I just started using these Grobuckets and they are working great so far. My question is. Would they work better if I ran a airstone down in the reservoir. And can you use Gaia green as a top dress using these buckets. Any help would be appreciated 😊🍻. Ps. I LOVE YOUR SHOW. GREAT INFO
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the airstones will keep you nutrients “active” , not laying. layered on the botton or floating on top of the water. Size of stone depends on your reservoir they surly wouldn’t hurt !!! Been looking into growbuckets – how do you like them ??
Really depends on the air being pumped in the water. Hot, CO2 rich air is not good for instance. They also do not keep anything “active”. Mineral ions are either soluble, or not based on temp and pH. Any solids fallen out of solution on the bottom can’t be made soluble by a pump or air stone moving them around.
top dressing gaia should be fine as you dont want to put recharge in the buckets water. (meaning you would be lightly watering in the microbes to the soil as to work on your top dress)
if you have water with a completely flat surface with no agitation, the surface tension of the water makes it hard to absorb atmospheric gas, you can get some anaerobic bacteria that will smell just like shit 1/10 times…doesnt seem to bother the plants too much but people will want to know why your living space smells like shit
since you are probably going to have it inside id use an airstone of any size just to keep the water from going stagnant for your comfort
from what ive heard is stagnant water bacteria “fart” different forms of sulphur gas…which will make you believe you are smelling shit
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I ran air stones in my bottom feeding pots many times trying to make it work and continually ran into issues, but I was also feeding nutrients through the reservoir. I ran the air stones because I had a large bottom reservoir (4+ inch in a 5 gallon) that I thought I could use if I aerated it.
I did many trials with low EC feedings to avoid salt buildup, never put recharge in the res, let the res go empty before filling it, all the stuff your supposed to do but I still ran into micronutrient issues and what always seemed like iron deficiency.
Then I heard that there is potential to oxidize the iron in the res of a bottom feeding setup if you are using nutrients. Im not sure if that’s what happened to me or how much validity there is to the statement, I know water temp also would play a role. The large reservoir size may have been too much of an obstacle to overcome as well.
If you just have water in your res, then I would say it’s fairly safe besides the potential issue mystro brought up. But if your res is only 1-2 inch of water then it will likely hold plenty of oxygen to prevent an anaerobic environment.