Homemade hydro setup - Lemon Kush grow

[trichomeman]

Howsit growers, I'm from nz, been lurking for a lot of years (about 20ish) I've learnt a lot from this site.
I started off growing indoors with a similar setup but I've been growing outdoors for the past 15 odd years.
I've been back indoors for about a year now, things seem to be going pretty good with my setup so I thought I'd put it up for you guys to have a look at.

I've got a 2m x 1.2m area, lined with panda film.

Lights are a pair of 4seasons LUMA 1200

I use hydroton for the medium.
4 x 10L buckets with holes drilled in the bottom that drain into another bucket with a drain.
The buckets are paired and share the same feed and drain line. The drains are gravity feed to the resiviour.

The plant's are top feed with hydro halos from a 200L drum buried outside the room for the resiviour. It has an air stone and heater in it. The pump is 2300Lph.

The system was initially supposed to be a flood and drain but I had a lot of difficulty trying to get all the buckets flooding and draining at the same rate, and had no overflow control. I also didn't want to use a control bucket due to lack of space and the extra complexity.
So I just flush the buckets for 2min every 3 hours during lights on.
I don't know if it's the optimal schedule yet.
The previous grow I watered for 1min every half hour and the growth rate wasn't as good as this time round with cuttings from the same mother.

It's a nice simple setup that's cheap to put together and cheap to run, the air pump is the only thing running 24hrs

I use Flairform GreenDream-1 nutrients/additives, but I'm only dosing half of what they recommend as I had problems with nute burn, so the nutrient cost seems quite efficient.

My previous harvests so far have gone from 23 ounces on the first run up to 30 ounces on the last one, I'm hoping to crack the 2lb mark on this one.

Some pics of the setup,
The current grow is at Day 21 of flowering

And just a pic of some Green Crack in the same setup

 

[exploziv]

Looks like a great build there! I will follow!

 

[stiff]

Very nice setup. I like it. How do you handle the drain exactly? I understand the saucer drain bucket, but how does the water go out? By pump? And where to?
Did u take photos when u built it?
I'm looking for a good solution for myself. Thanks for any hints
Cheers, stiff

 

[Zaaboot_1]

Hello there - hope you are well!
Great set up you made there - Is it recirculating as you are only in clay pebbles?

Thanks
Z

 

[trichomeman]

The resiviour is half buried in the ground outside the grow room, the top of the rez is just below the floor level of the grow room so buckets can drain just using gravity.
So yeah it is recirculating.
The pump is on for 2 minutes at a time so each bucket/plant is getting roughly 19L of nutrient solution through it per watering.
They seem to like the 3 hour dry out time between watering.




One issue though is one of the plant's sent a tap root down the drain pipe which blocked it and caused one side to over flow during watering.
I need to check the drains every couple of weeks to prevent this.
The plant didn't seem fazed by me pulling the root off.

 

[stiff]

I'm using the drainaway trays with normal pots and luckily dont have that issue. If it becomes a real problem for you, you might want to check them out.
Look closely,they have some fall in them,so everything gets drained right to the outlet. I really like them

Thanks for the pics..sadly I can't lower my draintank like you did.

 

[trichomeman]

The trays look cool I haven't seen those before. I'm not sure they would handle the volume of what I'm putting through the buckets though, as the buckets are partially flooding up to a third of the bucket at least and probably more with root buildup. So I think I'm benefitting a bit from the flood & drain action sucking air into the root zone.

 

[trichomeman]

Day 29 bloom

 

[trichomeman]

Day 40 bloom

 

[RottyRzr]

The resiviour is half buried in the ground outside the grow room, the top of the rez is just below the floor level of the grow room so buckets can drain just using gravity.
So yeah it is recirculating.
The pump is on for 2 minutes at a time so each bucket/plant is getting roughly 19L of nutrient solution through it per watering.
They seem to like the 3 hour dry out time between watering.


View attachment 18772020 View attachment 18772021 View attachment 18772022 View attachment 18772023

One issue though is one of the plant's sent a tap root down the drain pipe which blocked it and caused one side to over flow during watering.
I need to check the drains every couple of weeks to prevent this.
The plant didn't seem fazed by me pulling the root off.
View attachment 18772025

I use paint strainer bags inside buckets to prevent the roots from finding their way out.

 

[trichomeman]

Thanks for the tip rotty thats awesome, I'll definitely be putting those in next time.

 

[trichomeman]

Day 48 bloom

 

[trichomeman]

Started flush on day 55,
Day 62 bloom

 

[trichomeman]

Chopped last plant today Day 65, been doing one a day, about 3 hours trimming per plant for me and the Mrs.
Should be all dried in 3-4 days with the dehumidifier cranking.

 

[trichomeman]

25oz all Dried, not quite what I was aiming for but 1.2g per watt not a bad run

 

[delta9nxs]

very nice grow!

 

[trichomeman]

Some shots of the root structure

 

[Dabbert Globberfield]

I use paint strainer bags inside buckets to prevent the roots from finding their way out.

Thanks for the tip rotty thats awesome, I'll definitely be putting those in next time.

That's exactly what I thought when I first saw someone using a paint strainer bag in a system they were operating. I asked about it because it seemed like the perfect solution to my problem with my homemade hydro system; roots growing into the drain holes and blocking drainage in an ebb and flow system.

so come along with me on my journey.

Here is my first attempt at using the paint strainer bags.



^ These bags are easy to find and it's like every company makes these exact same ones. Well... The roots grew through these.

Then I was like, "Oh well this idea is so awesome it definitely couldn't fail a second time. I just need a smaller micron bag... Yea, that's what I need. Smaller microns.".

And here we have the smaller micron bag next to the original paint strainer bag. As you can see the micron size of the mesh is much smaller. The new bags are used for straining honey I think. I actually liked these a lot for their shape and had high expectations for them.


I mean, I thought I did well. I even ordered some sheets of even smaller micron mesh. I had a different plan for those. I actually did water flow tests as well to see how fine of a mesh bag I could use before waterflow would restrict so much that it would back up the system. Basically 50micron and under impedes flow too much to be used.

But there in lies the problem. I learned, that roots and their growing tips are as fine as 14 MICRONS!!!
So that would explain what happened here --


Roots grew right through

I mean it did make them grow out even and they look crazy good, but it didn't solve my problem. lol... so many problems.....

 

[RottyRzr]

That's exactly what I thought when I first saw someone using a paint strainer bag in a system they were operating. I asked about it because it seemed like the perfect solution to my problem with my homemade hydro system; roots growing into the drain holes and blocking drainage in an ebb and flow system.

so come along with me on my journey.

Here is my first attempt at using the paint strainer bags.
View attachment 18801635 View attachment 18801636
View attachment 18801637 View attachment 18801638

^ These bags are easy to find and it's like every company makes these exact same ones. Well... The roots grew through these.

Then I was like, "Oh well this idea is so awesome it definitely couldn't fail a second time. I just need a smaller micron bag... Yea, that's what I need. Smaller microns.".

And here we have the smaller micron bag next to the original paint strainer bag. As you can see the micron size of the mesh is much smaller. The new bags are used for straining honey I think. I actually liked these a lot for their shape and had high expectations for them.
View attachment 18801639 View attachment 18801640

I mean, I thought I did well. I even ordered some sheets of even smaller micron mesh. I had a different plan for those. I actually did water flow tests as well to see how fine of a mesh bag I could use before waterflow would restrict so much that it would back up the system. Basically 50micron and under impedes flow too much to be used.

But there in lies the problem. I learned, that roots and their growing tips are as fine as 14 MICRONS!!!
So that would explain what happened here --
View attachment 18801641

Roots grew right through

I mean it did make them grow out even and they look crazy good, but it didn't solve my problem. lol... so many problems.....

I haven't had that problem YET. I even grow hot pepper plants outside in straight perlite using the paint strainer bags and haven't had any problems. Sorry you didnt have the same luck.