Anyone tried ultrasonic fogger-type aeroponics?

I've been experimenting with different hydro grow set ups for my own personal grow. I saw a video on youtube of some asshole showing his root branching that looked so insane it looked like a white bush not a rope of roots. I thought these foggeres looked neat so I bought a couple cheap ones from china. Baisically what I ended up doing was running a hybrid fogger/deepwater culture system to test.

The res water cycled on a timed pump and had airstones in the bottom keeping it well oxygenated. I dropped water level to 1/3 of the bin O got from home depot and let the foggers float on top. Even using cheap chinese foggers it only took 2 to completely fill the bin with a dense impenetrable fog, dropped 3 in for kicks. I didnt need to run them constantly to keep the fog at that density so I put them on a short cycle timer and cut them back to a 33% run time. This worked with my system to fog the bin and give enough time so the fog just began to clear before fogging again.

I ran this system for about a month of veg on some clones I had taken and they definitely survive, but that's about it. The roots continued to grow in the fog and the plant above looked fine, but what I noticed was that once the roots grew long enough to dip into the water the parts that stayed submerged in the well oxygenated water branched like crazy. I let it do its thing for a bit longer to confirm but I noticed the same thing on both bins I was testing; a clear line of demarcation where the roots thrived in the DWC after not getting everything they needed from the fog.
*to clarify, I was running 8 plants as a sea of green in each bin and I noticed the same demarcation on the root ball of every plant running the fog hybrid instead of the DWC.

I wish I had a picture to show you cause it's really emphasizes my point. I read earlier in this post that you need to run lower ppm for fogging, I'll admit I didnt take that into account. However, I only run about 550-600 ppm during veg and my plants didnt show any signs of nuteburn so I would find it hard to believe that I was harming the roots with that conc.

TLDR; Fogging is a gimmick. You get superior results with less complexity in your system if you just have a DWC with some air stones. I found the same thing for sprayer heads. They do clog very seldom but more concerning was that I would find small pieces of fine root tips in the water that the sprayer heads would inevitably blast off even at low pressure.

So ...but the achieve the proper fogging it needs to be a pressure system what can create the correct PSI to get the fogging effect...NOT enough to by pump and nozzle...will not get the real deal foggy mist...
Have you seen this :

Yeah I've seen the pressure misters. Like I said, load of complexity and cost for no real benefit over a well done DWC in my opinion. Those roots you posted look nice but I've achieved similar results from my DWC set up. The only foggers I've worked with were the ultrasonic foggers, and they put out plenty of dense fog, though I'm not sure if the droplet size is the same in ultrasonic vs high pressure foggers.

When I first started growing I tried the low pressure spray manifolds, I tried ultrasonic fogging, I tried flood irrigation, they all work and I was really hoping they'd be superior cause they were cool and I liked having timed sprayers and neat things happening in my grow room. However I was a little disappointing to find that honestly it's really really hard to beat putting them in a big bin full of solution with a couple airstones and thats about as shit simple as it gets. Only moving part you need is a pump to circulate from your planting bins and your external reservoir. Worst case scenario you lose power and the plants have to sit in their nutrient bath slowly using up the dissolved O2. They'll live for weeks. You wanna talk about fucked up? lose power for an hour with those foggers and have your fine root hairs dry out.
Not to mention you can build a adequate DWC for less than $30 including the air pump and stones, takes 10 minutes to set up, and there's next to zero risk of failure barring a meteor crashing through your ceiling and crushing your grow.

As your name suggests you know what a pain in the ass pythium can be. That has been my only issue with DWC, it is more prone to pythium infections than soil grows. My solution was getting a reservoir cooler for my external res and dialing it in to 65 degrees. From my research it looks like that water temp discourages pythium and also cooler water has a higher O2 saturation point so even better for your roots.

Phytium hater said:

So ...but the achieve the proper fogging it needs to be a pressure system what can create the correct PSI to get the fogging effect...NOT enough to by pump and nozzle...will not get the real deal foggy mist.

Click to expand...

The treefrog doesnt deliver fog, its a wet mist. You dont need high pressure, i use 30psi of compressed air and water pressure at less than 0psi. The whole thing including a silent compressor cost half of what multiponics are asking (thats if you bought everything new, off the shelf)

YEP , SWhydro I agree with all you say, I am not going eather for complicated High Pressure systems ,,,
why, there ain't any pros, but many cons, Expensive, high risky to blow apart or get glogged etc. ,NOISY ! using electricity like
No other system, results are achievable equal even with hand watering in dirt, its all about light, temps ,nutrients and strain.

And yep I had my Pythium probs learnd my lesson, always Hydroguard, chillers, and airbubble pumps !
And yep,,misspelled the name when made my account and now stuck with it..