First Grow Log, 6 site, 1kw, clone grow. Bubble Buckets/Re-circulating drip

Been a long time ROI fan, and am finally going to start a grow log for my babies.

I am growing 2 plants which I have been growing for about a year and a half, though i just went hydro 6 months ago.

Plants on the left side, in the 4x4 tent are an unknown sativa strain which I got from a club a few years back; the right is OG Kush, from clone.

Plants are currently under a dual lamp air cooled hood with 2 150w CFLs both 6500, and 2700K. Once they start to root out to the water, I'll switch to a dual 400Watt Metal Halide+High Pressure Sodium setup, and finally finishing with my 1kw Hi-Lux 146,000 Lumen when they have topped out.

Hydroponics set up consists of a ViaGrow 4 - 3 gal. bucket system with 6" Net Pot Lids, with 2 added buckets. I stored the stock air pumps and use a 571 GPH - 20 Watt for the 6 buckets with 1 airstone per bucket.

The master bucket is the heart of this system. Hooked to it i have an AP Whisper 150 (deep water pump) for the master bucket. I have a torrent of bubbles provided by 1/4" semi-porus drip hose avail at home depot. I would have used this soaker hose for all of it, but it has some high pressure requirements that cant be met by the 571 GPH high volume pump I use. I also hooked an aquarium cooler to this bucket which is set at 72*, I will lower it once I get some more root growth. The aquarium cooler is being constantly supplied water from the master bucket by a 211 GPH submersible pump, which keeps the master bucket cold. 1 minute, every 4 minutes, the 550 GPH submersible pump hooked to the drip rings is activated by a repeat cycle timer to soak the Hydro Ton Expanded Clay with cold, super oxygenated water. The drip rings are home made, and are completely covered by the hydroton. I will take a picture of this later.

Water currently at 5.5 PH, but will bring it up. PPMs are at around 400 with some clonex and real weak Lucas formula using General Hydroponics Bloom+Micro Only. I am also running h202 5 ml/gal and Rez Clear @ 1ppm, aka Pool Shock.

Hello...

Looks good , but if you have your air pump on the ground below the water level your air pumps will be destroyed if you lose power or unplug...It will syphon back to your pump ruin your pump..

Just a heads up on the pump........nitro..

Yeah good call, I mean to find a more permanent home for it soon. Need to pick up a longer 3/8 tube next time I go to hd

I phucked up and tried to dwc, without compost tea, think8g since I got my ne gear, I shouldn't have any light leaks, plus I ran some pool shock.

Needless to say it did not work. I flushed my system by reducing the water level to a quarter, and put about 10 ml per gallong of h202. ran the system to hopefull purge the lines. I did the same with my res chiller. Afterword, flushed all media with pure RO+h202 @10ml per gallon. Basically just dumped it over the hydroton. I then used Lysol disinfecting wipes to wipe out all the tubs.

Added compost tea
These pictures are just after a few days of the tea.

New water, this time I didn't add tea since I had an abundance of brown goodness in the rez and the PH is holding solid. I pumped out 99% of the water, but didn't flush or rinse. New water is 800 PPM and plants have responded nicely. I think they are coming along quite good and the lack of all the chunks in the system is keeping thing running smoothly.

PS, I overdid it on the tea the first time, notice there is still some residual brown goodness on the roots. I think I put the tea in the reservoir before all the molasses could be eaten by the beneficial microbes, so I created a 20 gallon breeding ground for the little guys inadvertently.

By the way, I make tea by adding 1 tbsp. of botanicare pure tea blend and 1 tbsp of molasses 1 gallon of RO water. Throw in an airstone and walk away for 48 hours. I only waited 24 as I had an emergency and had clumps of bacteria, but it isn't necessarily a bad thing unless it clogs lines��