Levi's apartment-sized system

Levi

Stanimal wrote:

Whoa, those totes you used for the grow bed look a little flimsy! Have you had any issues with the sides bowing out or is the hydroton light enough that it's not an issue?

Nah, the totes are more than durable enough for the hydroton. Its actually the table I'm a bit more worried about. Seems to be holding so far though...

BenBrewcat wrote:

I think Colum nailed it... they're leggy. What happens is when a plant isn't getting enough lumens they "stretch" to try to grow out of the shade of their neighbor and catch some stronger sun. If they don't get into good light quickly, that super-fast growth catches up with them in the form of a weak stem that can't support the plant and you get collapses.

The idea behind grow LEDs is to emit only wavelengths in PAR or photosynthetically active radiation, but the rub is that the hype far exceeds the beef for most lamps. While the technology is rapidly advancing they're still something of a specialty niche for people who love tech, have tightly controlled electricity needs or need them for temperature control. Good grow LEDs are expensive, many times what a comparable HID, CF, T5 fluoro or even induction lamp would run. Look for LED emitters in at least the 3 watts per LED range and plan on spending a good whallop. Read reviews and note that there are a lot of crappy Chinese knockoffs that don't save you any money.

For the nonce, consider a couple fixes:
If the LEDs are grow lamps, move them closer, a LOT closer, like a couple inches from the plants.
Either way, once the plants grow a bit they'll need more potent canopy penetration. The least costly but effective is to get some cheap shop light fluorescent fixtures that'll fit your setup and alternate warm and cool white bulbs. T5s are great but you can definitely use just regular T12 shoplights which are inexpensive and easy to work with... I grew carnivorous plants and other light-intense plants under them successfully for many years. Put the bulbs as close to the plants as you can manage.

Hmm, interesting. They are 3 watt bulbs, but I could move them closer. I'd have to move it higher up again once they get to close though, right?

BenBrewcat

I suppose if you see scorching, yes. But if you hang from chains you can just move the hooks up a link as plants grow, or use grow light yo-yos.

Levi

I figured it was time for an update.

Things are still going! None of my goldfish have died, and I added two new ones the other day for a total of 6. They seem cheerful enough, although one of the two new ones seems shy and hides in the cave a lot.

The plants are growing, although nothing edible has appeared yet. The tomatoes plants are all over the place, I hope they don't get any bigger. The bell pepper plants look the nicest, but I'm not really sure what they are supposed to look like, haha. The kale died during a heatwave, and I replaced it with the bottom chunk of some grocery store celery. The celery was going good until I was trying to debug a problem with the bell siphon and I think I snapped apart all of its roots. :lol:

I also planted some more kale recently, but its still pretty small.

My cheap paper water test strips keep coming out okay, PH 6.5, and no ammonia, nitrates or nitrites any more, so I guess the plants are doing a good job keeping the water clean.

I got my mom to bring me some worms from her garden the last time she came to visit. She accidentally left them out in the sun before coming over so half of them were dead or almost dead. I put the remaining ones into my grow beds and hoped for the best. I kind of figured they would have died off, but the other day I actually saw one crammed up against the side of the growbed! Kind of neat.

Anyway, I'm thinking of building a second growlight(I think I might have enough LED's left over), and getting some proper reflective-stuff to cover the sides and back of the system. Hopefully that will help things grow more. Here are some pictures. :headbang:

Levi

Whoops, I spoke too soon about all my fish surviving. One of those two new goldfish wasn't shy, he was dead in the cave. :whistle:

Probably was sick when I bought them.

Levi

Made some adjustments to the system.

I built a second growlight, doubling the light going into the system. I also replaced my lousy sheets of tin foil with some slightly less lousy mylar thermal blankets. They do a great job of making my room less pink and glowy.

Also, my tomato plants have started to flower! This is a good sign, hopefully it means I'll actually get something edible out of them.

Not much else new. I had a bit of a scare when my biggest oldest goldfish didn't come out to eat one day. I saw him tucked over by my cave, I figured he was just being weird. Came back later in the day to feed them again, and saw he was still there, and his ass was pointing up and he wasn't moving. I figured he was dead!

I moved the cave over so I could fish out his corpse, and he swam around like crazy. It turns out he was too fat and got himself wedged between the cave and the wall looking for food and got stuck.

Some more pictures! (The mylar seems to make it hard to take close up photographs, so the flowers aren't really very visible.)

Lights off:

Lights on:

Flowers! (That you can't really see)

Shockwave defends!

BoredomIsFailure

That's looking great! The tomatoes are getting big, you might want to pinch out some of the growing tips to keep them in check (and get putting more effort in the fruit than the leaves).

I'd be interested to see what effect the extra light has in the long run.

Do you know what frequency the leds are? I've been reading up a little and have heard 660nm reds are a bit better than the more common 635nm ones, yours seem to be doing okay though!

swflcpl

Levi and others,

I had also built my own LED back in 2008 using 1w CREE bulbs and my own driver based around the laptop power supply I had extra to use.

Based on the power supply voltage and amps, and the fact I was using the LM317 for the driver, I had to break the light down into 6 different series strings and tie them together in parallel.

And the finished product had 25 Red 620-625nm, 8 Blue 465-470nm and 3 White (not sure of K)

Hanging at an adjustable level and angle (the light from the window was indirect, as it was WNW facing)

The heatsink was untouchable before I added the fans, and only warm to the touch with the fans

A pepper from 8/25/08

And then from 9/02/08

And flowering at 9/30/08

And pretty close jalapeno on 11/05/08.

Also note, this was from just a hydroponic setup, not aquaponics. Notice all of the salt build up at the veins where it sits from transpiration. Not hijacking a thread, I posted all of these here for the LED, trying to keep the LED info in as few threads as possible, showing another example and what it could grow. I have also grown lettuce, soybeans and an unmentionable under this same light over the years.

Bobby

Levi

BoredomIsFailure wrote:

That's looking great! The tomatoes are getting big, you might want to pinch out some of the growing tips to keep them in check (and get putting more effort in the fruit than the leaves).

I'd be interested to see what effect the extra light has in the long run.

Do you know what frequency the leds are? I've been reading up a little and have heard 660nm reds are a bit better than the more common 635nm ones, yours seem to be doing okay though!

Yeah, I got to get better at stuff like that. I'm kinda lazy so I've been letting things grow as they grow. Next time I'll try to do better at properly taking care of the plants.

The LEDs are 630nm, its possible that some plants do better with different wavelengths though. My kale just doesn't seem to be growing much, maybe a different spectrum would help?

swflcpl wrote:

Levi and others,
I had also built my own LED back in 2008 using 1w CREE bulbs and my own driver based around the laptop power supply I had extra to use.

Based on the power supply voltage and amps, and the fact I was using the LM317 for the driver, I had to break the light down into 6 different series strings and tie them together in parallel.

Also note, this was from just a hydroponic setup, not aquaponics. Notice all of the salt build up at the veins where it sits from transpiration. Not hijacking a thread, I posted all of these here for the LED, trying to keep the LED info in as few threads as possible, showing another example and what it could grow. I have also grown lettuce, soybeans and an unmentionable under this same light over the years.

Bobby

Nice. Its good to see the LED lights working for other people too. I've actually had a bit of trouble where the LED's fall off my heatsink(because they are just attached with cpu thermal paste) and they get ridiculously hot on their own. Today I duck taped some of the wires to the heatsink and it seems to be working better.

I noticed that the heatsink got bit toasty in the summer, but when its room temperature or less it barely heats up at all.

skeight976

this is a pretty sweet setup, seems like you could even add more grow beds, research on what plants grow well together and pack em in tighter. really good job for an apartment setup. I will be posting a blog of mine soon.

Levi

I don't have any pictures this time, but here is a quick update of my system. Basically, my tomato plants overwhelmed everything.

Its gotten slightly too cold in my room for the flowers to polinate, but its still growing like crazy so it sort of turned into an ultra-thick damp jungle pushing up against my growlights. I've got two tomatoes that are growing on the plants though, so its not a complete loss yet. I've ended up pulling out all the ones that didn't have tomatos, and pulling the rest down away from the growlight so the jungle isn't quite as thick now.

One of the LED's on one of my lights burned out though(probably due to how moist it was), so I had to fix that yesterday.

Also I've been having trouble with my bellsiphon on one growbed, I think bits of the hydroton kept getting stuck in it and making it not-level, which was interfering with it. I've pulled up everything on one side and added a media-guard to keep the clay balls out of my bell siphon. Seems to be working well. I also planted a bunch of smaller cold resistant plants and herbs(Kale, Oregeno, Peas, Thyme and parsley), so that one grow bed is pretty much been reset. I'll do the same for the other growbed once those tomatos ripen.

Overall my lessons were don't grow things that grow too big in a small space, and don't skip the media guard.

Goldfish are still good and happy. They are trained to eat right out of my hand now, and often give little kisses(well, they try to eat my fingers) when I feed them.

Levi

Here are some photos of my system as of a few weeks ago.

The growbeds. I'm growing a bunch of stuff, most of which I have no idea if they will work. Kale is going well, Garlic SEEMS to be doing well, but I've got no idea because its under the clay balls. Oregano is doing ridiculously good. Everything else, the Onions, Basil and other spices don't seem to be growing much.

My Kale:

The Oregano. I kinda just sprinkled the seeds over there and they all sprouted. I was going to thin them out, but then I figured hell might as well see what they do like that.

My Garlic! It grew ridiculously fast, but I've got no idea what its doing under the clay. Hopefully turning into garlic so I can eat it.

My fishes are all still alive. The first three goldfish are getting pretty big and they all seem healthy and happy. The medium sized one has a pimple like bump on his side that is probably bad news, but he seems active enough and it doesn't seem to be getting bigger. The smallest one is doing fine, but is a bit more shy than the others.

Compost worms!

Backyard Aquaponics A place to discuss aquaponics

Levi's apartment-sized system

Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics