MadMen/GDP NFT waterfarm - Sea Crop - DWC hybrid

What's up. I've got a journal or two here or there, but figured i'd make this a standalone as i havn't seen much on the waterfarm, and i see a lot of controversy on the sea crop,

For starters, we have tweaked all 8 buckets of the NFT waterfarm into being an NFT/DWC hybrid. That is, besides the drip system, we have added airstones to the bottom of each bucket to simulate at DWC.

As far as the strainage:

3 Mad Men cuttings
3 GDP cuttings
1 SOur D cutting not yet in there.

THe system got fired up and running last night. We had been soaking hydroton in 5.5 PH solution for about 36 hours, so we were ready to transplant.

We're curious about these sea salts, so we decided to run some Sea Crop. At first we were going to have it be the base nutrient, and add things like pure blend pro at supplemental levels, but now i think we may change to have the Sea Crop be the supplement.

Either way, the first solution put into the hybridized waterfarm (25 gallons) was 2000 ppm sea crop, 200 ppm PBP. This solution interacted well with my source water, and created a solution of natural PH 5.55 so we didn't have to add any ph up/down or buffers.




NOTE: I will not be doing a side by side with non sea salt plants, so don't ask. If i had extra time, space, money, mental energy, physical energy, or patience, i would. However i'm sure most of you can appreciate the scarcity of those resources these days.

This thread is not to prove sea salts effective or ineffective, to you. I'm here to prove it to myself. If my time constraints allow it, I will happilly share all my findings, good and bad, throughout this process, contingent on the fact that nobody comes in here screaming religiously for or against sea crop. IF you choose to make a comment on the subject HERE, please include scientific evidence, or at least try to. I'm here to teach and learn, not argue.




The waterfarm 8 pack. It comes with 'net' pots inside of bucket reservoirs. The net pots really are just pots with holes at the bottom to allow the roots to grow through. We drilled even more holes and added an airstone at the bottome rez in every bucket to simluate a DWC technique. SOlution drips out of the drip ring on the top, hydrating the hydroton, and eventually dripping down into the rootball, and back to the reservoir to circulate once more.



Thanks for visiting! See you soon!

This looks fucking sweet. Is that going to be where they get flowered out as well?

yah this looks kick ass. deff wanna watch this grow.

Wow, I mean wow. Have I said WOW yet? this is going to be amazing. Ive been on these forums a while now, and I have yet to ever see a hydro outdo grow!!! this is going to be fantastic, and thank you for sharing all of this with us. Like someone asked above are they going to be on the deck there whole life? Are you going to have to get bigger buckets? If you don't know it's all good. Im just trying to rap my head around this. GL and stay safe and green my friend

Mr.P

wutup fattie, cheese1,piston...

We're playing it by ear at the moment (if you didn't notice!) but we're likely gonna go ahead and just flower em right on the deck. It gets good light.

PH was coming up little by little probably due to solution drippin over the hydroton. Half a lime worth of juice brought er back down to acceptable levels.

Chiller comes tomorrow! Hopefully since these babies are late in the season they'll finish up right and proper in the containers that they're in.

Time will tell...

Geez dude...outdoor hydro? Could be insane. I think a wise choice to use the Sea Crop as a supplement instead of the base nutrient. PBP is a great way to go in this case.

Only input I would have is make sure those buckets are lightproof, maybe a good idea would be to wrap them in Panda film white side out mainly to keep the buckets from heating up from direct sunlight and a possible concern would be the buckets/solution getting too hot due to the ambient air temps. Another thing I might look at is taking some Panda film, white side up, and cut some large squares with a small slit in the middle, cover the tops of the buckets and tape the extra to the sides of the buckets. The water lines between the buckets could probably use light proofing too but they do look opaque. At the least maybe there cover with something to keep direct sunlight off like a covering of Panda film white side up. Those blue lines will heat up and the white side of the Panda film will help mucho.

Seriously though you should look at some preemptive actions to prevent/counter root rot and algae issues.

EDIT: Just read you're getting a chiller...NICE...and I think a very wise move!

What!!! This should be interesting. I've never seen these setup outside.

Best of luck.