Indoor Testing the eazyplug pyramid mini.

[kfigerm]

So what can I contribute to this - nothing too new.
From all your feed schedules are different and ALL work, there are some conclusions we can draw.

As I try to stay at minimal feed and try to adapt my nutes to the optimal/minimal Ratios and EC (and failed cos i still fed too much in some circumstances) I found that:

Pyramids store the nutes so "loosely" that the plants can very easily just suck what they need in what ratio they need it - the excess is transorted to the surface and builds up there.
The corners of the pyramids do dry most and theres most salt buildup.
These salts (the ones still water soluable) can be reactivated and go back if you simply wash/flush them back "in".
So the INSIDE of the pyramid is like a DWC but with perfect environment for the plant to pull exactly what she needs.
The outside is like some good grow bag, expelling the excess salts and airpruning.

The Ultimate was a nice eye-opener for me - when she grew into the stretch, she was pulling nutes like hell and I couldn't keep up with watering, because heat was setting in (pyramid takes only ~2,5l water and dries out fast). I could watch the big fan leave (yes, only one) degrade - the plant took what it needed from it. - just topping the missing in/changing the mix solved all fast.

When the ultimate was in the full bloom and in full sun at 40° and sucked 8l a day, there was a lot of evaporation as well and the pyramid salted fast, so I reduced the EC to 1/3 (1500->500) of what I would normally give her. Due to the heat the pyramid was though completely overloaded in a few days.Full wetting her with only EC 400/ppm200 strength the pyramid went from salty greenish-white back to brown over three weeks. In this three weeks the degrading fan leaf nearly didn't change state. When the pyramid was brown again the degradation set in again and I knew I am back on the lower end.
But since then i still just kept feeding with an EC of ~400-500 - enough for now and the the last 2 Weeks there will only be (PH'd)water to really get the pyramid sucked up. Still only just some lower leaves now slowly degrade. All the big ones went off in a defoil and aren't there anymore. Now she may slowly eat up what she stored.

@The Iconoclast @Drownomatic yes, especially my ultimate tought me that once more and it's not bro science. Leaves are storage for nutes/energy(=sugars). And as hemp isn't a tree it doesn't retract the nutes/sugars back to the roots in autumn and abandon leaves, it uses them if needed in the end of the lifecycle (single season plant). Especially our autos want to get pollen and produce pistils to the very last moment. The plant has still enough nutes there in the end to even be able to produce some seeds. We don't need/want green leaves til the end.

So
- as long as your plant is green and the outside/corners stay clean, you are in a super range of EC for efficiency.
- EC excess is no problem (at least in the range i had it)
- PH excess is no problem (at least in the range i had it)
- NPK-off Range is no Problem (not tested! *G* - but a valid conclusion)
- if too dry, use yucca - don't let the surface dry out too much - it becomes hodrophobic too on the surface. But just that the feed runs off the side until moist enough to sink in. Once found a way in, it distributes well and soaks the pyramid. This runoff gets sucked up very fast from the bottom, so it is no major problem.
- you can top up and work with teas also if you do not feed to (too much) runoff the following days (but keep the surface moist at any time) - what's in, is in and available for the plant, as long there's moisture to move the nutes to the plant - the plant takes what it wants and lets the excess back - just that easy.
- You can apply dry powdery ammendments just by putting it on the surface - this way I added mineral magic every 10 days. It sticks well to a moist surface and what becomes washed off goes in later.
as a conclusion of this..- You may be able grow this thing without runoff too.
- Optimally fed, may be no waste. Have to find my way to this.
- top flushing or completely drowning would be best to go for the goal - prevent drying out, salt-buildup and go for efficiency.
- looking at the ultimates grown in the pyramid now and the different setups - the bigger the pyramid setup, the bigger the plant - there must be some possibility to even improve the experience/size. For my setup the big pyramid setup with cube is more than enough.

I am heading to an easy setup like @Little-Leopard, but I am tempted to put a hempy setup below it or a kind of @The Iconoclast 's shallow water variation - keeping the allover height low.
And (someday) I'll get some kit like MoG to check all the nutes' elements in the runoff to just keep the res in an average balance, so most of what leaves the "process" only leaves it as plant mass.
I think that can be taken on best with those pyramids - i see no better medium - perhaps living soil is all in all better, but that's another level of knowledge and science I simply have no time for - to achieve this.

Time saved can be put in new experiments - also a good thing.

They advertise 100% success rate (with their eazy mixx, but that can apply to pyramids as well)- well you'll always find one idiot out of hundred that messes up everything, but any other idiot should be able to grow with these pyramids at least a decent plant - i could and will.

 

[The Iconoclast]

Terrific info there, thanks for posting @kfigerm, as you see from the pyramid shots the outside crust on the pyramid is literally skin deep, but inside, after a week without water it was soft and springy and slightly damp but amazingly it looks like there's barely any roots, indicating that as you suggest there is more performance to be gained. Perhaps, it would require a photoperiod to fully see what it is capable of, a large pyramid should be able to support 16 zip under the right conditions.

I have given up with pH now, figuring that it starts at 5.7 and by the time it goes up a bit due to added water, it's time for a new bucket. I play pretty fast and loose with the nutes now. I might throw a jug of veg nutes over a flowering plant if the mood strikes me, and vice versa.

I like this idea of doing half the drying on the plant, the whole chop took under 30 mins, instead of two days with my usual hydro including washing all the stones and cleaning everything.

 

[Drownomatic]

Interesting, I have none of that green buildup on mine. I do get some obvious drying in the bottom corners.

I will definitely vivisection mine after harvest.

 

[kfigerm]

Thanks @Zaaboot - just put together some things, that fit in the pic.
Today i was inspired to look at my pyramid in which the euphoria was. First I simply wanted to wash the nutes out.
I first soaked the dried out pyramid and then flushed about 10l un-PH'd RO Water slowly over it.
I put her upside down, cos of physics take the nutes along the way down - it should work like a funnel - let it sink from the wide side down to the narrow "top". The EC of that runoff was not measurable (high) with my meter - so i think. The sample of the last 2 liters still gave me an EC of 1200.
So NO! - Nute Excess is absolutely NOT A PROBLEM with those pyramids, they simply expells whats not needed - Look at the beauty of the inner of the pyramids, no salts, no dry pockets... Proven to me, Check off.

To the behaviour like a DWC - I just have a simple experiment what you get when you leave out an element here (no need for redundancy).
Lets see how fast she reacts to recover.

Perhaps a recycled pyramid will behave differently...and I want to reuse them, so I didn't cut the pyramid, I just removed the cube and then... The Pyramid was wet already, the main root was still dried hard...I took some pliers and pulled the visible roots out.
Just a little turning and twisting - like a dentist. Small roots just cracked and I had two "carrots" of about 5mm diameter and 7 cm length. No damage else, the rest simply stays in the pyramid, the roots of the next girl will find a way around (edit: if needed at all, there should perhaps be very litte according to @The Iconoclast's pic - well I had lots of roots penetrating the bottom - the must be somewhere inside - no I won't cut it open ). Ill let that dry now for some months, and reuse one in the next spring run.

 

[The Iconoclast]

@kfigerm, good point about being able to clearly see that the inside of the plug is a pristine environment. Fascinating the way she expels excess. Rather than reuse the plug I'm more interested in making better use of the roots it looks like it can support, so I may put two beans in one to see what happens. It has definitely shown me that the cube on top is not useful.

Update on current cheese situation...

These were also a bit of an experiment, when it was looking like there were problems I decided to do nothin other than remove a lot of leaves and reduce the light intensity for a while, there was no pruning or other work on either of the plants as I wanted to see the result, which is that I'm not real impressed with the quality of these beans from Philosopher Seeds, although they came in a very attractive tin, so I planted another one to see what would happen, which is that it did not sprout, so I planted another one and it looks different from the previous two but it's early days yet.

Topped not topped current bean

topped not topped

The Northern Lights experiment of removing two sets of important fan leaves after topping worked out well I have been inspired by @Little-Leopard's result to allow more growth rather than pruning too much.

The Gorilla Glue #4 from Expert Seeds looks very very powerful, so I'm going to let this one grow out naturally, the sub branches look like they will break out of the canopy soon, so this is a deliberate non topping as opposed to not topping due to plant being weak. So I am very excited about this. it's something I've always wanted to do. Unfortunately because I've had such a terrible time getting a pair of beans to start the same, I only planted one of these, had I planted two it would have been perfect for a topped untopped test.

 

[Little-Leopard]

@The Iconoclast
@kfigerm
Good morning My friends I have a notepad on my PC desktop with all the helpful notes, tips and information you have provided regarding these pyramids. Thank you for all the helpful information and updates. I'm really trying to get everything perfect with this current grow. Not just the temps and light etc, but the trimming and LST.

Something I'm not 100% sure about yet is the watering frequency. The pyramid is meant to hold the perfect water to air ratio. In theory one should then be able to run water through it almost continuously. When I say that I mean at least every 30 mins or less. This way it will always hold a constant fresh supply of nutes and water to the plant. Perhaps you guys could weigh in on this... have you found that its perhaps better to let the pyramid slightly dry out? Its easy to gauge the water content by feeling the weight. If more or less is better, I shall adjust my watering timers accordingly.

@The Iconoclast I hope I'm not being rude and hijacking your post, but I enjoy sharing my results with people that are so passionate.

My nine seedlings are now 7 days old and have been placed under the auto watering system. They have been having RO 5.8PH water for the last week. All nine seedlings roots have protruded through the bottom of the pyramid's. A few on the sides as well.



Here are some technical specs if helpful/interested.

I filled the 30 liter res today with RO water, added 150PPM CalMag and then up to 400PPM with 1:1:1 ratio of GH Micro, Bloom, Gro + my usual 90ml of H202 and then PH'd to 5.8. After about 2 weeks or so when they look a little hardier Ill raise it to 600PPM with correct nute ratio.

Lighting:
Flexstar 645W Pro LED. LED @ 40% now with 100w draw at plug. 8k LUX / 220 umol/s/m2 at canopy. Appox 25c Day / 19c Night - 20/4 schedule. 70 - 80% humidity.

The rez has an air stone continuously aerating the water. There is also an aquarium heater that keeps the temp at 20c. I have added a 3rd pump that continuously mixes and filters the water to remove any debris that returns from the tent.

I need to watch those dry corners as you have all pointed out! The flow seems to be very good however I will still use a jug every few days and pour a nice flow over the corners. Perhaps in a big upgrade... each pyramid could have two outlets flowing over them from multiple angles.

I must say. I get huge kick out of watching 9 pyramids getting watered with a touch of a button on my phone

To add a little fun to the whole thing I have a time-lapse camera running.







Each nozzle and pyramid has a nice 40cm diameter of space around it - I hope it will be enough.

 

[Little-Leopard]

@The Iconoclast You really need to tell us how your cheese is doing!?!
That very first pyramid grow on yours, on page 1. That was a Northern Lights right? How did you cure it and how was it?

So far so good... growing like wildfire. Not even 10 days old. Nearly twice the size as my first cam screenshot on the 12st Aug (above post)
I think I screwed up a tiny bit on the PH. I had it at 5.8/5.9 and can see a very veeery tiny deficiency on the bottom/first leaves. I should have had the PH at 6.2 for optimum N, P, Ca, Mg. (seedling/early veg) Cant quite get that Ca and Mg if PH 6 and under. Lesson learnt. Im giving them a foliar misting of CalMag @ EC 800 as suggested :

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[Drownomatic]

I tore into my pyramid after the harvest, and thought you'd like to see.

The bottom was completely covered with roots, and as others have noticed, not much in the corners

The top cube was completely filled.

 

[kfigerm]

Hi guys, here's another success story of not caring about the pyramids on holidays....for redundancy only the link to the story.
Special info for this thread here:
It seems all my assumptions were right and some more things became "fact", at least to my experience:
- recovery after nute def - check - the N def stopped and she then just ran into some P/K probs in the end, but thats absolutely OK for the stage she is at.
- feed schedule...twice a day is OK, but perhaps not optimal. There is something growing on the pyramid that looks like micro broccoli. Never seen it, may be som slime mushroom or alike, doesn't look like a mold - but perhaps it is mold....the plant itself is clean!
Who knows what this is? only algae? some of the mycos? Anyone got a clue?

the pyramid must have been moist all the time for this to grow, but there was never runoff - the runoff-container was empty



N8 and Cheers!

 

[Little-Leopard]

Morning guys.
Just a quick update as to how the plant roots are looking after 3 weeks of 25 second auto-watering every 1 hour. I still add 6ml of 50% H202 every week to avoid any nasty's showing up. The roots are still air pruning, however, they are much more prominent... I'm not even sure what I have here anymore, a pyramid deep water mini culture grow maybe lol. The devils cream now stands at 1m tall. I'm going to stick with one strain next time. So far so good. Just a top up of the rez every few days and that's it. Ill probably harvest my Ultimate in the mini this weekend. The Ultimate in the large pyramid is huge with arm thick buds.