[LadyLargely]

Originally Posted by rrog

Oh no. Nope. I also like to cook and I always prefer to follow a specific recipe the first time. If that's OK.



Thanks again much

I used all three grades of coco and it was wonderful. Primarily coarse coco and then a liberal powdering of the two finer ones. This is expensive and hard to do. Getting all three grades together is not neccessary, just something I wanted to have a crack at.

Redundant air stones sound nice. You may be overkilling a bit, but you won't hurt anything by doing so. Better too much than not enough. As I said it wasn't the air flow I was worried about on your pump, its the longetivity. It will work fine for now but I would not invest 50 bucks in another diaphragm-style aquarium air pump. Only ten bucks more would score you a swanky hydro style pump like mine.

[rrog]

Check on the Coco. Thanks

I was looking at the big Sweetleaves at 900 GPH

How much worm castings if I'm using store bought organic soil? 1/2 cup per 5 gal of total finished compost?

[LadyLargely]

Nooooo idea dude. I saw someone surprised that DM thought straight wormcastings would be too hot. You might mix as much as 50/50 worm-castings/bagged organic soil.

Huzzah for bigass air pumps. Just make sure you are prepared to deal with the noise and vibration of these sorts of models. Axial hydro air pumps are awesome but they produce a huge amount of noise, vibration and heat! You need to muffle the outputs and the inlet. Then you need a way to shock-mount the pump so it doesn't shake your house down.

They can be a hassle but I love the damn things.

[rrog]

Keeping in mind 3 plants, each in a 5 gallon pail.

Would this puppy work? https://www.sunleaves.com/detail.asp?sku=SDA550

58 watt. 1110 GPH

[issack]

Awesome.!!

[Citizen024]

Hanging the pump from a bungee cord is a simple way to cut the vibration. Hook the bungee to an eyelet or two. For heavy things the heavy rubber bungees are pimp. I did all my fans in a similar method, very quite. Placing the pump on a piece of styrofoam works too. Mine is mounted with rubber feet that pretty much dappen vibrationally completely. Adding more doesn't help noise at all. The little fuckers compressors are loud!!

I know your not interested in larger systems, LadyL, but I have come up with a very solid model.

But a bunch of loud ass airpumps could be the deal breaker, as currently I am about good on noise and have done EVERYTHING right in terms of noise reduction construction. Mine is the 1440gph I think, as that is the 8 line. LOUD!!!

Short of insulated air cooled boxes housing them, I am not sure what more can be done to quite them down. You eluded to having some method for sound dampening them, if so I am all ears

The boxes work I guess, but would be a pain to build a several boxes with so many air pumps in them. I have some left over 1 1/2" R-19 foam insulation sheet, and that would surely quiet it down quite a lot.

I know it probably wouldn't work, but a cardboard box full of packing peanuts (maybe rocks?) or something of that like comes to mind too. Simpler solutions. Overheating/fire would be an issue in something of that likes I imagine.

[LadyLargely]

Jesus Christ rrog, 58 watts? I'm getting along pretty damn well with an 18 watt model. Thats running 5 12-inch air stones with enough umph leftover to run an accessory stone or two.

Sorry to have set you off with my warnings on adequate air-flow. I know its important but in truth I've never seen an OBBT suffer from inadequate air. We've run 3 and 4 gallon OBBTs on shitty little 2 watt aquarium pumps. I suspect the absolute required minimum air flow to run an OBBT is quite low.

I'm sorry I can't give you guys hard numbers. I'm not really about that stuff. Stick with my description of what a bubbling OBBT should be like. Consistent moisture levels and listening for the seething like I said in the first posts are what to look for. There's very little extra performance to be had from excessive aeration. Aside from really fast incubation periods I've never noticed any real benefits to be had from surpassing the minimum, whatever it is.

Citizen024

I've done a shock-mounting demo over in my thread in the Room Design forums. It involves some specialty acoustic dampening material to suck up vibration. I will be doing a demo on how to use it specifically to muffle air pumps and fans very soon. Will hit you with a link when that happens.

[rrog]

Originally Posted by LadyLargely

Jesus Christ rrog, 58 watts? I'm getting along pretty damn well with an 18 watt model. Thats running 5 12-inch air stones with enough umph leftover to run an accessory stone or two.

Running five 12" stones with some headroom is a good benchmark. Gives me an idea of the capacity needed.

I like overkill, and the pumps are all so cheap. But I'd like to get the smallest that will do the job with headroom to spare.

Sounds like since I'm running 3 pails, your 18 Watt unit would actually well work for me. That pumps out 600GPH. I could go to the 35 Watt. That's the next biggest at 950 GPH. I can always dial back the flow.

I guess I should keep in mind that the bigger the pump, the bigger the noise. But I can silence anything...

I'll do a specific pictorial of building a pump silencer box.

[LadyLargely]

Nice. Yea, I would encourage going one-size-up from what you think you need. The 35 watter sounds good for your needs. Will provide enough excessive pressure so that you can upgrade and run more tubs later on. Just knowing how loud my little 18 watt guy is I shudder to think of the racket a pump with forty more watts would make!

[rrog]

I am so grateful for you taking the time to answer my endless questions. I promise not to ask the same question twice.

I'm buying that pump today.