Automated feed help plz

There a lot to be said for that personal touch of getting out their into the field, and being at one with the crops, for both plant and bodies sake.....but not here?

oldbudnew said:

Hey now lol. The main reason for needing some kind of automation is to cover me when I go away for a week at the end of October. The rest of the time I could get by.

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I had a similar situation and I got an aquarium pump that I put in a large bucket of nutes and ran a six-line splitter hose, one to each pot and put the pump on a timer.
I set it to pump for a few minutes every day.
This gave the pots some water to survive on for the 3 or 4 days that I was away but wasn't in danger of flooding the plants.
The only real danger was a power loss that would stop the pump from working and the plants would not get enough water. Even if the electric went off for a time, when it came back on, the timer and pump would carry on working on a different schedule but still for only a few minutes a day.
This setup worked fine for being away for a few days.
The hoses did not all deliver the same amount of water so I had to test it out and identify the lines that delivered more and less water and then I allocated the lines to the plants that I knew liked more or less water. The difference is small anyway if you only have the water pumping for a few minutes at a time.
My setup delivered about 1 liter of water in about 5 minutes, so I adjusted the timer to give the plants about 1 liter of water a day. You could set up any sort of schedule you want, even a few shorter times more than once a day, or whatever.
As an emergency measure, it worked great, but you wouldn't want to use it regularly.

I've used a Blumat system before for 48 plants in tight quarters just to make it easier to water/feed them and I loved the simplicity. They water from the top rather than the bottom but that shouldn't be a problem. I used 2-5 gallon pails connected to a "Y" branch and continues into the grow room. They are drippers but you can use an additive to control any clogging and the additive isn't very expensive and goes a long ways...it doesn't take much at all. All I had to do was fill the 5 gal pails and you could add more of them to extend the time between fillings. Google Blumat and you should get results.

You don't really want to keep the plants wet all the time, so I would worry about a watering system that watered all the time. The plant does need to go through wet and dry cycles. Dripping water all the time could well drown the roots. While the Blumat system looks cool, I don't think it would be good for cannabis. From part of their literature: "... The Tropf Blumat system is always suitable when plant groupings require consistent moisture". As cannabis doe not require consistent moisture, I would worry about them. Also I see that there is no pump or timers--it is meant to be connected to a pressurized system. This could also be disaster indoors. If connecting to a bucket, it would have to be raised high enough to give you enough pressure for the drippers to operate correctly.

Do you seriously have no one that can water your plants while you are gone?

No, it doesn't need a pressurized system, gravity feed is all it needs indoors. The amount of dampness of the soil can be adjusted as the cap has a thumbscrew where the feed tube goes through and when the pot reaches that desired dampness it shuts off. It's worked for me for several years now. Besides, if plants need a wet/dry cycle Hydro systems wouldn't work would they?

How it works: The cap is placed on the cone while submerged in water. When placed in the soil, the water seeps out the thru cone creating a vacuum that pulls down a diaphragm in the cap. There is a pin attached to the diaphragm that pulls down away from the feed tube and allows the water/feed to flow. Depending how much and fast the soil dries out the feeding could just be a continuous, slow drip or consistent flow until the soil is back to it's selected dampness as water in the soil goes back in the cone and reduces the vacuum, allowing the diaphragm to relax and pin pinches off the feed tube. It's a very clever system.

Hydro and soil are entirely different--you simply cannot compare the 2 in the manner you have. With hydro, the plants roots are exposed to highly oxygenated nutrient solutions and the entire root system in not 100% submerged 100% of the time. With soil, the drying out of the medium pulls needed oxygen into the root system of the plants. If the plant is kept constantly wet, the roots do not get O2 and will drown.

Surfer Joe said:

I had a similar situation and I got an aquarium pump that I put in a large bucket of nutes and ran a six-line splitter hose, one to each pot and put the pump on a timer.

I set it to pump for a few minutes every day.

This gave the pots some water to survive on for the 3 or 4 days that I was away but wasn't in danger of flooding the plants.

The only real danger was a power loss that would stop the pump from working and the plants would not get enough water. Even if the electric went off for a time, when it came back on, the timer and pump would carry on working on a different schedule but still for only a few minutes a day.

This setup worked fine for being away for a few days.

The hoses did not all deliver the same amount of water so I had to test it out and identify the lines that delivered more and less water and then I allocated the lines to the plants that I knew liked more or less water. The difference is small anyway if you only have the water pumping for a few minutes at a time.

My setup delivered about 1 liter of water in about 5 minutes, so I adjusted the timer to give the plants about 1 liter of water a day. You could set up any sort of schedule you want, even a few shorter times more than once a day, or whatever.

As an emergency measure, it worked great, but you wouldn't want to use it regularly.

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Thanks, yeah this is basically what I will be doing except I'm adding waste pipes so I can give them a nice shot of water once a day so they don't have to just survive but can thrive. A once a day feeding will also allow them a proper wet/dry cycle too.

I'll post up exactly how I do it wen I get it set up. Thanks for the input

NB

The Hemp Goddess said:

Do you seriously have no one that can water your plants while you are gone?

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No. I will not ask the wife to be involved and she is the only one who knows. Well my brother knows but I won't let him be involved either. I'm not taking anyone down with me if it comes to the worst.

Nobody other than that knows or will ever know.

NB

if you can make the medium airy enough, there would be no risk of overwatering. i am not a believer in wet/dry cycle, but thats just me, i did flood and drain forever and i flood every 2 hours or 3, or 4 with very little difference. you need to not drown them somehow when they are automated

That's fair enough and I can believe it. I pot up very loosely, always break up any clumps there may be when getting the coco from the bag and only use canna coco pro which is in my opinion the best you can buy so I would think my medium to be airy. That said however I have always done a wet and dry cycle which is usually once a day for the most part so I see no reason to change that just because I'll be going automated. The pump will just be taking my place as it were.

NB

if weed needs wet and dry cycle, then i guess that DWC will not perform as well or better than other systems with wet/dry cycles, when we know that dwc can excel in producing. weed likes moist medium with plenty of air in it. the level of water saturation which a plant can take differs greatly between plants in the plant kingdom, weed ime, is the plant that loves airy roots the most of the plants that i grew, even more than tomato which also loves that. from the coco that i used, it would be hard to automate without drowning roots, but some coco is different and comes in chunks and makes a more airy medium. if your coco looks like soil, and not like small chunks and blocks, then i would not automate that without adding a lot of perlite and/or growrocks to it.

The Hemp Goddess said:

You don't really want to keep the plants wet all the time, so I would worry about a watering system that watered all the time. The plant does need to go through wet and dry cycles. Dripping water all the time could well drown the roots. While the Blumat system looks cool, I don't think it would be good for cannabis. From part of their literature: "... The Tropf Blumat system is always suitable when plant groupings require consistent moisture". As cannabis doe not require consistent moisture, I would worry about them. Also I see that there is no pump or timers--it is meant to be connected to a pressurized system. This could also be disaster indoors. If connecting to a bucket, it would have to be raised high enough to give you enough pressure for the drippers to operate correctly.

Do you seriously have no one that can water your plants while you are gone?

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You know, you always seem to contradict me for some reason.:argue: I've used them for a couple of years and haven't had a problem with them. They DON"T water all the time and my soil isn't soggy, that's where you'll have a problem with root rot or oxygen levels. As I've said, they are adjustable. You can have your plants as dry or wet as you wish. It's excellent for plants that require lots of water because you can adjust it so the soil is very damp/wet while you're away for a lengthy time. You can adjust it so that the soil contains just enough moisture so that the plants thrive very well, no matter what plants you have.

This place sucks. I was invited and told the peeps are very friendly here but even the most experienced with a long history here are prone to be assholes.

I have a lot to offer but if I have to argue my case, I'm not interested. I see a lot of stupid things said in many posts here and this place looks to be too, much work if I'm going to be contradicted, even when I've mentioned success over the course of a couple of years.

Good luck all!

cbdoil said:

You know, you always seem to contradict me for some reason.:argue: I've used them for a couple of years and haven't had a problem with them. They DON"T water all the time and my soil isn't soggy, that's where you'll have a problem with root rot or oxygen levels. As I've said, they are adjustable. You can have your plants as dry or wet as you wish. It's excellent for plants that require lots of water because you can adjust it so the soil is very damp/wet while you're away for a lengthy time. You can adjust it so that the soil contains just enough moisture so that the plants thrive very well, no matter what plants you have.

This place sucks. I was invited and told the peeps are very friendly here but even the most experienced with a long history here are prone to be assholes.

I have a lot to offer but if I have to argue my case, I'm not interested. I see a lot of stupid things said in many posts here and this place looks to be too, much work if I'm going to be contradicted, even when I've mentioned success over the course of a couple of years.

Good luck all!

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i dont see where anyone was rude to you, just a differing opinion.. i guess you overreacted that is not the best way to start out here. rather show us what your gear does and be positive, everyone loves to see dank, so show us your dank

Coco is really not the issue with drowning the roots. I knew a guy that grew in coco/hydro and he had his water running continuously to a top feed system. His plants did quite well in this setup. the key is to constantly aerate the water to keep the maximum amount of oxygen in it. I also grow in coco/hydro and I use a top feed system that recirculates. I constantly aerate my water supply. I don't run my water constantly. mine cycles so that they get watered twice in 24hrs during veg and 4x in 24hrs during flower. Coco drains very well and when pearlite is use to keep it from compacting, it aerates itself when the water is allowed to drain away.

It will take a little trial and error to set up the automated system for the OP here but I don't think it will be nearly as problematic as it seems or is feared. I personally would set it up to top feed as I have found for me that coco works best when the water goes in the top and drains through to thoroughly wet the coco and then the left over is able to drain away. You can dial it in so that you get proper watering with little waste. And if you aerate your source water continuously, you will eliminate the possibility of drowning. I think you will find that once you have it dialed in, that you will keep it in use even when you are back and able to hand water.

The only real issue would be if you have several different plant strains that have vastly different water needs. If their water needs are at least similar enough, they will do fine for a week on that system. I still keep a check on my system every few days even though I have it dialed in, just to prevent any issues from developing. Plus with a recirculating system I have to adjust the pH of my solution every so often until the nutrients are exhausted and its time to replace the reservoir solution with fresh.

To individuals who have felt insulted or spoken rudely too, I would ask you to remember that on a forum it is very easy to appear to be "short", "rude", or other adjectives of insult. The reason is that some people are relatively blunt, if for no other reason than not wanting to type such wordy responses as I am guilty of doing. But when writing(or typing) responses in a forum, it is easy to misunderstand a person's approach because this medium doesn't allow for the body and facial expressions that give inflection to what is said. Aside from the emogees that we use here, it is hard to give the proper level of emotional injection that supplies the courteous mannerisms of social conversations.

You will also find that everyone here is very passionate about growing and each person with a significant amount of experience has developed their own methods that work for them. I ask that you try to take these types of insult inducing responses with a grain of salt as I am quite certain that no insult is meant for the most part.

cbdoil said:

You know, you always seem to contradict me for some reason.:argue: I've used them for a couple of years and haven't had a problem with them. They DON"T water all the time and my soil isn't soggy, that's where you'll have a problem with root rot or oxygen levels. As I've said, they are adjustable. You can have your plants as dry or wet as you wish. It's excellent for plants that require lots of water because you can adjust it so the soil is very damp/wet while you're away for a lengthy time. You can adjust it so that the soil contains just enough moisture so that the plants thrive very well, no matter what plants you have.

This place sucks. I was invited and told the peeps are very friendly here but even the most experienced with a long history here are prone to be assholes.

I have a lot to offer but if I have to argue my case, I'm not interested. I see a lot of stupid things said in many posts here and this place looks to be too, much work if I'm going to be contradicted, even when I've mentioned success over the course of a couple of years.

Good luck all!

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Some things never change BWHAHAHA

I stopped reading when I kept reading drippers halfway down the page, and you keep saying no drippers, sheesh. This guy wants a setup like I have. :aok:

Go into my link, "The Dr's Office" and read the whole thing. I run Coco Chips, and 32 sites from a 55 gal drum. The drum will fill the 7gal control bucket, and then fill the lines and they feed from the bottom. When the system is done, the control bucket is continuously pumped out to the main 55 gal res. I can walk away for well over 1 week with this system, as I also added a 35 gal fresh water ATO (automatic top off) system to the 55 gal res as well.




https://www.hydrofarm.com/p/GFO7KT

And expansion kits

https://www.hydrofarm.com/p/GFOE2

The DR gets it lol .