Dosing pump for indoor growing

[JL90]

Hello everyone!

This is my first post, my apologies if this isn't the proper place for this thread; still got to learn this blog.

I just finished my first indoor grow with a descent yield imo. But for my second grow, I'm looking to automated some part of my growing. Don't worry, plenty of love and care will go into each plants

Ill explain my setup, followed by my questions.

First, it's a single plant growing room/tent, in soil for the growing medium. I will most likely use a "Mars Hydro LED Grow lights", which from my understanding offers a wide spectrum, therefore better growth. Most likely on a 18/6 cycle for vege. Ventilation wont be a problem, as fans should do the job.

Now for my feedings, this is where I want to design a cost effective system for automated feeding. Since I don't a have a constant work schedule, it's a little hard to do the feedings on regular basis, therefore my need for a automated feeding. I'm looking at dosing pumps (Peristaltic pump), similar to aquarium setups, to add my nutriment and to allow adjustment as the plant grows. To summarize, I will have a water reservoir, around 40-50Litres, and about 4 different nutriments, mixed during each feeding..

I want to be able to control all of the system with a series of valves and an outlet timer. I will adjust the valve to give, for example 500ml per minute. I can therefore increase or decrease the time to achieve the proper feeding amount. I would use dosing pumps to add a concentrate of nutriment and allow to change the recipe with the valves.

Here's a quick schematic of my proposed system:

I wanted to know if anyone has a setup like the one I want? If yes, what kind of dosing pump setup do you have? Any recommendations?

Cheers!

J

 

[Atulip]

I haven't looked into auto dosers myself(too pricey), but if you're just looking to ease the work needed to grow, some good ole organic soil and all you need to do is water weekly. Get into a big swick system and you only need to water every 2-3 weeks.

But for dosers, I'd just go with a well made brand, wouldn't want inaccurate feedings. I believe a doser just maintains the nutrient level and ph of your reservoir, so you still need a pump or something to set up a timed feeding if that's what your looking for. Search for drip irrigation for that.

Organic soil building.

Swick self watering.

 

[Skybound]

I'm also looking into automating as much as I possibly can in the grow room, and I already have automated a good amount of the grow. I'm a hydro grower and generally use small 160 GPH pumps to feed my plants at preset times, each plant has it's own pump. I can definitely see the logic of using dosing pumps to water your plants though, if you wanted to go that route, but the speed of liquid movement would be much slower than traditional impeller pumps such as the one in the reservoir in your schematic. My plan is roughly the same as yours, but to use dosing pumps to mete in nutrients and supplements into each of my reservoirs one per week, and as the reservoirs tend to drift away from my preset values, I can dose in minimal amounts of whichever nute/supp I want to bring those values back to ideal.

What I have already achieved in automation strictly involves measuring room RH and Temp, keeping internal time and power cycling AC electrical devices such as lights, duct fans, heater, dehumidifier and feed pumps via a well known programmable microcontroller. The MC is connected to the internet via an ethernet cable and can be controlled by a free app in my Android smartphone. There is a programmed routine that is in accordance to the internal time keeper, so if for whatever reason the network side fails, the grow will not be affected, but I can also adjust the app to give me the ability to toggle any of my relays with a click on my phone. So for instance, for the sake of my grow, I won't have this feature on my lights, but will have it for my pumps and fans.

In the coming months, when I start my next grow and generate some extra funds, I will also get some dosing pumps (7 total) so I can more accurately rebuild my weekly reservoir changes, in much less time and waste no nutrients all while being more clean. I aim to find the cheapest dosing pumps on fleabay b/c they are really simple devices and their accuracies are easily discovered if you know how to measure volume vs speed. Shortly after that I will also invest in hardware based liquid analyzing probes to measure PPM, PH, Temp and DO. The probes will be fitted into a manifold and the contents of each of my reservoirs can be pumped through a series of valves to pass through the test manifold so I can know precise readings and adjust accordingly. From my inlet RO collecting tank, through each and every plant reservoir and a waste line will be one giant closed loop with programmable open/close valves to control the flow of liquid from a reservoir to a desired location, albeit to the test manifold and returned, to the plant, or to the waste line, I hope to have this 2 year long project completed in one more year or less. My complete setup will be shared freely to everyone on this site (or the greater web). My progress has been logged in my blog tagged in my signature.

Thanks for sharing your idea JL90! Apologies for the delayed response.