Anyone doing a "Wick System"??

[benamucc]

I'm planning on setting up a wick system this weekend and was wondering if anyone had any experience with them.

I plan to use equal parts peatmoss vermiculite and perlite to start, and add peat or perlite as needed in 2gal containers.

I plan to use several pieces of heavy cotton rope (3 strand) and frey the strands on the top and bottom to maximize surface area, and distrubution through the medium.

I plan to use FoxFarm fertelizer in a weak solution to soak the medium, and in the resevoir. I will airate a 2.5 gallon resevoir with an airstone.

Anyone??

 

[Budders Keeper]

Only on some african violets.

 

[MootPointBlank]

I'm not sure how much help I'll be but I tried doing a wick system once, rather unsuccessfully because for some reason I thought I could use halogen lights. Not only in the wrong spectrum, but incredibly hot. I don't know that you need quite all of those materials in your medium. I used pure perlite, though, I paid little heed to pH at the time so if you're trying to develop a pH balanced mix, I can understand.
They're not complicated and it seems like you have all of the necessary components to pull it off, the perennial trick being keeping light out of your res and enough O2 in. Be sure to pH balance your wicks as that may cause you some grief in the beginning with keeping your nutes balanced. I've been battling something in my system for a week (see thread) that keeps raising the pH of my nutes, though I think that it's finally starting to stabilize. Lesson learned, wash and pH EVERYTHING that touches your nutes. I would keep my res as full as possible to reduce the amount of work needed for the capillary action to take place in the wick. This will make your nutes more readily available and reduce the amount of exposed wick surface for algae and stuff to call home.
Ironically, I'm not high, but I'm about to be. Thanks for platforming my ramble.

Hope this helped,
MPB

 

[reno911]

I had a wicked system that worked surprisingly good