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Cheap Nutrient Line for Commercial and Home Grows?

exploziv

pure dynamite
Administrator
Veteran
Since recipes on that site are designed as cheaper analogues of certain products, I'd say thats how it works, yeah. But it never hurts to check EC, just to make sure.
 

kingape

Active member
Can you please check if I am making a mistake with mixing calculations

According to Bill,

Step 1: Dissolve 130 ounces or 8 pounds 2 ounces of Peters in 1000 gallons to obtain the following concentrations:

N (All Nitrate) - 50 ppm
P - 48 ppm
K - 216 ppm
Mg - 31 ppm
S - 125 ppm
Fe - 3 ppm
Manganese - .50 ppm
Zinc - .15 ppm
Copper - .15 ppm
Boron - .50 ppm
Molybdenum - .10 ppm

And the corresponding dry salt mix equivalent of Jacks 5-12-26 is

Magnesium Nitrate: 32.34490%
Potassium Sulfate: 22.09204%
Magnesium Sulfate: 21.20902%
Dipotassium Phosphate: 18.60148%
Mono Ammonium Phosphate: 3.64812%
Fe-chelated 18%: 1.36693%
Bo-chelated 15%: 0.27337%
Mn-chelated 18%: 0.22777%
Mo-Chelated 8%: 0.10252%
Cu-chelated 17%: 0.07234%
Zn-chelated 20%: 0.06151%


I am not considering the micros (Fe,Bo,Mn,Mo,Cu,Zn) for my calculations as I will be adding a micro mix.

Assuming the strength of the mixture Bill has posted to be equivalent to Jacks, at 3.64gm/gallon, the gram values for 1000 gallons work out to be



Magnesium Nitrate: 32.34490% X 3.64 X 1000 = 1177.35436 gms
Potassium Sulfate: 22.09204% = 804.150256 gms
Magnesium Sulfate: 21.20902% = 772.008328 gms
Dipotassium Phosphate: 18.60148% = 677.093872 gms
Mono Ammonium Phosphate: 3.64812% = 132.791568 grams


However according to Hydrobuddy the ppm for the above weights and addition to 1000 gallons works out as this
Hydrobuddy_Bill.JPG


The target ppm for NPK is off by a significant margin.

What am I doing wrong?
 

exploziv

pure dynamite
Administrator
Veteran
I am too high to do or follow calculations that complex right now, but looking over your post, one important mistake is using KH2PO4 instead of MAP, which is (NH[SUB]4[/SUB])(H[SUB]2[/SUB]PO[SUB]4[/SUB]). It even has ammonium in the name, yet your input had no N in the chemical formula. Easy to see. And it's about all I see at a quick look, but there may be other mistakes like that as well.
 

kingape

Active member
Ahh!

I selected Potassium Monobasic Phosphate instead of Ammonium Monobasic Phosphate.

The ppm values do match the ppm of Jacks 5-12-26 now, but not in the percentage proportion that Bill has.

According to Hydrobuddy, to get the Jacks 5-12-26 target ppm, the dry salt mixture should be

Hydrobuddy_Jacks5-12-26.JPG


Apart from a sulphur deficiency, everything matches

Bill's percentages in Hydrobuddy give the below ppm chart which is considerably different than Jacks 5-12-26

Hydrobuddy_Bill.JPG
 

BillFarthing

Active member
Veteran
Thank you for double checking my work in Hydrobuddy. I have found errors in a bunch of online formulas. I'm not surprised people have found errors in mine.

The commercial nutrient button and main page don't always come out correct the first time. Sometimes, I have had to go to the results/weight page and manually tweak weights to get the correct numbers.
 

kingape

Active member
Thank you for double checking my work in Hydrobuddy. I have found errors in a bunch of online formulas. I'm not surprised people have found errors in mine.

The commercial nutrient button and main page don't always come out correct the first time. Sometimes, I have had to go to the results/weight page and manually tweak weights to get the correct numbers.

Hey Bill!

Thank you for the amazing resource you have put together! It has been of much use for me!

GreenGenes Garden recently youtube'd the ppm of Jacks 3-2-1 and I entered them in the Hydrobuddy software and opted for a Part A & B solution, could you give me your views on it.
 

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BillFarthing

Active member
Veteran
Keep on plugging away! Your ratios look good.

I usually start with the University of Florida tomato stage 3 recipe. Get your NO3-:NH4+ ratio 10:1 to control pH.

Then I get calcium levels slightly higher than nitrates. You can dial back your magnesium nitrate (Magnesium 60-75) or substitute Cal Prime to achieve this.

After these tweaks, it is just playing with weights to hit targets.
 

ExNavyInSTL

Active member
Bill:

I am new here and new to growing. I have read through all 32 pages of this thread TWICE.

Your keep-it-basic philosophy resonates perfectly with me. I just finished up my first grow and I made just about every rookie mistake you can read in these forums. Translated = a lot of money wasted.

Along the way, I found GreenGenes on Youtube who preaches the solid value that Jack's 3-2-1 offers. He also toys around with it at times.

But at the basic level he runs at the following (early on in his videos):

Part A: 3.6
Part B: 2.4
Epsom: 1.2

In one video he modified his formula for flowering to:

2:2:2:1.2 (MKP is the 1.2)

Nonetheless, I hitched my horse to his wagon and bought Jack's 3-2-1, MKP, Tribus, some Great White, etc.

Also, from this thread I realize since I am growing in soil, combined with using Mr. Fulvic, I may need to dial down the recipe 15 - 20%. I'll probably start at half the first few weeks and ramp up as the soil starts running low.

Thankfully, for this thread, I just returned my dry "Humic" acid (via Amazon) and bought some Mr. Fulvic.

I also intend to buy that calcium with no Nitrogen that you mentioned.

Anyway, I'm sure I'll be back with plenty of "Help Me" requests. And by all means, if I have said something here that seems like a red flag let me know.

Thanks for starting this thread.

ExNavy

When I am consulting, I get asked for a complete but cheap nutrient lineup that is suitable for commercial usage. This lineup can also be scaled for the home grower to save some serious cash.

You start with a salt base nutrient. Jack's classic hydro, Masterblend, Jack's Nutrients TAP or Growmore soluble powders also work depending on your access.
 

dramamine

Well-known member
If anyone's looking for CalPrime, you'll find it's out of stock everywhere....like waaay out apparently. There's a good substitute at CHN called PureCal. The numbers are a bit different, but it still has more calcium than the usual calnit. I was glad to find that stuff.
 

kingape

Active member
Keep on plugging away! Your ratios look good.

I usually start with the University of Florida tomato stage 3 recipe. Get your NO3-:NH4+ ratio 10:1 to control pH.

Then I get calcium levels slightly higher than nitrates. You can dial back your magnesium nitrate (Magnesium 60-75) or substitute Cal Prime to achieve this.

After these tweaks, it is just playing with weights to hit targets.


Hi Bill!

Just to make sure the PK Boost should add around 50ppm to P and 100ppm to K right?

Also any recipes for Tribus?
 

mexweed

Active member
Veteran
personally I wouldn't waste time on that stuff when using salts/in hydro especially with mr fulvic, those products are designed to target nutrient deposits in soil and feed on them making them more available for uptake
 

kingape

Active member
personally I wouldn't waste time on that stuff when using salts/in hydro especially with mr fulvic, those products are designed to target nutrient deposits in soil and feed on them making them more available for uptake

Greengenes recommends it.

bill what's your take on it?
 

f-e

Well-known member
Mentor
Veteran
I had ordered (megacrop) 1 part A and 1 part B, but part B is 10 times more expensive than Yara's CALCINIT, and it has more calcium
Calnit Yara = 15.5N and 26.5Ca Calnit MegaCrop = 15.5N and 19 Ca

26.5 CaO is 19 Ca
Seems quite a coincidence.
 

maryjaneismyfre

Well-known member
Veteran
It is not...well spotted 100% correct.
From their website (yara) :

Total N Nitrate N Ammoniacal N Calcium CaO
15.5% 14.4% 1.1% 26.3%
Solubility (20 ̊C ) EC (1g/l at 20 ̊C) pH (1% solution) Colour
1200g/l water 1.2mS/cm 6.0 white

And from another of their websites..


Nutrients
  • N 15.5%
    • NO[SUB]3[/SUB]14.4%
    • NH[SUB]4[/SUB]1.1%
  • Ca 18.8%
From wikipedia, the basic reference:

The fertilizer grade (15.5-0-0 + 19% Ca) is popular in the greenhouse and hydroponics trades; it contains ammonium nitrate and water, as the "double salt" 5Ca(NO3)2⋅NH4NO3⋅10H2O
7a3b8dcb819f436fc3c7df70be248ad111406aa4
. This is called calcium ammonium nitrate."

One could just work it all out with a periodic table and a little bit of chemistry knowledge. That's what we had to do before software did it for us, or made the mistakes on our behalf. We do sap sample tests and my N reading must be multiplied by a factor to work out sap N PPM from nitrate PPM reading. Same same..

Calcium in yara is same as the rest as its the same stuff, calcium ammonia nitrate, made in Israel, South Africa or the States, no matter its the same stuff. If ammonia has been removed its different stuff, the purity can vary but most available are in the same range, calcium is 19% or 18.8% rather rounded up to 19... moral of the story. don't be mixing up your own nutes if you dont have a basic understanding of chemistry, unless you are sharp in that regard leave formulation up to the agronomists or chemically minded or trained, though that said I've seen experienced agronomists make the exact same mistake in formulating recipes for clients, and seen it more than once...Its a common mistake, compounded by some geographical regions by standard listing metal oxides percentages as the metals percentage, its not just calcium, one must be looking for it or else mistakes get compounded in calculations. LOL one complete F up in your crop due to calculation error would cause losses that would pay for years of nutes at shelf prices LOL, even at inflated prices of for example GH, i could grow way more the value of nutes in bottle, of weed at conservative prices or to put it another way if I spent $100 on bottled nutes I could grow $5000 worth of weed on an OK recipe and $10000 dollars of weed on a pukka recipe, so why am I worrying about saving $80-$90 and if I don't have enough basic knowledge to not make mistakes risking the entire crop and just learning to grow weed more efficiently would make the cost redundant. I have quite a few large licensed facilities running off 1000L tanks of my liquid nutrients that I sell them and why would they? They get a huge bulk discount sure but it costs them many times more than formulating themselves, why would they? The answer lies in them trying either to make their own before or running off a standard commercial recipe before and getting substandard results compared to what they get on my formulation, even if it costs many times more, it is justified by producing that much more crop for them that the extra outlay is irrelevant...even at inflated retail prices my cost of weed in nutes would be 1-1.5% and power would be 10-15%...And im not even too worried about saving power..I am more worried about how I can grow more top shelf and less mids in a shorter amount of time for the same power...or less power if it does not mean less light..but nute cost ....LOL whatever...increasing yield by 10-15% is ten times more money in your pocket than saving your entire nutes cost, for most growers it is easy to do a little bit of research and increase yield by that much, by the same stroke doing your entire cycle in 10-15% less time puts the same savings ten times your nutes cost in your pocket...Thank me later..
 

BillFarthing

Active member
Veteran
personally I wouldn't waste time on that stuff when using salts/in hydro especially with mr fulvic, those products are designed to target nutrient deposits in soil and feed on them making them more available for uptake

Fulvic is totally soluble and suitable for hydroponic application. You are thinking of humic acid, which is only soluble at an alkaline pH for soil. Just don't use strong oxidizers like hypochlorous acid or H2O2. Southern Ag Garden Friendly Fungicide is the super concentrated version of Hydroguard to replace those products. Fulvic is an excellent addition to hydro nutrients.

PureCal is good Cal Nit, but is ONLY nitrates. You just have to make sure you add an NH4+ source like monoammonium phosphate to balance the pH when doing formulations.

The ratio on MKP is 50 ppm P, 63 ppm K.

Tribus is a bacterial innoculant. It is suitable for all fertilizer lineups as long as you don't use anything that sterilizes the root zone.
 

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