Grow Mediums cleaning autopot systems. Is CLR ok?

[lunarman]

Crud build-up is usually organic, not salts from tap water. What are you feeding the plants? Do your feeds include carbs, or complex organics?

no man. no carbs. pretty much just Megacrop. I don't even use the Sweet Candy any more because I thought that might be causing it.

 

[HemiSync]

that is amazing. what the hell am I doing wrong? I will take some pics of my trays/valves/res now that they are all pulled out and ready to be cleaned for the next go. Will post them in a bit. And it can't be my water. I use 50% bottled RO that has like 3 PPM and 50% tap that is medium hard water. Although maybe it is the 50% tap water that gives me the build up.

I never understand the differences we see when using basically the same things. Water, nutrients, growing medium, and growing systems can be all the same but we see differences in pH, EC, clogs, and cleanup. We see it all the time, one person uses MC and their pH creeps up while another uses it and the pH creeps down. I have used rainwater, hard tap water, and distilled water with Advananced, BioTabs, Technaflora, and Greenleaf nutrients and only problem I ever had was the occasional clog, which were worse with AN than any other nutrient.

My personal favorite is fresh rainwater when I can get it. Where I live it comes down at a neutral pH of 7.0 and an EC of 0.03 or pretty much zero. Distilled water causes way too many pH issues for me and costs electricity to make and my tap water at an EC of 0.44 or 220ppm while not the worse has to be bubbled for the chlorine and treated for chloramines before you can use it. But I have used them all without scrubbing my trays and most I have ever taken to an autovalve is a toothbrush. Mind you my trays are not brand new black anymore but they do what they are supposed to. I tried to go cheap with some bargain 1/4” tubing once but then just purchased 50’ of what Autopots sell and have had fewer clogs for it.

I look forward to your pics of this cause I can’t imagine how this is happening to you. My worse cleanup on an autovalve was after I let the algae go wild in my tray out in the greenhouse. Yuck!

 

[HemiSync]

Sorry, like I’m not long winded enough, but another random thought just crossed my mind. Get two autopot growers to use the same everything, seeds, water, nutrients, pH adjusters, lights, I mean everything and run identical grows with lots of journaling. I bet you will still see different issues crop up with the only difference being environment and growing style. Now that would be some testing I would like to see the official testers here try. If you could use sealed rooms and try to maintain the same growing style those differences might start to be minimized.

 

[lunarman]

I never understand the differences we see when using basically the same things. Water, nutrients, growing medium, and growing systems can be all the same but we see differences in pH, EC, clogs, and cleanup. We see it all the time, one person uses MC and their pH creeps up while another uses it and the pH creeps down. I have used rainwater, hard tap water, and distilled water with Advananced, BioTabs, Technaflora, and Greenleaf nutrients and only problem I ever had was the occasional clog, which were worse with AN than any other nutrient.

My personal favorite is fresh rainwater when I can get it. Where I live it comes down at a neutral pH of 7.0 and an EC of 0.03 or pretty much zero. Distilled water causes way too many pH issues for me and costs electricity to make and my tap water at an EC of 0.44 or 220ppm while not the worse has to be bubbled for the chlorine and treated for chloramines before you can use it. But I have used them all without scrubbing my trays and most I have ever taken to an autovalve is a toothbrush. Mind you my trays are not brand new black anymore but they do what they are supposed to. I tried to go cheap with some bargain 1/4” tubing once but then just purchased 50’ of what Autopots sell and have had fewer clogs for it.

I look forward to your pics of this cause I can’t imagine how this is happening to you. My worse cleanup on an autovalve was after I let the algae go wild in my tray out in the greenhouse. Yuck!

Speaking of YUK. Well this might not be yuck, but its not pretty that's for sure. Looks like dried up toxic pollution sludge. I should maybe try 100% bottled RO but that is expensive. I already use a lot of RO for my big ass console humidifier I run during veg for dialing in VPD. But maybe I should start out with 100% RO this next run for a couple of weeks and see what happens and if its all clean I'll have to look at getting an RO filter for my tap water source (which is another building unfortunately and would be a bitch to transfer in the winter). I don't get a lot of clogs but I do get some. They are easy for me to fix so its not a big deal.

 

[BII]

That looks like simple salts/nutrients build-up on surfaces. That's fairly normal. You just need to wipe things down more often; that worked for me; with all that really matters being the valves. I presume the build-up is a 'natural' by-product of feed level going up and down and the biofilm or surface microbial growth providing a matrix/support for the salts/nutes accumulation. Since the crud is likely rather insoluble in water, it has no effect on anything other than looking ugly or if affecting valve function.

I would presume the variations seen with different types of crud deposition with much the same grow environments are due to different microbial environments, the biofilms that grow on the damp plastic surfaces.

 

[midIN]

Hydroguard helps with maintenance on the flow and helps keep the build up down like that.

 

[lunarman]

Hydroguard helps with maintenance on the flow and helps keep the build up down like that.

I'm using Drip Clean. I think very similar to hydroguard when it comes to helping keep lines clean.

 

[midIN]

From house and garden? Hear great things about it.

 

[lunarman]

From house and garden? Hear great things about it.

Yes, that is the Drip Clean product I use.

 

[HemiSync]

Speaking of YUK. Well this might not be yuck, but its not pretty that's for sure. Looks like dried up toxic pollution sludge. I should maybe try 100% bottled RO but that is expensive. I already use a lot of RO for my big ass console humidifier I run during veg for dialing in VPD. But maybe I should start out with 100% RO this next run for a couple of weeks and see what happens and if its all clean I'll have to look at getting an RO filter for my tap water source (which is another building unfortunately and would be a bitch to transfer in the winter). I don't get a lot of clogs but I do get some. They are easy for me to fix so its not a big deal.

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Holy CRUD! That is a lot of buildup. When I take apart my tray next time I will take a picture but I honestly don’t think I’ve ever seen it that bad.