I am not a fan of designer liquid organics myself and I think all the preservatives and buffing agents in them might hold you back a bit.

With the amount of time they've been in there I doubt the plants have become fully integrated into the fungal network. I believe that the coming weeks will see you going from impressed to mouth-agape dumbfounded. Very intersted to see how the OBBT Buddahs compare to the one you have in an ordinary soil mix. I am genuinely stoked to see your girls take off into flower, its going to be quite a show!

Good luck and happy gardening!

-DM

 

[RipVanWeed]

DM,
Waiting for these buckets to fill up with life has required patience, not my strongest atribute. This morning I noticed that in areas that the medium shows damp there is a visible layer of greyish fuzz. In other spots there appear to be micro mushrooms. I filled the buckets this am for the first time, so with the heat in the low 90's and Rh in the low 20's the evaporation hasn't been too bad.

I have yet to add any Fish E but will pick some up today. Do you think it's too early to transplant? I'm leaving for 4 days on the 19th. and hope I can get the buckets planted, and loaded in the grow box, early enough for me to be comfortable with the setup before I go.

Here's a pic of the bucket biology.


Thanks for your help and advice.

You haven't mentioned your grow lately, how's your stuff doing?

RipVanWeed

 

[DrunkenMessiah]

Hehe, fuzzy little buggers. These results are exactly what should be expected, good work RVW!

I am usually adamant about the importance of a long incubation cycle. I like for 100% of the medium to be fully captured by the fungus before planting. This is because any free-floating radical nutrient particles can harm very young plants. That said your medium isn't crazy-potent and you are not planting seedlings. Judging from the size of the holes you left with the spacer pots you are looking to transplant some fairly substantial girls in there. They will be far less susceptible to harm and I don't see why you couldn't go ahead and get them in there now. Seeing the fuzz at the surface means that the bacteria part of the micro-life has long since totally conquered your buckets. No way in hell are there any pathogens left alive. Stick 'em in! Lets get the party started!

As for my garden that run has long since finished. We did battle with Blossom End Rot because I never managed to get the Ph low enough (damn cannabis-tuned microbes! ). With some magnesium supplementation however we got them back where we wanted them. They where determinate tomato plants and so after they yielded they died. Too hot to run my indoor garden right now so we're concentrating on the great outdoors.

Presently I am experimenting with the basics of aquaponics. I never plan to run full-blown aqua, too much work, but I have started a compost pond. Its a 55 gallon outdoor pond loaded up with bubblers, gold fish, lillypads and a nutrient sock. Compost matirial is added to the sock and air is bubbled through it. The fish are fed. A masive culture of beneficial bacteria (including Lacto B) was added up front. The whole thing creates a bigass life-cycle focused around the breakdown of composted organic matter. The resulting pondwater is amazingly nutritios. I've convinced my mother to put down the Miracle Grow and fertilize her potted plants exclusively with this stuff. I also mixed her up some biologically active potting soil based on my OBBT mix. Her plants have never looked so good! I'm looking to use the compost pondwater in cojunction with the OBBTs for some super-active microlife!

Good luck and happy gardening!

-DM

 

[rrog]

I wish I had the experience to go full Organic like this. I'm just not savvy enough and need to rely more on measurements, timers and protocols.

Really this is all quite fascinating.

 

[SilverSurfer_OG]

Hey yeah i am very happy with bubble box so far. Had to rip out the smaller plant as it turned out to be male... they are from seeds that were 95% female but nevermind. It wasnt growing any where near as fast. Replaced with a Blue Mystic.





Hey rrog organics is lot to get into but quite simple and forgiving... it can be much easier outdoors until you get the basics and some good fert sources for indoors. Remember its fine to mix in some good quality mineral ferts if you cant cover the complete NPK.

 

[ScrubNinja]

Hey DM, really fantastic idea. I've been lurking this thread for a few days now and you've really got me thinking.

You mentioned earlier that higher humidity can be expected but the perlite top layer helps keep that down. I'm just wondering how much extra humidity we're talking here, if one is using the perlite layer? A couple of % rise?

 

[DrunkenMessiah]

Greetings ScrubNinja! After getting that karma from you a while back I was wondering if you would ever drop in on us here in my thread. First off, your location tag just struck me with a huge pang of nostalgia. "In a dark, dark room in a dark, dark house" What childrens' story is that from? I remember that line distinctly but have no idea where it came from, only that I remember it from when I was very young.

*Ahem* anyway. I had a quick browse through your Toking Tent thread. Its a very complete little grow box. I like you already as I am a big fan of ScrOG and coco moss. As you are running hand-watered open-topped coco I would not be surprised if a pearlite-capped OBBT wouldn't change your humidity at all, or even reduce it slightly. Any super-spongey open-topped medium grow like the coco pots you run actually bleed out a tremendous quantity of moisture. With a 1 inch+ thick pearlite cap over an OBBT the whole lot is surprisingly moisture-tight. When I said that you can expect slightly upped humidity with an OBBT I meant higher in comparison to a more traditional sealed hydro technique. (DWC, aero, etc) When compared to a loose open-topped normal medium grow I would put money on it faring well.

You seem like an accomplished cannabis cultivator already. The OBBTs take some experience to run. You need to be intimately familiar with the behavior and general needs of your chosen strains. As much as it irritates me running an OBBT is all about feel. You can get scientific when it comes to flush/starve/feed cycles and what sort of teas you brew and so on but at the end of the day it comes down to how well you can read your plants. As of now aggressively (high-speed, high-yield) growing cannabis with an OBBT is not for the inexperienced or faint of heart. I personally think they are very very easy to run, but I've got a pretty ingrained green thumb. It would be a hell of a lot easier to get a decent yield from, say, a normal HempyBucket fertilized with some decent hydro nutes by simply mixing according to the instructions on the side of the bottle.

However, for the experimental, organic-leaning, experienced or just plain confident gardener running OBBTs can be a very intriguing and rewarding experience. I hope one day many cannabis cultivators will come to love the laid-back low-maintenance tuned-in growing style that the OBBTs afford. Good luck and happy gardening!

-DM

 

[RipVanWeed]

Rip's BioBucket Update

Rip's BioBucket Update

I got my plants plugged in today! I let the pots dry out so the root ball would hang together. Spun the empty spacer pots up and out, when I looked down in there, I saw alot of grey fuzzies throughout.



Pop the plant out of the 6" and drop it in the void.





Pressed down a little to make sure of a good fit, then capped it off with a thick layer of Perlite. Into the Growbox they go.


1000w Vertical, veggin' another little while. 18/6, lights on temps average 80-82, Rh 40-55%...Lights off 72-76, Rh 50-60%. Topped and LSTed. Rather than a cage around the light, this time I plan to have an individual screen for each bucket for support and distance to light control. Easier movement and maintenence as well.

Here we go!

RipVanWeed

 

[Citizen024]

Having read more on your technique I think you have definately gotten a cool thing together. For the scale it runs at it does it very effectively with fairly minimal complexity. Yes you need an eye for plants, but honestly- you aint gonna make it far in all this if you don't have that. I could think of some folks I would send in this direction- primarily current organic soil growers who are used to the properties of ammendments and familiar with microbes.

I could even see recommending folks to start by using things like Bio- Bizz, Roots Organic or Earth Juice fertilizers (any more raw organic liquid in general) in addition or maybe even in place of amendments at first. This would help a newer gardener get the hang of it without having so much guess work nutritionally. Make sure all your needs are met. Even if is not as good as 100% raw amendments, it's damn good. Definately bio active stuff all those liquids.

Additions of kelp meal and possibly worm castings to your medium would be a good thing to experiment with, IMO.

You had asked about possible upgrades system wise. Some sort of watering system would be handy- maybe soaker hoses. But this poses the drain/fill build elements of complexity. Especially with every bath potentially behaving differently then the one next to it. At that point may as well bio bucket.

So with that in mind- why not?? Let's see how we can put these two clever ideas into one.

Do it like this: leave your medium right where it is at, and add a constant recircing bath. On top of your layer of lava rock get a mat of that coco root matting fiber stuff. Know what I am talking about? It's like glued together coco fiber about an 1" thick. Lay a layer or 2 of that on top of your rocks. Then fill your medium, etc. This stuff will keep your coco-perlite from getting into the bath in the rocks- even if your submerge it, it will keep your medium from constantly trying to run down your overfills. You could cover the overfills in protective screens as well, as long as they don't hinder water flow. You could get all fancy and cut the coco mess in a way to make a basket type thing even to fill with your medium, so it is held on all sides. Key to keeping a hydro system at work: don't let it clog.

Now. What you need to build is a not-so-deep-water-culture-esque in flow, with an overflow drain like you have built already. Have the drain lines all run into a 4" drain pipe, do the waterfall. Put a large screen, or filter cloth, or what have you to catch any medium that tries to come through in the waterfall (this would probably calm down alot after several days in anyways). You'll still get plenty of oxygen, and besides your okie dokie cause you have air stones in every bucket. Create the constantly recirculating river of at the bio-bucket system inside of your bathes- about what . . 4"s deep? Since its a much smaller river then the bio bucket, you would need a much smaller pump, which is good cause you might be able to NOT need a water chiller.

This would even everything out, allow you to feed in many different ways very easily, and still maintain the basic principles of your system. Could be built to any scale in theory. Practical even on the closet size too. Put a float valve on your res and you could leave it for days I am sure.

Just an idea.

A potential weak link with your current systems to try and troubleshoot: what happens if your air pump dies, or your stone is gunked? How do the plants do? Try turning one off and see what happens. I am curious. I am guessing- not a good scene. May take some days, but I suspect your microbes might get pissy, and bad guys could get in. They will have gone from a bubbling brook to a quagmire in a sense. I can't imagine that the microbes would be capable of maintaining availability and PH at the very least.

The recircing river should help with this should one or two air lines die. You would still get the river carrying O2 from the system as a whole though, so at the least the roots that are submerged are getting food and O2. Plus your microbes stay in a happy zone.

I am guessing too that currently if you had a large number of these to clean, it has to be a wet nasty ass mess when it is all done. I could see between cycle maintence being a bitch and a half. Changing the medium would suck; and unless your willing to toss lots of rock you need to fish your lava rock out of it. The coco mesh might make that easier too, since you might just remove the top medium and clean from there. Unless. . . you try to not change the mediums. . . but thats a whole other story.

This is what I would go for if I were to built one. First I would build like a 4-6 bucket system to get the hang of the concept.

 

[ScrubNinja]

G'day DM! Thanks for the warm welcome

It's from In a Dark, Dark Room and Other Scary Stories read by Alvin Schwartz (it's one of those read along to the cassette or vinyl record deals...I guess it's a CD these days). I'm listening to it now and getting freaked out! Another book that zoned me out as a kid was Where The Wild Things Are. There's also a music group called Boards Of Canada who are known for triggering those eerie 70's childhood memories/feelings.



Now, I swear I left a topic around here somewhere - a-ha! There it is I'm actually getting near finished building a new cab with better lighting and this idea just strikes a chord with me. (new cab is in my sig now if you'd like an overview - it'll be a 1 plant scrog).

OBBTs are like every technique I know and like, mixed with the techniques that I've always wanted to try! So I think I'm gonna give it a shot when my cab is done in a week or two. I have a pump and bubble tube laying around.

I'm a bit blazed at the moment so I'll be back with more in depth questions I'm sure. But for now, the tub I'd like to use is 38cm (15") x 32cm (12.5") x 16cm high (6.25") (approx 17 litres) . Is that too shallow? And I guess there'd be a chance of water bubbling out if it was too shallow? (I'm just thinking about it pooling up in the bottom of my cab)

Props to the guys giving this a go and to your thorough, in depth posts. Salute

 

[DrunkenMessiah]

RipVanWeed

Rock and Roll! Flawless execution rip, I think you've properly shown us all how its done when it comes to running mature clones in an OBBT. The girls are looking good in their new home. I love your cab design. I could imagine countless scenarios where a 1000 watt HPS in such a small space causes the poor gardener nightmare after nightmare. Running a vertical cool tube where you adjust the height of the plants instead of the lamp is just inspired. Double awesome-points bonus for having used a simple adjustable wire rack shelf system that looks easy to acquire and set up.

You're putting all of my old grows to shame! I've never had such a nice environment to run cannabis out of the OBBTs. I'm getting rather jealous over here. Keep up the good work!

Citien024

Haha! Now that's what I was talking about! I knew an experimental, hydro-loving organically-leaning mind such as yours could not go long without mulling over ideas on how to improve the OBBT design. Your ideas show a fairly strong grasp of the OBBTs and what they are about. I've seen that coco mat stuff, I can actually buy it locally off of a 1 yard wide roll for a couple bucks a foot. I can see how that would act as a lovely barrier to keep the super-fine soil sediment out of the bath. People have suggested to me before that I might try more of an Ebb & Flow approach with the OBBTs. That addition just might make it possible.

A fully integrated watering system like you describe could make the whole lot more convenient at a large scale. However I'm not sure it would make things that much easier for the grower when talking about 10 plants or fewer. The OBBTs are already fairly low maintinence. You say how it would be nice to be able to leave them for a while, not have to work on them on a daily basis. That is already possible with the standard OBBT design!

Watering happens by hand only once a week at most, often less. They are only fed every 2 weeks. Over the course of a full 3 month grow it is actually only necessary for the grower to intervene a dozen or so times. Water-insoluble slow-release nutes mean that you have to try pretty hard to cock things up. I could see a crazy Bio-Bucket-esque recirculating automated feed system reducing the maintenance schedule slightly, but the massive added complexity just wouldn't be worth it until you are talking 10 or more tubs.

I've actually been thinking that if you wanted to go large-scale with the OBBT you do it a bit different. I've been thinking of very large (think 30, 40, 50 gallon) OBBTs containing dividers with multiple plants. Look at what Silver Surfer has done. He has 2 plants growing in a single OBBT with a large plastic divider between them to prevent root strangulation. Setting a grid divider into a massive 50 gallon tub to run 10-15 plants out of sounds much more straightforward than going with a recirculation system. Take a bunch of clones and run them all in the same tub. They will all have similar nutritional needs so that isn't an issue. I think runing 3 or 4 of such tubs table-style under large HIDs could make for a wicked low-maintenance large-scale OBBT SOG. I really like the idea of recirculation but it just sounds like a lot of complexity for a system that is fairly redundant.

Dunno, maybe I just don't have enough experience with organic recirc systems. Perhaps they make life easier for a gardener than I realize.

As for air pump failure, it isn't as dramatic as you have imagined. I once tested this. After 3 days without the air stone running I chickened out. The plants showed no visible signs of distress and some poking around in the medium revealed that all was still fuzzy and sweet-smelling down there. Compare this to a water pump failure scenario in, oh I dunno, an aeroponic system. Those guys get into trouble if their pumps stop working for a couple of hours, let alone days. Add to that the fact that air pumps are some of the more reliable long-running mechanical devices you can buy and air pump failure becomes much less than a doomsday scenario for the ordinary OBBT. I'm sure the tubs would start to get pissy after a week without air, but that sounds like enough wiggle room to me.

As for cleaning them out, this is actually the easiest part of running an OBBT. I shall quote from an earlier post:

Yes, that is actually an interesting process. My organic bubble bath tubs are better suited to re-using their medium than any other grow technique I have yet seen. Allow me to explain:

During harvest (post final flush) you let the plant and medium get very dry before cutting it down. Cut the plant right where it meets the medium and take away the whole thing to hang. Pull out about half of the medium (still dry) and toss in your organic nutes for the next round of vegging. Put the half of the medium back in and mix well. There will be a TON of dead/dying roots, they'll be everywhere. Re-wet the medium and completely refill the resivoir while being sure that the bubblers are still running (they should NEVER shut off) and allow to stew for a week with the lights off. When you come back a week later and run your hand through the medium you will notice that all of the old roots have dissapeared. After the old root-ball dies it is rapidly broken down and consumed by the voracious micro-life along with the new organic nutes you threw in.

Normally left-over rootmass wreaks havoc on growers wanting to re-use their medium. Any dead roots that are allowed to rot on their own will rapidly breed pythium which is the family of pathenogenic microbes commonly known as 'root rot'. This usually makes recycling an organic medium more trouble than it is worth. However, with the organic bubble bath tubs the old roots are rapidly broken down into new nutrients for the next generation of plants! This is one of the most beautiful things about my bubble bath tubs and is yet another advantage that they have over other popular styles of medium-based growing.

Good luck and happy gardening!

-DM

Getting an OBBT ready for the next run of plants is easier than with any other hydro system I have ever seen. Just mix up the new nutes and bennies and let the thing bubble for a week. Old roots go *poof* gone! Even down in the lava rock layer. All of the old root mass that worked its way into the rock, grabbing and busting them up, is totally dissolved. This goes to show just how aggressive the micro-life in an OBBT can be!

As for newer or less experienced gardeners running an OBBT I certainly agree that using some nice designer bottled organics could make their lives easier in some ways. I tend to take the piss out of nutes like these but in honesty they are very good, and getting better all the time. However, it could raise problems as well. These newbies would not be able to follow the instructions on the side of the bottle. OBBTs use nutes more efficiently than any other grow method. They near 100% utilization of organic material which is just unheard-of with most hydro kits. I badly burned early iterations of the OBBTs with too many nutes three goddamn times before I learned this.

Also, these liquid nutes are much more volatile and water-soluable than traditional powdered solids. This is fuckin awesome for hydro rigs like yours. However it would make it difficult to use them for the pre-loading part of running an OBBT. The nute pre-loading and incubation period is one of the biggest things that sets the OBBT apart from other methods. This stage hinges on having some water-insoluble nutes in the medium for the fungus to capture and release later. Im not sure that the microbes would be able to hold on to 100% of the nutrient content of these liquid nutes.

Now, liquid designer organics would be amazing to use in the OBBTs as the grow goes on. OBBTs must be fertilized occasionally just like any other grow. To do this I make organic teas from my powdered stuff but liquid organics could do this job even better. Currently I have to use a little bit of salt nutes (12-55-6) to make it through flower. With liquid designer organics it may be possible to rock and roll through the entire grow cycle using nothing but organics.

Liquid organics are great but they could not fully replace the job of pure powdered stuff for running an OBBT. Traditional water-insoluble organics are necessary for the pre-loading process. After that though its open season. I could see huge success with designer liquid stuff in the OBBTs. The gardener would just have to keep the efficiency in mind and use lower doses of the stuff less often or else cause problems for the plants.

Sorry if it seems like I'm shooting you down Citizen024. I really like your thought process on this whole thing and think that developing the OBBT design into a flexible and mature gardening technique is something you could help with tremendously! Keep giving my little buckets some thought, I love bouncing ideas around like this!

ScrubNinja

That's what it was! I was such a weird kid, I loved that spooky stuff that freaked out my siblings.

Anyway, bitchin little cabinet you're rocking over there. More and more low-headroom gardeners are converting to PL-Ls and are very happy with them. I think you should be pleased with the performance.

As for your container that is a bit shallow but I think you could swing it. My only concern is that at 6.25 inches deep you'll be running a 2.5-3 inch bath and then 3+ inches of medium. This should be enough, especially given how wide the thing is, but the issue is that I see no room for the pearlite cap! You really want at least .5 inches of pearlite on top of the whole thing, but I say 1 inch is the minimum. Without this you will experience a high rate of moisture loss, higher humidity in the cab and less root mass as the light will be penetrating the first inch of your medium. Having the pearlite lets the plants grow root right up to the top of the medium. Late in the grow you can actually push the pearlite aside and see large roots laying on top of the coco layer! 17 liters is plenty of volume for a single plant, you're just gonna have to wring every last bit of potential out of that 6.25 inch height. I think it could be done.

Maybe you can build up the edges of the tub with duct tape or something. It doesn't have to be strong, pearlite weighs nothing. As for the water coming up out of your tub this fear is unfounded. So long as you have a nice free-flowing overflow drain and keep your medium low-density enough this will never happen. Keep us updated on your progress and why don't you post a list of available organics you have/have access to. Silver_Surfer is also trying out my OBBT technique and I believe that he lives Down Under as well. He might be able to help you out getting some good stuff locally instead of paying an arm and a leg to get it shipped to you. Good luck and happy gardening!

-DM

 

[rrog]

I'm now wondering if I should look at this proposed setup. You need guinea pigs. While I don't have years of experience growing the weed, I do have the skills, space and resources to do this. I have the test equipment and I have degrees in both bio and chem. I'd like to consider trying this Citizen / Drunken Hybrid. Maybe it's a Drunken Citizen hybrid, since that sounds more entertaining.

 

[DrunkenMessiah]

Hahaha! Drunken Citizen Hybrid, I like that!

As per usual I encourage people to experiment using the information that I provide. I will happily give you additional advice and suggestions for your project but you must keep in mind that you are leaving established hydro methods far behind. If you really choose to go through with this you will be navigating completely uncharted waters. Personally I was never happy as a cannabis cultivator if I wasn't growing in that sort of state, but it sure as hell isn't for everyone.

Citizen024's Bio Bucket/OBBT recirculating hybrid concept is based on strong and functional principals. I stand behind the OBBT as a consistent and stable grow method and the Bio Bucket has long since been proven as such. However, this does not mean a combination of the two is necessarily going to be successful/an improvement. Experimental grow methods are rearely successful the first time. It took me five seperate attempts to get the OBBT to the point it is now. And remember I do not consider the OBBT in it's current form to be totally mature and 'complete' as a grow method. You are combining an established grow method with another semi-experimental method to create something totally new. I just want to make sure you know what you are getting yourself into. You need to be braced for disappointment and prepared to see this experiment through several iterations. As I said the chances of nailing it perfectly the first time are seriously stacked against you. If you think failure on the first trial would be enough to discourage you from trying again then you might as well not even start. You must not only be willing to try again after an initial failure but also willing to continue pushing and honing the technique through several generations.

Now, with all that doom and gloom put aside I want to congratulate you for your bravery and thank you for taking enough interest in my technique to want to improve it further. Doing this successfully means that you are going to have to become even more familiar with the OBBT technique than someone who just wants to use it in its current form. To modify a system you have to understand it completely! All of it's governing principals and inner workings must be familiar and make sense to you.

That means you're gonna have to read this thread in it's entirety. Yes, the whole thing. There are a lot of nuances and small side notes that I have made about the technique only after being prompted by other user's questions. There's no one or collection of posts on here that will tell you everything you need to know. You've got to absorb all of it.

And then you'll have to go and find a couple of the better Bio Bucket explanations out there. I believe that PeatMoss has written a good one.

If you are really willing to put in the effort than I am willing to support you the whole way through. And you wouldn't just be drawing on my knowledge. There is now a very small clutch of gardeners on this forum who have started to give the OBBT technique a go. Then there are users like Citizen024 who like to experiment themselves and have some organic experience to boot. We will prop you up as best we can, I would love to see a networked, fully-scalable auto-fed version of the OBBTs come to life.

I never imagined that the OBBTs would garner so much attention as to warrant this sort of thing. I really want to thank you all for taking the time to read and absorb and understand what I'm ranting about. I have provided little more than a bigass WALL-O-TEXT and a crappy little diagram here in this thread. Despite this the OBBTs seem to be capturing the imagination of the gardeners here on this fantastic website. With no real evidence of the idea having any merit for cannabis cultivation you guys have stuck your necks out to give it a try. THANK YOU ALL You've made me very happy. My inability to currently cultivate cannabis myself with this technique has been made much less painful by watching you guys give it a go. Here's to looking forward, may the gods of dank watch over you all!

Good luck and happy gardening!

-DM

 

[rrog]

OK. I'm into reading and research as long as I can ask questions.

Quick question for you and Citizen024: What would be the distance from the floor to the base of the plant? That is, how tall are the buckets?

I am height limited and used a 9" tall tote as a res to minimize height. I have additional room laterally but not vertically. I would grow 2-3 plants under a 600 HPS with Hortilux bulb. Also, I'll be augmenting with a 70W UVB system.

Lastly, I had a SCROG to keep things tight and low.

If I can deal with the height of the buckets, I can proceed.

Side note, I'd like to get a good O2 meter and monitor that as well. It would be useful in some tests / diagnostics also.

I haven't been this excited in a while. This is a thrill. Thanks much.

 

[solarpowered_ca]

wanting to say thanks DrunkenMessiah . If posters were to read all of your postings in this thread from the beginning they will more than likely gain a brilliant insight into what you are saying and find most of their many questions already answered such as supercropping/ feeding/ flushing / starving and recycling cycles. All amazing and valuable information. This OBBT system as described by yourself looks perfect for a medical cabinet. No need for emptying soil or large containers with water . Something that medical users often find very difficult .This is a Low cost system once its set up and refreshingly simple. The possibilty of growing organic first class meds with both minimal imput and ongoing costs should appeal to many . Once again thanks . I dont yet have any pics to share but my sweet ladies are looking good in their new homes .

 

[DrunkenMessiah]

rrog:

Loving your enthusiasm! You show no fear so let's get it going!

OBBTs are somewhat intolerant of being over-compacted. If the bath is too shallow a lot of things go wrong. The res doesn't hold much water to begin with as a lot of the space is taken up by lava rock/hydroton. The distance from the top of the bubbler to the bottom of the water line gets too short and combined with the shallow rock layer the air bubbles do not get broken up and distributed nearly as well. This can make the tub irritatingly high maintenance.

There is much good news for you however. More lateral space reduces the bitchiness of the tub as long as you get a wider bubble net to match. Its cool for an OBBT to be fairly shallow as long as there is some width and length to make up for it. Even still I would say that the shallowest bath desirable is around 3 inches deep. Happily with your current 9 inches of depth you could easily run a 4 inch bath which is my preferred number. This leaves room for 4 inches of medium and 1 inch of pearlite.

You end up with an OBBT that consists of 50% bath. This is a larger ratio than I have ever run. Nearly every iteration of the OBBT so far has run about 33% bath by volume. I have no idea if this ratio is important. Granted, with your intention to hybridize the OBBT with a Bio Bucket recirc. system a bath-heavier tub may be desirable.

I have told others that I consider the absolute minimum height possible for an OBBT is 8 inches. That's 3 inches of bath, 4 inches of medium and 1 inch of pearlite. Lately though I've been thinking you could limbo under even this. I've had a look at ScrubNinja's cabinet and he's working with a 6.25 inch deep tub. I initially figured this up as too short, but it is very generous in the dimensions of width and length. So much so that the shallow tub winds up at a captious 17 liters of volume. I think that if he built up the edges of his tub to 7 inches to make room for the pearlite layer he could swing it.

This puts the minimum headroom number of an OBBT comfortably 2 inches shorter than what you currently run. Keep in mind there are a couple of trade-offs with this design. I've always run the OBBTs out of tubs that are long in one dimension, narrow in the other and very deep. Think 13 inches long, 6 inches wide and 12 inches deep. I prefer this because it makes the bubbling very easy. Just stick a generic 12 inch long 1 inch wide air stone down there and be done. The longer, wider, shallower OBBT would need a more complex bubbler setup to get good air distribution. This would not be an insurmountable issue. A bubble mat, flexible bubble wand or multiple smaller stones could all be used to get around this issue.

On top of that there are the as-of-yet-unknown influences caused by the oxygenated recirculation system. Running a water pump complete with Bio-Bucket style waterfall as Citizen024 has suggested could mean that the amount of necessary air injection from the stones is reduced. Whether or not this is true and to what extent that matters if it is currently resides in the realm of mystery. You will have to experiment

In summary then: I think you could easily get an OBBT-based system in at least as much headroom as you currently run with your old rig. Possibly even an inch or two shorter as we have seen. So long as you can make up for the lost volume with extra width or length you should be fine. I've always thought that an OBBT could be as small as one or two gallons if it where at least 8 inches deep, but I've never gone below 4.5 myself. I'm very interested to see what impact the recirc system might have on the needed dimensions of the OBBT itself. Currently I'm leaning towards the idea that the OBBTs could be made even more compact given the benefit of oxygenated recirculation. These are indeed very exiting times! You otherwise sound in good shape rrog, lets keep the dialogue going.

Good luck and happy gardening!

-DM