This system drains to waste? Suppose you built a table just high enough...snip
Funny you should say that....
All the drip lines plugged up...
Ripped them all out.
Redirected all of the drain lines back to the main res (30 gal) In the basement.
Added a second res (30 gal) In the basement
Added a third res (30 gal) Upstairs
Added a fourth res (20 gal) Upstairs
I pump the water upstairs from the main res in 2 steps with 2 pumps 600gph each. These pumps are inline and external to the res (less heat).
Res#3 Upstairs is used to fill res#4 upstairs...both Res#3 and Res#4 Drain back to the main res WITH GREAT FORCE because its falling 10 foot or so. During its fall it goes through 250 foot of garden hose coiled up in a deep freezer..drops the temp a few points. Will stick a filter of some type in here as well as soon as i find plans for one i like
Res # 4 is filled with fish and Deep Water Culture tomato,basil,ect... that are sucking up sunlight from an open window. The roots give the fish something to do.
For now watering is manual...but easy.
There is enough water pressure and volume on the falling water line to flood all of the grow tables in the basement in less than 5 min.
When I first fired this up I was sure the fish would be dead by morning but nope...lost a few but out of 20 or so thats pretty good I think.
Remember half of these pots still have OC+ in them....the PPM of the water was all over the place at first until all of the pots and tables balenced out...now it looks to be stable around 500
PH is a rock soild 6.0....it will creep up when the RO filter is topping of the system but it goes right back to 6.0 in a few hours.
The plan is to just see what happens...mainly...
Will the fish live?
Will the water hold up?
Will the fish be able to keep the ppms around 500 when the OC+ is depleted?
I have read that when in full bloom the fish cant keep up with MMJ...so if i need to boost the bud table i will just redirct the bloom table to drain to waste for that feeding.
I dont really care to much about the free organic nutes the fish can supply but thats a nice bonus...what i like is tropical fish can thrive in 80f water...without fish you have a real problem in the grow room if your res hits 80f...so well...i will let you come up with the punch line
Then again maybe i had too many of these