Otherwise [caution; contrary to common practice and beliefs], much like maintaining a good amount in the reservoir is not really needed, the reservoir need not be kept at working levels all the time. When I used AutoPots, after a while I'd only fill the reservoir enough for several days, run it, let the reservoir empty (stop at outlet/filter level) and then let the plants 'dry out' with no input for say a full day or even 2. The media in the pots, such as coco, in that period doesn't dry out much (with it being fully saturated, in terms of what can be wicked-up, most of the time); and you can get a wider range of wet to less-wet than when using the tubing/valves. I didn't have any clogging or restarting problems doing this.
Eventually [caution; even more contrary to common practice and beliefs], I saw no need for using a reservoir and the valves, and went to simply manually filling each AutoPot's reservoir as it ran low or dry, and did not notice any downsides compared to full automatic mode grows. But keep in mind, this is not the norm and is just regular bottom-feeding, or similar to hempy pots. But you still get the benefits (maybe more) of the wet to lesser-wet cycles of the automatic mode and the AirDomes; and I found it to be less work. I could feed the plants whatever I wanted, including adding organics supplements, with no clogging of tubing or valves and no settling or smells in the reservoir; and feeds could be more easily customized/modified for each plant vs. feeding them all from a single reservoir. [But currently, I'm using and prefer larger (vs. the 2.9 gallon Auto-Pots) Air-Pots with coco/perlite and standard top-feeding].
Eventually [caution; even more contrary to common practice and beliefs], I saw no need for using a reservoir and the valves, and went to simply manually filling each AutoPot's reservoir as it ran low or dry, and did not notice any downsides compared to full automatic mode grows. But keep in mind, this is not the norm and is just regular bottom-feeding, or similar to hempy pots. But you still get the benefits (maybe more) of the wet to lesser-wet cycles of the automatic mode and the AirDomes; and I found it to be less work. I could feed the plants whatever I wanted, including adding organics supplements, with no clogging of tubing or valves and no settling or smells in the reservoir; and feeds could be more easily customized/modified for each plant vs. feeding them all from a single reservoir. [But currently, I'm using and prefer larger (vs. the 2.9 gallon Auto-Pots) Air-Pots with coco/perlite and standard top-feeding].
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