My bio-bucket plan

I found a writeup on a bio-bucket system a while ago (on ICmag), and I think I'm finally going to give it a go.

Here are the basics for those of you that are not familiar with it.

Recirculate the water at a high volume through your entire w/f.

Use a media that is porous to support beneficial bacteria. (lava rock was used in the writeup)

Then everything else, from what I understand, is a basic hydro grow but without the water changes.

The beneficial bacteria prevents root rot and keeps bad bacterias from ruining your plants. From what I have read, it also gives you a lot of room for error with nutes because it protects from burning your plants. I'm not sure if I can provide a link to the forum topic, (pretty sure that's not against the rules) but just for my safety if you want to look it up, go to ICmag forum and look for 'BigTokes ~ "How-To" Of The Bio-Buckets 101' thread.

Ok, on to my plan...

I will be doing this in my closet with 2 or 4 5 gallon buckets (depending on how well i feel they fit) and maybe a 20 gallon reservoir. Since the space is somewhat confined, I plan to use CFLs for the canopy and T12 fluorescent lights vertically on the walls around the plants. This way the entire plant will receive light and it will be able to come into contact with the side bulbs without burning.

Ventilation will probably consist of either a 4" or 6" inline duct fan that will vent into the basement to help with heat in the winter. My closet is right next to a chimney that has room to the side of it so I will just cut a hole in the wall and run ducting down along that to the floor of the basement.

So as far as the setup goes, I think I have it covered. The real problem is nutes. I've been using miracle gro big bloom in my soil and then another one of there products for veg, but I'm not sure if it's ideal for what I'm doing.

Can anyone help me out with what I should use to do a simple grow that doesn't involve high cost in nutes? I will probably have to order them online, so if someone could suggest a brand and which of their products to go with, that would be great. I just want something to go with for veg and then something for flower. I've tried to look it up, but everything I have found suggests several different nutes and it gets expensive. Is there just a few that I can get that will work, or am I hoping for this to be too easy/cheap to start with?

I have no problem with upgrading to a more advanced nute schedule in the future, but for now money is a little low (just bought my house) and I just want some decent bud to smoke so I don't have to go find some shitty bud on the street.

Thanks for any advice!

:rastasmoke:

Ok, after some more looking around I think I'm going to go with Advanced nutrients sensigrow and sensibloom.

Start with a two part. GH, Technaflora, AN, whatever... Then when some money frees up start buying the additives.

I'll be curious to watch your project. I'm interested in seeing his Biobuckets in action. I pretty wary of the no-changeout thing. I think it is totally toxic, but I guess I could be wrong.

Well I started my grow today. I took two seedlings from soil and put them in rockwool. They are my test subjects for now. I have the PPM set at around 800. The PH is a little high at around 7 but I added some PH down to try and bring it to a good range. I guess I will see in the morning if it helped.

Right now it is two five gallon buckets with 8" net pots filled with lava rock. The res is a 15gallon rubbermaid filled to about 8 gallons. Right now I have two 24" flouro tubes and 4 26 watt CFLs. The tubes are T12s and are positioned less then 1" from the seedlings on both sides because I do not have anything to get the CFLs at a close enough distance. They are about a foot away from the seedlings right now.

I'm hoping this goes a lot better then my soil grows. I'm pretty positive it will though, I already like it more because of how well I can keep an eye on the nutrient and PH levels. I will probably try to scrog this grow as well.

I will be starting a log once I have everything figured out as far as the PH and lighting goes.

Seedlngs? How big are they? Sounds like your light is waaaaay too close.

They have two sets of leaves already. They have been growing for about a week in soil. They are doing fine with the T12s so close. So far it appears that the PH does not want to go down. I'll have to do a little more research on what to do from here.