Well part of the tea I make does end up staining the roots unless you filter a ton of times...but if you know the difference between root rot and stain you are fine. A good tea helps with Root Rot.
I think I saw you have a chiller. I have always felt you can do both if you do it right. A good tea will die down after a few days anyway. The leftovers are still great stuff and of good value but the bacteria doesn't last forever. I did one once that was on crazy. For about 3 days if you looked under the lid you could see it bubbling away. It looked like beer fermenting away. One day for about 24 hours if was going so hard core that all the space between the res and the lid was full of foam. But all that means is it found a ton of the goods to eat and was breeding like mad and after it died off all ways amazing. My point is after it dies off there is minimal return for what is left. After a few days they have stopped breeding and start dying off. So I have never tried this because I don't run sterile but I feel that the benefits don't last all that long in the res. They last a while in the plant but after like 4-5 days it is done in the res. They leave a bunch of goodness in the res but like I said after I run a tea I am topping off so fast with high concentration nutes that it is gone in a few days.
So if you are like me and run res changes long then you could run 3 weeks sterile and then run 1 week without the chiller and throw in the tea and let it do its magic and then dump and do your 4 week res change. Then you go back to chiller and sterile. Or maybe the other way...week one living then turn on the chiller and let it ride. One of the biggest benefits to bennies is that everywhere the good bacteria is living the bad bacteria has no home. But I still feel this is like the Ford Chevy debate and I choose not to take sides. I go living because I like making teas not because it is better. Maybe it is...But I am not about weight and time to harvest. I do personal grow only and I have enough equipment to do in 2 grows all I need for a year then I take the summer off. So for me it is about trying to optimize genetic capability and I feel it is easier to work with nature than fight against it...But sterile is cool too I aint knocking it!
I think one thing that is important to consider is none of this must be a constant. By that I mean just look at say Advanced nutes website and they have (or used to have) feeding schedules and you can see that they only want you adding bennies about twice in veg and maybe twice in bloom...I can't remember. The point is they don't last forever and they only need to be there a few days every few weeks. So considering that... you can do kinda like I explain and see if you get the benefits for running it and go back to sterile. Since I make my own stuff it is dirt cheap so who cares if it kills them.
So that is some good prices on the plastic...If I found those flop top buckets in 8 gallons for that price I would be ecstatic. I live about 10 min from 3 different hydro stores and they all have stuff but not those...except the one that is selling CC stuff and man it is spendy. I haven't looked around in the buckets section in a while though. I am starting a bloom soon so I will probably go run around during December scrapping together parts to try and make a new bucket system. I think I may not go so high of flow though and go smaller bulkheads and tubes. I know where I can get some 1" ones and you could even do more than one to get the flow up there. I was talking to this guy at one of the stores and he runs it and tells me it isn't pushing that much water anyway. He tells me it is all about the aeration not the flow. So maybe even run a gravity feed return with a ton of air stones in the main res and maybe that is all a home guy like me needs.
Well anyway thanks and good luck..I was hoping you had a link to some online place that had good prices on those buckets and bulk heads but it sounds like I just need to go poke around some more.
I will be watching your journal though now that I found it.
I think I saw you have a chiller. I have always felt you can do both if you do it right. A good tea will die down after a few days anyway. The leftovers are still great stuff and of good value but the bacteria doesn't last forever. I did one once that was on crazy. For about 3 days if you looked under the lid you could see it bubbling away. It looked like beer fermenting away. One day for about 24 hours if was going so hard core that all the space between the res and the lid was full of foam. But all that means is it found a ton of the goods to eat and was breeding like mad and after it died off all ways amazing. My point is after it dies off there is minimal return for what is left. After a few days they have stopped breeding and start dying off. So I have never tried this because I don't run sterile but I feel that the benefits don't last all that long in the res. They last a while in the plant but after like 4-5 days it is done in the res. They leave a bunch of goodness in the res but like I said after I run a tea I am topping off so fast with high concentration nutes that it is gone in a few days.
So if you are like me and run res changes long then you could run 3 weeks sterile and then run 1 week without the chiller and throw in the tea and let it do its magic and then dump and do your 4 week res change. Then you go back to chiller and sterile. Or maybe the other way...week one living then turn on the chiller and let it ride. One of the biggest benefits to bennies is that everywhere the good bacteria is living the bad bacteria has no home. But I still feel this is like the Ford Chevy debate and I choose not to take sides. I go living because I like making teas not because it is better. Maybe it is...But I am not about weight and time to harvest. I do personal grow only and I have enough equipment to do in 2 grows all I need for a year then I take the summer off. So for me it is about trying to optimize genetic capability and I feel it is easier to work with nature than fight against it...But sterile is cool too I aint knocking it!
I think one thing that is important to consider is none of this must be a constant. By that I mean just look at say Advanced nutes website and they have (or used to have) feeding schedules and you can see that they only want you adding bennies about twice in veg and maybe twice in bloom...I can't remember. The point is they don't last forever and they only need to be there a few days every few weeks. So considering that... you can do kinda like I explain and see if you get the benefits for running it and go back to sterile. Since I make my own stuff it is dirt cheap so who cares if it kills them.
So that is some good prices on the plastic...If I found those flop top buckets in 8 gallons for that price I would be ecstatic. I live about 10 min from 3 different hydro stores and they all have stuff but not those...except the one that is selling CC stuff and man it is spendy. I haven't looked around in the buckets section in a while though. I am starting a bloom soon so I will probably go run around during December scrapping together parts to try and make a new bucket system. I think I may not go so high of flow though and go smaller bulkheads and tubes. I know where I can get some 1" ones and you could even do more than one to get the flow up there. I was talking to this guy at one of the stores and he runs it and tells me it isn't pushing that much water anyway. He tells me it is all about the aeration not the flow. So maybe even run a gravity feed return with a ton of air stones in the main res and maybe that is all a home guy like me needs.
Well anyway thanks and good luck..I was hoping you had a link to some online place that had good prices on those buckets and bulk heads but it sounds like I just need to go poke around some more.
I will be watching your journal though now that I found it.
