Looks like you are more than covered with that power fountain especially if the water is directly hitting the surface of the res water, the only thing to think about is how much turnover your res has from the deeper water to the surface.

"Super thrive" is an expensive product that I don't see has a practical place in growing economically edible veggies and why you would want nitrogen boost in most situations is beyond me.

Almost all fertilizer doses are formulated based on a nitrogen need first, so it would risk giving plants nitrogen burn and you, bigtime wallet burn for a senseless & ridiculously overpriced supplement which would cause more damage than good in many instances.

If you want to add nitrogen, be very sure you need it (which may be the case if your nursery solution was specifically light on the nitrogen). For me, high nitrogen has been a problem, since I adjust pH with nitric acid, the purest form of nitrate available.

The only reason I can guess as to why someone would boost nitrogen when they already had the proper fertilizer is because they started off economizing with seedlings at half strength and now they are being thrifty in wanting to just boost nitrogen as the plants get bigger *and* postponing when they make their next res change (which will be at a stronger nutrient concentration and make the low nute problem disappear). In this way they can save a small amount by getting as much out of their fertilizer they can. But to purchase a very expensive product to do that sort of defeats the purpose in most instances.

I am currently running 'adolescent' strawberries. My nitrate nitrogen ppm at start was 48 ppm before pH adjustment. Correst pH adjustment w/ nitric acid in my solution brought the nitrates to about 65 ppm. I may get my formula back in sinc by adding a little PK bloom which is basically the exact opposite as a nitrogen boost situation to get similar economy. Only I didn't pay a zillion dollars for some fancy labeled product which doesn't seem to even be registered or have NPK numbers availble, made by a company that sells another booster "Top Booster" at cosmic pricing, which is simply a neutralized solution of pH down (phosphoric) and pH Up (KOH)...

If you do need a nitrogen boost, consider simply most Cal-Mag supplements. Double check that they supply nitrate from a reputable registered fertilizer label and unless you specifically are having a hard water problem this would be a more economical possibility.

As a wild guess I am thinking their nitrogen boost formula is simply nitric acid neutralized with KOH. But I dislike products that make it difficult to know their nutrient concentration. My experience is that they rely on hokus pokus marketing and anecdotal infomercial type evidence that does not hold up to scientific scrutiny.

This post was edited by PupillaCharites on Wed, Oct 9, 13 at 13:30

Has anyone been able to get away with not aerating their reservoir?

At the risk of starting a giant argument, my personal opinion is that aerating a reservoir is a complete waste of time. Aeration only matters at the root zone. Whatever oxygen you manage to put into the reservoir water will be mostly gone by the time the solution gets to the roots.

Looking at your video, the way you have water crashing down like that is perfect. I think it beats blowing bubbles by tenfold. If you do that at the root zone, you will grow some amazing roots.

I like to keep an open mind so nothing to argue that bubble aeration is optional and I agree with Cole in that sense.

However to call it a waste of time is like saying a carpenter doesn't *need* nails when he has wood screws. There are times and places for which each is convenient and while someone who likes screwing things in might consider nails a waste of time, on the flip side, that doesn't mean nails don't have excellent applications.

Back to aeration. Splashing it down on the surface will certainly fill the need for aeration of the plants. However there are other things to consider in that a bubbler on the bottom causes small movement which when running smoothly can create minor but excellent currents to aerate the entire res and by non-violent means. It can prevent stagnation points and what I like best about it is the fine misting it can continuously provide which drench the root in a very tender way if the design is as I like it.

That makes it more of a craftsman's option among the different possibilities, since good systems can be made with either technique. Fot my DWC, I much prefer the refined misting I get out of the Bubbler above the surface of the water. Not to mention that it uses only a small fraction of the electricity of a pump in a tote application.

On the other hand for NFT, my current design does not make use of a bubbler even though it would be a nice to have thing; since it works without, I just didn't want to split the outlet. I currently have a rectangular res. If I had a large barrel sitting upright, I don't think it would be a waste of time to have bubbles from the depths rising for the simple non-verified, non-fact based feeling that the entire res was in an aerobic environment and thus more sanitary, better stopping anerobic microbes from putrifying in the bottom for a longer period of time. But if the res is shallow, I think that non-fact based feeling argument would be shallow ;-)

I've never had a reservoir from which I did not move so much of the solution that aeration could never become an issue. But I could see that a system without a lot of water flow, and especially in high temperature environments, could benefit from reservoir aeration.

I would still much prefer a water pump over an air pump, though. Aeration comes from creating new surface area to come into contact with the outside air, which once again is exactly what you are doing so perfectly in that video. I would just put the pump at the bottom so all the water turns over, and forget about the air pump.

I agree. For me, the air can give extra efficiency in powering so that is why I was quick to put in a good word for it.. This is for two reasons. First, because it is a lot more power consumption to put the pump at the bottom of a deep res in some peoples' designs which add a foot or two to the pump head ... requiring a more powerful pump.

For solar powering, every Watt-h counts whether to generate or to store, if you are into solar and this happens to be a concern, and In warmer seasons when temp is a problem the air has the opposite effect since the air pump is outside of the system so the heat it generates doesn't get dumped into the res. It comes in at around 2 psi overpressure and essentially drops to 0 at the surface which is a small additional cooling effect.

They are not usually great considerations and if you don't want to deal with the extra appliance and have returing dump water power you can utilize instead, I can see that being an efficient design when the person designing it knows their stuff.

Thanks for the posts. I have decided not to use an air pump. I get great flow with the big water pump i am using. I got the idea to break up the water as it entered the drum from shrimp tanks at the bait camps. Everything looks great, so i will roll with it for now. The temp of the water in the drum stays around 75 F. I think due to my burring it in the ground. Again i really appreciate the comments and hope one day i too can be of help to someone looking to start growing hydroponics...