Seeking Critique on Vert Colosseum SOG concept.

Crusader Rabbit said:

You never really got to see how this table would work as you originally designed. You built an automated ebb & flow system but hand watered once every two days instead.

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This is a very valid criticism. I can easily fix the E&F fittings to keep them from leaking. But I also see the potential for benefit from switching to a bed and allowing the plants to grow into the unused space if they so desire. Would an E&F bed work if I used some kind of mesh to keep the E&F fittings from getting clogged?

I think the reason your buds didn't swell like your CFL grows was that your plants could have been shorted on nutrients this time. You thought they were happy only watering every other day because they didn't show water stress, but you were also only feeding them every other day. There was water in the containers the second day to prevent wilt but the plants had already sucked all the nutrients out of it.

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This strikes me as truth. I was looking for the plants to show me they needed to be watered the way that they did in the light mix.

I suspect that if you hook up the pumps and a reservoir as designed, and feed them twice a day during lights on, you'll get the fat buds you want.

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Hmm. Definitely food for thought.

I'm curious about people's thoughts about the pros and cons of drip fed vs. flooded and drained. I have all the materials on hand to repair and seal the E&F fittings so that they should work as originally designed. But if it would be a matter of buying tubing and a day's work setting up the individual sites I can see it being worthwhile if there are significant gains over straight E&F.

I do a perpetual grow. It is really important to me to be able to pick up each individual plant for whatever reason. Plastic containers in ebb & flow work perfectly for this. Individual feed lines would be a pain. Since you're doing single run mono-cropping you really have no need to manipulate individual plants until harvest. You'll only have to set up the feed lines once.

In this thread by High Country he is growing ebb & flow in a hydroton filled tub;

https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=166407

I suppose if you placed some sort of vertically mounted screens on either side of the E&B fittings you could fill the channels with any medium. Unless the pumps were throttled
down, I'd question whether coco could take on the water fast enough to prevent an overflow.

edit; If you do fill those troughs with a growing media and let the roots intertwine, the only way you'll adjust plant spacing is with clippers.

ebb and flow along with individual pots will allow you to keep your job as a light mover but not have to do it as often. I think your table setup benefits from having that flexibility to juggle them to optimize your canopy.

OK, Anti. First off I'm really glad that you want to keep your thread stickied, that's awesome. Second I'm really glad that your going to modify your setup into a drip fed drain to waste setup, I guarantee when you get it setup and running you will never go back to soil, I've got a few people to switch over to this way of growing and they can't believe the results they are getting, maybe I can get them on this thread to tell ya their experiences.

Now most importantly we need to do this and do it right, I'm kinda pushed for time here but I'll do my best her fer ya.

More below...

Anti said:

I will be implementing many of your suggestions HGO. And I have some questions:

Is there any reason I can't drain to waste by using the existing hole I've already cut for my E&F fittings?

I'm not 100% sure what you mean, where is the E&F hole located? You could drain from the E&F hole but having a more even drainage at the base of your beds will be 100 times better, you won't have any stagnant water and salts building up in your coco. You could drill holes at the base of the beds like bobble says but personally I would take the base off and attach wire mesh like this... (It might be easier for you to drill holes since your working with a built system)

That way you will have a 100% zero resistance flow of water free falling into your waste guttering. Now if that is too much work, or if it will make your current setup unstable then just get drilling lots of holes. Coco is a great medium, it's really hard to over water in coco if not impossible, the coco will hold a certin amount of water then quickly dispel the extra portions unlike soil that will keep on sucking up water/nutes to you've over watered and suffocated your roots.


Your drawing shows the drains in the centers, but my holes are cut on one end of the table. Since I'm shortening the legs anyway, it occured to me that I could shorten the end where the drain holes are located by an extra inch and make the whole table slope gently toward the drain.

You want a free flow of water going into the coco, down to the hydroton and right out the base with as much ease as possible, if the hydroton at the base of your medium meets solid wood your gonna have problems IMO, free fall bro, drill holes, put down wire mesh, anything that will get your that water going out quickly.

Is there a good reason not to do this? The holes are already cut on the sides of the table. They'd have to be plugged and new holes cut in the center, if so.

Please get me pictures, if your talking about installing your drain pipe to your E&F hole to you waste rez (part of your guttering) then yeah that's cool, but if your thinking about having a solid base below your roots and tilting your stadium towards a waste hole then your going to have problems and it's best we get this sorted now than you getting salt build up and root disease.

Then I could make a mesh "floor" leaving an inch or so below the coco bed for drainage.

Eventually, I could completely redesign the table using your NFT gutters, but do you think what I've described will work in the short-term?

Anti, 'if it's worth doing, it's worth doing right' You need your drainage working 100% with all of the waste getting out, easily, I worry if you don't have a wire mesh or holes drilled at the base that you will get a lot of salt build up, then you will have many problems, see what I'm saying? Oh and scratch the NFT idea, most likely your roots won't grow properly into the guttering which upon thinking this idea over in my head many times since posting, it's a good thing, we need to focus on one feeding system and max it out, adding NFT in their is gonna add more potential problems that we don't need

And will my 496 GPH pump be able to run 70 drippers?

It should do

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Any more questions fire away, we all wana see you do very well out of this and were here fer ya bro.

HGO

this is the best thread ever. this is an awesome community.


I personally run the hortilux bulbs..I've done the cheapos and I noticed a difference, and I'm one cheap-ass mofo!...but I buy the hortis now. I wish they came in 150's ;v/

I'd say if yer going with hps, then go for broke and get the high end bulbs too....(imo)

If yer still undecided about weather to run hps the whole time or cmh for the first week or 2, then try both...CMH on one side and hps on the other....I think your set up is wide enough that you'd be able to tell the diff between the plants on the far right and far left. (I'd do cmh first 2 weeks then go hps)

I would like to add that if you go with a large diameter mesh like HGO suggests, the water will literally run straight through the medium. You're gonna have to compensate for this by feeding in really small increments... Which I suggest anyway... Slow 1 minute feeds. Gotta run drip tubing unless you wanna be in there with a turkey baster 2-3x a day.

Perfect, bobble. I feed like that too, you don't want the water pissing out of the drippers a nice steady 1 minute feed is what I give my plants and I'm getting a nice run off after a minute in 6.5Ltr pots.

Also I think that it might be easier to do as you have suggested, drill holes, because his system is already built and taking away the base now might be more work than it's worth, what do you think, bobble?

Hundred Gram Oz said:

Perfect, bobble. I feed like that too, you don't want the water pissing out of the drippers a nice steady 1 minute feed is what I give my plants and I'm getting a nice run off after a minute in 6.5Ltr pots.

Also I think that it might be easier to do as you have suggested, drill holes, because his system is already built and taking away the base now might be more work than it's worth, what do you think, bobble?

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agreed... but I have some other ideas as well... Like you could take a saw and slot out drainage channels down the middle... but you just have to get creative with the gutter to make sure that they capture everything... Like maybe mount the gutters, and then caulk them so nothing can escape. Then you're guaranteed to not have any drainage issues...

I'm sure there are more experienced builders than me around here...

Anyway... skip the ebb and flow unless you're switching to hydroton. Coco is best top fed dtw, and I will stick to that until the day I retire... and then some.

Hundred Gram Oz said:

Any more questions fire away, we all wana see you do very well out of this and were here fer ya bro.

HGO

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Ok. I'm going to try to explain this idea one more time, because I am under the impression that it isn't getting through. Please don't be frustrated with me.

Suppose I took a wire mesh like you have pictured and put it in my existing troughs, but I find a way to mount it so that there is an inch (or more if necessary) below the wire mesh for waste water to drain to. (This space would replace the gutters.) Then I build the beds on top of the wire mesh and drip feed. As the medium gets saturated, it begins to drip or run out of the mesh and into the basin of the table. If I am only feeding in 1 minute bursts, I can't imagine that the whole trough will fill with waste water before it can be drained.

Taking the bottom of each tier out would necessitate starting over from scratch and rebuilding. These things were not built to be disassembled with anything less than a circular saw. It would be possible to drill a bunch of holes in the troughs, but just the gutters are going to cost twice what it cost to build this table in the first place (once you factor in the end pieces and corners and etc.), so if I'm going to go that route, I might as well just build a whole new table.

So I am trying to explore if there is a reasonable way to achieve what you guys are suggesting without having to completely redesign. Money is still very tight at the moment.

Here are pictures of where we're at at the moment as far as drainage:





I have the table upside down because I am shortening the legs and it weighs a lot. Hopefully you'll be able to get the gist of it from these shots.

If I went with the E&F fittings, all I'd have to do is mount a 1/4" thick piece of wood to the underside of those holes and then put the E&F fittings through that 1/4" piece.

If 3/4" and 1/2" drain tubes aren't going to be able to keep up, I could always attach a larger "drain tube" instead.

If I cut the legs on my table so that they're an inch shorter on the side with the drain holes, won't the whole table drain out completely between waterings? (Assuming I'm drip feeding from above in 1 minute bursts.)

It's a really good point that this thing is already built and paid for. You'd learn a lot and probably get a lot more bud if you did a run with multiple ebb & flow feedings per day. Maybe try some larger containers like the "Short One" treepots for more roots.

If you drilled a bunch of holes for drain to waste, each hole would require some sort of fitting. Even with the prohibitively expensive rain gutter you'd still need some sort of drip edge to keep water from running along the under surface of your trough and dripping outside the gutter. It could just be a pvc pipe insert, or a bulkhead fitting like the E&B fittings (getting expensive again). If you do have some drain fitting coming down underneath it could then be controlled within tubing. You could go all schedule 40 pvc, or if you had the E&B fittings it could be 3/4 vinyl tubing.

Lotta work. And if you were designing this from scratch for bulk troughs DtW, would you have made the troughs so narrow? Be careful not to put so much effort into modifying this thing that you could have just built a new one designed for the new specs.

Anti, I see what your saying and if funds are low then your gonna have to go down the path of least resistance I think your idea is defo doable, if you could get the wire mesh inside your beds with an inch or 2 gap at the base then attach your drain at one end, you will have to put a slight tilt in your system but that's, and I quote...

DHF said:

Babyshit

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The only real problem that your going to have is getting the wire mesh down and keeping it there but don't worry if it's not perfectly level because the hydroton will give you another level to work with if you get me? You could put a fold on the wire mesh so it looks like a U, then just slide it down to the desired level and brace it into the wood, hows that sound?

I've asked Bush Dr to come and have a look at this, he should be able to give you some extra advise, but what do you think so far? Have you got the image in your head yet?

Don't worry about frustration bro, we wana get this sorted for you the best we can, no frustration here just plenty of brain storming

HGO

I think it would work to fill the troughs with hydroton without a mesh. If you use a mesh and fill them with coco, the roots will probably become entwined. For this situation maybe design the bottom screen to come out with the coco-root mass after harvest.

I already have two sets (one fill one drain) of E&F fittings in the 1/2" fill and 3/4" drain variety.

I pulled them off the table yesterday and scraped all the excess silicone off of them. I also have the vinyl tubing that I bought to run the E&F setup originally as planned.

I could EASILY run this as an E&F setup just as originally planned. I have all materials on hand to do so.

I am also inclined to prefer the idea of using drip irigation if all I have to do is get some more 1/2" tubing to run from the pump up to the table and then attach individual drip lines to that. That's cheap, too.

Irrigation seems more likely to more equally saturate the medium as opposed to E&F where fully 1/2 of the treepot would be above the flood point. (Please keep in mind that my only experience in hydro was watching my friend bungle through an attempt at growing 4ft tall sativas in a six pot hydroton closet setup with a couple of shop lights when I was 17.)

Getting larger treepots is another relatively inexpensive solution, though I am limited by the width of the current troughs. (3.5 inch wide) The Short Ones are listed at 4" but I can see they taper. Are they 3.5" or smaller at the half way point? They'd slightly more than double the root-space for each plant (0.44 gal in the Short One vs. 0.2 gal in the current MT2510). Plus I can probably get 100 of them for less than $50.

Hundred Gram Oz said:

The only real problem that your going to have is getting the wire mesh down and keeping it there but don't worry if it's not perfectly level because the hydroton will give you another level to work with if you get me? You could put a fold on the wire mesh so it looks like a U, then just slide it down to the desired level and brace it into the wood, hows that sound?

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Yeah. I was already thinking of ways to do it. (Pretty much as you've described.)

Getting the mesh mounted would be pretty easy. I'm assuming you're recommending hydroton cubes to take the place of bobbles perlite layer, right? Because the hydroton will help keep stuff from getting through the mesh?

If I were to raise the beds up on a mesh, could I not also get some landscape fabric and make some fabric troughs in order to allow the beds hold more coco?

I've asked Bush Dr to come and have a look at this, he should be able to give you some extra advise, but what do you think so far? Have you got the image in your head yet?

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I think so. I just have so little practical experience with anything other than soil in small containers so I'm treading carefully. I'd love to have Bush Dr.'s opinion and anybody else's ideas, as well. I'm all for finding a good solution. The more ideas proposed, discussed, etc. the better chances that someone will come up with something brilliant.


I like Crusader's idea about trying things as an E&F but the idea of half of my medium sitting "dry" above the flood stage seems very strange to me. (Keep in mind that I'm a guy who literally submerges plants in a bath for the last few years.)

Don't worry about frustration bro, we wana get this sorted for you the best we can, no frustration here just plenty of brain storming

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I just don't want to come off as argumentative. I trust you guys and I appreciate the way the community has embraced this project.

Thanks very much for all the ideas from all directions. It really helps with my thought process.

I have an idea. Why not use PVC for drainage instead of gutters? I don't think you should have 1" of dead space... You need your water to drain. It's not going to do that unless you angle the table, and then you're probably never gonna have even saturation in your medium. The coco closest to the drain will always have more water.

So, I propose that you just drill a few drain holes and plumb them with PVC. That shit is cheap. What do you think about that?

Crusader Rabbit said:

Stuewe & Sons Inc. makes many sizes of treepots. I'm looking at one now called the "SHORT-ONE".

9 1/2" tall, base 3" x 3", top 4" x 4".

Five inches up from the bottom, the pot is 3 1/2" across, which is the height and width of your flood troughs. The "SHORT-ONE" is only 1/2" shorter than your containers but maximizes the possible width. This would give you more root volume using the same spacing or tighter.

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Ok. Took me a minute to find it, but here it is.

What do people think of using these SHORT-ONES tree pots as opposed to the bed idea?

These SHORT-ONES pots would fit in my troughs and be about the same height as the tree pots. But they'd hold twice the volume of coco/roots. I could still run drip lines to each pot and I could still put in an inch of mesh at the bottom to ensure none of the roots are sitting in stagnant water.

bobblehead said:

I have an idea. Why not use PVC for drainage instead of gutters? I don't think you should have 1" of dead space... You need your water to drain. It's not going to do that unless you angle the table, and then you're probably never gonna have even saturation in your medium. The coco closest to the drain will always have more water.

So, I propose that you just drill a few drain holes and plumb them with PVC. That shit is cheap. What do you think about that?

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Another excellent suggestion.

several small holes plugged with PVC drain pipes that all connect and run to the drain might be a doable solution.

I need to go up to the hardware store and try to figure it out.

The "Short One" treepot would nicely wedge into your troughs, no problem. Any bottom feeding technique will tend towards salt build up because you have a constant upward movement of solution in your media which leaves salts behind at the surface with the water's evaporation (this has destroyed civilizations by the way). DtW avoids this problem by maintaining a constant downward movement of your nutrient solution, effectively flushing the media. This is probably more pronounced in the tall treepots.

I'm using KISS coco in E&B and the drip clean has helped, but I'm making a habit of periodically dousing the top with tapwater to dissolve the salts which accumulate in the surface media. It seems to be helping the root growth. I don't mind doing this cause I want to be able to shuffle plants about. If you're mono cropping all on the same schedule then you don't need to shuffle plants.

If you used your current drain set up with individual feed lines to Smart One containers filled with coco, that would probably be maximizing the potential of the path you've set upon.

If you live in a dry enough climate for swamp coolers, when you're at the hardware store check and see if they have the swamp cooler drain fittings. It's one of the cheapest bulkhead fittings on the market. It has 1/2" inch internal pipe threads and outside 3/4" hose threads too.

Evaporative Cooler Drain Kit

Anti said:

I don't quite know what to say about these results....

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How about some pictures of all that bud!?

Sorry you didn't meet your goal bro, but you didn't do bad by any means. I think if ya only did one or two things differently and everything else the same, you'd be much closer to your goal. Thanks for another great thread Anti :]

You could have crammed more plants in there and/or topped all of them. Just one simple change could have made all the difference.

There were no plants in the spot where you had the most light, between the bulbs. A single row or column of plants could've been placed there.

Nothing wrong with pH drop kits or your lighting. Watts are watts, but plants care not; it is more challenging to get higher GPW with smaller wattage bulbs. I don't have any hard proof to back that up, but having read thousands of threads in which many were micro, I'm pretty confident in that being true.

Chunkypigs said:

I think your design is limited by the size of your rootmass.

vertical growing seems to maximize GPW easier by growing larger plants with less light.
Or through training to use all of the available space around the lights.

I'd guess the best gains in GPW with vert come from growing plants taller

Now show us some dried bud shots, Yo!
Great Work, can't wait to see what you come up with next time.

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His design is definitely not limited by his root size per plant with a high plant count. I firmly agree with everything else ya said tho.

The thing with growing taller plants is people tend to worry too much about larf; having parts of the plant that aren't very fruitful yield wise. I say who cares because in most instances a taller plant will have larger tops. I don't think it is really a matter of the height of the plant, but the age or maturity of it.

Anti said:

I don't know shit about running hydroton vs. coco. At this point I'm figuring on using up the other block of coco that i've got sitting in front of me and seeing if I can dial it in.

Please don't think I'm arguing as increasing rootmass seems a worthwhile experiment anyway, but I'm not sure my problem is a function of rootmass.

Are you recommending perlite as a means of allowing drainage?

I think one of the cheapest and easiest experiments I can do with my current setup is simply to switch to HPS for the next run and see what difference it makes.

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If I was you, I'd go with the coco again and assume the same yields per plant unless I had a lot of faith as to why I didn't maximize the potential of the medium. That or I'd just go back to what I know and had success with. Actually, I'd try and meet somewhere in the middle by mixing perlite and/or other mediums into your coco.

Perlite is interesting for one because it doesn't absorb any water internally. Water adheres to the outside of it because of surface tension. This leads many people to believe perlite offers better drainage when in reality the particle size of perlite is small enough that water actually will wick upwards. Coco actually wicks water higher, but it also absorbs the water. Where there is water, there can be no oxygen. When most people talk about needing better drainage, they essentially mean needing to suffocate the roots of oxygen less. You would want to mix the perlite throughout the coco and not just have a layer of it on the bottom.

Anti said:

I like Crusader's idea about trying things as an E&F but the idea of half of my medium sitting "dry" above the flood stage seems very strange to me. (Keep in mind that I'm a guy who literally submerges plants in a bath for the last few years.)

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If you flood to the height of half your container, water will still be wicked higher up using most mediums, because of the medium itself and being roots spread moisture around as well. Roots take on different structures depending on their surrounding moisture content. I've generally seen people refer to there being air roots and water roots. That idea seems to work well and not be troublesome for many people from what I've gathered. Seems like the best simple way to automate watering for so many small plants.

Anyway, let's see some dried buds!