My only concerns are nutrient build up and when the plants are underdeveloped you will have to top feed as well. Would you just run nutrients the entire time like hydro? Also when the plants are large I can imagine changing these out probably weekly isn't much less work than changing out a hydro reservoir at that point. Do these actually create less work than traditional top feed watering? Or is it more about keeping a consistent wet dry cycles? I'm intrigued but not so sure it would be less work than top feeding.
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I see that this has never been answered, so I’ll jump in. I have a full grow under my belt using the AC Infinity self watering bases with FFOF soil and perlite. I’m a convert to bottom-feeding and I’m sold on it! I did absolutely zero top-feeding or top-watering. Once the roots reach the bottom I simply filled the reservoirs weekly with nutrient solution and topped the reservoirs off every day or two depending on water usage. I do recommend a thorough flush between veg and flower to get those salts out of the medium (I needed one flush). Except for that flush, these make growing simple. I did not clean them out weekly as recommended either, but that wasn’t difficult at all. I would not use them with a SCROG net though as it would be difficult to remove the bases for cleaning and new nutrients.
My current grow is using these same bases with Coco Loco and perlite this time. The benefit with coco is that I don’t need to do high frequency fertigation and I’m not constantly watering to 20% runoff as recommended with coco. So it’s much more efficient with water and nutrients because there is no runoff. There is no wet/dry cycle either…..the plant uses what she needs.
if a plant is in need of nutrients, just increase the nutrients in the reservoir. You can foliar spray too if it’s a crisis, but i never experienced that.
I do recommend modifying the bases so that you can insert a ph pen and ppm pen into the reservoir without removing the plants. I also recommend removing them from the bases every few days or else the roots can grow into the wicks.
Stock base unit with plastic grid covering reservoir fill…..and then a photo of modified fill
Wicks can be added or removed to control the flow of nutrient solution to the fabric pots. I’ve added a few extra wicks here. The idea is to get the bottom 1/3 of the fabric pot permanently moist. The very white wicks are extra wicks….the other brown older wicks are the standard
If you’re looking at bottom feeders, the other model that’s worth considering is the GroBucket. Again, a very simple and effective bottom feeder with a smaller reservoir and less soil than the AC Infinity self watering bases. I’ve used both but I like the AC Infinity self watering bases better because I prefer fabric pots to plastic buckets….but both are equally effective grow solutions.
Looking forward to results!
(even though I am a traitor and not using SIPS atm lol)