Suggestions Ditching the air pump in RDWC

I'm currently in the late stages of flower but have been struggling with tanking pH(or acid rain effect) for most of the grow. I have to drag 5 gallon jugs to the water and ice store Every time I do a res change, and being honest I really don't feel like doing that more than once a week lol. A few days ago I turned off the air pump and added T fittings to the water supplies in the plant buckets. After just 24 hours I noticed a reduction of pH drop and a lot of new bud and pistil growth. I sprayed the roots down with h2o2 did a thorough rinse before filling with fresh nutes. We shall see how it goes.

I added a submersible pump, 400 gph adjustable flow, with a tee fitting on it and suction cupped it to the side of the plant bucket, with the fitting pointing up and down. The tee fitting allows for some of the pressure to bleed off so this thing doesn't shoot to the ceiling. Then the suction cups allow you to move the pump up and down for the best fluming action. The reason is because I'm also in the last stage of flower and the roots are so big that there is no more surface area. It's all surface roots, floating. So very little movement. The pump was installed 3-4 days ago, and the plants do seem to be doing better, but I still have my air on.

I planning on making an assembly out of tubing (PVC) that will sit in the bottom of the bucket and produce flumes and waterfalls. Will post it when it becomes reality. Thanks for listen.       peace

Air stone on the left, flow-rite spray head on the right.

That looks really good!! @JbonesGreens. Why I could wash my long golden locks of hair with that. 🤩  One thing I did find out was to watch the placement of holes I put in the sides of my buckets. I drilled my air lines holes in my buckets and things were fine till I decided to flush my system to the max water height. I was waiting for the water to get to the top of the bucket but it was already running out the air line holes. Not the end of the world but it's still a bucket with a hole in it. Gotta love water. 🤣 Looks great man.

My entire last grow no air pump!! Woohoo!!! First time. Plants did NOT suffer. Just moving water, like shown above. Nice work man. 👍 

I’m working on ditching the air pump also for Rev 2 of my system. I’m leaning on the Bernoulli’s principle for my approach. Just tweaking the Venturi, but you get the idea. Second half of the video, I closed the Venturi, but still flow coming out of the nute line.

@sevans1965, yeah man it does work. You can run air or not, the rule is 1L of air, per 4-liters of solution. I've blown mine out of the water with too much air and overdosed them on CO2, so yes 1L works best for me. 

You can use a Venturia and those work great, I just use the ones that come with the pump, building or buying them didn't seem cost efficient to me. My last grow I used Venturia's but now I'm trying to grow unplugged as mush as possible. But it all comes down to surface movement. Injecting air doesn't put air into the water but moves the surface of the water allowing O2 to enter. I now focus on less heat in the water so trying to cut down on blowing hot air up their ass, or continuous running pumps. My current grow has slightly over the 1 liter of air per gal, 6 stones, and I have a submersible 400 gal pump on a repeat timer that comes on once a hour for 5 mins to stir the pot. This is my simplest setup yet, and so far is working great and I think I'll stick with this. I've tried so many other combinations but this is the simplest and the most affective. Good luck, have fun building and I hope your water gets dizzy. lol   

@woodi2 I was looking at the water pumps with built in aerators, but my brand of choice I only saw a 1400 GPH pump ( a little big). Now I just noticed, they have smaller ones in the aquarium section !

Like you, I’m going to look into that approach. Gotta say, it was fun firing up the old physics memory banks again. I had to laugh at my self, I specifically remember sitting in Physics class saying to myself, why am I learning this, I’m never gonna use this in real life. Who would have thunk, 30 years later I’m applying physics in my grow !

So any mums and dada out their- teach your kids my life lesson when they are questioning the relevance of their studies.  

Posted by: @woodi2

@sevans1965, yeah man it does work. You can run air or not, the rule is 1L of air, per 4-liters of solution. I've blown mine out of the water with too much air and overdosed them on CO2, so yes 1L works best for me. 

 

I was focused more on making sure I have enough dissolved ozygen. So do you just monitor pH to make sure you don’t have a carbonic acid problem ?

@sevans1965, Below water line, as long as I have the adequate amount of air bring pumped into the solution, and I adjust the EC to stabilize the PH, then she flies. Above water line, keeping proper air moment and exhaust are the other two key pieces. Temp and RH sometimes you can't do much about but exchanging fresh air sure helps. 

I'm not buying a DO meter, I swear!! I would use it one time and never again. I'll use a plant as a meter, I've got seeds. lol