Yoda tries Bubble-Buckets

[BongCalledYoda]

So I am making the switch to hydro and have a million questions buzzing through my mid....Toke..... Ok, now to the point, I am planning on running 2 buckets(and already have them made) and need to know how much bubbling I want, I keep reading that "too much is never enough" but what then is sufficient? I have a topfin 8000 with 2 lines to each bucket and just did a "test bubble" and it didnt look strong enough to me... Should I get another pump and go 4 in each bucket or just also get each bucket a single pump? Without airstones made the bubbling much more drastic but still not what I would consider suitable.

Also, as this was quite a hasty change to buckets from soil(like over the weekend) I was wondering if its possible to wash the soil from the roots of vegging plants to place them in a much more hydro friendly medium?

Thanks in advance for the help, I have a feeling I am in for a slow start due to the learning curve of switching styles and I am hoping that the expertise of the IC community can speed that process up. Thanks again everyone.

 

[MaynardG_Krebs]

So I am making the switch to hydro and have a million questions buzzing through my mid....Toke..... Ok, now to the point, I am planning on running 2 buckets(and already have them made) and need to know how much bubbling I want, I keep reading that "too much is never enough" but what then is sufficient? I have a topfin 8000 with 2 lines to each bucket and just did a "test bubble" and it didnt look strong enough to me... Should I get another pump and go 4 in each bucket or just also get each bucket a single pump? Without airstones made the bubbling much more drastic but still not what I would consider suitable.

Put as much air to them as you can. It doesn't have to be crazy, but if it is, that's ok too.

Also, as this was quite a hasty change to buckets from soil(like over the weekend) I was wondering if its possible to wash the soil from the roots of vegging plants to place them in a much more hydro friendly medium?

You can. The plants will probably go thru a little shock period, but should be back in stride within a week to 10 day. I would go very easy on the nutes, but do use some, for that first week to let the plant adapt to the new nutrient system.

Thanks in advance for the help, I have a feeling I am in for a slow start due to the learning curve of switching styles and I am hoping that the expertise of the IC community can speed that process up.

The only thing I don't like about DWC is the noise of the air pumps and the airstone noise. I'm in close proximity to my grow and it kinda bogues my peace.

Thanks again everyone.

mgk

 

[BongCalledYoda]

Thanks Krebs! Im just gonna get another pump and run 4 lines to each bucket, I am not too close to my grow so the noise shouldn't bother me. I should be able to get all of the supplies tomorrow after work and have a final test tomorrow night. As soon as that is done I will carefully wash my veggies and get them ready for their new home. Closing in on my soil harvest and hope to have these ladies up and moving in time... Any advice on nutes? (this is me preparing to sound stupid-) Cause I don't know if I can keep using the nutes I use for soil or if I have to do a Complete 180. I use general hydroponics nutes, so I think that's where I'm getting the confusion. Flower Pics coming soon along with pics of my new tent setup complete with buckets as soon as the kinks are worked out.

 

[MaynardG_Krebs]

Thanks Krebs! Im just gonna get another pump and run 4 lines to each bucket, I am not too close to my grow so the noise shouldn't bother me. I should be able to get all of the supplies tomorrow after work and have a final test tomorrow night. As soon as that is done I will carefully wash my veggies and get them ready for their new home. Closing in on my soil harvest and hope to have these ladies up and moving in time... Any advice on nutes? (this is me preparing to sound stupid-) Cause I don't know if I can keep using the nutes I use for soil or if I have to do a Complete 180. I use general hydroponics nutes, so I think that's where I'm getting the confusion. Flower Pics coming soon along with pics of my new tent setup complete with buckets as soon as the kinks are worked out.

Sounds like a good plan. Let me give you this data point tho. I am running 3 buckets, I started with 4 but one of my plants turned out to be a male (from a fem pack from Sagarmatha seeds). When I pulled that plant, it left me with an unoccupied air stone. I plopped it in one of the other buckets, so one of them is running 2 stones and the other 2 are running 1. I see no improvement nor benefit to the bucket that has the dual stones. But, like we discussed before.. more is not necessarily better, but if you can do it.. why not. The root mass of these plants is amazing. I'm using House and Garden's full line of nutes. General Hydro should do you just fine. You might want to read up on the 'Lucas formula' method. I did a couple runs using GH's full line (silly me) and the results were amazing. Just keep and eye on your nute level and your pH is very important and you'll do fine. I am going to finish up these 3 bubble bucket plants then I'm moving over to coco. There's a ton of folks running dwc and doing amazing with it, so you'll get lots of support.

mgk

 

[BongCalledYoda]

Thanks again man, and if you don't mind me asking, why you going to coco? buckets not working well? I just ask cause I thought about going coco before I decided buckets...

 

[MaynardG_Krebs]

Thanks again man, and if you don't mind me asking, why you going to coco? buckets not working well? I just ask cause I thought about going coco before I decided buckets...

No, not at all, the buckets are working great. It just doesn't suit my particular circumstance. I'd have to have air pumps going in my veg cab as well as my flower closet and that would just get too crazy. I think coco is a nice step between regular hydro and dirt. It's the KISS method that I'm after. I am considering going to the Blumat type watering system tho, but I'm always 'considering' things. If there were a way I could get my plants in my veg box ready to go to the closet without using air pumps, I'd probably do it, but I don't think it's going to work for me. I do a perpetual harvest type thing with harvesting 2 plants and putting 2 more in to start flowering at that time, so I will have 8 plants in flower at a time when I hit my stride.

mgk

 

[superusa]

No, not at all, the buckets are working great. It just doesn't suit my particular circumstance. I'd have to have air pumps going in my veg cab as well as my flower closet and that would just get too crazy. I think coco is a nice step between regular hydro and dirt. It's the KISS method that I'm after. I am considering going to the Blumat type watering system tho, but I'm always 'considering' things. If there were a way I could get my plants in my veg box ready to go to the closet without using air pumps, I'd probably do it, but I don't think it's going to work for me. I do a perpetual harvest type thing with harvesting 2 plants and putting 2 more in to start flowering at that time, so I will have 8 plants in flower at a time when I hit my stride.

mgk

Go to a recirculating setup. If you have enough volume of water recirculating you don't need air pumps. so called "waterfall effect". I just built my new 4 bucket RDWC but with 3/4" feed lines to each bucket and 1" drains, instead of the 1/4" feed lines most people use. mine circulates the total capacity of the system about 30 times an hour. It will grow plants without the airstones (I have them anyway). Isn't this the same deal with the bio-buckets?

 

[MaynardG_Krebs]

Go to a recirculating setup. If you have enough volume of water recirculating you don't need air pumps. so called "waterfall effect". I just built my new 4 bucket RDWC but with 3/4" feed lines to each bucket and 1" drains, instead of the 1/4" feed lines most people use. mine circulates the total capacity of the system about 30 times an hour. It will grow plants without the airstones (I have them anyway). Isn't this the same deal with the bio-buckets?

It don't work for me with the way I do a staggered harvest. I run different stages of flower at different nute levels. The hand watered coco just makes sense for me. If I decide I don't like doing this staggered harvest, I'll consider going to rdwc. I love this stuff.. no right or wrong way to do stuff... well.. actually, there's lots of wrong ways to do stuff, but there's a lot of 'right' ways. I'm strictly a personal grow guy, so I don't have to be too concerned about 'maximum harvests' or anything, so it's fun for me to dink around with the hand water etc. Coco will stay moist enough for me to make an occasional 3 day trip away from home on occasion (don't do it very often). Ya never know.. I might hate it and do something totally different.

mgk

 

[beatster]

I'm tryin bubble buckets for the 1st time also.. 18 buckets tho lol and I'm runnin them all on wal-mart air pumps, air stones, and tubes.. you wanna talk about throwing a hydro grow together.. It seems that even alil bubble does the trick for me.. All my pumps are run on splitters too so 1 dual outlet runs 4 buckets.. everything is peachy for me. I've heard good things about buckets so I'm lookin forward to the results.. good luck on your initial start

 

[toastfighter2]

First the air question-put in as many air pumps as you can handle. If you look into how krusty was growing, he was just one step away from hooking an actual air compressor up to his buckets, to the point that the water was almost a froth.
For nutes, I swear by General Hydroponic 3 part, with a dash of sm-90 thrown in the mix. Some people say that you only need the micro and bloom, but I like the little extra kick that the grow gives me.
As for getting the dirt off of your roots, do it in a 5 gallon bucket of room temp water, trust me, you don't want to do it in the bath tub. Soak the root ball and let the water do most of the work, that way you don't loss a lot of roots.

 

[BongCalledYoda]

Thanks Krebs, I plan on having a perpetual setup after I find out how I like the buckets, so hopefully all goes well.
Beatster, That setup sounds crazy! and the fact that you say a lil bubble does the trick for you makes me think I could make my one pump work fine if I join 2 valves to one hose...
Toastfighter, Thanks for the heads up on the 5 gallon bucket, I was kinda iffy on using my bathtub.... Also what is sm-90? I use GH micro,bloom, and I use kool bloom, just not too sure on what sm-90 is exactly.

Well im off to get a couple "t" joints and get this shit going. Should be up and running in a day or 2, pics by the weekend for sure. Thanks again everyone, feel free to stick around and see how this adventure plays out for me.....

 

[toastfighter2]

I haven't read the bottle lately, but I am pretty sure it is coriander oil, and it really helps keep away a lot of different bugs, and it also prevents root rot. On top of all that, I think it smells pretty good.

 

[FreezerBoy]

I use a pump rated for 60 gal in my 18 gal bucket (12 gal nutes) and a 10 gal pump for my 2 gal cloner. A 5 gal bucket will be lucky to hold 3 gal of nutes. The smaller the res the faster the disaster. Consider larger tubs or be prepared for extra work.

 

[BongCalledYoda]

Thanks again for the heads up toastfighter2, I'll check into that.
Freezerboy, I thought about going for a bigger res, but seeing as this is my first adventure in hydro-land, I figured I'd go small scale to get a handle for it. But if what you said rings true, it should be a cake walk to make the switch to a larger scale in the long run, Less work/checking and more time to adjust to avoid disaster....True?
I'm sure these are the words of a noob to hydro, but I am kinda looking forward to being in the basement more often......

 

[FreezerBoy]

You can certainly make do with smaller buckets!

They just take a bit more attention which may, in the long run, increase your learning. Chart EC and pH every day to see what your plants want. EC up, pH down is too rich. EC down, pH up is too lean. Oddly, EC flat, pH flat is not a good thing. Not over time anyway. A small pH swing is better than none as no one pH reading allows full absorption of all nutes.

 

[Wasntmee]

We found self watering buckets at WalMart ($3.50) worked really well. Ran an air line into the water trough and watched the roots grow. Takes the 6 inch net pot perfectly.

 

[BongCalledYoda]

quick question, if I put a 5 wk vegged plant into my new bucket system, should I give it a lil bit in veg still before flower? The plants get pretty big during flower and I dont want them to get unmanageable, but I also dont want them to be lacking...So transplant and give a couple days to recoup or just transplant and switch to flower?

Also, I have finally got a couple blueberry clones rooting! My basement has been too cold so I have been taking a couple every once and awhile and these are survivors!! Need batteries before I can snap pics but Ill get them up here soon.

 

[FreezerBoy]

If you've less than 2 feet of space between canopy and lamp, I'd flip now. Consider LST or ScrOG.

 

[BongCalledYoda]

So I took POMH's DIY for a bubbler cloner and tweaked it a little hoping I could use it as a small veg version to get the roots acclimated. Once again, I am sure I am making this harder than it should be, especially cause I want to use clones that have vegged for 5 wks in soil as my first run in hydro... Waiting for the black paint to dry so I can hook it up and get things rolling cause my vegged plants are closing in on root lock and I cant transplant til everything is running up to par... Pics up friday after everything SHOULD be running well.

 

[BongCalledYoda]

Lil' veg bucket seems to be doing its job. They have been in it for 2 days or so, can't see any roots sticking out the bottom, but then again I dont know how long that'll take.... They seem to be going strong tho, new growth towards the light....I guess I'll just take my lazy ass to get some batteries for my camera so I can just show instead of explain.