I been doing little experiments here and there recently. I recently bought a 30gal fish tank pump from walmart. Got some line and a few air stones.......the little tootsie roll lookin ones. I always keep 3.....5gallon buckets of water on hand for my plants......I just fill em up and leave em sit out until use, which is a few days, I keep a cycle of the buckets as to not let them get stagnant. What I did was, take the pump, made the connections, attatched the airstones....and threw them into the buckets running 24/7. Making LOTS of wonderful bubbles and givin me tons of oxygen! The result is seriously noticable. Very much a more plush, lusher green in color and it seems to have sped up growth a little bit. All in all for about $30 it honestly seems to have givin me another teeny tiny bit of an edge on the plants. It was an experiment and it WORKS! Just my situation folks!assit: assit: assit: assit: assit: assit: assit: :thumbsup:
seems like it would be beneficial to the plants to have as much oxygen in the water as possible. If I were sticking with soil i'd give it a try. but i'm venturing into aquaponics, so far everyone seems happy.
I wasn't even trying to say that aerating the water doesn't work, in fact I'm certain it does and it is in the works when I get my budget. Just didn't have it right now. But yeah, I was probably going to set up some kind of aquarium bubbler setup like that, only I use those gaterade tanks that you see at the football games.
I remeber talkin about this back when i joined here and alittle at OG before they got shut down. I also think this made a huge difference. The better the air pump the better the water, but anything helps IMO.assit:
Stagnant water gets low O2 and then the anaerobic bacteria start to do their thing and anaerobic bacteria aren't the pleasant ones. I know when I make a compost tea, if I bubble the hell out of it for a couple days, the water basically comes alive with all the bacteria which helps plants and it gets this great earthy smell. You let it sit, the water gets slimy and gets this smell of decaying rot, i.e., the anaerobic hard at work. I also find bubbling my res for the hydro nutes allows me to keep it much longer before they start to get that rancid smell as well.
I dont know if I already said this but Im in soil and this technique is really helping me out since implementing it, for a simple $30bucks its done wonders
O2 is O2. Roots need it regardless of soil or hydro and the bacteria which help with soil grows by processing nutes n shit need that O2 as well, just like a compost pile needs to be turned to get fresh O2 into it. You want to see some real neat shit, take a sock, put some soil in it that you use with all the organic nutes n ferts n shit in it as well as some outside compost looking shit from under a tree or a bush and suspended it in 5 gal bucket of water with the bubbler and give it a few days. Should see a thick bubbly foam on top. That's the goods right there. It will be gold to your girl. Same idea as a compost tea. The sock will keep any of the bugs from the outside soil out of the water, but you need some of the bacteria from that compost to start the process as some store bought soils can be a bit sterile.
