Is there any way to force gels to grow slightly larger? I have a stash of ausgel blues that are topping out at 7-7.1mm very consistantly after a week in water.
Iv got annoyingly soft water, for what its worth.
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I believe they grow to a predetermined sizeā¦
Happy to be corrected though 
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Hey @Chapinb
Unfortunately @Friendly_Fire is on the money mate.
Gels are predisposed as to their full growth size from the factory.
If thereās no difference in size between 2 hours, 4, 6, 8 or overnightā¦ā¦ they aināt gonna get any bigger!
Try different brands until you find the right gels for your requirements.
Rule of thumb states that more expensive hard gels are designed to only grow to smaller 7.0-7.2mm sizes, whereas cheaper hardened gels will still average out to 7.5mm + depending upon timed growth practices 
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Can anyone tell me why War Interest gearboxes always do this?? 
Over itā¦ swapping out this piece of crap box for something better.
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Because they are shit 
I had same trouble and replaced it with a Laylax Prometheus 
The other gripe I had was the top rib screws. Either fall out or split the rib.
Every time I try an AEG I always get feeding issues. I wonder if itās the gels being too wet/excess water or the type of gels being used?
A little more information might let us help you out a bit. 
Could be a lot of things, but weād need to know what gels are you using, the blaster youāre using them in, whether itās been modded, battery voltage youāre using, etc
If youāre gels are very wet it wonāt help the issueā¦
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I agree could be anything tbh from mag problems to nozzle rubber detached itself. Gels oversized. If it used to work fine then you have to see whatās changed.
stock LDT HK416D (nylon gears) 7.4v battery. Tactoys Ronin gels.
My standard old growing method:
Add gels into a 2 litre Coke bottle and fill with water.
Leave to grow 4 hours, pour excess water, leaving maybe a 1/4 of the water in the bottom of the bottle, and then throw into the fridge for safe storage.
When gels are required, pour required amount out of the bottle through a kitchen sieve and give a good shake to get rid of excess water.
Can then pour into speed loaders or smaller containers if travelling out to a field for a day, where they should still dry off any small excess water the longer you are running around with them.
If Iām at home and want to use them immediately, I will pour them out of the sieve into a kitchen towel and roll them around a bit to dry off any excess, but this still leaves them moist enough to useā¦ā¦ donāt use paper towels or anything that will dry them out completely, as they still need some moisture to lubricate the barrel.
Try different gels in your blaster.
Many blasters are very picky on the types of gels that perform best with them.
Just because everyone else is chasing āthe bestā, āHardest ā or āmost popularā gels, doesnāt mean that they are going to work with your blaster.
Most āhardenedā gels grow to smaller sizes than regular gels, which causes jamming/feeding/performance and accuracy issues in stock blasters designed to run 7-8mm gels.
The stock standard mag wheels, feed tubes, t-pieces, barrels are all designed with large clearances to fit the bigger gels.
If you try running smaller Ultra/Hardened gels that tend to only grow anywhere from 6.8-7.1mm diameter, suddenly the mag wheels canāt pick them up properly, they can jam in feed tubes and double stack into the t-piece gap between the nozzle and barrel.
Even if they do feed cleanly, accuracy and FPS can be woefully bad because they are still too small for the ID of the 7.5mm barrels.
This allows too much air to escape past the gels and they can ābounceā around inside the barrel causing them to come out whatever direction they want.
Use correct size gels to suit your blaster.
Try different hardness/types/brands.
Get yourself some simple measuring tools and a chronograph so that you can accurately compare what works best for you.
Good luck and let us know how you go 
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Sweet. Iāll give it a try. Can I seal the bottle while they grow or leave the bottle open? Just wondering if that causes an issue with gel growth.
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Oh your over here too lol. Well thing is if you mis judge how many gels you put in a sealed container they are going to squash split not good.
Outside air combined with water makes them grow and absorb water. Drying them off they will still shed water over a few hours out in the air. Sealing them up in an air tight container with little water you can get away with months in a controlled low temp no UV enviroment and they will not change size. Too much water and they can keep growing becoming oversize everytime you open that air tight bottle.
I havenāt tried tactoys ronin gels myself but from what I can gather they seem to be pretty hard and good for GBB pistols something similar to AKA gels.
If you dump them in a bucket and grow them for a day they will end up oversize and jam. Try growing a small batch for 2hrs 30mins and see what happens. Unless you have calipers to measure or those sizing sieves.
Yeah exactly my comments about how indiscriminate gel growth times and completely random results that can be found from so many different brands/types of gel sizes/consistency.
Itās pretty much stuff that we have to actually scientifically test growth times and measure results based off of how all the different types of gels react/perform differently across the whole spectrum of products available.
Hence why I always recommend spending some time and money on measuring equipment, sieves and chronographs to properly work out whatever works best for every individual application.
Quite funny when I used to post reviews of brand new latest release blasters punching 260-280 FPS on shithouse supplied Blue/Green OOTB cheap soft 7-8mm gelsā¦ā¦ whereas testing the same stock blasters only produced 170-190 FPS and a heap of accuracy/feeding issues with expensive aftermarket hardened gels!
Not dissing hardened high performance gels, only saying that stock blasters cannot successfully run on them unless modified to suit.
99% of my brand new breakdown reviews were always Chronoād with crappy 7-8mm soft supplied standard gelsā¦ā¦ which always gave some awesome results compared with many aftermarket performance gels.
Everything only just boils down to individual experiences at the end of the day, which unbelievably also includes simply trying out the cheap basic crap that is available for all of the generic products available out there.
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i have calipersā¦somewhere 
EDIT: Every time i have ātriedā growing gels I now know that it was incorrect. They were grown in a sealed container with a closed lid (so they werenāt the right size) and when taken to be used they werenāt dried off and they did seem to compress when in a magazine.
gels were stored submerged in a sealed container (a double walled drinking flask).
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Thatās cool, itās something for you to try @boit I forgot to mention water quality can give headaches in size variation. Some places have high chlorine and flouride content in the town supplied tap water depending where you are which could interfere.
Iāve only ever used rainwater so definitely has none of that. Bottled drinking water would be another option.
Docbob is right. I went through a range of the coloured ausgels to get my Aug feeding nicely. The yellow ones were poop too small jammed up in the mag yet the blue ausgels grew just that bit bigger and didnāt skip a beat. Mates acr also had feeding trouble with yellow ausgel, swapped to ausgel blue and ran like a dream.
Just a bit of trial and error, youāll find itās favourite food eventually.
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It makes absolutely no difference if in a sealed/unsealed container.
I always grew my gels in those 2 litre Coke bottles with the lids fully tightened down as they were laying on their sides in the fridge.
They soak up water no matter what the pressure/vacuum or whatever environment they are in.
Like @Maiphut commentedā¦. water quality can have a lot to do with how gels grow and react in the real world environment.
Thereās been much discussion about growing in rainwater, tap water, mineral water, de-ionised water etc etcā¦ā¦ but at the end of the day, itās all about learning how gels grow in the water that you have available to you!
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Iāll definitely try bottled wotah.
ngl feeding issues made me weary of AEGs.
I actually grew my gels back in the day in distilled water bought from Supercheapā¦ 
Didnāt take me long to wake up to the fact that it was a big added expense I didnāt need 
I use filtered tap water now.
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good to know. back to experimenting.
It is a problem with sealed, in the past a smart cookie tryed to grow a whole packet of gels in a 375ml bottle and wondered why they had a problem. Unsealed gives them room to grow during the grow process with a bit of agitation to avoid deforming or irregular sizes.