Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Yes, for sure the ladybugs are going to be added.
About the hypoaspis, they live around a inch under the surface and eat the eggs and small larvae. So the spidermites eggs and youth up in the canopy would have a easy way of living, ...as long as they stay away from the soil, that is.

The temp is down in 20 degrees now, the eggs that are already there would prob. hatch, but there should not be any more population after that.

What I recently found out about the ProGrow 400 LED light is that even tho I turn both veg/flower switches off these days (the timer was buggin' out), there is still some light coming out from the LED diodes. It looks kinda like light being reflected from the light diodes but it is actually light output.. This may have been the case for around a month now, ...dunno if this have had a big impact on the flower, but it's far from optimal.
Have been jankin' the cable the last week.

Take a look at Steve's LEDs sometime. Once I'm back up and running, I'm adding their "Typhoon" controller to the light I built a few months ago. Programmable sunrise/sunset.

Out of curiosity, how much did the ProGrow cost?

Will do. I really want to start building my own LED's.
What kind of equipment is a must to have ?

I think it was around £350

Depends on just how serious you want to get. Haven't had any trouble with Steve's approach of using square tubing for heat sink so far. Depending on how many/size you want the ability to cut aluminum tube cleanly/squarely would be good as buying in larger pieces/quantities is more cost effective. At least in the US is usually comes standard in 8' lengths.

A good volt meter is essential to dial wattage in. I blew up a driver after 2 weeks thanks to a cheap/poorly calibrated meter. Stick to Fluke products whenever possible.

A decent soldering station and associated tools (wire cutters, strippers, etc.) will make life easier as well. Can get into better quality ones for $50-100 US.

After that, a dedicated space to work in and you should be good to go. If you want to really spoil yourself, a small drill press would be handy. Otherwise, a solid drill and metal bits should work fine.

you measure this PPM 470
what is it you are measuring
and how do you measure it
what do you use to measure this with


Don
Ms Gulf Coast

Hi man! Have not been on this forum for ages, just noticed a notification email poppin` up, made me miss my nice setup in Barcelona..

What you need is a TDS or a multi-meter of sorts.
A TDS Meter indicates the Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) of a solution, i.e. the concentration of dissolved solid particles. Dissolved ionized solids, such as salts ...

Looks kinda like one of these:

https://www.google.no/search?q=tds+meter&num=30&safe=off&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiFuZP46cjPAhVLCCwKHcE9BwEQ_AUICCgB&biw=1920&bih=950

I used a New Zealand product, Bluelab Guardian Monitor, witch can also monitor pH and temperature, just found it convenient to have all the important information in one gadget:
https://www.bluelab.com/products/type/monitors

If you are very unsure of what PPM / EC is, I recommend you to read this fine post about it. It is very easy to understand and well written.

https://www.420magazine.com/forums/how-to-grow-marijuana/71813-what-difference-between-ppm-ec.html