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Dosatron Secrets · Hydroponics Daily

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  Hello there and welcome back to
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  Hydroponics Daily, your go-to podcast for everything soilless cultivation.
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  I'm your host Dr. Russell Sharp, the inventor of gold leaf as it's known in
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  the US and liquid gold as it's called in the UK and that's a complete fertilizer.
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  It's every nutrient in one bottle, pH perfect and it dechlorinates and so you
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  don't need to have multiple bottles and you don't need to dose different products
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  and that makes it really easy when you're dosing in line into a fertigation system.
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  Now, as I said on previous episodes, if you have an A and a B fertilizer in
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  your hydroponic system, you need pH control as well.
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  So you'll need a computer to control the ratios that they go in.
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  But at the basic level, the machinery you require to get the water in,
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  we've talked about previously, that's a solenoid and a dripper and a spike and
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  some sort of controller on that.
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  To actually get the fertilizer into the liquid, then if it's a liquid fertilizer,
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  you normally use something called a dosetron, and that's a water-powered chemical dosing pump.
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  Now, there are lots of names for these, but normally a dosing pump is like the generic term.
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  The main leading brand is a dosatron so everyone refers
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  to it as a dosatron just like vacuum cleaners are often referred
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  to as hoovers for that reason so this
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  what this machine as long as there's water moving through the
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  system it automatically injects a precise amount
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  of the fertilizer maybe a disinfectant or
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  a biostimulant or even a biopesticide pesticide into
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  the flowing water without electricity so they're
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  widely used in agriculture horticulture livestock for
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  you know feeding micronutrients to animals water
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  treatment and in sanitation so it mixes concentrated
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  liquids into water and gold leaf or
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  liquid gold is a concentrated liquid now it
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  maintains a constant ratio of water to
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  the liquid that it's mixing and make sure that it mixes it
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  thoroughly at the same time so the machinery all does that all
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  together and it gets the ratio
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  by a setting on it now it have only one setting so it might only be a one percent
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  dilution or many different dosatrons you can actually adjust it now for something
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  like gold leaf in the us because it's such a concentrated product you really
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  want like a 0.1 or a 0.5 percent.
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  Ratio and a lot of dosing meters
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  don't actually go down that low so really do check you've
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  got the right one and the right dilution ratio
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  to for the one you want like a one to a hundred
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  would be crazy because that would be like a 10
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  mils a one percent would be
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  10 milliliters per liter and that'd be way too much because
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  the product's so concentrated so it works on it works
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  only from water pressure and flow water flows through the
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  unit and when water enters the dosatron it drives
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  a hydraulic motor inside the device then
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  that motor powers a piston and the water flows
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  mechanically moving the piston up and down and when
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  you go to trade shows often the dosatron stand will
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  have a one made out of transparent plastic so you
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  can see it moving and mixing in real time and it draws a
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  lot of people to the trade show stand because people like moving things
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  and water and you know they get distracted by
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  it that piston draws the chemical concentrates out
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  of whatever it is your normally the bottle or the barrel
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  that it's in and each piston stroke piston stroke
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  pulls a precise amount of concentrate from a
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  suction tube placed in the container and then that that on the downstroke that
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  is injected into the water stream the concentration is direct injected directly
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  into the water inside the dosetron and then proportionally mixed so that it's
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  proportionally mixed to the water flow more water more product injected.
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  Less water, less product injected.
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  So the concentration is constant even if the flow or pressure changes, and that's crucial.
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  So there's a motor, a piston, a chamber, an adjustment dial,
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  and then suction tubes to get it in there.
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  So the advantages are there's no electricity required, just the flow of water,
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  which means it's great for off-grid situations.
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  It's very accurate at dosing and can be used over a wide range of water pressures,
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  simple mechanism, and it's reliable limitation requires a liquid concentrate
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  can't be used for powders,
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  And there is a pressure loss over the system. So if you're working with really
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  low water pressures, it can reduce your water pressure.
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  And it's not suitable for really viscous or abrasive chemicals.
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  But even though gold leaf or liquid gold, as it's called in the UK,
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  is a viscous product, it's not too viscous for a dosatron.
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  So with a dosatron and water pressure, you can have a completely off-grid hydroponic
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  system because you don't need a computer to control A and B.
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  You don't need electricity for that.
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  If you don't have water pressure because you're completely off-grid,
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  then you could have a solar-powered pump that could pump the Dosatron and then
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  take the fertilizer straight from.
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  The gold leaf. The only thing you would need to do is to shake the bottle of
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  gold leaf every few days to make sure that it's completely homogenous.
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  But apart from that, it's completely self-sufficient. So you could even have
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  a computer-controlled solenoid, battery-powered, that could set it to go on
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  or off at certain times, so you wouldn't even have to be there.
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  So the other option is a Venturi injector, which I'm not aware of, but I'll look into it,
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  perhaps do another podcast about it if it's of interest
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  so that's been hydroponic stated for today adding the
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  dosatron the pump injector
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  into what we talked about previously about solenoids and drippers so we've got
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  the water with that then the dosatron the dosing pump just adds the fertilizer
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  to the fertication system and you you look at a lot of hydroponic farms that
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  do use a and b and ph up and ph down and might have a biostinulant.
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  They might have seven dosatrons on the go at the same time, and there will be
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  a computer to control them, and they might have to have sensors to feedback
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  loop to control when those dosatrons are turned on and off in the valves and the solenoids.
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  But that will be controlled by the solenoid running through each of those.
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  It won't be controlled by the dosatron.
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  They won't adjust the flow rate through the dosatron very rarely. You wouldn't do that.
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  You would just control the solenoids going through.
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  All right, that's been Hydroponics daily for today if you found this interesting then
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  please leave a apple podcast review because that helps spread the
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  word amongst the horticultural community about hydroponics and
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  make sure you click follow so you don't miss an episode and check
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  out utreema.co.uk where we have loads of interesting
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  fertilizers biostimulants and organic biopesticides not just gold leaf and everything's
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  unique and where you won't find any any of the technology anything close to
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  their technology on any other nutritional type website okay thank you very much
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  for listening until next time goodbye.