Advanced Nutrients, Love it or Hate it, State your claim!

[tester]

Look at say a pair of jeans, yes you could make them yourself but really are you? So you pay for the convenience of going to the store and buying them right there. No different then buying a set of AN/GH food

It's very far from a pair of jeans mate, it's more like a lemonade.
Big Mike buys some Lemon Juice and Sugar, adds a lot of water, puts it in a plastic bottle with a label, and spends a lot on :

• advertisements
• packaging
• shipping
• storage
• licenses
• wages
• profit
• company upkeeping
• Big Mike's whores
• etc...

That's a lot of additional cost, while the product remains the same, no real value added, only the costs are more, and you have to pay that.
Storage and shipping cost are 90% more compared to fertilizer salts because the extra water, it weights more, takes more space etc, and these were the smallest extra expenses.


You can buy the same Lemon Juice and Sugar, or even organic lemons to make your own juice or whatever, and mix your own lemonade for the fraction of these costs.
This way you will know whats in it, and won't have to pay companies like AN to tell you lies about a product (this is what marketing is about)


You can buy the same (or better) fertilizer salts that AN, then you can make not just that product but almost any fertilizer solution from any company from these same salts.
Or you can make and fine tune your own unique profile, based on you own environments, just buy using different amounts from these same salts. Or you can buy premixed fert salts then just add water...

If someone can follow AN's feeding schedule (eg. add 4ml Bloom and 2ml Grow to a liter water) then he also can do the same with the fertilizer salts (eg. add 6g Calcium nitrate and 2.5g Universol Blue to 10 liters of water).
You don't have to be a chemist to do that, do you?

There would be only one reason to buy a ready made fertilizer solution: if there is some real research behind it but so far I haven't seen any.

For God's shake : the nutrient profile for cannabis (drug type) is still unknown, no real research has been made to find it, while these companies are making fortunes from selling nutrients said to be tailored for cannabis?

 

[Bud Bug]

This is all true but I do absolutely know retail mark ups in hydro are 100% across the board for consumables.

Yes but even at 110% a 1L bottle of GH Bloom/Grow is approx $6.99 and sold at $16.99 BUT because of the type of clientele that hydro stores cater to, you have to have HUGE walk in traffic just to make proper profit and you CAN"T sell the 1L GH Bottle at $29.99 as no one will shop at your store unless you in but fuck no where and you're the only store.

I can tell you that a store that is doing 50% margin each month is not very busy and will not last long. Typical margin for a hydro store in Canada is gonna be 30-35% with about 10-35 customers per day these days, 5+ years ago those numbers would have been 35-100 customers per day. This is why so many questionable stores have closed down over the last three years in BC.

my issue is with the pack of lies some companies use to sell goods.

I'm not here to dispute that because thats 70% of the hydro manufacturing industry.

You will never hear a Nike Ad where they seriously say John was a 100 pound weakling and then he brought some Nikes. He went to a running meet and broke the 100 meter world record and he'd never even won a race before.

Of-course not as they would be sued for false advertising. But even then there are companies that don't do that kind of advertising which should be supported for that.

 

[Madrus Rose]

OK , following up....here's AN's CEO Big Mike's vid on--> "the great myth of phosphorus-exposed "
http://www.growersunderground.com/blog/hydroponics-articles/the-great-phosphorus-myth-exposed

and the PDF file for the above
http://www.growersunderground.com/PhosphorusMyth.pdf

love the charts of NPK uptake & the tissue samples specifically taken from different strains of canabis at
certain times during growth stages ..one close up in the vid shows the leaf sample analysis
were done by Hedron Analytical Inc in BC
http://www.hedron.ca/

Big Mike goes on to dispute a Larry Brooke interview in Urban Grower Mag on the misconception of Flower transition & need for curtailing N & increasing P ....out of this segment he makes some interesting references to a Dr Rush & Dr. Cal C. Hermann who apparently developed at UC Davis 1978 (?) the first hydroponic formulations for the "general 3part" nute series which Larry Brooke of General Hydro based his GH 3-part formula's on. DR Hermann is listed as chief research scientist at GH , former NASA researcher & has done some interesting work ..as has Larry Brooke .

Found little on either of these PHD's or their University treatise but an interesting collaboration between Dr Hermann & Larry Brooke here over on PatchTek.... a start-up patent pending company who's mission is :

PatchTech
http://www.patchtek.com/inventors.html

<<< Patchtek’s mission is the development and licensing of a transdermal cannabinoid patch worldwide. Patchtek currently holds multiple patents throughout Europe, the United States, Canada and Australia on a transdermal patch to administer cannibinoids across the skin.
Patchtek is undergoing pre-clinical studies for this device indicated for use of various diseases and for treatment of conditions such as neuropathic pain, nausea, vomiting, anorexia and spasticity. >>>

* first time viewing Advanced Nutes "Big Mike" & his vid's...love the charts !

** Interesting start up company by Larry & Dr Cal Hermann of GH ...seems they are very much involved with cannabis , how could Big Mike have missed this ? Or maybe they are
interested only in synthetic produced cannibinoids .

 

[Bud Bug]

You can buy the same (or better) fertilizer salts that AN, then you can make not just that product but almost any fertilizer solution from any company from these same salts.
Or you can make and fine tune your own unique profile, based on you own environments, just buy using different amounts from these same salts. Or you can buy premixed fert salts then just add water...

Thats all dandy but thats only 2-5% of the customers that would do that. No one really wants to mix their own salts when the base foods are already cheap compared to the ROI you get out of them.

Even if someone is running 1 1000W light and pulling 1.5 lb out of that every 10 weeks and they buy the following

Flora Nova 1L $29.99
Floralicious Plus 500ml $29.99
Grotek Vitamax 1L $27.99
NutriLife Heavy Weight (molases) 1L $14.99
Gh Kool Bloom liquid 1L $26.99
Potassium Silicate 1L $14.99
PH UP 1L $19.99
PH Down 1L $19.99
Gro Zyme 1L $29.99

=213.91+ taxes.

That food will last two crops +

With those two crops minus the clones and hydro ($600) + the food say $840 total a grower would make about $5000 with about $4200 profit. Pretty good ROI for what the grower paid in food.

 

[Madrus Rose]

Ionic Nutes verticle/recirculating ...think genetics, longer veg & larger pot size/hydroton has anything to do with yields?

Make a great ad for AN ...but sorry, Heath used Ionic
https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=181239&do=filter&fid=114890

and

 

[tester]

Cost comparison at GC
http://www.gardenscure.com/420/hydr...am-commercial-nutrients-vs-team-custom-8.html


GH nutes

5 cups Micro (6 gal - $149.95) enough for 19 rez changes
5 cups Grow (6 gal - $129.95) enough for 19 rez changes
5 cups Bloom (6 gal - $129.95) enough for 19 rez changes
4 cups Diamond Nectar (6 gal - $169.95) nough for 24 rez changes
579 $ for all.

28.43 $ TOTAL for a 200 gal rez
Makes 3800 gal
​

Custom nutes
Micro Nute Mix 20g (4 pounds - 31$) - enough for 90 rez changes
Potassium Phosphate 200g (20 pounds - 58$) - enough for 45 rez changes
Magnesium Sulfate 200g (20 pounds - 27$) - enough for 45 rez changes
Magnesium Nitrate 200g (17,5 pounds - 28$) - enough for 40 rez changes
Potassium Nitrate 200g (20 pounds - 37$) - enough for 45 rez changes
Calcium Nitrate 500g (20 pounds - 21$) - enough for 22 rez changes
202$ for all.

4.65 $ TOTAL for a 200 gal rez
Makes about 8000 gal (twice as much as with GH)​

AN would cost even more than GH.

Yes, even if you spray gold dust on your plant you'd still be making profit, but what is the point to do it?

Fertilizer solutions made by these companies are
- inconsistent (see Big Bud's lab analysis with the missing Mg made by Oregon , or Sensi's nute changing time to time on integralhydro)
- the quality and quantity of the components are unknown

The bottom line is:
You don't pay that money for the product itself, you pay for it's marketing and advertisements and all that shit listed in my prev. post.
The only reason people are buying fert solutions is because of the HYPE.


About this "research":
DATE of Analysis: 05 March 2003
And they came out with it 6 years later, as it were something new. If one of them had a degree they should already knew that any plant material will contain similar ratios of NPK, test any dicot's leaf and the level of P will be lower than N and K, this is not new.

Some problems with the "research" itself:
The amount of the applied nutrients are unknown (a leaf's nutrient content strongly depends on the fertilizers it was fed)
It looks like the analysis were made from a single leaf (based on the weight of the samples)
Where was it taken from? A bottom leaf nute content will differ from a middle or a top one. Anyway, one leaf is not enough, a whole plant analysis would have been better, 1 lousy leaf does not proves nothing, lots of nutes are in the flowers/stalks/roots in different ratios than in the leafs, that's why a whole plant analysis have to be made in these cases.
It's totally amateur and unprofessional.

 

[orangutang]

Yeah, Heath really did well with the Ionic. Ionic is the cheapest on the hydro market in the UK and it does work really well, best plant I ever grew for taste and smell (most stinky plant I've ever run into) was this thing and I grew it with Ionic hydro nutes in a hempy style bucket of perlite with no additives apart from some Maxicrop first 4 weeks of flower. Can't get more basic than that unless you drop the Maxicrop.

I always say that all nutes work it's just about working out how to use them so i just pick the cheapest that have everything the plant needs. I'd still be using Ionic if I hadn't picked up a load of Vitalink freebies. When these are used up I'll probably just buy more Ionic, it works, it's cheap and I hardly ever have to use any ph up or down cos my ph stays 5.8 to 6 after mixing the Ionic. To me, simplicity and results are what counts and I know from experience that all the different boosters you can buy will do very little to improve your crop, far better to invest you money in improving your environment and your genetics.

 

[tester]

The only reasonable product from AN is pH Up and Down, based on it's MSDS.
In fact it's to good to be true.
This is why I ask anyone who has these to weight them please.
Use a syringe and put 10ml on a scale, let's see how many grams it weights.

If we get the density (g/ml), we can get closer to it's true concentration.

 

[orangutang]

Cost comparison at GC
http://www.gardenscure.com/420/hydr...am-commercial-nutrients-vs-team-custom-8.html


GH nutes

5 cups Micro (6 gal - $149.95) enough for 19 rez changes
5 cups Grow (6 gal - $129.95) enough for 19 rez changes
5 cups Bloom (6 gal - $129.95) enough for 19 rez changes
4 cups Diamond Nectar (6 gal - $169.95) nough for 24 rez changes
579 $ for all.

28.43 $ TOTAL for a 200 gal rez
Makes 3800 gal
​

Custom nutes
Micro Nute Mix 20g (4 pounds - 31$) - enough for 90 rez changes
Potassium Phosphate 200g (20 pounds - 58$) - enough for 45 rez changes
Magnesium Sulfate 200g (20 pounds - 27$) - enough for 45 rez changes
Magnesium Nitrate 200g (17,5 pounds - 28$) - enough for 40 rez changes
Potassium Nitrate 200g (20 pounds - 37$) - enough for 45 rez changes
Calcium Nitrate 500g (20 pounds - 21$) - enough for 22 rez changes
202$ for all.

4.65 $ TOTAL for a 200 gal rez
Makes about 8000 gal (twice as much as with GH)​

AN would cost even more than GH.

Yes, even if you spray gold dust on your plant you'd still be making profit, but what is the point to do it?

Fertilizer solutions made by these companies are
- inconsistent (see Big Bud's lab analysis with the missing Mg made by Oregon , or Sensi's nute changing time to time on integralhydro)
- the quality and quantity of the components are unknown

The bottom line is:
You don't pay that money for the product itself, you pay for it's marketing and advertisements and all that shit listed in my prev. post.
The only reason people are buying fert solutions is because of the HYPE.


About this "research":
DATE of Analysis: 05 March 2003
And they came out with it 6 years later, as it were something new. If one of them had a degree they should already knew that any plant material will contain similar ratios of NPK, test any dicot's leaf and the level of P will be lower than N and K, this is not new.

Some problems with the "research" itself:
The amount of the applied nutrients are unknown (a leaf's nutrient content strongly depends on the fertilizers it was fed)
It looks like the analysis were made from a single leaf (based on the weight of the samples)
Where was it taken from? A bottom leaf nute content will differ from a middle or a top one. Anyway, one leaf is not enough, a whole plant analysis would have been better, 1 lousy leaf does not proves nothing, lots of nutes are in the flowers/stalks/roots in different ratios than in the leafs, that's why a whole plant analysis have to be made in these cases.
It's totally amateur and unprofessional.

I agree with your point but I think the costs of the GH comparison are a little off. You have Diamond Nectar in the GH rez but don't have any fulvic in the custom rez so that will skew the costs. Powdered fulvic is damn hard to find, best I have found is a humic/fulvic blend that seems to be mostly humic.

Also, you don't need all 3 parts of the GMB, people tend to get better results with those Lucas style formulas where they just use bloom and micro.

The other point is that while I can buy all those chemicals you list in 25 kilogram sacks at a palce 10 miles from my house I just don't have anywhere to store half a dozen 25 kilo sacks of chemicals. I can buy them by the kilo but then the cost rises 4-5x per kilo and some of them I would have to get mail order which increases the price.

So yeah, while mixing your own nutes from salts is great for some of us, it's not for everyone, I just wish decent liquid nutes were cheaper, the cheapest on the market here are Ionic which are 6-7ukp a litre, I buy the 5 litre sizes for 20ukp so it costs me 4ukp a litre. I can live with that. The Ionic Grow is 2-1-2 and the Bloom is 1-1-2. I like those ratios although I do like to add some more K in the form of seaweed in veg and early to mid bloom and then molasses in mid to late bloom. I like to keep it simple and apart from some good quality fulvic (if I could find some that wasn't stupidly expensive) I don't think there's much I want to add. I am interested in this new idea of supplementing a mineral nutrition in hydro with organic additives instead of keeping the medium sterile so I might try making some bat guano teas, you can buy liquid bat guano now here, Guanokalong brand, seen it on the shelf at my local hydro store, but it's 15ukp a litre I think, I can get a kilo of bat guano for about a fiver I think so I'll get some dry stuff and stick it in a bucket of water for a month or two.

At the end of the day it's only a weed and pumping all the exotic and over-priced bottles of crap you can find into it won't do much to improve it, in fact it will usually decrease the quality of the smoke, make it harsher and less smooth to burn, people go on about flushing but honestly, it's much better mot to pump all that excess crap in there in the first place, the plant only has simple requirements and it is far more important to hit the right levels of NPK for each phase of growth than to pump in a ton of different and only marginally beneficial extras. People always tell me my weed is great and I always tell em it's cos I don't feed it too much. After all, I'm usually growing the same strains as everyone else so I'm sure the secret is not to overcomplicate things and make sure you don't overfeed.

 

[orangutang]

The only reasonable product from AN is pH Up and Down, based on it's MSDS.
In fact it's to good to be true.
This is why I ask anyone who has these to weight them please.
Use a syringe and put 10ml on a scale, let's see how many grams it weights.

If we get the density (g/ml), we can get closer to it's true concentration.

I don't see the point in commercial ph down, citric acid works and I think I paid 3.50 for the kilo I bought like 10 years ago, still not finished that first tub off.

 

[tester]

There are different approaches, you can buy single fert salts and mix your own complex fertilizers, then you can add water if you prefer to keep them around as a solution, or buy the premixed salts.
So instead of Ionic Grow 2-1-2 there is Peters 20-10-20 for example.

These companies are buying the same salts, then water it down and sell it for extra profit. Thats all.

Commercial pH Down's like AN's phosphoric acid can be also used to raise the level of P without touching other nutrient levels in the rez, this might come in handy sometimes, it's 2 flies with the same hit.
But you are right, citric acid can be also used to lower the pH without adding any nutes to the rez.

By th way Canna sells 50% citric acid for 8 euros (=11$) per liter. So 2 liters will contain 1kg of citric acid
Thats 22$ for Canna vs. 7$ for the same amount of citric acid.

 

[Guest 18340]

The only reasonable product from AN is pH Up and Down, based on it's MSDS.
In fact it's to good to be true.
This is why I ask anyone who has these to weight them please.
Use a syringe and put 10ml on a scale, let's see how many grams it weights.

If we get the density (g/ml), we can get closer to it's true concentration.

I can tell you that it only takes a few drops/gal of AN's ph up to reach my desired level where as it takes me 1/4 tsp/gal of GH ph up to achieve the same.
I'm a GH user, but AN's ph up/down really is super concentrated.

 

[tester]

I have no doubts you need less from it to adjust the pH than with GH' pH Down.

AN's pH Down
Supposed to be

• 85% phosphoric acid

according to the MSDS
Density: 1.7 g/ml.
I'm really curious if it's really that heavy.

If you could tell me it's weight, I can tell it's real concentration.

GH's PH Down Bloom
Based on a mixture of

• phosphoric acid
• citric acid
• and mono ammonium phosphate according to the (MSDS) or ammonium bisulfate according to the label
  

Density is around 1.12 g/ml

Just by having a look at their densities, you can tell that GH's weigh less than AN's, this usually means it contains more water than AN with less ingredients.

So can you measure it's weight please?

If AN's ph down is really that concentrated it might be something that actually worth to buy from AN.

 

[Guest 18340]

I don't have any AN down left but I do have GH down. I weighed it a long time ago and my notes say 10ml weighed 12.3
Does that sound right? These are old notes.

 

[Madrus Rose]

Yep those are pricey. I can buy 25Kg bags of calcium nitrate for $3.50 (Ag Grade) by the pallet. In China you would pay less than $1.00 a bag by the ton.

MKP and MAP tend to be a bit more pricey and prices fluctuate but you're looking roughly at about $35.00 a bag from the right sources.

Keep in mind that you can make a hell of a lot of nutrients and additives from 25Kg bags.

That 1L of Big Bud would cost me about (rough guess) 50c to make. She's a high profit industry for sure - a joke and you people are on the receiving end while fat mike snorts coke and shags asian hookers.

Yep thats about right , so 1L of AN @$9 , GH or any of the other over the counter products are
marking up roughly 18 times over the cost of the base chemicals. Really mind boggling ...

******************

Found the China suppliers selling by the ton & Calcium Nitrate ag grade was
running $10US for 25kgs @ $350US/ton.

Magnesium Sulphate was running about 4 times cheaper than CalNitrate
@ $2.50/25kgs @ $75 US/ton

Mono Potassium Phos was running approx $30 US for 25kgs @ $1000/ton & the same for
Monoammonium phosphate MAP

Potassium Nitrate the same as above , a little less ...

*Since were talking Citric Acid here as PH down it was running about 50c /lb @ $1000 Us/ton

**Phosphoric acid (food grade) running about $900 a metric ton...

*** 3-Indol Butyric Acid $1200 metric ton US or by $100/kg ..which is a lot of Dip n Grow !!

 

[Madrus Rose]

These companies are buying the same salts, then water it down and sell it for extra profit. Thats all.

By th way Canna sells 50% citric acid for 8 euros (=11$) per liter. So 2 liters will contain 1kg of citric acid
Thats 22$ for Canna vs. 7$ for the same amount of citric acid.

They're paying $1.20 US for the kg of citric acid they're buying from China ..again its marked up about 18 times initial base cost of the chemical from maker to retailer.

 

[tester]

I don't have any AN down left but I do have GH down. I weighed it a long time ago and my notes say 10ml weighed 12.3
Does that sound right? These are old notes.

I don't quite understand: 12.3 is for AN, or GH?

GH should be 11.1 - 11.3 according to the MSDS, if it's more than that, who knows what else they added or what the hell is in it.

AN should be around 17g / 10 ml.
The more concentrated the solution, the more will it weight.
85% phosphoric acid is the most concentrated one can get, it's weight is 1.69 g/ml, this is on AN's MSDS. They also always bragging about how concentrated it is.

If it's 1.23 g/ml as you said, that means it's about 38% Phosphoric acid, and not 85%.
This is based on generic density tables can be found in CASC

 

[Guest 18340]

Sorry, yeah it's for the GH. 12.3
Later today I'll break out my new scale and weigh it out again.

 

[Madrus Rose]

Yeah, Heath really did well with the Ionic. Ionic is the cheapest on the hydro market in the UK and it does work really well, best plant I ever grew for taste and smell (most stinky plant I've ever run into) was this thing and I grew it with Ionic hydro nutes in a hempy style bucket of perlite with no additives apart from some Maxicrop

I know from experience that all the different boosters you can buy will do very little to improve your crop, far better to invest you money in improving your environment and your genetics.

well glad that somebody noticed heath's work ....like to see some other pics thrown up too.

sort of thought this thread would be a waste of time ...

& wasn't really too far off... cheers.

ஜ۩۞۩ஜmroseஜ۩۞۩ஜ

PS: for my own amusement , have to go over to GH & talk to Larry Brooke about Big Mike's claims on the P issue & see what he has to say...when in doubt go to the source
.
.
.
.

 

[farmdalefurr]

isnt there a thread specifically for mixing your own nutes?