Early Miss Auto-HELP

You got a lot of questions to answer here so ill give it a shot. as far as grow media goes you have a lot of options. if you are gonna go soil I would grab the best quality local soil you can afford and some basic nutes to get started. fox farms happy frog and ocean forest are two great soils to use together. happy frog is a lighter mix for seedlings so they don't get nute burned. ocean forest is very nutrient-dense for when the plants get bigger. fox farms or general hydroponics trios are good starter nute options. I personally use megacrop because its very cheap but still very very good. megacrop is a dry nute that lasts a long time. I'm on grow number six with enough to finish a seventh grow still. because you are running an auto make use you plant in the largest pot you are gonna use and don't do any transplanting. this saves the plant a lot of stress and will increase yields. if you go with the two soils I mentioned, fill your pot to the top with ocean forest and then dig a decent size hole in the middle and fill it with happy frog. if you use another soil you can just go ahead and fill the pot and plant in it. You could also grow in coco coir which is a hydroponics medium that acts like soil. it has no nute so you would provide them in every watering you do from the very beginning. its a very forgiving medium as you can water very frequently and not overwater. you just want to make sure you keep it moist and not let it dry out at all. typically when watering you would fully saturate the pot and then keep watering until you get about 20% of the water that you put in as runoff out the bottom of your pot. For a grow tent just grab anything off amazon that fits your budget and the space you want to grow in. if your budget is small get a small tent. vivosun is the brand I use and have no issues with. one great thing about autos is that they don't care about light leaks. how much light and the distance of the light really depends on the size of your grow space and your budget. I highly recommend quantum board style leds. they are more expensive up front than other lighting but use half the wattage for the same light output meaning you pay half as much on your electric bill every month. they also produce amazing quality flowers. I recommend buying from kingbrite off Alibaba to save some money. their lights are top notch quality and its what I personally use with really good results. my last grow was about 20oz under a 480w quantum board light in a 4x4. now depending on your tent size you'll want a different wattage light. with quantum boards you want 30w/sq foot of grow area. so in a 2x2ft area you want 120w, 3x3 you want 270w, and in a 4x4 you want 480w like I have currently. i usually keep my quantum boards around 18" from my plants and as they grow the closest I let them get is 12". if you go with other lighting the distant you keep it will be different. I'm not familiar with other lighting so I'm not sure of exact distances but I know hps you want to keep quite high above your plants for most of the grow. like 2.5-3ft above the plants.