6 bio buckets, water chiller, t5 veg, 1k hps flower

[sirripalot]

Whats up guys. So I don't have any good pictures yet so I'm going to begin the thread off by talking about the water chiller i just installed last night. Currently I have ~500 watts with t5 bulbs. Now t5's don't generate much heat, but i don't have any ventilation set up yet. The room temp stays ~80F, and unfortunately so was my water. Actually before installing the water chiller my water temps were at 81.1F, too high for my liking. So i found a somewhat local guy who was selling a JBJ Arctica Tit. Chiller that he was using for his aquarium.

Here is the link: http://www.marinedepot.com/JBJ_Arct...roller-JBJ_Lighting-JB1111-FICHINQCBC-vi.html

I got the 1/10hp model from him for $200, retails for $500!

I'll snap some pics tonight maybe to begin my journal here. So anyway, the water chiller has a thermostat you set that is built in. I set it to 69F last night. This morning i checked and it was hovering at 68.5F! This thing dropped the temperature in my bio bucket system by over 10F!

The water chiller is currently directly chilling the water in my resevoir. I plan on hooking up an IceBox once I put my 1000 watter up, so I'll probably have to invest in a bigger chiller then..but we'll see what i can work out.

Please stay I'll be back with pictures of my setup soon! The system is completely built and running. 6 Bio buckets, 630gph pump, air stones in each bucket..pretty slick.

-- UPDATED WITH PICS BELOW --

 

[cashmunny]

I thought that you can run higher res temps with bio buckets. At least that's what big tokes' tutorial says.

I don't know why that would be the case, I'm just going by what he says.

 

[Apu]

i believe you can run higher temps.. probably better to keep it low though. nice setup ill be waitin for pics!!

 

[sirripalot]

yeah i've also heard that. i think because certain beneficial bacterium grow in bio buckets that don't grow in other hydro setups, and that bacterium helps prevent algae from growing. and yes, that's probably true. let me be clear i wasn't necessarily noticing growth problems, i'm just expecing more heat than there is now, and at 81F water temps who knows how high it would have gone. also keep in mind that i am forced to keep my res. in my room because of stealth and space issues.

taking some pics now, post them in a few minutes!

 

[sirripalot]

alright i got a few pics. sorry they are so low quality i can't find my girls digi.

okay so here is a quick shot of the room:


~~ updated pictures below ~~

that's all the pictures i have right now. as you can see i haven't finished the room completely due to time restrictions. i need to get some cover on the walls inside, and get a room on the door. once i get the door in i figure out how i'm going to battle the heat from my 1k watt hps. i think i may go the IceBox route, which looks pretty promising.

water temp is at 68 solid all day with the lights on

 

[oldschoolfarmer]

Nice setup

Did you do any mods to BT's original design? I'm in the process of planning a similar system

 

[sirripalot]

thanks! the design is pretty much identical to bigtokes. the only differences i would say is that I don't bother mounting the net pots under the lids (i like being able to pull them out), and also i put a water pump/stone in each bucket to provide a ton of oxygen to the roots.

this is the third bucket system i've built, this one being the best construction i would say. previously i would run the sump house from each bucket to the resevoir, but i decided to go with the one main drain tube after seeing bigtoke's design, thanks bigtoke!

 

[Apu]

Very awesome bio-buckets sirripalot. Im planning a very similar 8 bucket system right now. Its my 1st time newbie grow too. I have a couple questions if you dont mind. What kind of pump did you use. Im going to order a Magnetic Drive Pump at 168GPH, 1/200HP for eight buckets and res. And two 400W HPS. Any thoughts?

 

[kp^]

sirripalot, Your bucket system looks good. How far are those ladies along?(sry didnt see) Whats with the clay rocks?? Or are those lava rocks.. hard to see hehe

High temps with a Bio-Bucket system is bad. I've got my own system running, but ive got more time into research and design too. I've basically 'stalked' BigToke in most of his threads over the past year to learn all I can about the bio bucket system. So I share a snippet if info I've collected....

Quote from the man himself, BigToke:

Q. Would be possible to run the system at a higher temps (before plants are inserted) to 80-85 to get the system colonized faster?

Answer is: No!! in nature or our echo-environment the number of good-bacteria out number the bad-bacteria by the millions!! So way is there any bad-bacteria at all? The answer to this is; nature rarely supplies the perfect conditions for the good-bacteria to take over….go figure? In our Bio-Buckets we are attempting to supply that perfect hydro-environment for the air-born bacteria that causes bacterium {bio-film}, the population of various microorganisms, trapped in a layer of slime and excretion products, attached to a surface. thus giving way to the terminology of {Beneficial Bacterium} increasing your temps in your Bio-Buckets will do one to two things, 1) if temps are around 80 degrees the {BB} will begin to decrees not increase. 2) if temps get to 82 degrees and above lab results have shown that the {BB} cannot survive, in other words; you have just made your Bio-System more appetizing for the bad-bacteria than the good-bacteria, that’s not what you want!!!

I will not even get in to what this will do to your BOD’s {Biochemical Oxygen Demands,} in brief: this is the amount of oxygen (measured in mg/l) that is required for the decomposition of organic matter by single-cell organisms, brother you do know that going higher in temps lowers your 02 right? Lets not go there!!

Also this is going to cause lock-out of the COD’s {Chemical Oxygen Demands,} this is the amount of oxygen this is consumed in the exidation of organic and oxidasable inorganic matter as well, in other words; not even your nutrient solution was designed to operate in such high temps and low {BOD’s} & {COD’s}

So how do we fix this problem wanting to get an early start on things, it’s really very simple I do believe and it goes something like this:

There is this term that we use in labs that’s called {BOD5,} this is the amount of dissolved oxygen consumed in five days by Beneficial Bacterium that perform biological degradation of organic matter.

Here’s how this works: have you ever hard of {Breakpoint Chlorination} this is the addition of chlorine to water until there is enough chlorine present for disinfection of water. The thing about this is chlorine is only able to hold it’s bond with H20/water only for a certain amount of time without adding any more to it……….and that breakthrough point is around 24-hours, after this the chlorine have lost it’s hold on the H20 enough for the {BB} to begin to work on that bio-film.

I understand that most folks would like to use Bio-Catalyses to quick start there system and that’s just fine; just remember if using tap-water give 24-hours for the chlorine to reach it’s breakthrough point and after that go to it, I would recommend something like GH-Subculture or something to it’s equivalent.

Also you need to consider what is known as CFU’s {Colony Forming Units} this is a measure that indicates the number of microorganisms in water, I will not get into all of that right now, but if your not using lava rocks go get some and use them in your net-pots as your medium, also go back over the material that I have supplied it will tell you every thing in short what you need to do, btw there was a hell of a lot of time and consideration that went into the design of BigTokes Bio-Bucket System, thus I found that some of the science that went into the making of it, that some folk didn’t want to here, so I’m just giving folks what they need to know for now in the building of the system…….but every now and then I will explain in more details about this great-system.

once again in short, every hydroponics system that is manufacture by a company used hydro-engineers to design there hydro-systems, and every hydro-engineer knows that there is one single thing he must design/build his hydro-system around, and that is the most reacting substance in the world, OXYGEN!!! Bottom line, every hydro-system is built around how well they can utilize this most precious gas, in short: every plant-cell needs it in order to stay alive, your nutrients need it in the forum of {Biotransformation} the conversion of a substance into other compounds by organisms; including bioegradation. And last but not lest your Beneficial Bacterium need it to live!! Nothing will react or live in your system without it, it is the most single important element of your system.

The short answer, you’ll just fry your plants.
The beneficial bacterium already exist in the tap water, correct? you are not physically adding them to the rez, right?

The Beneficial Bacterium that I use is air born spores………fill system up with plain old tap-water let it run 24/7 and after 24 hours the chlorine will be gone and then the air bone spores will begin to colonize in the system (lava rocks), btw if you will place a fan to blow over the reservoir it will speed up the process a great deal and should be able to start putting your cuttings in the Bio-System within a week, it really depends upon amount of lava rocks your using and how well you have them submerged and the exchange rats of each Bio-Bucket, plus a very good waterfall!! If every thing pan’s out I would say you would be safe to put them in the system within a week, btw I do not add anything to speed up the colonization process other than put a fan to blow over my reservoir……….it is very important that your reservoir is not sealed, it needs to have anywhere from 2” to 4” cracks to let gas’s out and to get fresh air in. this is were your 02 is added in the Bio-System, as the waterfall turns the water it mixes the 02 back into the system, so if you seal it up there will be no were to get the 02 from.

 

[sirripalot]

Very awesome bio-buckets sirripalot. Im planning a very similar 8 bucket system right now. Its my 1st time newbie grow too. I have a couple questions if you dont mind. What kind of pump did you use. Im going to order a Magnetic Drive Pump at 168GPH, 1/200HP for eight buckets and res. And two 400W HPS. Any thoughts?

thanks bro. hey good luck on your first grow. this is the third bio-bucket system i've built so I've pretty much have got it down packed by now, but it's been awhile i must say.

i originally intended on getting an external pump (to reduce on heat), that's why i've got that outlet at the bottom of my res. but while shopping for pumps, heh..at HD, they had a perfect 1" outlet pump but it was submerisble, so i ended up just using the 1" hole i originally intended on using. the pump is 630gph. I know, it's about double what i need...SO?

bro you're low on that 168gph pump, especially for 8 buckets. if i'm doing the math appropriatly (8 * 5) * 10 = 400gph, that's if you want your buckets refilling 10 times per hour..which is optimal. But hey got for 20! lol.

two 400's would probably be sweet. i once had a 8 bucket under a 1000, and it was beautiful so you should see the same results. and probably even be able to spread the light out better with 2 lights instead of 1.

 

[sirripalot]

sirripalot, Your bucket system looks good. How far are those ladies along?(sry didnt see) Whats with the clay rocks?? Or are those lava rocks.. hard to see hehe

High temps with a Bio-Bucket system is bad. I've got my own system running, but ive got more time into research and design too. I've basically 'stalked' BigToke in most of his threads over the past year to learn all I can about the bio bucket system. So I share a snippet if info I've collected....

Quote from the man himself, BigToke:

why thank you kp! yes i'm very glad my instincts served me well this time . i've been at a solid 68F with the chiller and the ladies look very happy.

yeah i haven't even introduced my ladies, wtf. the three on the left are cali hash clones from a fem. seed i grew out and cloned. the other three on the right are blue hash, again from fem. seed i grew out and cloned.

does anybody know if rooting solution expires? i have NEVER had so much trouble with cloning before this time, and i was thinking maybe because of old rooting solution? I did end up getting my 6 i wanted, plus a few left over for a buddy so all is well

they've only been in the bio system for about a week and a half i guess.

thanks guys! post more pics soon.

 

[fatigues]

The room temp stays ~80F, and unfortunately so was my water. Actually before installing the water chiller my water temps were at 81.1F, too high for my liking. So i found a somewhat local guy who was selling a JBJ Arctica Tit. Chiller that he was using for his aquarium.

Here is the link: http://www.marinedepot.com/JBJ_Arct...roller-JBJ_Lighting-JB1111-FICHINQCBC-vi.html

I got the 1/10hp model from him for $200, retails for $500!

Very nice! Gratz on the chiller pick-up. Chillers are often the single most expensive hardware component in any hydro setup. $200 for a 1/10 hp aquarium chiller is a great find. You must have been grinning ear to ear after you did the deal for it at that price.

I probably missed it, but what are your water temps now?

 

[sirripalot]

Very nice! Gratz on the chiller pick-up. Chillers are often the single most expensive hardware component in any hydro setup. $200 for a 1/10 hp aquarium chiller is a great find. You must have been grinning ear to ear after you did the deal for it at that price.

I probably missed it, but what are your water temps now?

haha yeah man i was pretty stoked to find such a deal. i had to drive about an hour but was well worth it. the chiller has a thermostat and i have it set to 68F and it holds steady easily. i just ordered an icebox and a water-cooled co2 generator that I think i'm going to try and cool with my res. water, so we'll see how good it does at keeping the temps steady then

thanks bro

 

[sirripalot]

hey guys just updating with a couple of pics. i removed the old ones bc i didn't know you could host them right here on IC! sweet.

shot of the blue hash:

shot of the cali hash:

finally got around to cleaning some stuff up:

can you see the yellowing on the leaves and the brownish tips? i think i corrected it by adding some more nutes, i underestimated the PPM. after looking at some charts it looks like people have their PPM(ECx.7) ~2200 at mid-growth veg?

stick around i still have plans to seal the room, inject co2 via tank, and throw the 1k hortilux up

 

[Casual]

Hi SirRip... Looking at your pics, What are you using in the net baskets? Are those small round lava rocks, or are lava rocks underneath those? What is that on top?

Very nice setup!! I'm hoping to have mine up and running in a few weeks.

Caz

 

[sirripalot]

UPDATE

UPDATE

Sorry it's been so long, i've still been completing the construction of the room completely, and making some purchases.

sentinel chhc-1

20lb tank, C.A.P. regulator

1k hortilux cooled with a vortex

custom a/c ventilation box for the sealed room

i recently fried my plants when making a big nute change right before leaving for four days. a real stupid move on my part. i'm recovering from that now, and will post some pics when they're good to look at

 

[Natagonnaworrie]

I just made it over... damn. Sounds good, tons of good equiptment. Unfortunatly i am a little late and some of the pics were removed. I will be checking in often to see the grow in full bloom. Looks like you have everything you need for a nice set up. i'll admit i'm a little jealous of the cool temps from the 1000w.

Nice job bro. Keep the thread up. I'd love to see the CO2 working its majic on this one.



Are you planning to add some clones? Anything in mind?

 

[sirripalot]

thanks for the support bro. yeah a lot of time/money has gone into it. this is the first 100% sealed setup i've done, heat can really be a bitch when it has nowhere to go! i wouldn't even attempt to have a sealed room without an A/C or water chilled method setup. My temps would also rise into the 90s with no A/C, which i'm not comfortable with.

i'll be sure to update the thread soon. thanks.

oh..and i'm not adding anything. my bio-bucket setup is only 6 buckets, and i've got each side of 3 full of clones from feminized seeds that were vegged out. i said i "fried" them, which is definitely true..but they're definitely going to come back...honestly i didn't even really lower the nutrient level that much, they seem to be fine with the amt. Now i'm thinking that i did not in fact fry them, but my dumbass left the room sealed for 4 days before i even had co2 in there! stupid.

 

[Billy Burroughs]

i run one 1000 hps and have even loswer temps than that i run sam kinda setup too sealed room sealed hoods run through a scrubber and i dont go over 71 but typically hover around 68 i run co2 as well with cool temps and the co2 this next round should be some real solid big strong colas

 

[Billy Burroughs]

ya man i gotta 4 x 6 x 7 room and i run a 12k btu ac unit to it cranked to as low as it will go i run it all ytear even when its freezing out because it doubles as a dehumidifier as well so it keeps the air in your room always fresh and up to its best preformance wisei got another room same size as my flowe rroom atm im thinking about knocking out and just using the one 12k btu ac unit for but i dont know if it'll be enough know what i mean what i got is working for the space have and i geuss i better listen to dad god rest his soul and if it aint broke dont fuck with it