Can you aerate remote reservoir in DWC?

Gamberro

Well-Known Member
I'm considering a possibility for my next grow that I want to ensure is actually a possibility. I would use waste pipe to suspend the plants up to ten feet horizontally, the waste pipe would be filled with hydroton and a reservoir bin at the end of each line would be heavily aerated. My question is, cuz I grow in DWC and that's my entire hydro experience, would it be alright to just aerate that final reservoir instead of having aeration along the way in the actual waste pipe? I could possibly do the latter, but it would be a lot easier if I could just aerate the reservoir. I have heard from some that as long as you're aerating the same body of water, you're good, and I've heard from others that you need to provide direct aeration to the roots. If I can just aerate the reservoir I could have that SOB bubbling like crazy, but if not then I could just drill in inserts to put air stones along the bottom of the waste pipe. Keep in mind, the waste line would extend a minimum of four and a maximum of sixteen feet from the reservoir.
 

dimebag87

Well-Known Member
you want to raise your plants ten foot dude? either way as long as your solution that is feeding the plants is well aeraetd then you will be great. get a powerful air pump and bubble the shit out of it!
 

Gamberro

Well-Known Member
No, not ten feet high, ten feet across. I guess I'm not expressing what I'm trying to get across here... Let me illustrate.
paint.jpg
 

contraptionated

New Member
If your circulator pump is somewhere in the neighborhood of 4000 lph and the waste pipe is 4" or less than the turbulence created will be excellent for mixing oxygen through the root mass. You need not put any additional airstones. Your diagram is a semblance (fundamentally, although nowhere near the same) of Heaths Flooded Tube Vertical. When you Google that key phrase, you will find that King Heath achieved incredible water/oxygen flow by keeping the full output of the water circulation pump undivided through one 4" pipe. If you were to have two of these plant containing waste pipes being fed by only one pump, you cut the turbulence in the waste pipe by half and then I could not assure that you would deliver the same amount of oxygen that Heath did with that legendary 2.14 gpw/86 plant grow.
 

Gamberro

Well-Known Member
That would be ebb & flow, which is worth considering, but it doesn't really apply, DWC does not regularly require pumps or circulation.

EDIT: Although it uses the circulation of ebb n flow, the grow you cited is actually technically DWC in that it uses a dam, and therefore would hold in water if the pump should fail, which is EXACTLY what I need because I want something I can check in on every week or so without disastrous results in the interim. I'm not sure I will go this way, but I will research it to death either way. Thank you for that contraptionated, definite +rep..
 
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