The system comes with rubbery tubing, which is far more superior to the 1/4 drip tubing . Aquarium type air hose . Should you like me want to keep the pot away from the tank or extend the air hoses. Can be used for both.
I added a couple of in line shut off valve to the lines to isolate or do Maintanance. They also come apart instead of having to cut.
When you clean your tank every 2 cycles (or fills) minimum, clean the auto fillers and flush the tubes. I used clean water in tank and let them fill in a bucket. My tank sits on cinder blocks yes 2 to insure it won’t fall off.
Before you set you plants test your setup. Plants arnt needed. The fillers are trickery the first time and if you don’t do it right your tank WILL, flood your floor.
Every few day or at least once a week, until your comfort level gets there, pop the covers and Doug le check you pot level. The at there is no clogging. Mine level is just covers the hose.
And yes Level pots are a must.
Happy growing.
Did I also forget to mention you need some space to start clones . Pull them before you start flower. OR BUY SEEDS FROM ilovegrowing.
To me, the difference in the amount of growth. The stalk is more than 2x thick. The plants grew faster. I have the air on a timer it runs on and off during the lighting period,. It also increases the water uptake.
Is just short of a bubbler system vs wick system . No scientific proof, but I am guessing that it helps to keep from root rot.
@Bubbelkush I personally have never run a comparison however; I know several growers who have and they claim it makes no difference. Many autopot users grow without the airdomes and have great results.
I have 30 double 8 liter AutoPots set up in three lines each line with its own reservoir for nutrients. Ec of 0.4, 0.8 and 1.0 for already rooted clones, mid vegetation and flowering. I don’t use air domes and my grow media is Coco peat with 10% pearlite.
The AutoPots are very convenient and trouble free. But there are problems but they can be avoided.
The plants can tolerate a lot of abuse but nutrient buildup and the waste that the plants excrete, they can’t. Not sure about this last one but included it here for comment. Plants poo and pee and this also builds up in the AutoPot tray.
Monitor the nutrient buildup by flushing with PH water and measuring the EC of the runoff. This also solves the other problem.
And as Nunder said use nutrients that at least 50% of the recommended strength.
@screwauger, i think i’ve spent three days reading your magnificent posts. i’m sure i haven’t seen it all, so hoping you don’t mind a few questions?
I read your posts from a year or two ago with the BB and you had CalMag issues. was that with ANs old version of nutes? they have calmag in the new sensi coco. I think i saw you added to the reservoir, but it’s my understanding the calmag should not be added with the base nutes because they’ll gum up. i switched to the new nutes, still ran into a VERY mild CalMag issue and they told me to wait a day after feeding the base nutes to add calmag.
i’m barely half way through my first grow. I"m using AN in coco. I was watering every 3-4 days at 100% strength and they told me to bump it to every day. of course they want to sell more nutes. but i did increase to every day and knocked it down to 75% and haven’t had any burn.
on that note, did you or could you come up with a ballpark of how much it cost to feed one of your plants using the AN? i think using the AP you’re probably using a 1/4 th of the nutes than i am, and watering to runnoff is also wasteful. I was going to switch away from AN because this is far more expensive than anticipated. For “fun” i tried to calculate what it would cost at 100% following their instructions and it came up to like $250 per plant in a 3 gallon pot using the organic line (didn’t do it for the regular yet). this could also be some bad stoner math.
You mentioned trying soil in one of your other posts. have you done a run in soil yet with the AP? I saw one mention organic didn’t work? i really want to do an organic run.
@TDubWilly , i emailed them yesterday about doing these in bottom feeding scenarios as they recommend a top dress if you’re in pots under 15 gallon. do you know what can be used instead of this top dress of 1/4 cup bone meal? they also say to use liquid squid which you may be able to use in the autopots (not sure if it’ll clog).
IF you can find it locally it’s super cheap. it’s like $15 per 5 gallon plant. worth searching around for. shipping makes it expensive.
@TDubWilly thanks for the soil recommendation and I will actually start using this in our fabric pot grows.
This does not seem to be beneficial for an autopot grow tho. Where the auto pots have more of a need for synthetic nutrients to not clog the lines to the containers .
