Hydroponic Food Factory

Step 19 Maintenance

Some of your plants won't take to the new system right away, for the first week or so, you will need to add a little bit of water from above while the roots find there way to the flowing water.

My Strawberries did this to me the second day, they were wilted and not happy.
A small dose of nutrient water from above, and the next day they were standing up happy!

Nutrients

I have a small box of nutrients from a previous project, so I started with this.
In future I'm planning on buying in bulk for the longer term.

With a powder based nutrient mix, you will generally have two parts.
Follow the instructions on the box, and fill your small reservoir and your bigger tank.

My small bucket is 20 litres, and the bin is 60 litres.

The box has instructions for 100 litres, so it is simply 80% of the instructions, mixed straight into the water.

Lettuce & Celery

While the strawberries will go on happily, I will have to harvest the lettuce & celery at some point.
I'm planning on replacing them with seeds, as lettuce will come down to only a few cents each, instead of the $1~$2 I would pay at the shops!

Comments

[ohyaitsthechad]

I don't really understand the purpose of the large water reservoir, does the irrigation channel end in it instead of the bottom bucket or is it just to make sure that the bottom bucket never runs out of grow fluid? Im a little unclear of its purpose and am wondering if it is necessary if a person is willing to check the h2o level of the lower bucket on a regular basis.

[NathanWilliams]

It isn't really needed.

I added it as I tend to get distracted easily, so I could imagine forgetting to keep the water topped up and burning the pump out when it all went dry! (not to mention killing the plants!)

I found the lower bucket of water lasted a fair while, but I would suggest a dark bucket, preferably light proof, as all that water and nutrients makes a nice place for algae to grow, and I found I had to dump the water and clean it after a while.

[flyfish1]

great work..I really enjoyed looking through the steps.....I will be using some of the points there......Thanks for the work it took

[NathanWilliams]

Thanks for taking the time to leave a nice comment like that, it makes all the effort worthwhile :)

[makarenko54]

I really enjoy your project and think I will be building it myself. I live in TX so we get plenty of sun and I love to garden, but our soil is not very condusive to growing since its either very sandy or compacted with clay and not to mention the periods of drought we go through. I think this will be a great way to actually have a veggie garden and not have my plants die because I can't water my garden. I am actually installing some rain barrells as well. Have you ever thought of using those as your water source in your setup? Thanks again this is great!!

[NathanWilliams]

I would love to get some rain barrels. My main problem is that I rent, and wouldn't be able to hook them up to the guttering.

[fearless77]

Ask Tony Pincham he has 1,000 free standing water tanks (Plastic) he gets from his son-in-law John the plumber for $50.

[joeydlh]

Then we need to talk...

[makarenko54]

Thanks for the info on the pumps. I guess that would be needed especially here in TX during the summers to keep from drying out, I just worry that I will come home after work to find my pump dead has died. Does your bucket have a lid to cut down on evaporation? Also could you explain to me again the need for the float if you are running the pump continuously with a constant flow?

[NathanWilliams]

I do have a lid for the bucket, and I keep meaning to make holes in it (for the hoses), so I can put it on. But it is one of those jobs I still haven't gotten to yet.

As for the float valve, I need that because the plants do still take some of the water. (just not as much as dirt does!)

I could top the bucket up by hand pretty easily (they don't drink that much each day), but as you might have noticed from my comments, I can get a bit lazy, so automation helps me out!

[makarenko54]

Okay that sounds very logical and efficient!! thanks again for you posting!!

[pimpmogul]

MacMan45, I notice you are using garden hoses as your supply. Typically those are not good for consumption (i.e. not good to use for water supply - probably not good for water supply to plants you will eat...). What's your take on that? Are you just willing to live with it because of supply limitations? T5 fluorescent lighting is supposed to beat even the 1000 watt HID lamps. I have yet to complete my system setup, so I am going on passed-down knowledge. Nice setup though. I especially like your system of hanging. Good for saving space!!!

[NathanWilliams]

The garden hose was due to cost limitations mostly. My original plan was to have two 90 degree pvc pipes (to make the full 180), but the bends were going to cost more then the pump! I'm not overly concerned about the hose for water, if I had a dirt garden, I would be using a garden hose to water it afterall :p If anyone is concerned, they could probably switch for something like irrigation hose, which I would imagine being a better choice. I have never heard of T5 lights before, but it is going to have to be something to look into! (do you have any helpful links to get me started?) If they can even match HPS with less heat, it would be fantastic for indoor hydroponics! What kind of light spectrum do they give off? This is why I like instructables, it isn't a one way thing, I came here to share what I had, and in return I learnt new things so quickly!

[lolobon]

I don't know if I did not catch it or not, but how long do you have to run the pump? 24 hrs ?

[NathanWilliams]

Yeah, I run it 24x7, otherwise the roots will dry out, killing the plants!

[meismeems]

What an excellent instructable! My suggestion for nutes would be what the aquaponics people use....fish emulsion. Theirs is straight from the fish, of course. I use it on my dirt plants and they love it. It's a natural fertilizer, so it's not going to harm your plants. jmtc Thank you for putting so much work into this and sharing it here. Very doable! Kim from MilwWI

[NathanWilliams]

Thanks! I have thought about aquaponics, and it is something I would love to try. Right now I wanted to keep things a bit simpler, to figure out the bugs in the design. My wife wants pet fish, which to me could be a good excuse to start a small indoor system ;)

[Eggs Ackley]

Interesting contraption, but 90% of the success of a hydroponics system is in the nutrients you feed your plants. Virtually every plant on earth requires 17 elements to grow, and that includes light and oxygen. Normally a plant draws its nutrients from the soil, but in the absence of soil you have to provide the nutrients. You touched briefly on nutrients, but a store bought bag of fertilizer from the nearest home center is designed to supplement soil, not replace it, so it supplies only a few of the essential elements a plant needs. You need a nutrient mixture designed for hydroponic growing with micronutrients that provide all the elements a plant would normally draw from the soil. A simple google search on "hydroponic nutrients" will direct you to all the information you need. Also, the nutrient mixture ideally needs a closed system, meaning the nutrient solution should drain back into the supply bucket, and changed about every ten days to two weeks. There should also be a small aquarium air pump supplying a constant stream of air into the solution to make sure the solution is well oxygenated. This would provide your plants with everything they need to thrive to their maximum, except sunlight, you still have to make sure they get plenty of that.

[NathanWilliams]

Ahh, I guess I wasn't clear on the nutrients section, after writing 19 steps, and taking a few hundred pictures I was a bit eager to actually get the post done! My nutrients are actually a general hydroponic solution, I'll take a picture of the box later and improve that step. When this box runs out (it is pretty low from my previous experiments) I was thinking of actually switching to a bigger bulk pack from an online hydro store I know. I might also go as far as getting two sets, a flowering growth mix and a vegetative growth mix. I'm interested to see first hand if it would make much of a difference over my current general purpose mix.

[Eggs Ackley]

I've been using the General Hydroponics brand for a couple of years now with outstanding results. They have a three component hydroponic nutrient solution that covers from seedling, vegetative, and on through the flowering stages. It's reasonably priced too. You might want to check out Fox Farms products as well. I've had considerable success with both of those company's products. As I had mentioned, it's all in what you feed them. Give them what they need and you can grow crops twice as big and about 1/3 quicker than in soil, and in a lot less space. It should be noted that the entire apparatus you created can also be used indoors for year round growing. The required lighting can get rather pricey as you have to use special lamps that reproduce the suns spectrum of light. But, with more and more people realizing the benefits of growing hydroponically, the costs are sure to come down. Credit NASA for the lion's share of the research into hydroponics over the years, as they've long been researching how they would sustain astronauts on multi-year missions. Hydroponics would seem to be the answer to a large part of the logistics. Anyway, that's a nice system you made, seeing as how the bulk of it is reclaimed materials. Hopefully you'll light a creative spark in folks who will want to attempt it on their own.

[NathanWilliams]

I love hydroponics, from the smaller experiments I have done so far, I have had amazing results. As for my nutes, when I said general, I meant all round, not the brand :p I'm actually in Australia, and we don't have the same range as you do in America sadly. The hardware store had one single box for hydroponic nutes, I was actually surprised to be honest! (the nursery had nothing at all for hydro, they claimed dirt was just as good these days, I left laughing :p ) I am planning to move onto indoor lights in the future, but the smallest HPS we can get here is something like 250 watts or more, and it is a little hard to justify the cost & power right now for lettuce! I'm also interested in making an LED array, but I keep hearing mixed results, and I'm a little sceptical about the lumens they would give out. I have heard that in the US you also have HPS security lights in the 70 watt range for really cheap, I have to say I am envious, ours are all halogen :( (Probably worried about indoor pot growers or something :p )

[wavesearcher]

I use florlux tubes for my indoor herbs ugly color on the light, realy cheap and works perfekt even with normal soil;)

[tengaman]

hey umm im really new to hyrdoponics but i wanted to tell you to save more energy you could use solar like a solar walkway light they charge batteries to use at night u could make it so that it charges bigger batteries its easy check diff instructables and then use like a couple to make it work in the day time and a couple to charge a battery for night they have a light sensor so the light turns on at night just make the wires that go to the bulb go to the pump so that when its lights out the batteries power your pump sorry for my coment being so long btw check instructables to see how to jack the light with ease o great idea use some lights to make it "pretty lights"at night

[NathanWilliams]

Thanks for the thought, but solar would have made my project a lot more expensive. The plants also get enough light from the sun, they actually need a dark period to produce fruit.

[tengaman]

I know but the solar lights are like 10$ American for like 5 lights and A can make the lights not work it the pretty lights thing is just for fun but for the 20$ A spend on lights thats less drain on the environment and a smaller electric bill its easy enough I could do it in about ten minutes and 3 lights should power your pump in the day and another 3 should power your pump at night and thats 20$ american sorry i dont know the currency value of AUD i beleive it is like 75 cents american per dollar well i was just trying to help dont mean to seem like im mad im just trying to explain myself better it for me was like 11 o clock so i was tired well anyway great ible i give it a 5.0 and umm beep beep 8-]

[NathanWilliams]

Do you mean the small led solar lights for a path for example?

I have looked into LED lights before, and you need a lot, and to have them close to the plants to make them work.

As for powering my pump, it is an 18 watt pump, an 18 watt solar panel would be about $140 US:
http://www.solaroutlet.com/RV-18-Watt-Solar-Panel-p-7.html

Another thing to be worried about is that a system like this is sensitive to power loss.

If the power is cut for too long, the roots will dry out and die, which would mean we would need a system to switch to mains on a cloudy day etc (which are a bit expensive).

I don't mean to be down on your idea, it is however something I have looked into ;)

And thanks for the rating :)

[tengaman]

no biggy i just thought the pump didnt need that much power and yes i mean solar path lights the power loss problem is the easy part i have in the past made a system that fixed the dusk and dawn and on cloudy days solar "rays" if you will still come thru the clouds(even if that doesnt work you could go out and manualy switch to your main power)and i have seen some low power pumps and i like to make things weird like attaching solar things i know how to hook up a couple of solar panels from the solar lights to make a big solar panel so that helps i dont mean to seem so pushy but i like to try and find new ways of doing things so i kinda tried to make this work in any way i could so i seem pushy so im sorry for that

[NathanWilliams]

I didn't take it as pushy at all, I really appreciate being able to discuss ideas with other people, its how I find out about new things! You should post your solar contraptions, I would like to see how you did the dusk / dawn switching :)

[tengaman]

lol well i think i might its basicly putting a lil cap on the light sensor its manual but i have an idea how to make it automatic but im to lazy to fix ill try to fix and post

ill work on some ideas on doing that

theres an instructable about making i think its either solar rc car or solarize your back pack and it shows you how to put alot of solar panels(lil ones)together ill have to post it if i can find it the instrutable

im currently trying to figure out any ways to improve your design before i make mine such as how im thinking that you could use a simple suction system for gravity feed you would have to manualy switch the water from top to bottom but it saves on buying a pump.....

well umm thank you for talking with me its helpfull ive figured out a couple of things like how i should finish fixing my dusk/dawn solar switch but i think that in its current state its managable ill work on it =]

[tengaman]

ive been thinking that maybe you could increase the power of a solar panel by using tin foil like a reflector to put more solar rays tell me what you think im very bored =[]

[NathanWilliams]

foil would increase the amount of light on the panel, but I'm not sure if it would be as effective compared to a mirror. I think you will just reach the cell's maximum capacity sooner. It would be more efficient, but there would be a limit to what you could get out of it. But, instead of guessing, you could do an experiment on it. Get a multimeter set to read the current (amps) given by the cell. Find a sunny spot, and read the numbers you get. (write it down, it is easier then remembering!) Then try with a foil reflector, and try with a small mirror. I think the results would be very interesting! (if you want to talk more about this, feel free to message me on here, it might be easier to keep track of!) (Boredom sucks! make something!!)

[tengaman]

i was thinking the same thing but the problem is ive had bad weather and i think itle be alot easier to message you lol

[tengaman]

ps if you find this hard to understand ill explain better if u want