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AACT/Compost Tea
- Thread starter Balduvian
- Start date
A little too strong for a five gallon bucket. I use those cheap ones from wallmart.
Great it will work for you... 
very true, i use the one's with two hoses, that way i can get three air stones per bucket.sp33d said:
works great!sp33d said:
We did almost a year straight of research (at a cost of thousands of dollars) building almost every conceivable compost tea brewer design and size, ranging from 1 to 1200 gallons. These included every type itemized on my webpage in the design section and more. We measured the dissolved oxygen (DO2) religiously at all hours of day and night, eliminating configurations which failed to maintain the DO2 at or above 6 PPM. This is close to the minimum level required to support aerobic organisms.
The outcome of this research was, the estimation, that the minimum flow required from an air pump to make compost tea while maintaining the DO2 at 6 PPM, is 0.05 CFM per gallon while the optimum flow is 0.08 CFM per gallon or greater. (the only exception was when utilizing airlifts)
Tim Wilson
I use a pump rated for a 40 gallon tank and the numbers worked out to just under two gallons of brew strength. The linked website is a great read if you have the time. Clears up some of the mummery around tea.
The outcome of this research was, the estimation, that the minimum flow required from an air pump to make compost tea while maintaining the DO2 at 6 PPM, is 0.05 CFM per gallon while the optimum flow is 0.08 CFM per gallon or greater. (the only exception was when utilizing airlifts)
Tim Wilson
I use a pump rated for a 40 gallon tank and the numbers worked out to just under two gallons of brew strength. The linked website is a great read if you have the time. Clears up some of the mummery around tea.
All you need is a cheap ass pump from Wally World or what you have works just fine...as long as you get small bubbles and enough of them and the end result of foam then viola that pump works...so before you go and spend money on a different pump cause some article say otherwise , run a batch and see if your current pump works , as long as you get the foam on top after a minimum of 18-24 hour brew then boom what you have is good... FWIW and this is only my opinion...Balduvian said:
Good read btw miguelovic..thanks for sharing
Foam is only an indicator that you are brewing with saponins..
Any pump can push air through water, and fitted with an airstone or puck, produce small bubbles. If you are underrated (as far as recommended DO2 levels), is your tea going to come out with the funk and kill your plants? I doubt it. You can produce a useable tea with compost, food, water and a stir stick. Hell, I know someone that uses an old stair railing to mix everything, and he produces a loverly crop.
I think the intended application of the recommended DO2 level is for larger brewers, but it is the ideal I aim for. Maybe I'm just a stickler for details? XD Of course I am, sometimes it's productive, sometimes not so much.
Any pump can push air through water, and fitted with an airstone or puck, produce small bubbles. If you are underrated (as far as recommended DO2 levels), is your tea going to come out with the funk and kill your plants? I doubt it. You can produce a useable tea with compost, food, water and a stir stick. Hell, I know someone that uses an old stair railing to mix everything, and he produces a loverly crop.
I think the intended application of the recommended DO2 level is for larger brewers, but it is the ideal I aim for. Maybe I'm just a stickler for details? XD Of course I am, sometimes it's productive, sometimes not so much.
miguelovic said:
Maybe... XD
You can either go with what you have and brew a normal 5 gallon buckets worth and I'm willing to bet the farm it works just fine or you can find the coordinates of XY and Z and follow a chart and make sure you have the correct DO2 levels or whatever ....I'm a huge fan of KISSS, you know keep it simple you stupid sumbitch, well maybe that's just me ...ColdSmoke said:
Maybe? Definitely XD
I start off by saying this is just what I do, you can take it or leave it. Like I said, you can brew with a stick and a bucket, and it's very unlikely anything negative will happen.
Ehhh.. here's the stickler details. Math above is wrong, I add another pump to run 2 or so gallons.
A (my) 40 gallon tank pump produces 1.31 litre per minute. Make and model will vary, it isn't hard to track down numbers.
1.31 litre per minute = .046CFM, rounded to 0.05, because we're going to keep it simple.
So, a gallon on the low end of Wilsons recommendation. I have another pump with 2-3 times that capacity, and run 2-3 gallons at a time.
Do you have to do it this way? Nope. Is it really that complicated? A little math never turned me off. Complete opposite, I get a rager for long division. But it ties in to a point I've tried to make a few times in regards to AACT.
And now for something laced with smartass. If it wasen't, would'ya really believe it was me? XD
There are people that have conducted innumerable brews, varying from one to thousands of gallons, with a range of brewer styles, and quantified their experiences with fancy machines. Science-y equipment, you might say. They have thoughtfully recorded their results, and made their findings available to the everyone. If you follow their general guidelines, you will get an approximately equal result. As Celtic has correctly pointed out in the main thread, two brews with similar equipment and ingredients, are not going to give the exact same result. This isn't an exact science, but with a few simple, or so I thought, guidelines/parameters, one can achieve good result without remaking others past mistakes.
Enter DO2.
The optimum results achieved by said benevolent tea brewers, have provided some thumb rulers for other people to use. One of them is to pump an average of .05 - .08 CFM of air volume into your brewer, to achieve the "prime" of 6-10 PPM DO2.
Is having a little less oxygen in your brew going to kill your plants? Doubtful. Kind of a strange benchmark for whether an idea or course of action is successful or not, but that's probably just my way of thinking.
Hell, I've spent more time writing about this than I did doing the original calculations for myself. That ain't keeping it simple smartass. Gotta stop ranting one of these days XD
ColdSmoke said:
I start off by saying this is just what I do, you can take it or leave it. Like I said, you can brew with a stick and a bucket, and it's very unlikely anything negative will happen.
Ehhh.. here's the stickler details. Math above is wrong, I add another pump to run 2 or so gallons.
A (my) 40 gallon tank pump produces 1.31 litre per minute. Make and model will vary, it isn't hard to track down numbers.
1.31 litre per minute = .046CFM, rounded to 0.05, because we're going to keep it simple.
So, a gallon on the low end of Wilsons recommendation. I have another pump with 2-3 times that capacity, and run 2-3 gallons at a time.
Do you have to do it this way? Nope. Is it really that complicated? A little math never turned me off. Complete opposite, I get a rager for long division. But it ties in to a point I've tried to make a few times in regards to AACT.
And now for something laced with smartass. If it wasen't, would'ya really believe it was me? XD
There are people that have conducted innumerable brews, varying from one to thousands of gallons, with a range of brewer styles, and quantified their experiences with fancy machines. Science-y equipment, you might say. They have thoughtfully recorded their results, and made their findings available to the everyone. If you follow their general guidelines, you will get an approximately equal result. As Celtic has correctly pointed out in the main thread, two brews with similar equipment and ingredients, are not going to give the exact same result. This isn't an exact science, but with a few simple, or so I thought, guidelines/parameters, one can achieve good result without remaking others past mistakes.
Enter DO2.
The optimum results achieved by said benevolent tea brewers, have provided some thumb rulers for other people to use. One of them is to pump an average of .05 - .08 CFM of air volume into your brewer, to achieve the "prime" of 6-10 PPM DO2.
Is having a little less oxygen in your brew going to kill your plants? Doubtful. Kind of a strange benchmark for whether an idea or course of action is successful or not, but that's probably just my way of thinking.
Hell, I've spent more time writing about this than I did doing the original calculations for myself. That ain't keeping it simple smartass. Gotta stop ranting one of these days XD
Depends on the pump, but I doubt it can vary significantly. Rating pumps by tank size is ambiguous, whereas volume at least gives a convertible measurement.
Looking at it at face value, it can seem odd that a pump that can provide enough oxygen for a 40 gallon tank would only support 1 gallon of AACT, but the sheer number of microbes (thousands per millilitre) brewed, compared to a handful of fish, puts it into perspective.
Looking at it at face value, it can seem odd that a pump that can provide enough oxygen for a 40 gallon tank would only support 1 gallon of AACT, but the sheer number of microbes (thousands per millilitre) brewed, compared to a handful of fish, puts it into perspective.
Exactly my point ....lolColdSmoke said:
Not that miguelovic is wrong cause he is dead on actually but to keep it simple I'm confident the OP's 45 gallon fishtank air pump will work just fine ...and if he actually notices any difference in his brew using a pump "designed" with the capability to "properly" brew 5 gallons of AACT ..let me know I want in on that action, otherwise I'm gonna roll with my $3.99 special and keep making the 5-gallon brew I have been making for years and actually sometimes take the 5-gallons of brewed tea and mix it with another 5-gallons of rain water and water my garden, lawn etc with that 10-gallons which only 5 of it was brewed and my garden and lawn absolutely love it, because in all actuality as soon as those microbes hit the soil or whatever they start feeding and multiplying in the soil food web, right? Maybe I'm wrong because I'm far from a pro at the whole tea and microbe thing. I'm just a simple organic gardener who likes to think I know a little something which I probably don't know much, but love to learn...