Hi monte, It's unlikely you'll remember me; I was a newbie the last time you were around. I loved reading your how-tos, and they saved me so much time. On several occasions, I had a brilliant idea to devise something from scratch, but I'd find where you had perfected it already. Your mini blind container post was one of the very first I read when I joined the forum. I was trying to be green and opted not to print it out. Boy did I regret that one! As stage_rat mentioned, your posts have been much sought after. How many times did I search for "monte's mini blind containers" hoping they would magically fall back into the forum? After several years, I finally decided to create them from scratch. As it turns out, there's lots of flexibility in the measurements. (You already knew that.) I had good intentions of posting my own creations, and calling the post "Monte's mini-blind containers." Anyway, I'm excited to see you posting, and can't wait to see what other creative stuff you share. Seedmama

To tommilak, I am a ticketed, licensed plumber and I believe you should get away from plastics AS MUCH AS YOU CAN. PVC, CPVC, and PEX are chlorinated poly vinyl. They will leech at the start and then rinse out o.k however after exposure to U.V light (grow lights) they will start to break down. Check your solder and make sure that it is lead free (by law) use as little flux as possible but FLUSH your system for at least a week. I use a strong lemon juice concentrate (acidic) and let it run for a week. As for copper leeching, copper is used by the body and is a natural element. Your nutrient mix contains copper! One thing I discovered on one of my first systems was hydro static electricity. Moving water will generate a tiny, tiny amount of an electrical charge. Quick fix, bare copper wire wrap it around your copper somewhere and ground it, the copper on copper contact will remove the charge. Copper is a little pricy, get to know your scrap yard guy or local dump person, with some beer and a little luck, you can get scrap that is easy to clean and re-use. My first system is 4 years old and still going strong, I notice no difference in taste or texture of my fruits and veg. Good Luck!

I couldnt help but smile when i saw your heirloom tomato video on you tube. Looks nothing like the red tomato in your post. My guess is that you cut a section of stem (complete with one fruit) from a plant and put it in the 2L bottle to root which failed and then you decided to take the video? A tomato plant on deaths doorstep isnt the best advert for a growing *system (*drip nozzle). Tip: heirloom tomato plants dont grow a few inches tall, then flower and set a single large fruit. If we are to believe it spent its entire life in the 2L bottle next to the window, it would be much taller with long internodal length and no fruit due to the lack of light.

I don't mind answering questions and will do the best I can. I will add though that I don't specifically see many questions, so I'm just responding to what I think you're asking in everything you said above. And with that, here it goes; the plants in the middle did eventually bear decent fruit though not nearly as well as the outer rows. I believe the growth was stunted from not enough sun. you were probably using either 3 gallon or 6 gallon pots. for reference, the grey rubbermaid trashcan I grew tomatoes in is only 32 gallons. the rocks I used for medium are called lava rocks. they are very cheap and available at Lowe's hardware. However, since then I have started to use hydroton as my medium. I only use 2" net pots normally, so I kept having to smash the lava rock to make workable size pieces. If you have a hydroponic store locally, I would recommend the hydroton. a 10L bag was only $12. I don't use a promix in the sense of a nutrient concentration marketed for hydroponics, but it is still a commercial fertilizer. I use soluble hydroponic solution(mftd by southernAG), greenhouse grade calcium nitrate, and epsom salts. the first two I bought from a landscape supply company. I believe they ran about $80 total and they will probably last me for 10 years or more if I only grow about what I did this past summer. the plants (or their root systems at least) are not constantly submerged in nutrient. the initial system flooded then drained maybe every 1.1/2 hours. this is a pretty standard technique called ebb n flo. nutrient solution is changed every two weeks because with time, the plants consume the nutrients out of the water. Without the appropriate testing equipment I have no way of knowing what is left. Thus, I change the solution every 2 weeks (preferred) to 4 weeks (when I'm slack)to ensure the plants have enough minerals to survive thrive. pH is not used to provide nutrients to the plants. it is a measure of the acidity of the water. depending on the acidity of the water, some minerals become more of less available. find any post by freemangreens, follow the link to his web page and you can find a chart showing this relationship. I am fortunate in where I live, I don't have to check pH if I don't want to. in my experience, tomatoes and peppers will thrive in a pH range of about 5.8 to 7.5. without any modification, my water is always in that range. Algae growth was a bit of a problem, but not so much that it inhibited my plants. I will paint the gray tub black before next season and with the better aeration from going with an NFT (nutrient film technique)system, I don't expect it to be a problem. aquaponics is its own little entity. from what I've seen, you tend to have a lot more fish than you do plants because you're trying to create a symbiotic relationship between them. Not really my thing. If I want fish, I'll go to the coast. Aeroponics is a form of hydroponics just like EnF(ebb n flo), NFT, and DWC (Deep Water Culture). with Aero, the roots are suspended in the air and a fine mist is sprayed on them. larger pumps are generally required because a higher pressure is required. also, the plants must be sprayed very frequently so the roots don't try out. I consider true aeroponics an advanced technique. supper cropping is where you squeeze and twist the stem between leaf nodes to crush the cell wall. this forces the plant to repair the area before continuing to grow upward. the result is much stronger stems and shorter nodal length which means shorter plants. you can grow a full size tomato plant in a 5 gallon paint bucket, never putting more that 3 gallons in it. at full size and flowering, however that plant will consume approx 1/2 gallon of water per day, do you have to pay attention to it. bugs aren't that bad. they take longer to get on the plants because I keep them a decent distance off the ground. Plus with them raised, it's easy to look under the leaves for them. then I simply thump them onto the ground (or lid as the case may be) and use a rock/stick/knife to end their struggle. I don't grow with lights. . . yet. but my understanding is T5 is a high output flourescent. so a HPS (high pressure sodium) or MH(metal halide) is not interchangable with them. they both require a larger ballast and produce a lot more light. I hope I have answered your questions. Feel free to post more if you'd like. a bit of further browsing:My bucket reservoir build instructions.