Big Johns first steps into AP

[jcoop]

UF, makes sense. I will stay away from that.

John

[jcoop]

Making progress on the greenhouse and the surounding area. Have decided to scale back a bit for the first go round.

This will be what I am doing first off

110 Gallon FT
Maybe a sump tank of around 100 gal
4 maybe 5 2' x 3' x 8" Growbeds, these are the mortar mixing tubs from Lowes.

I will pump from the sump tank to the GB, The GB will be on a timer of 15 min on and 45 min off, they will drain directly to the FT and the overflow from the FT will go to the sump.

Hope this makes sense. Please offer any suggestions.

After chatting with another member "eskowronski" it made more sense to start off smaller

[rfeiller]

Flood and drain works real well for many different plants, but then the folks are jucing up the plants hydrponically. The ones I have seen the crops were really being forced, they get phenomenal results.
You might want to try your mosquito fish first, I am still trying to get the chemicals out of the reservoirs, tubing pumps and airstones from the equipment from a drug bust. Still smell like cannibus!

[jcoop]

[quote="rfeiller"]You might want to try your mosquito fish first,

any advantage to the Mosquito fish? Wally World had feeder goldfish for .10 ea figured I would start with 20 of those and see what happens.


I understand about the smell, half of my hydroton came from places like that. got a few "medical" roots left over that will have to be cleaned up.

John

[rfeiller]

since you had mosquito fish already usually they fill the ponds thought you could just put some of those into the tub. feeder goldfish are cheap and easy to come by. whatever works for you. just repeating what you probably already know, they use fungicides, insecticides in their mixes.

[Big Al]

hi Big John, keep up the good work best wishes. good luck Big Al

[urbanfarmer]

+1 for goldfish

[jcoop]

Ok,

Got a second GB today so, tomorrow I am going to level the bed for the growbeds, add a table top for the base, set two of the four GBs up, put the FT under the GBs. Have some bulkhead fittings on order, they should be here Tuesday, but I can place the beds over the FT and pretend they are draining. Going to have four GBs with two pumps feeding two GBs each. They will be on a timer so that they pump 15 min of every hour, but they will be offset 1/2 hour so two pump on the top of the hour and two pump on the bottom. Two pumps will give me some backup if one fails, they will be on independent timers. Now I just need to figure out the timers, got them second hand with no manuals. with the electronic timers I don't think I will have them cycling at the same time so I hope to get away with a 50g sump tank. will find out tomorrow after some playing.

Will try to post a couple pics along the way.

John

[jcoop]

Pretty quiet around here

An update,

Got the stand leveled for the gb's, got some wood to make a top for the gb base cut to length and installed. Filled up a gb with hydrocal to see how much water vs hydrocal and it looks like I will have about 10g of water in each gb, so that means I will have twice as big of fish tank as GB, looks like I need to rethink the amount of GB or just reduce the amount of fish. Either way it looks like my 45g sump may not be big enough. I might get away with 4 gb's, but if I want to add any my sump will be undersized..........d**#*)@$##@

Don't really want to pump from the FT,

May have to go find a clean 55g barrel to use as a sump.

Figured out the timers so that will work,

did the plumbing on the FT,

All for now.

John

[rfeiller]

it's a growth experience. no matter how many times you work it out in your head or on paper you get blind sided somehow.