What now???

[JackdaWack]

damn dude, your making me want to go aero now haha:jointsmile:

[oldmac]

Hey JackdaWack,

I would like to point out to you that "fogfognugen" is the name I gave my frankenfogger setup that I built. It is an aero/fog grow tray(s) setup that uses two types of fog, one based on a high pressure pump and misters and second fog based on an ultrasonic FrapaPlas fogger.

Hello Prodaytrader,

I tried to answer one of your questions on another thread awhile ago, and have since seen you looking all over for answers to many more questions. I've been busy away from the board trying to take care of my housemate Tonto. (He's 91 and had a ATV accident)

First, not all fog is created equal. Fog growing is really just an outgrowth of aeroponics, just a bit more efficent. If you decide to supplement your fog then do it with aero, something like ez-clonner misters, are not true misters and are really hydro. Trying to go from hydro to fog will have it's problems, I just found out how big a problem. Rooted cuttings from an ez-clonner going into an aero/fog will loose thier terpidity or wilt out badly, it is kind of a transplant shock for them. In hydro they develope tap or water roots but no hair roots. Hair roots is what feed off of fog the most, and it takes time and right conditions to grow.

Second as pointed out above, you need to use RO water and nutrient use is much less. A good starting point is to use a 40% solution. Example is if the nutes mfg recommends 20ml/gal, then I would use 40ml/5gal. This is based on most handwatering suggestions to use full strenght nutes once then plain water twice to feed. Since you are feeding all the tiime the 40% is right there. Type of nutes are an issue, especially if you are using a pond fogger based ultrasonic fogger. They clog real easy. Make sure you are using teflon replacement discs and look for a clean running nutrient, many fog users swear by Humbolts master, but I've had good results with Duch Master's Advance.

You are not alone growing with fog, so hang in there. I would suggest you look at my album showing the building of "fogfognugen" to see what I used in my build.

[dejayou30]

I am pretty sure I told you in another thread about a week ago (http://boards.cannabis.com/plant-pro...ml#post2035320) that you weren't supposed to be feeding plants that young, and yet you are still choosing to feed them, and as a result, are still experiencing problems. How do you expect to fix your problems if you won't take advice from people who have been there before and know what your problem is and are trying to help you? :wtf:

[Prodaytrader]

oldmac few questions:

If I resolve my pump issue either by getting a cyclone pump or a diaphragm pump which I hear will also work, I can get the proper 50 psi needed for a high pressure aero. If I could design something that would allow for two chambers one of which is a shallow one for the plants, then can I alternate between the wet and dry all the way to flower? The wet I could feed into the side of the shallow chamber like you did, but how are you moving the fog through your chamber? What kind of fan is reliable enough to move the fog? I've burned up 3 thus far with my fog alone. Also, it seems my net cups aren't fully taking advantage of the holes. My slits only go up half way, which maybe isn't sufficient with fog?

Don't take it personally dejayou30, I'm just getting conflicting opinions is all and some of this info takes time to sink in. It turns out that my water alone was still too much for the plants to handle.

One other thing, given that I have low pressure sprayers in there now and the fog, I decided to run both simultaneously until I can afford the pump and a second timer not to mention all the chamber parts, what kind of timing should I be using? I am still keeping the nutes in the 100 to 150 range since I'm still using the fogger. My current timing is 10 off and 2 on running both together. Seems to be workings but like I said the roots are also changing so I don't want to over water and kill them all.

[oldmac]

oldmac few questions:

If I resolve my pump issue either by getting a cyclone pump or a diaphragm pump which I hear will also work, I can get the proper 50 psi needed for a high pressure aero.
I'm not sure that 50psi and those misters will get you to true aero. What you have going now is hydroponics with some fog added. Most of the true aeroponic systems are running in the 100+psi range and use misters with much smaller orifices. Your proposal sounds like a FAG system (fake aeroponic growing).

If I could design something that would allow for two chambers one of which is a shallow one for the plants, then can I alternate between the wet and dry all the way to flower?
Yes. In fact I've built two smaller and cheaper versions of "fogfognugen" that use shallow trays and some misters and a "bucket of fog" based on a 5 head pond fogger in a 5 gal bucket. The lid of the bucket has 2 holes, one with a pce of pvc to act as a hose fitting for the fog out. And a second hole with a muffin fan on top, blowing INTO the bucket to push fog out.

The wet I could feed into the side of the shallow chamber like you did, but how are you moving the fog through your chamber?
In my case the FrapaPlas fogger has a fan built into it that blows thru the ultrasonic torch blowing the fog out. When introduced to the trays, the fog will distribute itself. You are trying to raise the relative humidity to 100%, when it gets even close to that it will start to condensate to droplets on the roots then it's time to stop the fog for awhile. Consider also if building fresh to put your plumbing external to the tray lid and consider puting the misters in the top of the tray. That way they are always above the root mass. Also shallow trays allow the tap or water roots to grow to the bottom and can feed off excess nutrients that puddle there.

What kind of fan is reliable enough to move the fog? I've burned up 3 thus far with my fog alone.
In the bucket of fog I used regular muffin fans, but "moisture proof" muffins are available and are a better choice

Also, it seems my net cups aren't fully taking advantage of the holes. My slits only go up half way, which maybe isn't sufficient with fog?
That should not be a problem, enough fog introduced to the tray will seek out everywhere to be. Keep in mind relative humidity, it would be impossible to raise it in only one part of the tray without it raising everywhere.

One other thing, given that I have low pressure sprayers in there now and the fog, I decided to run both simultaneously until I can afford the pump and a second timer not to mention all the chamber parts, what kind of timing should I be using? I am still keeping the nutes in the 100 to 150 range since I'm still using the fogger. My current timing is 10 off and 2 on running both together. Seems to be workings but like I said the roots are also changing so I don't want to over water and kill them all.
Since this timing seems to be working good then it is fine. The off time sounds very good to me, the on time probably favors the mister side of things not sure how much you get from the fog in just 2 mins.

In my current fogfognugen setup the high pressure mister side runs 7 seconds every 1/2 hour. The fogger runs 10 minutes every 1/2 hour and the events are off set by 10 mins. ie: top of hour misters run, then 10 min later the fogger runs for 10 min and 10 min later back to pump/mister event.
Also I should note that fogfognugen is a "fog to waste" system, there is no recirculation of spent nutrient solution. I'm currently running the pump/misters at 200-210psi and with impingement nozzles with just .012" orifices this "aero" is very much a fog.

Hope some of this might help you. I have a thread from about a month ago showing a little bit of setting up my aero/fog tray, I'd love to link it here but I'm too lame on a 'puter to do that. Look for it in the "hydro" section, maybe I'll bump it up so you can find it easier. Have a couple of "fog" pics in it. I would love to see more people trying to use fog, it really is a great way to grow.

[dejayou30]

Don't take it personally dejayou30, I'm just getting conflicting opinions is all and some of this info takes time to sink in. It turns out that my water alone was still too much for the plants to handle.

Nothing personal, but it just perturbs me a bit when you post one thread with problems, I tell you what the problem is, and then you post another thread a week later with the same problems, without taking any of my advice. I am certainly not a know it all, but I am pretty good at picking out basic problems, and yours was definitely an overfeeding problem. My point is, I don't post on here trying to help people for my own health, and if you are going to post on here saying you have problems, you might want to try some of the fixes people suggest. :thumbsup:

[JackdaWack]

It's hard to decide whos opinion is worth more, some random joe on the internet or the guy who runs your LHS. It can take a bit of time to really see who knows what there talking about, unfortunately the one guy most people rely on, The Hydro shop guy, in this case was dead wrong and by a mile i might add. Either way now u know to take his advice with a grain of salt, and hit the forums a bit more, and hey, now u have some one with real experience and know how to help you out, 99% of the time most people on here are willing to go far beyond what u would expect in terms of help, and when its appreciated, people will never get sick of ur questions and problems.

[Prodaytrader]

It all started with your responces Jack so for that again, I must say thanks. I thought I would post some follow up pics and another question for my future modifications.

[Prodaytrader]

Strange that it posted only part of my reply. At any rate, let's try again:

It all started with your responses Jack, so for that again I must say thanks. I thought I would post some follow up pics and another question for my future modifications.

Oldmac: you say that even 50 psi is too low for aero, but what I think your driving at is that the best aero to use would be one with a very small micron water droplet which is best produced at 100psi. This is technically why foggers work so well however, they have obvious practical implementation issues. I fully understand that the low pressure aero system will not work well in conjunction with the fog, but do my water microns have to be that small especially since I am using fog. My thoughts on the misters were to get a pump from Harbor Freight that is capable of delivering 50 psi and then use a new line of misters that Lowes is carrying now. Here is link to the misters I wanted to use: Misters on Amazon.com They have a mister section that is used commonly with patio cooling systems and a quick test with my garden hose showed that it would produce a very fine mist indeed, but I'm sure it's not as small as 100psi system. I intend to get two or 3 of those big misters and a pump capable of pushing enough pressure through there (tests show 50 psi for these misters) and call it good. Since I am using the fog as well, I probably don't need as fine a mist as true aero growers alone would need. I hate to dump another 300 bucks on a 100psi pump, 100psi misters and all the other stuff when I have something much cheaper and probably just as good as any other high pressure system would have especially since I have fog in there too. If nothing else it has to be better then using the low pressure sprayers that are in there now. Those low pressure sprayers have killed every last hair my roots had developed which I guess was to be expected. I want a system that will give the plants enough nutes as well as water, yet still keep the hairy root benefit. It's obvious to me now that fog alone is not sufficient to carry enough water. Within 2 hours of me turning those sprayers on the plants perked right up and now 3 to 4 days later the plants are twice as big. Whatever I am doing now, it's working

I have noticed that misters like these tend to clog up easily. With the misters I have chosen, I can get a few replacement heads in advance and change them out once a week while I soak the other heads in a cleaning solution. Is it possible that 100psi systems don't clog as much since they have more pressure? If the only benefit of 100psi over 50 psi is smaller micron droplets then I don't think I need to make that heavy of an investment since I want to use fog too. You use fog and misters, you tell me what works.

Long story short Oldmac, can you give me a parts list for your pump, timer and mister heads so I can consider going that route instead of something pieced together from the parts stores.

I am keeping pretty good notes and lots of pics. When I am done with this process I hope to write something up and put it out there for others to see. I think I have encountered just about every problem fog people encounter and now have pretty good solutions and answers to those issues. It wasn't easy getting to this point and yet still I have further to go.

One more thing, on the fog to waste system, which I have considered strongly, what kind of waste do you get at the end of the day? Do you have the fog and misters timed so perfectly that you only end up with a gallon or two of waste water each day? If that's the case then your fan on top idea would work great. The fan would, as you pointed out, never make contact with the mist and would therefore be much more reliable then a fan sitting in the mist.

And another: what do you think of my germ box there? I dropped the hyrdroton level to about 3/4 full in that cup, placed a paper towel on top of that and then a clear dome for the light to get through and boost humidity. I either need to put a vent hole at the top of the clear dome or continue to leave it partially uncovered and this allows the fog to push into that chamber. I have two sprouts in a little dish now that love it in there but I am also doing a test run with some seeds to see how they like that spot. This way they are pretty much living in the same environment from day one. It will be interesting to see how that works. I have been struggling to find the rooter cups everyone loves using here.

[Prodaytrader]

What do you think of my artistic rendition? LOL At any rate, I tried to draft something up that I think would work in my space. I may or may not attempt to divide the grow space into two sections in an effort to have two separate environments. I might have to stick with my first plan which was to grow start to finish each batch instead of trying to cycle them. The only reason I am trying to cycle at this point is because I lucked into a bunch of seeds last night but I already have viable vegetative plants. I would rather not slow my current ones down so that the new seeds can catch up. I might just stick some cfls on them or something to keep the new seeds alive but nothing more. If I do separate the room then i will have to run a split vent shaft as I cant think of a way to let in air but not light unless it's coming from below and nearly under the growing container. I can install vents in the bottom of the shelf to allow air to rise up under the container and through the space. I could conceive a way to divide the room if I had too.

By raising the table up I can put 2 x 5 gallon containers under the table and have a fog to waste system. One bucket will draw fresh water while the other can be the dump. This would make life so much easier when changing water and I don't have to maintain a 20 to 25 gallon res any longer either. I'm fairly convinced that their wont be enough waste water to cause me concern. I'm already mixing and dumping around 20 gallons each week and I have a recirculating system. I believe I know how to find one of those muffin fans that I have been hearing about. I might have to order it but at least I know it's built for fog and can use that to push the fog up the bucket, down a pipe and into the grow chamber.

Somewhere in my travels I recently saw a fairly flat shallow container that wasn't a tote with curved sides on the inside. I think it would fit my space if I could get a lid for it. It might be available at the hydro store. I can attach my misters to the outside of that but I think I would rather try something else instead, if it's possible.

Question time: can I pump in aero mist in the neighborhood of 50 microns with the same fan I'm using for fog? What I am wondering is whether I can generate the mist in the same bucket as the fog and then pipe it in using the same system I am using for fog. ORRRR do I have to create the mist right where it's needed which is closer to the grow chamber. I just don't know how heavy the droplets are and how far they can travel. I think it would be easier to blow in the wet and dry using the same method as opposed to running plumbing to the chamber for the misters to connect on side.