Make your own diluted liquid
Teas work wonders.
Make your own diluted liquid
I've never seen any positive effects from root feeding silicate, I used potassium silicate for several years and orthosilicic acid products like Aptus Fasilitor for a couple years, I cut them out of my regimen and see no difference in my plants.
A few foliar feeds may help strengthen cell walls but but dumping silicate in your reservoir like everyone does just spikes your PH so you need extra PH down to get your PH in check and your plants can only take up about 1300 ppm of nutrients so your just feeding your plants extra bullshit taking the place of good old NPK.
If anything I've seen negative effects from feeding heavy levels of Fasilitor like Aptus tells you to do(double the dosage the first two weeks of flower to stop stretch) is what they instruct you to do, not only does that not work but it messes with the plants osmosis causing the plant to hold to much water making branches weak and brittle. Calcium is what you want for strong plants not silicate.
It is expensive and you are right its hard to tell if it works. I only use 125 cc/50G. It does affect initial pH. But it also buffers pH. I actually save money in pH down while using it. I use about 1/3 the acid. Still trying to wrap my head around that.
When something is really expensive and hard to tell if it works means you should ditch it. Especially dumping silicic acid in a reservoir is just throwing away money, it degrades with in a couple days.
Another fun fact about silicic acid is the guy that created Aptus Fasilitor and Mills Vitalize intended them to be used as a foliar fertilizer, which is insanely more economical to use than dumping it in your reservoir so it just degrades to nothing with in a few days. Mills Vitalize is made by Rexil Agro its listed as a foliar product its called AB Green. Here's a link if it works
https://www.rexil-agro.com/abgreen.html
Some where in here theres a thread where someone tested all the major brands of silica and silicic acid products and Agsil 16H the cheapest silica product on the market had way more silicic acid than even the silicic acid specific products. So save yourself a ton of money skip silicic acid products entirely and use silica products as a foliar fertilizer. Doesn't potassium silicate have to be broken down by microbes in order to be taken up by the roots anyways? That sounds like a pretty stupid and useless to me lol.
You contradict yourself. In one sentence you say it doesn't effect the plant. In the next you complain about it causing brittle branches when too much is used.
Just an observation.
I think its best to not think of Si as a magic additive, but as a plant nutrient that is often not present in sufficient quantity. Without Si and B, you cant get enough Ca, so if Si is the limiting nutrient, then yea youre going to see results when using it...
mushroombrew- your plants look great. If your happy with pouring silicic acid in your reservoir even though it quickly degrades keep doing so. Im just trying to share my knowledge and experience what works for some may not work for others. For me putting silicic acid in the reservoir is expensive and stupid and putting potassium silicate in the reservoir is useless. You guys have at it