Bubbleponics question for small grow tent

[Saxplayer]

I want to try the “bubbleponics” method, but before I delve in, I would like to ask a couple of questions for those of you who are already doing this. I’ll list them for clarity ;-)





Firstly, my growing enclosure (for now) is a 4x2 tent. I have a vent to outside via a filter.

Questions:

• Will I be able to fit all the components (water reservoirs/pumps/filtration etc) into my small grow space. This is a dealbreaker, as any external tanks etc would defeat the object and also in my “office” I don’t have the space!
• Am I right in thinking one ten gallon res will accommodate two plants (I could get three in there in pots/soil.
• Can I transplant seedlings and/or clones into this system easily?
• We get quite a few power outages at our place here in NZ during a year, some which last a couple of hours or more. Is this going to be a issue?

Thanks guys & Gals.
PS I will be happy to document my first grow using this method.

 

[Wastei]

I want to try the “bubbleponics” method, but before I delve in, I would like to ask a couple of questions for those of you who are already doing this. I’ll list them for clarity ;-)





Firstly, my growing enclosure (for now) is a 4x2 tent. I have a vent to outside via a filter.

Questions:

• Will I be able to fit all the components (water reservoirs/pumps/filtration etc) into my small grow space. This is a dealbreaker, as any external tanks etc would defeat the object and also in my “office” I don’t have the space!
• Am I right in thinking one ten gallon res will accommodate two plants (I could get three in there in pots/soil.
• Can I transplant seedlings and/or clones into this system easily?
• We get quite a few power outages at our place here in NZ during a year, some which last a couple of hours or more. Is this going to be a issue?

Thanks guys & Gals.
PS I will be happy to document my first grow using this method.

Bubbleponics is basically a top fed deep water culture system(DWC). It's better to separate plants with individual reservoirs at that small size.

You will struggle to transplant plants at different stages in growth in a DWC system. You can transplant seedlings and clones into the system or straight into it. It's however better to treat it like a regular top fed plant in the beginning and when it has well established roots reaching the water level you can increase aeration and decrease top watering/feeding.

Regular 5 gallon buckets works. Even better with storage containers. Figure out a system that shows you the water level and a way to empty and fill the reservoir. Light proofing is very important in DWC to stop any algae or other nasties to grow.

Power outages are fine with established roots in DWC, a passive DWC is called a "Kratky" system and people grow plant without any air stones added while it's way better to use them.

You don't need much of filtration depending on your water source. You can often make it work if the values are not horrible on your tap water. Bad is anything above 200ppm / 0.4 EC as a base but people make it work even higher than that in water cultures.

 

[Delps8]

I want to try the “bubbleponics” method, but before I delve in, I would like to ask a couple of questions for those of you who are already doing this. I’ll list them for clarity ;-)





Firstly, my growing enclosure (for now) is a 4x2 tent. I have a vent to outside via a filter.

Questions:

• Will I be able to fit all the components (water reservoirs/pumps/filtration etc) into my small grow space. This is a dealbreaker, as any external tanks etc would defeat the object and also in my “office” I don’t have the space!
• Am I right in thinking one ten gallon res will accommodate two plants (I could get three in there in pots/soil.
• Can I transplant seedlings and/or clones into this system easily?
• We get quite a few power outages at our place here in NZ during a year, some which last a couple of hours or more. Is this going to be a issue?

Thanks guys & Gals.
PS I will be happy to document my first grow using this method.

#1 - yes. My res is pretty big and it's in a 2' x 4' tent. The res is referred to as a "35 gallon res" but it holds 26 gallons of nutes.

#2 - per above, my 35 gallon res holds 26 gallons of nutes. Rather than "think" in terms of it being a "10 gallon" res, which will hold about 8 gallons and I would be leery of growing two plants in that small a container. One issue is that the roots of the plants will almost inevitably grow together; second, unless the res is shallow, it's not going to have a lot of surface area which means your plants will be spaced very close together.

My res is 22" front to back and 40" side to side and I'm going to try to get two plants to grow in that space. In the past, >1 plant has been challenge. My last three grow journals have been 1 plant; the older ones were >1. You might want to check them out to get some sense of how things work out.

#3 - absolutely. I germinate my seeds, put them in a Rapid Rooter, and then put the Rapid Rooter right in the net pot in the res.

#4 - if you're using an air pump + stones, it could be an issue. I'd get concerned after a few hours. Power outages are an issue in hydro but the benefits are significant. One of the nice things about hydro is that, once your environment is set up, you can go for a few days without having to do anything. I do manual add backs of RO. With two changes to my current setup, I could probably go two weeks without needing to go near the tent.