Krusty Bucket with lava hydro.

[marigyp]

I have had a couple of PM's concerning the use of a Krusty Bucket hydro setup with lava rock as the grow medium. I have used this system several times and it works great. This system is basically a containerized flood and drain system. The tables are always a pain in the ass to work with especially if you like to grow different varietals with different rates of growth. If a plant should die due to an accident, I know you all probably never make a mistake on your tables but I do, and the individualized containers make it easy to move them around under the lights or whatever chore you need to do. You can put the individual buckets on their own truck with wheels for easily moving them around the floor. Just make sure you leave longer than needed fill and drain hoses. I determine what the longest possible fill and drain holes would be in my set up and that is the length they all get.

Pic#1 is the feed line from the reservoir. It fills the bucket from the bottom at a metered rate of 1/4 gallon per minute. The pump runs for fifteen minutes twice a day. This gives you 3 3/4 gallons of fresh nutrient each feeding. With the lava rock in the container it will only hold about two and a half gallons of nutrient when filled. After the pump shuts off the nutrient in the bucket will slowly drain back to the reservoir until there is only an inch or two of nutrient left in the bottom. As the nutrients drain out of the bucket, fresh air enters into the bucket from the top and the nutrient left in the bottom is being aerated by the air stones.

Pic#2 is the return line side of the bucket. It utilizes a vortex breaker in the return so that you never wet the very top of the lava rocks. This cuts down on algae growth on the lava rocks as well as problems with knats.

Pic#3 shows the air stones inside the bucket on the bottom. The hose on the inside left goes to the return line to the reservoir. The short hose right is the input from the reservoir.

 

[marigyp]

Pic#4 shows that a water bottle, with a lot of holes cut into the bottle has been placed over the return line. This helps to keep roots from growing down the return line.

Pic#5 is the Southern Cross in her dirt container. She has been under the T5's for one month and is fifteen inches tall. Notice how short the node devlopment is. Normally if I knew I was going to put a girl into hydro from the T5 veg system I would have used a hydro Promix. Originally this SC was going to be done in dirt, but due to requests from Skeeter I am going to do her in hydro. She was soaked for twentyfour hours in a bucket of water to loosen up the soil in the pot.

Pic#6 is the SC after having the soil gently washed away until the organic matter has been removed, I never worry about the left over perlite pieces. I can hear the Root Police already."Oh my Gawd, he will damage the roots and kill the plant or retard its growth!". I have never had any problems with the plants doing this. In fact I think the root disturbance causes an explosion of new root growth.

 

[marigyp]

Pic#7 is the SC in her new home. I like to have the base of the mainstem about two inches above the ultimate fill level. That way the main stem stays dry and doesn't develope that white krusty mold that you sometimes see on plants in hydro.

 

[Bogey]

Good job there Krusty...i mean Mari...

 

[marigyp]

Tanks Butt Head!:jokercolor:

 

[Agent-Smith]

this should be fun to watch! :D

 

[pikes peak 69]

Looks good <ari.
I also grow with a KBS system. I have switched out the lava for a mix of coconut coir and Dyna-Rock though. Lava created to many problems for me. This new media is the bomb.
I am going to try to do a demo of my grow from start to finish. The girls are trying to get their roots as we speak. This run will probably be 2 BnB from help forums, and 2 Armagedon Skunk F2 from Pukka seeds.
Will probably start a thread on it in about 10 days.

pp69

 

[marigyp]

High as Hell Pike, thanks for stopping by. What kind of problems did you have with the lava rock? Were you using it as flood and drain or permanently flooded?
I have been led to believe that if the lava rock is flooded it will contantly adjust the pH level down of the nutrient bath.

 

[pikes peak 69]

Mari,
Sorry for the typo on your name above. I'm legally blind and have a difficult time on a keyboard.

Ph fluctuation was the problem.
I'm running it as designed, so like e&f I believe it's called. I feed in the top and drain from the bottom. There is always about 2" of nutes in the bottom bucket. I use a Regen blower for air, 50 cfm for 4 buckets. Lucas formula for GH nutes.

pp69

 

[Mrs G1]

Lookin goooood marigyp,,, i love seeing the girls get new stuff,,girls rule,,at least in weed..

 

[marigyp]

Mrs. G1, girls rule in life and that is just a fact. You all got something that all of us guys want, unqualified friendship. Excepting Bogey of course, he has his boyfriend. Red is the queen of my life, the bomb, and the boss or at least that is what my granddaughter tells me all the the time. I am not the boss of my castle, I have seen the boss's job, it sucks and I don't want it. I like just being the breeder drone. We get to fly around stoned, golf, fish, enjoy life, and every few days make sure the boss is satisfied. Yea, yea I know I got it made in the shade.

PP69 don't sweat the small stuff, and I do believe it is all small stuff. I am going to give this a try using straight lava rock. I am thinking that on the next grow, if I have trouble with the pH floating, I will try a mix of 25% lava rock and 75% birds eye pea gravel. If I put the lava rock on top of the pea gravel then I shouldn't leach so much of the sulfur complexes out of the lava rock. We will see.

You all enjoy growing and have a great day.

 

[marigyp]

That is wierd! I just checked the pH of the nutrient bath. I let the bath water remain in flood stage for three days and the pH went from 7.0 to 8.5. That is a increase of pH not a decrease. I am using red lava rock instead of yellow lava rock. I wonder if the yellow lava rock is a high bearing sulfide complex that makes it yellow and lowers the pH. Hmmm further testing in the system is required. Any ideas?

 

[pikes peak 69]

Hummm. Never heard of yellow lava rock. Have only used black and red. Black seemd to be more stable than red, but they both did massive ph fluctuations. Had to use to much down to try to control.

pp69

ps. This was with well water at 7.6ph and 280 ppm.

 

[marigyp]

Thanks Muggles as always. Just trying to ge this lava thing down to where I can deal with it. Love experimenting with hydro.

PP69 thanks for your help. Will keep you posted as to what control mesures I use. I added back to the reservoir with 5.5 pH addition of GH 0-8-16 and the pH dropped to 7.0. I am now doing flood and drain twice a day and see if that doesn't keep the pH steady.

 

[DMAN]

Hi Marigyp,

Awesome tutorial my friend...stuck! ;)

 

[marigyp]

You Dman dude! Thanks.

 

[marigyp]

Okay now two days later of ebb and flow twice a day for fifteen minutes. I had rebalanced the water to a pH of 6.2 and it has gone up to a pH of 6.5. So it seems to be pretty good using flood and drain. The young SC in the lava is just sitting there greening up, no vertical growth yet, but all of her leaves are fattening up, and her mainstem is fattening up. Reminds me of a leapord getting ready to spring, she's puttin roots down for the growth spurt.

 

[Growth Opportunity]

Very interested in this style of growing. Thanks for sharing the your knowledge. I`ll be watching.

 

[marigyp]

Thanks for droppin by GO, experimenting is always interesting whether the results are what we want or not.

 

[marigyp]

We will call today day 12 in the krusty lava bucket for the Southern Cross. She has grown up to 22 plus inches in the last twelve days. The first week she didn't do anything above ground. Now she is growing about an inch a day even with me cracking the hurd. I want her to be short and fat as she grows a lot like Cindy99 and can be real willowy, but she does produce nice size buds so short is the ticket.

PH is no longer any kind of serious problem. The additions of half Lucus Formula keep the pH stable at around 6.8 with minor additions of white vinegar dropping the pH to 5.8. Have to make an adjustment every four or five days. Seems like flood and drain works well with lava.

I trimmed off the lower growth and was very surprized at the intensity of the berry aroma in the trimmings. Very intense, could it be the lava does bring something to the table? Stay tuned Joe, all shall be revealed in the end!