Yeah didn’t like it at all, my experience and especially with autos it the ball were treated like obstacles by the plant so starts were either really hard and or slow cause the plant had to work its root around the balls, using rockwool starter cubes helped with that, but i also had troubles trying to keep consistent moisture levels with in it especially with small pots, like if you have a deep bed and the top couple inches are used then it can be worked around, but when a couple inches is half the pot for me didn’t quite work.
As for the root binding on the other end of the spectrum, the issue i ran into was that the balls unlike coco do not move or cannot be compressed, so the roots when growing in the spaces between them once they filled those spaces then went through a dry and wet cycle or continued building on the roots would pack so tightly in between that they would actually choke themselves out and then ran it phytium issues because of that and lack of air. Like they were bricks.
