...and I'll have plenty more. Can you use autopot with hydroponics, or does it need soil to properly soak up? This is for a future DR80 grow Thanks
Autopots work by wicking water through the medium to the roots. I'm not really sure how you would setup true hydro in autopots??? You need some sort of soiless medium, coco coir is what I used in my autopots when I first started out. If you want to go hydro on a small setup, go DWC.
Deep Water Culture......Here is a pic of a basic setup and one of my buckets in veg. Basically you keep your plant in a soiless medium, I prefer hydroton (expanded clay pellets), in a netpot. The roots grow down through the net pot and remain suspended in the solution below, where they are areated with disolved oxygen from an airstone. This method will give exponential growth rates and high yields when HID lights are used. T5s work great in veg, I prefer HPS in bloom. Here to help buddy!
Yes, the disolved oxygen created by the airstone is critical to the growth of the plant. The more oxygen, the better.
I'm thinking soil will have to be the way forward, it suits the Autopot and I can't really afford the noise of the pump, I'm already worried about the noise levels. DWC looks good though, Orient's grow is coming along...
I recently picked up some autopots. I got tired of manual watering every day. I have been using Roots Organics soil cut down a little with vermiculite. So far so good. My plants seem to like the new pots. My question is, when I transplant into the autopots would using hydroton be too course and not allow the plants to properly wick? I would like to try using a medium that can be reuseable. I have no problem continuing to use soil but if I can cut cost a little and still get great results that would be a win win. Also would installing an air stone in my reservoir be of great benifit?
I can't say that I've ever used hydroton in an auto pot. I would imagine that once the roots got long enough and reached near the bottom of the pot, they would wick water to the rest of the root system. How do you plan on transplanting a plant with a root ball in soil to hydroton? It kind of sounds like you are trying to have the best of both worlds. In my opinion you should choose either soil or soiless medium. If you started the seed or cutting in a rockwool cube, this would work much better. Auto pots are a version of "passive hydroponics" and are designed to use a wicking medium. If I were you, I would invest in a single DWC bucket setup and run it side by side next to your autopot and watch the difference in growth and vitality. After one month you will be out buying stuff to build more buckets!!!
Oh BTW, as a good rule of thumb, with the exception of something like a res for a fogger, if it has water in in that you plants drink, it should have an airstone, or even in some cases several. The more disolved oxygen the better. If you followed the design in the illustration I showed you a while back, it would only cost you about 25 bucks to build one bucket. I'm tellin you, give it a try, it wont fail you.