Bound to screw up

[Gatekeeper777]

hello all,
It has been a while since i have visited the board. I have decided to try my hand at hydro. I went out and got a small 10 gallon blue bin with lid from wal-mart a pump ,air pump and some nutes and small one inch rockwool cubes from a hydroponics store and a few plasic disposible 12 OZ cups.
I got some seed from a friend and germinated them in a napkin.
I put 5 gallon of water in the bin and added my nutes according to the instructions I placed my pump into the water and cut 5 holes into the lid to hold my cups. I filled the cups 1/2 way with riverstone I purchesed at home depot 5 years ago.(It worked in the wifes flowerbed.) I place the sprouted seedlings into the rockwool cubes and then ran a 1/4" OD air line to the cube and hooked it to a manifold i built to cary water to all my plants.
I put it all on a timer for 1 hour every 4 hours(timer wont go in 15 minute incrememnts its a light timer) the pump kicks on and waters the rockwool cube for 1 hour every 4 hours the lights are cfl on 24hrs.
Am i still in danger of drowning my babies even though i water with highly oxigenated water?
I can provide pics.
thanks

[LOC NAR on probation]

It sounds pretty good. Just a few questions. A timer that would go 15 minutes every 2 hours would be better.

Do the cups have slots and holes in them to let the water drain out good and fast ? I ran a drip system just as yours but used hydrotron clay rock and ran the water 24/7. The rockwool tends to hold alittle too much water at times. The 1 hour every 4 maybe a good thing.

Your headed in the right direction. Just keep an eye on them. They will start to droop if they get too much or too little water.

Think about a bigger light for flower time. The bigger the light the bigger the buds.

[Gatekeeper777]

Thanks for the quick reply. The cfl light that i have on them is a poor mans version.
I will take pics of the whole thing.

[Gatekeeper777]

I built this whole thing for dollars. Plus nutes of course :D
Pic 1 is the cups in the bin with the river stone from home depot (40 pounds $3.00 US)
Pic 2 is pump line air line and pump power cord comming from inside the bin. :thumbsup:
pic 3 is a view from under the lid with cups filled and in place.
pic4 is a spare board 1"X8"X4' wrapped in mylar gift wrap with four lights bought at home depot and the 4 cfl's to go in them.;)
pic 5 is a pic of the whole thing.
the pvc pipe is an extra experment where as the one end will be the water entry point and be fed by gravity to the bottom exet point. Provided rockwool will absort water like a sponge. Otherwise I will need to water them manually till the root system runds the water line.
If that works i wanna build a living wall. Where as the 4' pvc snkes up the wall all plantes into the pvc pipe would be water fed.
In therie you could use a wall 10' wide and 12' tall and snake the pvc pipe up the wall at 1 foot levels and plant 1 plant per foot along the pipe you could go 9 plants at 4 leves and have 45 plants along the wall saving room space.
I will post more pics if i can.

[Gatekeeper777]

pic 1 is the manifold i built from 1 1/2 inch pve pipe and some hose plugs i bought at home depot. I drilled the holes, tapped them and threaded them in.
they are compresion fittings so when tightened they wouldnt leak.
Pic 2 is the water inlet fro the pvc pipe and a fan behind it all.
pic 3 is a little baby peaking out of its rockwool ready for some light.
pic 4 is top of water manifold with both ends capped so it will fill with water.
pic 5 is a spout peaking up from the rockwool from the prototype living wall.
Using Floragro 2-1-6 and flora micro 1-0-1
This is day 3 since germination.:rasta:

all built for under 50 bucks.

[LOC NAR on probation]

Very cool and inventive. The only problem I see you might have is your rockwool staying too wet. The water roots will hang down in the res and where the rockwool is now is the air root ball. It can get wet but need good dryout time too. I might would stick the water line down in the rocks. It will keep the rockwool moist on bottom.

The living wall you need to do a grow thread on. Awsome. Only thing there is the rocks and roots will clog up your system. You might need a small cup just on top the pipe. Roots hang in pipe nutes flow down hill roots not enough to clog pipe. NFT.

Get your lights closer and if you can spend the money lights are the best investment.

Keep the pic's coming

[Gatekeeper777]

I will use 3' or 4" diameter pvc for my living wall and i will put cups in it after the roots go through the bottom. But when I do that they will be clones. :D

not seeds.:thumbsup::rasta:

[toxinn]

in my personal experience rockwool will never be to wet if the water is full of oxygen...my rockwool in my dwc actually sits half in the water 4 weeks and i just switched light to 12/12 3 days ago. i've had nothing but positive growth from day one

[Gatekeeper777]

Thanks toxin. I was wondering if i was goona drown em .

[tinytoon]

As long as you are pumping plenty of O2 into the water in your res you probably wont have to much of a problem with overwatering but a lil voice in the back of my head says you might want to check into a 15 min interval timer. Also if there is any way to change how the lights are mounted to the board so that they sit horizontal then you will get more light to the plants. CFL's put most light off of the sides then they do the end of the bulb.

[Gatekeeper777]

You could mount them horizontal from the ceiling. I thought it would be better to mount them standing up for 2 reasons.
They will grow out instead of up resulting in branches becomming main colas, (almost like low stressing) and secondly the space used is less so you could plant them higher utilizing more space.