I don’t know this system you speak of but I have encouraged everyone to get onto autopots since the day I learned about them.
Every system has challenges but autopots are fairly simple, so simple the failures are much easier to diagnose.
So I would say let’s dig into your autopots issue save you a bunch of money and time wasted, instead get the autopots running smoothly.
Your getting high ppm’s you said. So my questions would be.
#1 what grow medium are you using
#2 what nutrient line are you using
#3 where, when, how and for what reason are you checking ppm’s.
Growing cannabis is extremely more difficult to do efficiently and consistently in soil when growing indoors, it becomes labour intensive to do it correctly and better done on a large scale like commercial grow ops although few do.
For this reason i steer people toward a medium that does not contain nutrients, my personal favourite for many reasons is coco (rockwool is nice but I THINK it’s worse for the environment (peat is much worse)
Once an autopots grower has their medium decided that is inert then the process should be as follows.
Choose nutrient line (Jack’s is preferred here because its cheap, easy, professional grade and tons of info on it all around the web)
Following the nutrient directions of other cannabis growers and avoiding manufacturers directions is generally preferred here but it’s good to keep both in mind.
Toss a water pump or wave maker in your 30 gallon reservoir let’s say and put it on a 30min timer every hour or two.
Fill the reservoir with water, ensuring your water is of decent quality here, use a charcoal filter if it’s chlorinated tap water but always check your public water test records so you know what exactly is in your tap water as other sterilization chemicals can cause great harm to your plants and won’t be filtered from a carbon filter.
Then mix in the silica addative you have chosen to go with, let it mix very well and then PH your mix to something rough (just don’t want it above let’s say 7). Don’t drop it to low though because nutrients will also drop the PH (most) once the nutrients have been mixed in the correct order with a couple minutes in between adding each step to ensure proper mixing then we PH down to our desired PH 5.8 for example.
Then add your fish shit or tribus here (not recharge!)
Walk away and come back in an hour or two, but this whole time the reservoir valve is turned OFF. Double check the PH it often changes after full mixing.
Once you have confirmed 5.8 then open the tap.
No need to check the reservoir for a couple days once or twice week seems to be okay for my 30 gallon reservoir running 4-6 plants.
The time that PH will drift and TDS will bud is as it gets to the last 25% of the reservoir, so I try to keep it above this level.
I personally pre mix a concentrate in a 5 gallon bucket and then add 15 gallons of fresh water to the reservoir, then I PH that water roughly again to about 7 (don’t want it to high or bonds will happen within the nutrients and nutrient dropout happens).
I then add my 5 gallons of concentrate nutrient mix and top up the reservoir until the ppm is correct then I do a PH, come back in 2hr or before I go to bed and ensure PH is correct.
I also run two 25 or 30 gallon reservoirs, yours don’t have to be this big but I think everyone’s reservoir should last them a week in peak flow growing at high temps in order to ensure there is less fluctuations day to day with your system.
I will clean my reservoirs once every couple of fills when I notice the build up in the bottom /sides getting excessive as these salts will mess with the PPM/PH of the mix.
Its also really nice to fill both when I have more time, or only have to turn one valve off, check PH on new reservoir and then open valve, when in busy with life.
Cleaning your lines every single grow is very very important, it’s also important to bleed the lines out once and a while. I don’t do this and it’s bit me a couple times but I will bleed them once a month when I fire up again.
So I hope this has made you double think a couple things your doing and can initiate some conversation so we can fix your issue, because it’s not the system it’s the way the system is being run. Not just with you but with any of us having issues.
