Post by Apoplast on Jan 3, 2016 11:11:25 GMT -5
Hi everyone - It's been a little quiet around here the past couple days. Let's help fix that. I wanted to share my recent build in my highland room - a "Tincher Tray". I can't take credit for it, it was originally designed by briar here (Av8tor1 on most forums), and named after him (it gets called "Slack potting" after all) You can see his original build at this link, including my recent questions at the end while I copied it.
Here is a photos of the shelf with the few plants I've moved over to the tray:
The essentials are that a water pump, in my case a pump meant for hydroponics, lifts water into the tray and floods the tray until it reaches a higher tube that then acts to siphon the water back down. The lower feed line also acts as a secondary siphon when the pump turns off. The one modification I made was to use 1/2" ID tubing rather than the smaller aquarium air tubing from the original. I'm hoping over time this will reduce the need to replace the tubing from algae growth. This required another modification of using rubber grommets to seal around the tubing.
Here is what it looks like in the tray:
On the bottom shelf, I have the water reservoir for the system. I can just check the TDS ever week or so, and do a water change when it starts to creep up. The water has taken on a brownish tinge because of the peat moss in the Ceph pots. We'll see how that does for the other plants.
The photo of the bucket is not that impressive, but here you go:
They've not been in there long but the plants seem pretty happy.
The Cephs, whose soil is guilty of tinging the water:
The Heliamphora minor that I've had for a few months:
And some young H. purpurascens plants that seem to be recovering nicely from their traumatic transplant:
The tray is not full, but I have a feeling that will change over time, assuming it works well as a system. I've got a middle shelf between the current Tincher Tray and its reservoir that I could add another tray some day, if I need it. So what do you guys think, will this be a decent system for these plants? Here is hoping so.
Thanks for looking!
Here is a photos of the shelf with the few plants I've moved over to the tray:
The essentials are that a water pump, in my case a pump meant for hydroponics, lifts water into the tray and floods the tray until it reaches a higher tube that then acts to siphon the water back down. The lower feed line also acts as a secondary siphon when the pump turns off. The one modification I made was to use 1/2" ID tubing rather than the smaller aquarium air tubing from the original. I'm hoping over time this will reduce the need to replace the tubing from algae growth. This required another modification of using rubber grommets to seal around the tubing.
Here is what it looks like in the tray:
On the bottom shelf, I have the water reservoir for the system. I can just check the TDS ever week or so, and do a water change when it starts to creep up. The water has taken on a brownish tinge because of the peat moss in the Ceph pots. We'll see how that does for the other plants.
The photo of the bucket is not that impressive, but here you go:
They've not been in there long but the plants seem pretty happy.
The Cephs, whose soil is guilty of tinging the water:
The Heliamphora minor that I've had for a few months:
And some young H. purpurascens plants that seem to be recovering nicely from their traumatic transplant:
The tray is not full, but I have a feeling that will change over time, assuming it works well as a system. I've got a middle shelf between the current Tincher Tray and its reservoir that I could add another tray some day, if I need it. So what do you guys think, will this be a decent system for these plants? Here is hoping so.
Thanks for looking!