HYDRO Question About Growing in Buckets

[madams9]

Greetings!

I'm embarking on my second grow. I will be raising 4 Northern Lights (af) in a tent under LED's. My previous grow was a photoperiodic plant of some kind grown from donated bag seed in a DWC hydro in a single, large reservoir. The res was easy to sample from and relatively easy to regulate as to PH, nutrients, etc. I simply sampled water from a 3" hole in the lid and added whatever I needed to add through the same hole. Easy peasy.

Now, I'm going to be growing 4 plants in 4 separate reservoirs which will require about 4 times as much work. The issue I'm having is that I'm not sure how I can easily sample soup from the buckets or add more to the res. I would rather not cut holes in my "Lip Bucket Baskets" .

Any suggestions out there?

Thanks.

Mark

[Tersky]

Hey madams9, I grow hydro in buckets with lip bucket baskets and what i do is have an extra bucket to put the air stone and put the roots and plant in bucket on it while i take the res bucket to test ph and ppm. I add water/nutes as necessary then put the plant and air stone back in the res bucket and go on to the next plant. It is more work to do buckets but personally dont mind. I only do two buckets at a time right now so it's not a big deal.

[madams9]

Stand-by bucket. That's not a bad idea Tersky. I'll certainly give that some consideration.

Thank you sir.

[smoorman]

I have mine in 5 gallon buckets and just shift the lid to one side and dip ppm and ph meters in. I don't remove plant or airstone. I just do it "in situ".If I need to add top-off water same thing, just shift lid to the side and pour in water. Easy peasy.

[LurkingInTheGrass]

One of those battery powered iquid transfer pumps is handy as well

[FlyingDutchPaddy]

Hi there,

i've done 3 hydro grows with a recirculating system which had a res also with a lid that had a sampling hole.

now i have a new tent (5 x 10 ft) and have gone for individual "heavy duty" storage boxes (total capacity 11 Gal) with net pots on top (see attached picture).
(picture only shows one third of the capacity of the tent O:-) )

for now, its easy enough to just lift the lid and measure pH and ppm, and check on the roots as well.
i also should have enough free boxes left when changing water every week to transfer the plants to while cleaning out the boxes, also for now...

as LurkingInTheGrass said, having a water pump is very handy. it will spare your back in the long run.

picture of the total setup may help in further constructive advice

happy growing,

FDP

[LurkingInTheGrass]

sweeeeeet

[madams9]

That looks downright luxurious. Looks as if you could comfortably raise 4 full-size plants in there with room to work around them. And that light looks pretty nice, but big and spendy. I'm struggling to afford another VIPARSPECTRA Reflector-Series 600W. That should give me oodles of light for my small tent, but as is, a single unit isn't really enough to cover 4 plants well.

Were it me and I had your setup, I'd have a 2" diameter hole in the corner of each lid so that I could get a thief in there and pull samples/top off the levels. The holes could be easily covered by something loose and simple to avoid nastiness from growing in the reservoirs. Nevertheless your setup looks really nice. My tent is 48"x24"x60". I just don't have the room for more at this time.

And I have a cheap handheld pump that came in quite handy in my old setup. The trouble is I have no access to the reservoirs without removing the lids. I think Smoorman may have the right idea in my situation. I should be able to offset the lids enough to gain access without disrupting the situation. If that fails, I'll go for the "stand-by bucket" method described by Tersky.

Thanks for the response.

[FlyingDutchPaddy]

..."downright luxurious"... thanks
tent is of sufficient size to fit 12 of those boxes, and have a bit of working space as well.

In the previous tent i also had LED lighting, drew around 200W at the wall and was supposed to be comparable to a 400W hps light.
Since then, I've been looking into lighting systems that were better than the LED that i had.

I settled for CMH / LEC fixtures and bulbs. ( http://www.grow-lumii.com/products/804/ and bulb: http://www.grow-lumii.com/products/l...315w-cdm-lamp/ )
Currently have one 315W light at 5ft (60") above the plants (3200K).
mind you, i got 2 fixtures with lamp included for around US $300 each (at current exchange rate to euro).
most of the better LED lights tend to cost a pretty penny more than 300.

i suppose, depending on the shape of your buckets, you could lift the lid & turn 90 degrees to have the lid rest on the sides while you measure.

[RagWeedDWC]

I modified my totes so the lids give me access, I use to use a battery power pump to pump water out, but built drains instead. When I cut the top for the net pot, I saved the cutout and pop riveted, to the top, it swings around and gives me access to measure ph and ppm, also pump in fresh nutrients. Hope the pictures explain better.

[madams9]

Nice. I use the same pump. That's a similar access I had in my old res. I didn't work too hard on it because I anticipated that the reservoir might be disposable as it was my first effort and I wasn't happy with some aspects of it. I never drained the res, just kept adding to it. Beyond fighting high PH (tap water) I had no trouble the the soup.

Here is a casual shot of the res as it appeared on my grow cam. https://forum.growweedeasy.com/forum...dwc-first-grow

It worked well enough but I'm going with buckets to provide some flexibility in terms of placement and ease of management. It's another first, so I've got some details to iron out.

I appreciate the information. Your setup looks really good.

[RagWeedDWC]

Im very limited on space, bride laid the law down, what space I have, everything rolls out to maintain. Testing autogrow for the first time this year, so far I like it.

I can drain old nutrients via a hose to under my shop, so makes it much easier to dispose flushing and old nutrients. I used an old aquarium pump and hose to replenish one a week.. I use the hand hold to finish up whatever is leftover, but have a new design in the batters box that should take care of that problem.

I recently discovered the totes I use are not light proof, so the next will be painted or use foil like you did.

Nice setup by the way!