I been looking at auto watering systems and landed on octopots, the 3 gallon ones.
Will coco work in these or promixHP or soil be best? I have been seeing mixed reviews.
Is it really as easy as mixing nutes with water and keeping it topped off?
Also, would 4 in a 2x4 be overkill? If so I can run 3 and one is a separate tent.
Check this out … 
I use pro mix hp works great
I can’t get sunshine mix #4 near me
I wouldn’t recommend living soil it doesn’t seem to keep the plants happy 
Yep promix HP hands down. I do add some additional perlite to the lower 1/4 of the pot.
Do y’all run the 3 gallon reservoir or the 6 gallon? I just realized the pot/sleeves are the same size for both models. Was hoping for a 3 gallon pot size just to keep the plant a little smaller.
Very happy i found this thread just now. Ive been considering switch my style up from no-till bed to octopots. I think it will make multistrain grows easier and more individualized. Good to know i shouldnt use my current substrate.
I wonder tho, the 60% the manufacturer recomends, instead of using coco,peat, bark,ect. What about a vermiculite, leaf mold, coco?
Anyone heard of verm and mold to replace peat?
I used to mix a few additives into my ProMix, like dolomitic lime and earthworm castings. Nowadays it’s just ProMix HP straight out of the bag into the Octopot. I use the 6 gallon bags, but don’t fill them all the way (maybe 4-5 gallons), and roll/fold the excess bag material down. My plants get HUGE, so if space is a concern you might opt for the 3 gallon size. I’m lazy and need an option for when I travel. I’ve left my large Octopots unattended for up to 6 days multiple times and there has never been an issue.
I also found some tomato cages that fit inside the Octopot bag, so you can still spin the bag around to access all parts of the plant and move pots around easily.
That’s a 4x8 tent. Not sure how many more plants I’d want to cram in there. I’d rather they have room to breathe with good air circulation…
@BarefootAndBlazed Thats a nice setup you got. What nutes are you running with that promix?
I have a 2x4 tent and a 2x2 so i could probably run 6 gallons octopots, 2 in the 2x4 and 1 in the 2x2. Just top them to keep low.
Octopots like salt nutes the best. Lots of us use Jacks Nutrients. I use 15-6-17 Clone, 12-4-16, 10-30-20 Bloom and 7-15-30 Finish, all jacks nutrients, as recommended by their schedule.
I’m a Jack’s user as well
20-20-20 all of veg and through the stretch
10-30-20 the first few weeks of flower
5-12-26 the rest of the way.
I mix 5 gallons of nutrient solution at a time to fill each Octopot reservoir. 1 TBSP Jack’s, 1 TBSP CalMagIron, 1 TBSP pHdown. I have added silica in veg in the recent past, but never replaced the bottle I emptied and the plants don’t seem to mind.
I have both sizes. The size of the res doesnt change the size of the plant just the frequency you have to water it. Plant size is all about how long you veg it for.
Sounds good! Not trying to reinvent the wheel, ive just got a ton of verm, coco blocks and leaf mold.
Back in the day ive ran hempy buckets 50/50 verm perlite and salts. Worked great then so im pretty eager to go with the octopots using the auto top-off and just maintain a 20 or 30gal supply tank. Jacks you say huh? Never ran it, but i see more and more everyday that advocate for it.
Im an organic guy, but only because im gone alot with work and water only is easy with the blumat pump system ive got now for the 4x8 bed. But the supply tank would maintain easily too for a week running jacks. Damn man, the more i hear, the more im convinced. I think its time for a change!!
