New grow room Autopot grow

I reached back out to autopot over the weekend and have yet to hear back.

The plants are still growing well. Here is a photo from this morning.

I am getting ready to transplant tomorrow. The plants were removed from the veg tent today and defoliated. They will dry back slightly over night before being transplanted tomorrow.



I also got started with the scrog net build.

I've finished the scrog nets and transplanted the plants into their final 9 gallon containers without issue. I used the bags of Beanstalk crf I had premeasured and just mixed the fertilizer into the coco/perlite before I transplanted.

The plants are still recovering from the transplant. I turned on the system yesterday and allowed the plant bases to fill up before turning the system off again. I top watered each plant with 2L of pHed tap water yesterday as well. This morning the plant bases were dry so the pots did absorb the water from the bottom of the fabric pot.

This morning, I top watered each plant again using a liter of water and again allowed the plant bases to fill up before turning off the system.

Here are some photos of each strain:

Blueberry Bang Bang



Grand Master Sexy



The Hive



I plan to begin CO2 supplementation soon as well. I plugged in my CO2 meter and my CO2 level was about 550 ppm. I plan to run the room around 1000-1200 ppm.

I checked the CO2 meter again at lunch and it was sitting around 150 with me not in the room. I will be setting up the CO2 tank today or this week and getting the CO2 levels in check.

I got the CO2 tank from the grow store and installed the CO2 regulator as well as the pH controller for my flower reservoir. The only issue I am having is that I don't have a tool to completely tighten the CO2 regulator to the tank. There may be a small leak. I am watching the CO2 levels to ensure they don't go too high. I drilled a hole in the cap of my pH down to feed the tubing for the pH controller as well.

I was able to tighten the regulator so that there is no leak with the CO2. I'm maintaining a level of 900 ppm CO2 in the flower area when the lights are on. The plants are looking pretty good this morning, and they are beginning to recover nicely from their transplant a couple days ago. I top watered each plant with a liter of water and gave the The Hive pheno on the left in the photo below an extra liter as well as the Grand Master Sexy pheno on the left. Again, I turned on the autopot system and let the bases fill before turning them off again. This allows me to establish a baseline for how fast the plants are drinking from the autopots and will hopefully allow me the know when to turn the system on for good and be able to end the top watering. As soon as all the bases are dry within 24 hours of me filling them up, I will know that they are uptaking enough water from the roots in the bottom of the fabric pot for me to turn the system on.

Blueberry Bang Bang



Grand Master Sexy



The Hive

I did not bother with letting the bases refill this morning and the plants do not seem to be uptaking water from the bottom quite yet. The first two times I let the bases fill up they were dry 24 hours later. This time they were not. This tells me that the wicking nature of the coco worked and that the pots are now saturated. I'm going to let them dry back another 24 hours before refilling the bases.

I took the hose from the dehumidifier out of the flower reservoir. I'm going to see how long it takes to fill a five gallon bucket and if I leave Area 51 for an extended period of time beyond that I can always run the hose back into the rez. There are varying ways of thinking when it comes to using this "grey" water to water the plants but it was kind of dirty so I decided against it.

The my new toys are working great. However, the A/C Infinity humidifier I've had this past year briefly stopped responding last night when I was filling the container and some water splashed. That is already the second one I've used, so I would recommend against buying your humidifier from A/C until they fix these issues.

Doing some more digging, it does appear as if they've updated the Cloudforge T7 to include "a water-resistant seal to prevent leakage and extend operational lifespan." No wonder the old one stopped working twice, huh?

The new T7's also include VPD triggers as well as humidity triggers. Would you look at that, now I want one.

I really like A/C Infinity's grow gear. They seem to listen to feed back and their equipment is really good for any homegrower in my opinion. The EVO series lights kick ass! I use the UV light bars as well in hopes that they will increase resin yields on the plants.

I like how simple the light bars are to mount, and I would love to use the supplemental light bars that A/C sells as well although, for the price and wattage, I am much happier with my aliexpress light bars that are something like 60 watts each and have lm301h Evo diodes as well, or at least that's what the Chinese company (yxo yuxinou) had advertised. They are kind of awkward to mount, but this wasn't too much of a problem.

I only run the side lighting and uv light bars 12 hours a day in veg. I doubt the uv is doing anything at this point but they are only 40 watts total. The main lights, the EVO 3's, are turned to 7 and are run 18 hours a day.

I turn the lights off at night because the door to Area 51 let's in a lot of light. I'm going to experiment with ways to cut down on this before flower so that I can run the lights when the room is the coldest.

The plants are enjoying their dry back. I'm going to let them dry out for another 12 hours before I top water again. I will let the bases fill back up tomorrow.

Some photos:

Blueberry Bang Bang



Grand Master Sexy



The Hive



Flower area



I bought a few things on Amazon last night as well. Almost everything ac infinity is on black friday sale for 25% off. Just a heads up.

Nice setup! I would recommend to get some trays under the Autopot in case of overfloating. It happened to me few times after cleaning my setup and not being careful with those silicones.

tuksu6000 said:

Nice setup! I would recommend to get some trays under the Autopot in case of overfloating. It happened to me few times after cleaning my setup and not being careful with those silicones.

Click to expand...

That's a big fear of mine. What kind of trays would you recommend? I know the aquavalves are finicky with being level.

My plants continue to grow but they are not looking completely healthy. The The Hive phenos look the most sad with droopy leaves and yellow spots between the veins of some leaves as well. There are some dying leaves on most of the plants.



Overall, I am still happy with the results I have from this grow so far. It has been easy and very little effort has been put into this grow outside of me documenting it. The Blueberry Bang Bang plant in the corner is showing the best growth since the transplant almost a week ago, and the leaves on that particular pheno are praying hard towards the light.



I accidentally broke my humidifier some more by stepping on the probe where it plugs in to the unit.



This humidifier has been on the fritz anyway, and I had already ordered the updated cloudforge unit.

Here are some more photos:

Blueberry Bang Bang



Grand Master Sexy



The Hive



All three together

I got the new Cloudforge T7 in the mail and set it up. I also received the VPD thermometer. The only problem I have with these items is that the temperature and humidity are inconsistent between the thermometer and the humidifier (the new T7 is awesome, by the way.) I bought a hygrometer/thermometer set of 3 sensors and a display so that I can have something to calibrate the VPD thermometer and hygrometer and the cloudforge as well as giving me the ability to have a sensor below each light so that I can get a good idea of the air VPD for each plant.

The leaf VPD seems to be a little janky because the leafs were getting really hot with the a/c set to 74. The VPD was overall all out of whack with the a/c set to 74. I decided to cool down the room to 70.

Does anybody here set their minisplits to auto like I do? I'm thinking it might be better to set it to cool only, although it may get cold with the lights off.

I will have the veg light running in the tent for 6 of the 12 hours that the lights are off. I'm not entirely sure that the lm301h evo diodes will create enough heat for the garage, especially with only one light running at 150-225 watts. In the summer it won't be a problem to keep the garage warm while only cooling the grow, but in the winter it might prove difficult. The problem I am having running the minisplit on auto is that the leafs were getting really warm. This could be compounding with the fact that I had the minisplit set to 74.

Although the VPD thermometer and humidifier sensors were off, they still a good enough job to have shown me that my VPD was all wrong. I also had my dehumidifier set too low. I'm hoping that the plants will recover from these short comings on my part and when they do, I will be ready to throw them into flower.

My goal for the 6 plants is a total of 9000 grams of fresh frozen. I like this goal because it is 1500 grams a plant, which is a nice number, and because if I beat the goal I can freak out that it's over 9-. Well, you get the idea.

Was just going through this thread, they didn't seem right to me from the start, they were turgid enough to suggest the fluid balance transpiration was ok, but the color and leaf set is wrong, seems to me its a PH/ feeding, additive thing or root issues. to troubleshoot your issues, you would have to look at a lot of things but you got something going wrong I don't think its VPD unless its way way out, seems like youre throwing money at it but there is basic growing issues, I don't say that in a bad way Im 70 been growing for 50 yrs, regardless of the system used, plants should be blemish free looking like show material, if they don't something is wrong.

9000 grams is nearly 20lb from 6 plants, youre not going to get anywhere near that from those plants, I run 6 plants in a 10 x 10 under 3000 watts of light and get around 8 pounds, that's with a 4 wk veg 8 wk flower, I cant imagine getting more than double that, but good luck to you if you can but I cant see it.

Im just kicking of my first Autopot grow transplanted today, Ive never grown in APs before, I want them pristine going in and all the way through, I see a lot of guys showing plants in APs that look not right to me, and then I see others that look great so Im looking forward to giving them a go.

Went in today


This was my last grow in a DYI wide tray NFT type thing growing on a strip of geo blanket with are constant trickle, they did well.

ryan s said:

That's a big fear of mine. What kind of trays would you recommend? I know the aquavalves are finicky with being level.

Click to expand...

Im using these. 4x4 trays on 4x4 tents.
U can find it by name 4x4 Flex tray.

Roadblock said:

Was just going through this thread, they didn't seem right to me from the start, they were turgid enough to suggest the fluid balance transpiration was ok, but the color and leaf set is wrong, seems to me its a PH/ feeding, additive thing or root issues. to troubleshoot your issues, you would have to look at a lot of things but you got something going wrong I don't think its VPD unless its way way out, seems like youre throwing money at it but there is basic growing issues, I don't say that in a bad way Im 70 been growing for 50 yrs, regardless of the system used, plants should be blemish free looking like show material, if they don't something is wrong.

9000 grams is nearly 20lb from 6 plants, youre not going to get anywhere near that from those plants, I run 6 plants in a 10 x 10 under 3000 watts of light and get around 8 pounds, that's with a 4 wk veg 8 wk flower, I cant imagine getting more than double that, but good luck to you if you can but I cant see it.

Im just kicking of my first Autopot grow transplanted today, Ive never grown in APs before, I want them pristine going in and all the way through, I see a lot of guys showing plants in APs that look not right to me, and then I see others that look great so Im looking forward to giving them a go.

Went in today
View attachment 5441165

This was my last grow in a DYI wide tray NFT type thing growing on a strip of geo blanket with are constant trickle, they did well.
View attachment 5441166

Click to expand...

Thanks for your advice. I will get a fresh start soon after I take clones. I doubt it would be a pH thing, the pH has been right from the start. I am adding nothing but tap water and pH'ing the reservoir. Only thing that could be true is root issues, but I didn't see anything wrong when I transplanted so I am not sure. Your plants do look very nice, and you're not wrong about mine; something is definitely off. It could be the weights in the easy2grow or transplant shock, or watering problems after transplant, or a VPD problem, or what you said. I didn't turn the system on right away after transplant either.

Also, I'm not talking about dried flower. I'm talking about 9000 grams of frozen, wet, material. You'd be averaging a lot more than that. It's totally doable, it might just not be this grow. 9000 grams wet is about the equivalent to 4 pounds dry.

ryan s said:

Thanks for your advice. I will get a fresh start soon after I take clones. I doubt it would be a pH thing, the pH has been right from the start. I am adding nothing but tap water and pH'ing the reservoir. Only thing that could be true is root issues, but I didn't see anything wrong when I transplanted so I am not sure. Your plants do look very nice, and you're not wrong about mine; something is definitely off. It could be the weights in the easy2grow or transplant shock, or watering problems after transplant, or a VPD problem, or what you said. I didn't turn the system on right away after transplant either.

Also, I'm not talking about dried flower. I'm talking about 9000 grams of frozen, wet, material. You'd be averaging a lot more than that. It's totally doable, it might just not be this grow. 9000 grams wet is about the equivalent to 4 pounds dry.

Click to expand...

Ah ok I misunderstood what you meant with the 9k grams, and I didnt realise you were in a soil mix, Ive only ever done hydro I see lots of issues like youre experiencing with soil grows, it seems to me when something is off there isn't a quick fix in soil where hydro you can change stuff around quickly.

Good luck with it.

Roadblock said:

Ah ok I misunderstood what you meant with the 9k grams, and I didnt realise you were in a soil mix, Ive only ever done hydro I see lots of issues like youre experiencing with soil grows, it seems to me when something is off there isn't a quick fix in soil where hydro you can change stuff around quickly.

Good luck with it.

Click to expand...

No worries man and thank you. It's coco/perlite 70:30 and Beanstalk crf in autopots. I just ph the tap water reservoir at that's it. I'm not really a green thumb but these are about as healthy of plants as I've ever had regardless. It was not lost on me that you are looking out for my wallet as well in my obsession to have a perfect environment while I could be neglecting basic plant signs. I appreciate that.