Grow Room AC Infinity Self-Watering Fabric Pot Base: Any Feedback Yet About Their Use?

[GreenBean]

Gotcha. I missed the strings part.

 

[DCLXVI]

Gotcha. I missed the strings part.

Wicks! Wicks, mate! Gotta call em' "wicks." Lest the "Wick Crew" boys hear you...... It's like calling soil DIRT!

 

[stressed]

i've never used coco before. i have 2 bricks worth soaking in water with cal/mag in it. it's been soaking for days as i've been gone. i'm going to assume it's still good but i'm searching for info.

i'm wondering if i can only use perlite in the bottom 1/3rd of the 5 gall bags and happy frog in the top 2/3rds. any idea?

 

[BII]

i've never used coco before. i have 2 bricks worth soaking in water with cal/mag in it. it's been soaking for days as i've been gone. i'm going to assume it's still good but i'm searching for info.

i'm wondering if i can only use perlite in the bottom 1/3rd of the 5 gall bags and happy frog in the top 2/3rds. any idea?

With the AC Infinity and other bottom wicking-dependent feeding systems you generally want to use a single consistent mix. Wicking action into your soil/medium will be much decreased by the needless interface of 2 different media and the added distance the water has to travel. It's OK (but may not be best) to use use a bottom layer of perlite with pots that full-time actually sit in water, such as AutoPots, but not with cloth pots wicking-up water from a reservoir.

And be careful pre-treating your coco with cal-mag! Many, including seemingly most of the better, coco products now come rather well buffered. [I use Canna bagged coco right out of the bag, no rinsing or chemical pre-treatment with AN pH Perfect Connoisseur A&B and only add calmag a few times starting in later veg/early bloom, generally by foliar spray (that way avoiding adding salts to the coco).

 

[stressed]

With the AC Infinity and other bottom wicking-dependent feeding systems you generally want to use a single consistent mix. Wicking action into your soil/medium will be much decreased by the needless interface of 2 different media and the added distance the water has to travel. It's OK (but may not be best) to use use a bottom layer of perlite with pots that full-time actually sit in water, such as AutoPots, but not with cloth pots wicking-up water from a reservoir.

And be careful pre-treating your coco with cal-mag! Many, including seemingly most of the better, coco products now come rather well buffered. [I use Canna bagged coco right out of the bag, no rinsing or chemical pre-treatment with AN pH Perfect Connoisseur A&B and only add calmag a few times starting in later veg/early bloom, generally by foliar spray (that way avoiding adding salts to the coco).

thank you. i've had 3 different plans in the last few days. i'm going to throw out the coco i have, buy what you use, mix well with perlite and cross my fingers. i'll leave out the soil and go all coco. something i have never wanted to do. this company mentioned soil so many times, i though i could actually use soil. then again, i'm usually high and watching tv if i'm surfing the net.

i have 6 different mephisto genetics going. i am going to do 3 in my regular soil and 3 with the coco. maybe 2.
this way, if i mess up the coco i'll still have enough home grown to get me through to the next crop.

 

[BII]

thank you. i've had 3 different plans in the last few days. i'm going to throw out the coco i have, buy what you use, mix well with perlite and cross my fingers. i'll leave out the soil and go all coco. something i have never wanted to do. this company mentioned soil so many times, i though i could actually use soil. then again, i'm usually high and watching tv if i'm surfing the net.

i have 6 different mephisto genetics going. i am going to do 3 in my regular soil and 3 with the coco. maybe 2.
this way, if i mess up the coco i'll still have enough home grown to get me through to the next crop.

Presuming it's a basically good commercial coco product, you don't need to throw it all out. You can recycle it, flush/rinse if needed, mix it into your 'better' coco; dump it outside (mix it into a garden), etc..

 

[stressed]

Presuming it's a basically good commercial coco product, you don't need to throw it all out. You can recycle it, flush/rinse if needed, mix it into your 'better' coco; dump it outside (mix it into a garden), etc..

It's good coco but after reading about the stuff that is all ready to mix with perlite and get on with it. i'm going to toss it. that is the route i will take. recycle? never! i worked for environmental cleanup companies/agencies most of my life and i hate recycling as it requires extra effort. money i got, extra time and energy, not so much.

i'm using a KS 5000 light and i have 3 autos in 5 gall pots, 3 in 1 gallon pots that will be easy to empty out for their final home. the one gallons are filled with soil and a lot of perlite. i will use one or 2 of them with coco/perlite filling the rest of their 5 gallon final pots. i am also going to hook up the auto watering devices to one of the all soil/perlite pots to see if there is any wicking at all. i am doing this in the name of science, and lazyness. mostly lazyness.

 

[BII]

I very successfully completed my first grow using AC Infinity passive (wicking action) automatic-watering 5 gallon fabric pots. Overall, I got ~50% higher yield than usual (vs. using top-fed 5 gallon Air-Pots) with bud quality likely slightly (hard to tell, not cured yet) better than usual. Yield averaged about 6 oz./plant.

I grew:
Sour Crack/Mephisto,
LSD-25/Fast Buds (came out deep purple),
SkyStomper/Mephisto and ;
Jack 47 Auto/Sweet.
The plants went about 90-100 days, somewhat longer than usual - not a concern with the increased yields.

I used Adv. Nutrients Connoisseur Grow and Bloom A & B at about 2.5/L (with 4 recommended) with new lights (2 x HLG-300Rspec and SP-2000/Spider Farm quantum boards) in 50/50 (pre-mix volume) Canna coco/Vigoro perlite with RO water (and never checked, much less adjusted, the pH). I was lazy and also other than initially charging the pots with 1.5 mL/L Grow I never did drain-to-waste or flushed the pots. The only problem encountered was rather normal (for me) slight start of mild Ca/Mg deficiency in early bloom, easily fixed - never any problem with salts build-up (with salts presumably concentrating at the top of the coco/perlite).

The only modification I made was to double, add 2 more, wicks to the bases (figuring the pots could use more access to water since I was using such a high percentage of perlite). Wicking from the reservoir base worked perfectly. After harvest, when examined the coco/perlite was packed full of fine roots from bottom to top, more/better vs. Air-Pots, roots were somewhat more dense at the bottom, with the bottom half "wet," but not too much (and with 50% perlite, simply hard to get over-saturated).

So the system worked as it should with rather exemplary results even with my lazy, e.g., no drain-to-waste or flushing, growing style.

 

[InkAddict$]

I very successfully completed my first grow using AC Infinity passive (wicking action) automatic-watering 5 gallon fabric pots. Overall, I got ~50% higher yield than usual (vs. using top-fed 5 gallon Air-Pots) with bud quality likely slightly (hard to tell, not cured yet) better than usual. Yield averaged about 6 oz./plant.

I grew:
Sour Crack/Mephisto,
LSD-25/Fast Buds (came out deep purple),
SkyStomper/Mephisto and ;
Jack 47 Auto/Sweet.
The plants went about 90-100 days, somewhat longer than usual - not a concern with the increased yields.

I used Adv. Nutrients Connoisseur Grow and Bloom A & B at about 2.5/L (with 4 recommended) with new lights (2 x HLG-300Rspec and SP-2000/Spider Farm quantum boards) in 50/50 (pre-mix volume) Canna coco/Vigoro perlite with RO water (and never checked, much less adjusted, the pH). I was lazy and also other than initially charging the pots with 1.5 mL/L Grow I never did drain-to-waste or flushed the pots. The only problem encountered was rather normal (for me) slight start of mild Ca/Mg deficiency in early bloom, easily fixed - never any problem with salts build-up (with salts presumably concentrating at the top of the coco/perlite).

The only modification I made was to double, add 2 more, wicks to the bases (figuring the pots could use more access to water since I was using such a high percentage of perlite). Wicking from the reservoir base worked perfectly. After harvest, when examined the coco/perlite was packed full of fine roots from bottom to top, more/better vs. Air-Pots, roots were somewhat more dense at the bottom, with the bottom half "wet," but not too much (and with 50% perlite, simply hard to get over-saturated).

So the system worked as it should with rather exemplary results even with my lazy, e.g., no drain-to-waste or flushing, growing style.

Here's mine in coco using Megacrop on ac infinity self watering grow bases with rain science bags

 

[InkAddict$]

As you can see they work really well I let them feed for the day and suck the rest out the next morning....then repeat.....