They work fine, and grow big plants. One thing that you will need to watch though is that they tend to build up nutes in the medium, so you need to control your nute concentration very carefully. In my last grow, I got into serious lockout because of this issue. The problem is that by the time you see symptoms, a lot of damage has already been done. Since with autopots you normally do not top water once your plants are on the reservoir, you do not water to runoff, and therefore cannot measure the pH or EC of your runoff to keep track of what is going on in the pots.
What did you learn lol?? Spill the beans. Basically can you get away with just adding the nutes to it and not messing about too much?? Of I'm to use just a b and bloom would that work well in it??
Yeah fair points. I might just risk it and try one. What nutes do you use I'm going to do photos next, and just see how that turns out. Do I have to use coco or can i use soil??They work fine, and grow big plants. One thing that you will need to watch though is that they tend to build up nutes in the medium, so you need to control your nute concentration very carefully. In my last grow, I got into serious lockout because of this issue. The problem is that by the time you see symptoms, a lot of damage has already been done. Since with autopots you normally do not top water once your plants are on the reservoir, you do not water to runoff, and therefore cannot measure the pH or EC of your runoff to keep track of what is going on in the pots.
To deal with this issue in my next round with autopots, I may do pre-emptive weekly flushes to clean the medium out and check pH and EC of runoff.
All considered, I am not sure that I would go with autopots again if I was starting from scratch. Some sort of automated top watering system might better avoid the nute buildup and permit easier monitoring of runoff. When I chose the autopot system, one of the main attractions for me was that the system was independent of electricity, so a power outage would not screw things up. However, in the event of a power outage for much of a time period, lack of nutes will be the least of the problems (lights, ventilation, and air circulation would bugger the grow eventually anyway. Bottom line is that independence from electricity turns out to be less of an advantage than I was thinking.
Good luck with your decision. You might want to have a look at the irrigation setup described at Cocoforcannabis.com before making the leap.
So far, I have been using Megacrop version 2, single part. I am still trying to use up some liquid three part stuff, but I only use it early on before moving to Megacrop. Next grow may be Jack's 321 because it seems more tunable than either the single part or the two part MC. The jury is out.
Top notch advice man. Love it from all you guys. I'm going to run 8 pots with the 100l tank what ppm should I be looking for in that as I don't have a clue about this kind of thing, I'm not going tk have to be too careful coz I'm going to run autos on some clean mineral nutes. So they are obviously going to take more nutes than autos. Any advice on that please.You can use soil, or more specifically 70% soil/30% perlite, which is what I did/am doing with autopots. I use MegaCrop, which is a one part nutrient, combined with Recharge (beneficial microbes you buy on Amazon). The only other additives I use are Drip Clean and pH Up/Down. Start by watering through the pots with weak Recharge the night before planting. Then, after planting, just water the seed/seedlings from the top for the first 2.5-3 weeks, until the leaves' edges reach the edge of the pot, then you can "turn on" the reservoir. For soil, maybe start out at 450 ppm that first fill of 4-5 gallons, then on the next fill, go to 500-525 and leave it there the rest of the grow. Manage to 6.4 pH (for soil). And that's about all they take, management wise. A circulating pump running in the res for 15 min 3-4 times a day is plenty to keep it nice and mixed up. I think what Goud learned is leaving the pump on 24/7 will raise the pH up quickly, but I could be mistaken. The pH will gradually creep up a tenth of a point every few days with the minimal pump schedule, just adjust back down to 6.3 when it gets to 6.7 or so. And don't buy a cheap pH meter!
If you're interested in maximizing returns as well as automating the watering/feeding, get the 5 gallon fabric autopots, and an air pump with the air domes. And get some strong lights and start learning about Vapor Pressure Deficit (VPD). If you're more interested in just automating the watering, autopots in whatever configuration will do great.
The key things to remember with autopots, from my limited experience: never top water once you've started bottom feeding, and keep the PPM under 550 for the reasons Olderfart mentioned above, buy and install your own 1/4" valve between the res and pots so you can turn the system on or off, and supplement the rootzones with Recharge once every week or two by turning off the res and manually bottom feeding the Recharge into each pot. Oh, and ignore the Bud Explosion and other additives for MegaCrop. The new formula is plenty for the duration of the grow, no supplements needed, a lesson I'm just learning today.
