Grow Mediums Fabric, air, or plastic pots?
- Thread starter MANNIK
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Growpito in autopots simple easy. Rainscience bags. All sponsors here oops autopot is not a sponsor but there is a section in the hydro area for them.
Plastic and coco only, hand water. Always end up with a "rootball" that solid white with roots and you cannot break apart with you hands..Usually a 1-2 gal.
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Bit of a noob here, but my experience with fabric pots, coco/perlite, and autopots worked well. I highly recommend the setup, especially if you may want to leave the grow for a while. No power required, and if you set it up right, pretty much bullet proof in my opinion. If you use autopots, I suggest setting up a better reservoir filter than the small foam ones that Autopot supplies. If you want more info on what I did, let me know and I will post photos.
Good luck with your coco adventure.
Good luck with your coco adventure.
Yes please. That filter is a joke honestlyBit of a noob here, but my experience with fabric pots, coco/perlite, and autopots worked well. I highly recommend the setup, especially if you may want to leave the grow for a while. No power required, and if you set it up right, pretty much bullet proof in my opinion. If you use autopots, I suggest setting up a better reservoir filter than the small foam ones that Autopot supplies. If you want more info on what I did, let me know and I will post photos.
Good luck with your coco adventure.
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The filter that Autopot supplies is better than nothing, I can give them that much. But in my opinion it suffers from two serious limitations. First it is so small that its capacity is negligible. If for any reason there is stuff in your reservoir, it can plug with not much junk. Second, the filtration it accomplishes is coarse, and it will let too much smaller diameter stuff into your lines, and that could accumulate in the lines or the valves and cause mischief. All opinion on my part, but I can tell you that my setup sorted a long grow with zero issues with the autopot system, and my reservoir was full of junk the whole time because I was using stream and lake water with significant amounts of organic debris in it.
There are lots of ways to skin this cat, I have used two. Last winter, with my ~10 gallon reservoir, I wedged a common pleated filter element over the reservoir outlet as shown in these photos:
Note that by wedging the way that I did, the only way water can get out of the reservoir is to go through the filter first. Both ends of the common filter elements are open, so the far end from the outlet needs to be sealed one way or another in order for this to work. I had the fairly dense white foam I used sitting around (bit of a diy pack rat, I admit), but if you need foam, one of the pool noodles would work fine if you cut it to the lengths needed.
In my garden this summer, I used a 45 gallon reservoir which is a lot wider than the 10 gallon one, so rather than wedging the element like the setup in the pics, I adapted the filter element so it would screw into the bulkhead fitting I used to install a tap on the barrel. The filter element is still on the inside of the barrel, just mounted with a pipe thread, not wedged. I don't have pics of that setup, but you get the idea.
You could also just buy the entire filter housing sold for this sort of filter and install in on your line, but if you do that, install it downstream from your reservoir tap/valve so that you can maintain it if needed without draining the reservoir. Unlikely that you will need to do anything with it though, its capacity is far larger than any likely loading unless you are fooling around with some really nasty organic stuff. And it will not let anything that is not dissolved or seriously tiny into your lines or valves.
Just my take on it, but it works well for me. Good luck with your grow, I expect you will like the autopot system if you give it a try.
I see a few recommendations for autopots with smart pots. How is this achieved? Do you put the smart pots inside of the autopot containers? Or place then in the base? What size smart pots fit this technique?Bit of a noob here, but my experience with fabric pots, coco/perlite, and autopots worked well. I highly recommend the setup, especially if you may want to leave the grow for a while. No power required, and if you set it up right, pretty much bullet proof in my opinion. If you use autopots, I suggest setting up a better reservoir filter than the small foam ones that Autopot supplies. If you want more info on what I did, let me know and I will post photos.
Good luck with your coco adventure.
I would love some more info and pics. Trying to get better results and easier processes than my current setup.
I'm using 5gal tall smart pots. They just sit right inside the autopot trays. Massive plants lol
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You can buy the fabric pot/autopot setup directly from the Autopot website. The one that they sell is their XL tray with a fabric smart pot which fits inside the tray perfectly. The pots supplied are nominally 5 gallon and on the tall side. I rolled the rims of mine down and filled them with only ~3 gallons of coco/perlite mix. You certainly do not need anything larger than that. Smaller would likely work just fine too, but I just used the supplied pots. This setup will grow them big, so watch your strain if your space is limited. You can see pics of the results in the grow and review in my sig.
I am just about sold on the 9 site XL fabric from Autopot. Do you ever see lockout from salt build up in this system? Is there an easy way to flush?
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