Thinking of switching to Autopot...... can you help me brothers and sistas?

I've been growing in soil in a grow tent for a couple of years now and have been considering switching to Autopot but I need to ask some advice first, so here goes!

Firstly after watching the Autopot animation showing the set up process, which seems quite straight forward, I have to ask about the initial watering. Autopot say that the first watering is done by hand and then there would be no need to turn on the system for 3 weeks as the initial watering would be sufficient until the plants had established themselves but I'm guessing that doesn't take into account the fact that I would be growing under lights?

Secondly, I currently grow in Gold Label Special Mix and was wondering f I should carry on using that or switch to clay pebbles?

Thirdly, my tent is 2 meters in height, would that be sufficient? I'm growing Green Cheese.

There are probably lots of other questions that I need to ask but they'll occur to me later

Thanks in anticipation of your help.
Rick

I can't help with auto pots though I do know someone that uses them. I use blumats. Have you ever considered them as an alternative automatic watering source? It's the same principle using ceramics in the auto pots I think.... and you can stay with your soil set up.

don't use auto pots! there is my advice.

i haven't the time nor the energy to go into detail so you can choose to take my advice or not it makes no difference to me.

you get better results hand watering, if you can't be arsed to give your plants the time they deserve then you should look into some kind of automated drip line system.

Have never used them, but i think anything that seems to simple isn't going to work well.

bubba, how long have you been using the blumats? I tried them out. They seemed great at first but then ran into problems.

The connector to the bucket is cheap as shit and not standard, so it is hard to detach and clean the bucket. Lots of nute sediment developed over time even with a airstone and pump inside of it. So it was hard to maintain nutes levels and ph.

They also clogged on me. That did seem to end once i added drip clean to my water but i can't say for sure because harvest came shortly and i stopped using them.

I also had problems with them flooding sometimes. I suspect it was because my soil is airy with lots of perlite and sensors caught an airpocket or something of the sort.

I guess my net on blumat is that they do work as advertised if conditions are perfect. though they definitely need to make the plastic connectors MUCH more durable. I suspect the net with autopots would be similar.