nft ukcheese terra aquatica bioponics

hi guys, welcome back to another week ! i awoke to the sound of rattling, it was 6 am, and my hangover was pounding.... i went to my tent and found the biofilter had somehow run out of water? i took it apart, and found that it was quite severly blocked,,, i cleaned out the foam compartments in a bucket of its own filth,, and noticed that the foams felt really solid, maybe they sucked in some of my silicate and got blocked.. who knows. top tips, ill probably clean my bio filter every 3 weeeks or so now,, ill deffo keep an eye on flow rates through it after 3 weeks, and for next time when i clean it out, mine has 6 foam sections, i would clean 5 and leave one well alone, so that its still fully collonated with bio film. so after cleaning the filter, my ec didnt go down anywhere near as quickly, i imagine it needs to recolonise itself a bit before it can eat lots of nute again. after 2 more days of not much movement, i added 5g of trikologic into the pump,, just mixed it into a litre or water then sucked it up with the filter intake. other than that, my pc stability test with silica is a bit broken now, because i put the silica in and the next day the pump blocked lol ,,, coincidence? maybe. as im new to this bioponics thing, maybe some of this info you guys know, but i certainly didnt and im finding out as i go,, with that being said ive learnt something about biofilters and id like to share here for later referance:- ive got a canister filter for an aquarium its a fluval 306, they're avalable worldwide on the web (other manufacturers are avalable). In it are various compartments for ceramic bio rings(the only bit we care about), foam (cleans sedement), activated carbon (filters fine impurities), and a thin white filter (to polish the water). Different high quality filters of varying grades are wonderful for aquariums, but in bioponics we dont care about water condition because we arent interested in looking at fish so its clarity doesnt matter to us, only thing we care about is having as big a space for our ceramic bio rings as possible. these bio rings are the home for the trikologic bacteria that produce the nutes that our plants then uptake. infact its possible all the filters would filter some of the "good stuff" out of your nutes before it got to the bio rings. Inside my filter ive got a flat panel filter with foam up both sides, and then 3 small stackable buckets on the other, the stackable buckets are meant to have foam in the bottom section,, i have taken those bottom 2 foams out, and replaced them with extra bio rings bought seperately, and also filled the rest of the buckets up with as many bio rings as they will comfortably take instead of foam , also the more i thought about my remaining 4 foams in the panel, the more ive come to realise, they just strain sedement out... their very corse foam with big holes, so im going to leave them in there but clean them regularly, to prevent any blockages in my pump, but in all the buckets, just bio rings. Now i can open my canister pump very easily, and access the panel filter and im thinking im gonna clean that foam part every 2 weeks. i wondered if not cleaning them for 3 weeks infact built up dead matter in the foam filter parts and then this may have casued issues with my water stability.....heres what a quick google tells me :- Dead plants actually can produce a strong effect on pH. Dead plants will rot in aquarium, which releases ammonia and other nitrogen compounds into the water, thus lowering the pH either way. now i know ill clean the panel regularly , but leave the buckets of bio rings alone. i also noticed online they sell cylindrical foams for aquarium filter intakes , so im gonna stick one of them on, and i can clean that weekly too, and its alot more visable to me on the outside of the cansiter in the res. Each foam measures 120mm long, 60mm total diameter and internal hole 15mm diameter. so this week is week 4, and im a bit late doing my "under the net removal" which does what it says on the tin...... i take anything and everything, because the more i leave.......... the more low grade bud grows thats never seen light and i have to put in the binlater, but if i cut it all off then it grows up the top of the plant fattening my colas instead.