'The Bubbling Barrel'

[Rattdogg]

Great TabbyCat , hopefully you can make this work it'd be great to see some huge budsicles.

 

I'd just like to make a couple of suggestions that may need to be fixed/changed to ensure a incident free and fruitfull grow story.

 

Looks to me like your drum may be slightly transperent, this may let light into the res area and will cause root development to be slow or even become slimy and rotten, easiest way around this is to wrap the container in a tape that'll hold the light out, personally i'd opt for black 100mph tape.

 

Only other problem i could possibly see arising in the nute area as well is that the powerhead you have in the bottom of the barrel may clog, stop or even worse short out , from sucking up the dead root material.

I may be way off the mark here as i know buggerall about how powerheads work, just assumed they must have an intake and impellor like a pump. If this was the case then it would'nt be too hard to make a frame to sit between the pump and the roots out of pvc, cover it in flyscreen , sit it over the pump and extend the outlet on your powerhead with a piece of hose up through the screen.

 

Sorry if i sounded like im rammbling, just a bit zotted right now, hope some of this helps....

[white_cluster]

A powerhead is a pump rattdogg and they already have a filter at the front, you just need to clean the filter and I imagine Tabbycat does alot of that.

Thats a great little setup there tabbycat, good work and nice post.

[skankmaster]

Yeah nice one tabbycat, please update and let us know how you are going, the powerhead is a great idea.

[Buddy]

Hey Tabbycat,

A nice easy to understand thread for the DWC beginner.

I've had one of those same powerheads for about two and a half years almost running continuously and its given me no problems and the hole cutter for larger holes is a next on my shopping list, the novelty is starting to wear off the jigsaw ......I need all my fingers to trim bud

[tabbycat]

heh stoners, appreciate the support. Havn't updated for a while.. been finishing off some institutional based learning and the neighbour wanted his dig camera back... he's had a week so soon's a good time i reckon.

 

So the first domina clone i ditched and replaced with a bigger mother. The mum is one of two from my mother/clonef bubbler, about 30cm high and has fairly established root structure. As the mother was established in a smaller net basket i cut a decent hole in the bottom of the bigger basket, poked the roots through and filled the side with the expanded clay - worker pretty well. Then straight into the drink... has showed little stress in the first week of flowering. After reading Skywalker's advice on sending clones into flower with little veg. i thought the original domina clone would be a bit of a waist of time... wouldve' been just one long cola... a long time in flowering to produce just one main cola... cool in SOG but not what i'm aiming at.

 

The domina mum stand about 30-40cm high, fairly bushy as i took cuttings off it a couple of weeks ago in veg before transplanting. Will have photo's soon.

 

Yeah Rattdog, will endeavour to black out barrel soonish... i used auto spray paint on the outside and lid of the other bubbler and has faired well... will probably do the same.

 

.....and yes White Cluster, the powerhead does have a foam filter element with plastic encasing attached.... intend to wrap layers of insect mesh around foam element and between its casing... positive no roots and whatever will not end up in the flight path.

 

Like the barrel is on the side of my floodndrain table (1050x2100mm), lights running on a light mover down the cenre of the table. So it gets a fair amount of side of side lighting... enough to so far (1 wk) see growth. The reason i had to transplant straight into flowering is because my main grow (another time! !) was already two weeks into flower... may have explained this already.

 

So far no major hassles, updates soon

[tabbycat]

Here she is... the mighty BD

Fairly healthy... 11/2 wks into flower just showing hairs.... pretty tall & lenky as she's been under fluros most of her life & domina's are stretchy.

Changed nuted today to bloom 1/4 strength.

Reckon she might come on a bit thinish as current root structure will only support so much.. will be interresting

[tabbycat]

Picture of powerhead with filter attached. Enclosed in the plastic cylinder is a foam filter element wrapped in 2 layers of insect screen cut to size.... hope to be cleaning the filter only a couple of times during the grow and i don't think roots will grow into the pump.

[tabbycat]

Picture of current root structure.... the roots will not grow a great deal more while flowering.... certainly if i had vegged this under HPS/MH lighting a more robust root structure and therefore more robust plant would occur.... sometimes though we go fuck it and just give it a go

[tabbycat]

Picture of top of BD.. sorry shitty photo... forgot to mention, spraypainted the barrel in a cheap black enamel.. seems to bond well, have wahed it, banged it around a bit with no flaking... think it will do the job... not sure of temperatures though... will take a reading of water temp. tomorrow.

[Rattdogg]

Picture of current root structure.... the roots will not grow a great deal more while flowering.... certainly if i had vegged this under HPS/MH lighting a more robust root structure and therefore more robust plant would occur.... sometimes though we go fuck it and just give it a go

I hope i dont sound like im harping but there is definately somthing wrong there with your root production/health, my bet is that light is getting into the res through the lid, and maybe nute temps are off ????