1st pic is of the aeration setup in the tub, pump off. 2nd pic, pump on, you can see how it bubbles out of each section of tubing below each plant site. 3rd pic, fans, lights, and reflector walls.
Edit: 4th pic, you can see the neoprenes, 5th pic, just a quick pic of my new hakko hk40 pump that runs my little veg setup, and the little 12 way splitter/valve things that allow me to set the airstones so they all bubble evenly..in theory anyway.

Only 304 stainless and plastic touches the nutrient solution in the 60 gal tubs.

The hiblow 120 air pump, you can't hear shit when it's on except for the peaceful sound of water bubbling, quite a contrast to the loud, endless drone from wal mart pumps. The hiblow pump is supposed to go several years before needing new diaphragms. The wal mart pumps need to be replaced all the time.

One thing that annoyed me when I was building this was I couldn't find 2" mesh chicken wire anywhere. So I ended up with 1" mesh wire. I'll have to cut out the holes where the stalks come through a little bigger. I don't do a scrog with this, the chicken wire is just there to hold the plants up, since the neoprenes cannot do that alone.

Thanks Harv. I'm gonna pay attention to this one.

Here's another pic, this one I've thought of as a sort of "trade secret" for a while, but now I'm not thinking it's all that much of a secret anymore, haha, so here it is. Actually, I didn't used to have it this way, I had the sections of tubing epoxied in place, but same concept. This is a million times easier. You can see the tubes floating in the solution, they prevent the roots from becoming all entangled like they would in the cloner. Those tubes are just cut of sections of drainage tubing from lowes. Once I realized they float, I knew exactly what I could use them for. With the lid on, each piece lines up with a hole in the lid above it. In the water, it's just crappy wal mart airstones, they clog and bubble unevenly, but to their credit, they do have lower backpressure than those other wal mart plastic tube bubble things I used to use. I don't know why I ever used those before, you can't even blow through them at all, they're so restrictive. With the big 60 gal tub setup, you can actually pull the hose off the pump and exhale into the line, and all the tubs will bubble almost as much as they do with the pump connected. (!) At some point, I'll probably build a smaller version of that setup for these.

Woot! Hell ya Harvey. I'm pulling up a chair for this one. Love me some DWC action!

Very nice setup. It looks like you are pumping a lot of air into those cloners. Is that to get proper air to the separated root chambers? or do you feel that they do better/need that much air?

Well, I always try to hypothesize, but other factors always seem to come into play, and I never know how it's going to work until I actually do it. I wonder if I add enough aeration, if it'll behave more like aero. I also wonder if it's possible to have too much aeration. I know that when the roots get to a certain size in those tubes, they start to require a higher tds than an open container. My intuition tells me that if there was aeration beyond a certain point, it could exacerbate that by actually displacing too much of the nutrient solution. But at that point, I think it wouldn't really be the aeration that would be the limiting factor, it would be the root vs tube size. ?

But in general, I've found that the more air you have, the less likely you are to have root rot, and the healthier your plants will be. With my cloners, almost every time a clone didn't go, the bubbles hitting it weren't very good. Usually they would still sprout roots from the area above the rotten stem, but with adequate aeration, the stems wouldn't rot. In the flowering setup, I think it is even more important, because with a big plant up top, you get a substantial mass of roots, and you need a lot of bubbles pushing up into it to keep it healthy.

I know I've said this before, but as far as temp and dissolved o2 in dwc, I don't think the oxygen has to actually dissolve into the water at all, if it physically touches the roots in the form of bubbles. I designed my flowering setup with this in mind, placing a section of aeration tubing directly below each plant site. I believe my theory is supported by my experience of running the solution temps into the mid 80s without root damage. Contrast that with leaving a harvested plant in dwc with the air pump off at 80F, you can pull the stalk right out of completely rotten roots in an amazingly short amount of time.

Bin some brain stormin over there, for sure...hey?

Looks really clean. Keep it commin

Vaper

Here are a few more pics. First one is just a random bud shot at 5 weeks in, other pics are of my "dwc intercooler" and air pump setup. The "intercooler" is actually an old aftermarket automotive transmission cooler that never actually had fluid in it. The reason I set this up is despite being a good quality pump, the hiblow 120 puts out really hot air, even with this extremely low backpressure setup. (You can exhale into the line and bubble all 4 tubs nicely) It's hot to the point that you don't want to hold that rubber hose coming from it. But with this setup, the air going into the tubs isn't even warmer than ambient, it works amazingly well.

Good fuckin idea Harvey. Do you ever get a solution temp??? You da man!!!

A lot more elaborate setup than any of my stuff. Looks pretty good.