Quote Originally Posted by AquaponicHerb
Ok. The way this thing works:

The bucket has a pot inside of it with 5/8inch perforations on the bottom only; it fits a perfect seal inside the bucket. See first picture....

Super oxygenated venturi-driven water trickles in from the top through 1/2" tube when my timer kicks in. A venturi is better than an airstone for many reasons, we can get to that later. Also the oxygenated water has to feed in from the top in order for the process to work properly. This creates pressurization inside the fittings starting a countdown...

The waterline fills all the way to the top of bucket, fully soaking the entire lavarock filled pot to the rim with superoxygenated nutrient solution. It fills 1 inch from top of bucket, submerging all of the grow medium, actually the whole plant up to the stem is in the nutrient solution. Then the magic happens.

Right when it gets to an inch from the top of the bucket and looks like its going to overflow, a powerful snap and rumble can be heard from inside the bucket.

Through fittings and the physics of fluid, a siphon forms in the bottom of the bucket, and through a extremely powerful vacuum the water is rapidly sucked out through the bottom of the bucket, with approximately 40 lbs of pulling force.
The water level will quickly recede back into the depths of the bucket.

This creates of a surge of air being drawn in from the surface of the medium all the way through root system, the medium, down through the 5/8inch holes, into the the root chamber below the pot in the bottom of the bucket, and finally out through the bell-fitting in the very bottom of the bucket.

Basically it works like connecting a vacuum to the bottom of a plant container, and sucking air through it via a 1 inch hole in the center-bottom.

Everyone is familiar with flood and drain. One of the reasons this works so well is as the water leaves the pots and the beds drain, new air gets pulled into the pots like a piston. Now imagine this concept x10 and much more often, each time after a drain so there is always a fresh coat of nutrient solution on the roots to protect them as air blows over them through the entire medium.

When the timer is on, every 3 minutes the bucket fills and empties drawing enormous amounts oxygen directly through the entire root system.
This is some mad scientist shit. I love it.