Do you drain and refill the reservoir with your water with the flush additive, or can you pull the 5gl pot out of the auto pot and flush it from the top? I would like to use recharge for the flush but it’s seems like it would be prone to clogging the lines, what flush additive works with auto pots in coco?
This.
Why do you feel you need to flush? My last autopot run in Jack’s never saw a flush.
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I wouldn’t flush unless absolutely necessary. If I read right, autopots push the salts from your nutes to the top of the grow medium. If that is correct, you would need to be very thorough in flushing otherwise you’re pushing the salt back to the root zone and that spells trouble! Of course, it depends on what you are using for nutes.
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Thanks for the advice, I’m using fox farms liquid trio nutes and their feeding schedule calls for a few flushes through the grow. This is only my second grow and I didn’t do any flushes on my first and was successful. Lots to learn here, would rather not have to flush at all if I can.
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I still use the FF trio in my small tent and will continue until it’s gone. Nothing wrong with cutting your teeth on the Fox! I’m going to go out on a limb and say that they push the flushes because they sell a product specifically for use during the flush.
The subject of flushing is polarizing to say the least. I myself don’t do it.
Should not have to flush with auto pots.
But to answer your question about adding the recharge. .
Don’t add to reservoir, just water in from the top. You can do at a super concentrated level just to simply get them into the soil.
Or you could remove it from the tray and flush it, or give it a full watering from top if you wanted to but it’s not necessary…
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Fully agree with everything said above. Flush shouldn’t be needed at all through the grow.
I found using AN nutes I had to do more frequent cleanings, I’m hoping running Jack’s start to finish this round to not have to clean the lines or pots at all during the grow. Just the res every 1-2 weeks.
I start the plants in their bags on pot elevators and am considering a feed with recharge right before putting the bags in the pots and turning the res on when the plants are ready.
@Myfriendis410 I run primarily hydro but thinking of getting an auto pot set up. Obviously you PH the water going in the reservoir but how do you check that it’s still correct at the plant?
Just watch the plant to see what it shows you. I’ve only run one grow with autopots so far but didn’t worry at all about the plants.
If you run Coco, its really closer to hydro than soil, you shouldn’t run into any issues. If for any reason you needed to test runoff or top feed you can simply lift the pot out of the tray and do so (assuming no screen or yo-yos in use). Just remember to turn off the res first if you do.
I overthought a lot of this going into the Autopots, in the end (at least so far) all of those “what ifs” turned out to be non-issues.
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Because it’s a bottom feed into coco it tends to not be as much of a problem. So long as you keep your rez in range you will be fine. I ran a couple of grows last year in autopots using Jack’s and never did a flush: plants were fine.
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Did you use jacks through out the entire grow?
Sorry, and how did you feed it? From top, or did you add it to the rez?
Not sure what you are asking. I top fed in autopots until plants were large enough to accept liquid from the bottom. Fed in Jack’s full strength and never flushed.
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So once they start to feed from the bottom, did you add the Jack’s to the rez or still use Jack’s as top feed?
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As soon as the rez was activated I discontinued top feed. This promotes root growth.
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Once the system is on you don’t really want to put anything in from the top. The excess salts will accumulate in the top portion of the pot and top feeding or watering will wash them into the root zone
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Agreed, I’ve not (yet at least) seen a need to flush when running the Autopots.
Yes, it feels “too” easy, and frankly that seems to be because it is… I had a lot of similar thoughts and concerns when I started using them and they’ve all been unfounded so far.
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Pretty much just want to know if you put the jacks into the reservoir with deionized water.
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Yes, I mix my jacks 3 gallons at a time with ro water. After checking the ph it gets dumped into the rez
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