Looking great @MNGrower . The autofill must be working fairly well?
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@Jpaul it does seem to be 
we shall see when we are closer to harvest 
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How many days into flowering are you? 10ish? How long did you veg those in the Octopots?
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Day 11 of flower ( showing pistols ), and vegged for about 3 weeks or what I considered veg…
total time from seed to flowering is almost 50 days.
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Growin like a Boss @MNGrower!
Isn’t this fun?
Now you get to play with the knobs…
Try turning an individual octo reservoir tap off, letting an Octo dry down deep. You may be surprised to find that they seem to like that. The exposed roots take a deep breath of oxygen and the plant seems to smile. 
Even tho you have the autofiller in action, you can tailor your water levels and nutes to each octo. I grow a ton of Frankenstein genetics and they are all hungry plants. So I keep a gallon of “Hi Test” nutes just for them. Let a octopot drink its rez all the way down, then turn off the autofeed and manually give her a gallon of your special sauce bloom mix! The Girls will tell you within hours if they like it…LoL
Jus Sayin,
-Grouchy
PS, Welcome @JOHN1234 if he drops in to share his Octo AutoFill plans with us.
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Thanks for the intro Grouchy!
Sorry I’m so busy lurking and soaking in all the available info, I often forget I can interact with the posters.
Still in the design phase on my system and will be posting a list of questions shortly. TIA.
Have a great one!
John
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@GrouchyOldMan yeah this is great and totally looking at letting them have a dry down soon but not till they get a chance to recover from last training 
Welcome @JOHN1234 the autofill is amazing 
Looking great @MNGrower!
Few questions for you:
- What size fabric pots are you using?
- Grow room size?
- Did you purposely wait until flower to use autofill or that’s just where your grow was at the time?
Thanks!
John
Did you choose this model for any particular reason? I’m asking because there seems to be endless choices for this type product.
Thanks!
John
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I’m using 2 gallon pots and that room is about 8x10 with a closet.
And they have been in the pots since week 2 of veg. Transplanted from solo cup to these pots
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Ok guys looking to see what you’re all using for nutes.
I’m looking for simple and clean which my gh flora trio is doing ok but always keeping my eyes out for other stuff.
So wondering if your pots get scummy or the Rez. Do your nutrients settle?
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I have tried a bunch of different nutes in the Octo/autofiller combo and I’m not entirely happy with any of them.
The organics can make a terrible mess, as @mngrower found out, so I steer clear. The GH trio is liquid and that may be the best way to keep the reservoirs clean but all the liquid nute products seem expensive.
That leaves us with powered inorganic salt fertilizers and the best results have been with Jack’s, products along with a couple of helpful additives. @Jetdro, @Papalag and a few other Octo-pioneers have settled on Jacks after years of experimenting, and I use that program. Jacks is relatively cheap and seems to do the job.
The basic Jacks program:
- 20-20-20 for seedlings - veg, building up to 1 tsp / gallon as they mature
- 10-30-20 for the stretch & primary flowering 1 tsp / gallon
- 5-12-26 for late harvest and finish building up to 2 tsp / gallon if the plants can take it.
That program just emphasizes the mix Cannabis needs at various growth stages. I also add 1/2 tsp of gypsum and 1/4 tsp of epsom to every gallon for Ca/Mg. I pH every batch to 5.8 - 6.0, and test the final result for electrical conductivity (EC) numbers (above the tap water baseline) around 1.5 for most of the grow, then up to 2.4 for the final week or two.
Using Jacks will not ensure that your main reservoir will stay crystal clean. The salts can precipitate out of solution leaving a grunge in the bottom of the system. The good news there is that, unlike Organics, the grunge settles in the bottom of the main res and stays there so you don’t clog float valve or the small tubing downstream. Regardless, I often schedule an hour to remove and clean the main Rez and the controller about midway through each grow.
I didn’t have good results adding nutes to the upper soil. My theory is that our plants are quite happy getting food from the octo rez then building a root system above that just thrives on all the oxygen. organic soil keeps it too moist. When you hit harvest, I bet you’ll find that your upper root system pretty much fills the air pot.
-Grouchy
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Peter’s excell 15-5-15 plus epsom and gypsum. half strength for seedling then same feed rate throughout works for me. couple of buckets a week is all I have to lift. pots and tubes are clean and my plants happy. Good reading light.
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Thanks for the quick response!
A few more ? if you don’t mind
-
Why did you choose the seral layout vs manifold of water delivery tubing to individual pots?
I understand that the layouts are very similar but was thinking that the manifold may act as a pseudo isolation/check valve to each pot. I recall you had some worries about the PH of downstream pots being influenced by upstream conditions. This is only my hypothesis without scientific proof. -
What is the light size coverage area in your flower room? I’m trying to best estimate my max # of octopups in a 4x4 tent.
TIA
John
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I’ll try to answer what I did 
Ok so the reason I did it this way was to try to keep them close together and not use so much tubing 
but if you look now, I’m using more tubing cause things got tight.
Either way you do it, if a plant drinks super fast, it can take from the other pots before the control can fill it. I believe it is a type of pressure thing. The pots have more volume than the control box or at least mine.
The issue I thought I might have, was not because of the layout or order, I ended up switching the last pot to the first and it still ended up having the highest ph and lowest ppms meaning it was eating and processing 
so I don’t worry about it now.
I do have a manifold also that I am gonna use in another tent. I think one thing nice about that is you have one place you can shut off individually without having to try to get to the pot.
My table is a 4x4 table. I feel like 4-5 is a good amount. All depends on the size your plants get to and how long you vegged them.
If I had 4 of those Jack herer that size, I would only have 4
Truly if I can prove this working at 85-95% I will probably change everything over to that for the plants that I fully grow out. However I am doing some testing and breeding so those will never get put on the system.
Hope all this helps ya out
I’m sure @GrouchyOldMan might have some insight to what I said or maybe he has another way of thinking of it but this is how I’m doing it and how I think it works 
but I’m still trying it and learning it also.
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I’m pretty agnostic about the layout for the autofiller downstream of the controller. TBH, I’m not sure it matters much as long as you don’t have more plants online than the little tubes can provide at such a low water pressure.
One advantage of the manifold layout is that it makes it easier to reconfigure your pots if needed. I recently disconnected everything and rearranged the pots to keep plants of similar height together. Ten minute job, no fuss, no leaks.
Other than that, time and experimentation will probably reveal advantages and issues with different layouts.
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Always a wealth of knowledge Grouchy. Thanks!
Can you please confirm - The RO tubing fits OK over the manifold outlets? I was a bit worried that the RO tubing would be too stiff.
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Yes, but it turns out that they make manifolds with a larger inlet fitting, no idea why. Look carefully at the picture before you buy.
@GrouchyOldMan Yep I took notice after you mentioned it. I ordered the one that has the same size fittings on both inlet and outlet. I also like your idea of cleanout mid grow to verify no gunk is built up in the delivery system. Preventive maintenance 100% worth it.
I’m getting close now. My tent already arrived, installing new RO system today. All other items arrive this week.
Thanks!
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Hey John,
Here’s a suggestion, just for fun and education… once you have your autofiller system complete and charged with water for testing, take a break before your first planting. Take all the lids off the pots and experiment a bit to learn, hands-on how it works.
Trust me, this is loads of fun and will end up being useful when, for example you need to swap out an octo rez for some reason and you need to fill the new pot pronto.
Or, watch what happens when you remove a cup of water from one pot and four cups from another and watch everything normalize again. It’s all in slo mo too, so you can spark a fatty and groove on the minor miracle of fluid dynamics! LoL
Take pics of your build, post anything you learn… be happy!
-Grouchy 
PS,
Here’s a first, OctoScroggy! an attempt at adding a ScrOG screen atop a micro octo fabric pot! I’ll post a few pics if there’s any interest, but the take home is that it worked. Well.
Nearing harvest, Frankie’s Daughter Bx1
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