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Fertigation Tanks · Hydroponics Daily

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  Hi, welcome back to Hydroponics Daily. Today's topic is fertigation tanks or
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  nutrient tanks or water tanks.
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  It's the area where you may keep your water and your diluted nutrients for applying to your crops,
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  especially useful in continuous circulating systems or where you've got a lot
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  of plants and you don't want to be hand watering or even using a hose.
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  So you keep maybe a 200 litre tank and you fill it with water and then you allow
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  that water to warm up and then to get to the right temperature and then you
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  add your nutrients and then you feed your plants simple.
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  However there's a number of factors to consider obviously fresh
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  tap water or rain water going in there will be cold
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  so you might want to have a heater you might want to
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  keep that or in the summer conversely you might want to keep
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  it cooler keep the roots cool by cooling that down and
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  the other reason you might want to keep that cool is that to limit
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  microbial growth in there as well a really hot tank
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  full of nutrients could get pretty funky
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  and that would lead to smells coming off and scum
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  and foam appearing on the surface and you
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  might get foam and scum appearing if you put an aerator in there
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  because the other factor is you want to optimize is oxygen levels
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  roots need oxygen and so
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  you've put in stagnant water in there you might want to increase your
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  aeration by having an aerator but that will also may
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  lead to foam and scum appearing and that's a problem with DWC deep
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  water culture systems if we're
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  going to have an issue with gold leaf or liquid
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  gold here in the UK it's going to be in deep
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  water culture systems where there's a lot of aeration you
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  can limit the aeration put it on a timer only only
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  use it for a few minutes every hour that helps you
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  don't need continuous aeration often you might
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  put beneficial microbes in there however they might also feed
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  off the nutrients as well so just be careful about microbes
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  it could be something that you learn over time what's
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  best for your system there's going to be chlorine in there if
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  you're using tap water might be a lot of chlorine depending on where you are.
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  In in the world and that will impact on microbes and it'll impact on plant growth
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  as well significantly so you may want to dechlorinate that water which means
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  either waiting 24 hours for it to gas off This is a term you'll hear.
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  Or you'll add a dechlorinator, something like Dr. Hydro dechlorinator.
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  Or you include a fertiliser like Goldleaf, which actually contains a dechlorinator
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  already. So you don't need to worry about that.
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  You add the nutrients according to the rate on the feed chart.
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  Don't overdo it, because again, that's going to be a problem.
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  Then you'll have an outlet. You might have a filter on the outlet because there could be sediment.
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  If you mix in a lot of nutrients together over time, you can get sediment and
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  drop out of those nutrients. That's a problem because they can block filters.
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  That's also a problem because those nutrients are never going to be available to your plant.
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  So if you mix them incorrectly, especially a problem with silicon fertilizers,
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  if you don't do that correctly, you can get it dropping down to the bottom.
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  And then microbes can feed on that sediment and it can be a whole bit of pain.
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  You will get microbes living on the sides of
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  the tank as well over time so they'll need to be cleaned out
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  especially good when you when you've finished a run to
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  clean everything out i'd also clean it out before before a
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  run because you know even if it's a clean fresh new
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  tank it's a lot of plastic going into the system and
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  there'll be there'll be agents on the on
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  the like varnishes and things like that on the on the
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  plastic that might you might not want and you grow you might
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  have an inlet as well so it might be a circulatory system like a
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  nutrient film technique where it's circulating back in so
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  it's not just one outlet the inlets and
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  the outlets will be the point at which you need to worry
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  about safety of your system because you don't want
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  hundreds of liters of water spilling into
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  a grow room where there's lots of electricity flowing through lights
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  cables and things like that so and you don't want to flood your.
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  Rooms so always check everything's on
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  correctly and check it regularly as well because this
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  is where there's going to be an issue with catastrophic failure
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  of your system and if you went away for a few days thinking it's
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  all right i've got the the tank it's on
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  a dosing system you might have a timer here that sets it
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  to go at a certain time or it might be drawn in based on
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  the pull from the plants and then that you get
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  a blockage or you get a leakage worst case scenario then you
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  you're not only have you got hundreds of liters of water flowing
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  out of your system or your plants suddenly stop getting water so
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  it's not having a fertigation tank is not an
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  excuse for never going and looking at your plants as we
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  say in horticulture the best fertilizer is the grower's shadow so it simplifies
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  it it makes it easier but don't use it as an excuse to never go and see your
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  plants check your plants every single day for pest and disease and just make
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  sure they're happy okay so that's been hydroponics daily,
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  a very basic introduction to vertigation tanks.
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  If I've missed anything blindingly obvious, then comment below,
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  rip seven shades of SH-1T out of me, and I'll take it in good humour. Thank you very much.