DIY Nutrients formulations, recipes, chemistry etc.

hope this thread gets sticky .....

for the bibliophiles out there, Hydroponics: A Practical Guide for the Soilless Grower by J. Benton Jones Jr. would be well worth reading if you are into this sort of information ... they don't get to the crop that most of us are talking about but there are several different formulas in the book ... TIP!!!! this is not a cheap book (around $100) try a library!

i think mel frank is the only person that has actually published any cannabis specific nutrient profiles. you can find those at angelfire.com (i think).

like what your doing funkey ... keep it up !!!

you had mentioned calcium chloride (ice melt for some of us) earlier in the thread. cutting edge solutions makes a cal supplement that is derived from CaCl2. i have used it in my res and foliar and the stuff works great. my question is how to get rid of the chlorine ??? i assume that i don't want to be doing it in a closed space because it will most likely be a gas but i don't really know. the bottle does say that the calcium is chelated with a "low molecular weight organic acid" (fulvic maybe ???) IS THERE A CHEMIST IN THE HOUSE ??

Good post greenmatter, some good info there. Maybe someone with some chemistry education can chime in and give some info on calcium sources?

I'd like to read that book but have no bidget for buying books, sadly. If someone has it and can upload scans of the formulas, that would be fantastic.

I agree, Mel Frank seems to be the only one to have published nutrient profiles, I stick to his 200-100-200-60 NPKMg for veg/early bloom and 100-100-200-60 NPKMg for mid-late bloom and it works well for me, the Ionic nutes I've been using for a while (got em dirt cheap) happen to have those same ratios as Mel published which makes it pretty easy to stick to those ratios.

I know spurr has some info on nutrient profiles, maybe he will pop in and post it for us.

Disappointingly, that H&G PDF doesn't have any info on the ingredients, it mentions they use EDDHA as their Iron chelator but gives little other info.

I've been mixing my own for a while.


You have to know what you are doing, and know a bit of ion chemistry and how to calculate Molar weight. You don't want to mix salts like MgSO4 with CaNO3 and end up with plaster in your hydro pumps.

About using fert. grade salts vs. lab salts. Many of our salt used have inpurities, many are expected and basically make for some of the micronutrients. Be careful copying a recipe.

Hiya superpedro, I can see you know your stuff.

Have you got any formulas to share that you use with success?

Do you make your own micronutrient mixes or do you buy a premized micronutrient formula?

Hey.

I work as a greenhouse gardener, and I've mixed a bottle of micro concentrate as well. They are hard to come by, many of them are pure poison in concentrated form. Some salts are used by a gram pr. 10000L water or less.

The funny thing about nutrients. You can't boost growth by any ferts, but loose a lot if you run low on a single element. I go by the Canna values to start out with, and then do a few measurements of the nute ratio along the way. That way I keep the mix in my res. somewhat close to what the plant uses, not for superior growth, but ultimate stability

superpedro said:

I've been mixing my own for a while.

You have to know what you are doing, and know a bit of ion chemistry and how to calculate Molar weight. You don't want to mix salts like MgSO4 with CaNO3 and end up with plaster in your hydro pumps.

About using fert. grade salts vs. lab salts. Many of our salt used have inpurities, many are expected and basically make for some of the micronutrients. Be careful copying a recipe.

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Right freakin on man!!! Someone get this man a chair and a drink so he can stay awhile and enlighten us all

evlme2 said:

Right freakin on man!!! Someone get this man a chair and a drink so he can stay awhile and enlighten us all

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Well said, here is a guy who has not bought into all the marketing and hype of the nute companies and knows what his plants really need. This is a man who we should mine for information! lol

superpedro said:

Hey.

I work as a greenhouse gardener, and I've mixed a bottle of micro concentrate as well. They are hard to come by, many of them are pure poison in concentrated form. Some salts are used by a gram pr. 10000L water or less.

The funny thing about nutrients. You can't boost growth by any ferts, but loose a lot if you run low on a single element. I go by the Canna values to start out with, and then do a few measurements of the nute ratio along the way. That way I keep the mix in my res. somewhat close to what the plant uses, not for superior growth, but ultimate stability

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Yeh, boric acid and copper sulphate are not nice substances for the health. I have reagent grade versions of both to hand. I realise it is not easy to make a micronutrient mix, you only need 0.1g in a litre of concentrate solution that is used at 1ml per litre so that's a tiny ppm the plant actually needs.

I very much agree about needing to maintain all the plant's need to get the max rather than being able to boost things. I use lots of seaweed extract and molasses to ensure there is a wide range of trace elements available, I also use lots of amino acids and humic/fulvic acids, I buy them in powdered form cheap. They do work and work well, most of the expensive boosters and stimulants are made of aminos, seaweed, molasses, humic/fulvic so why pay their massively overinflated prices when you can get the raw ingredients cheaper? I think that's the whole point of this thread really, to give us the knowledge of formulas and their mixing and use to be able to be independent of the hydro industry which really does rip us off badly.

Actually, I think it's worth restating that as it sums up nicely what I'm trying to achieve with this thread:

I think that's the whole point of this thread really, to give us the knowledge of formulas and their mixing and use to be able to be independent of the hydro industry which really does rip us off badly.

funkymonkey said:

why pay their massively overinflated prices when you can get the raw ingredients cheaper? I think that's the whole point of this thread really, to give us the knowledge of formulas and their mixing and use to be able to be independent of the hydro industry which really does rip us off badly.

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thats wuts up.we also need source's.ill be kind of worried bout looking up componds.lol.good read yall cant wait for d.peace

Wau. What a response .

I have no fancy formulas. I just have something to start out with, and then use more or less accurate ways of measuring the uptake along the way.


That way I don't change a lot of water when i change the formula a bit. I use my biofilter to avoid buildups of NH4, root rot and any other bad stuff. Very easy to run.

If you know how to calculate molar weight, you know how many grams of Mg is in 100 grams of MgNO3 and so forth. Ppm/mgL (same thing ) can be then calculated.

Buy a test set for Kh. If you know your carbonate hardness and how the Ph scale works you can "twist" the formula to hit 5,8 without using any Ph up or down.


English isn't my first language and I'd have a very hard time trying to teach you the basics of ion chemistry, and would probably do much worse than anything you can find on the net.
I'll try to answer your questions, but my best advise is to find a chemistry C-level book. I think it has everything you need for the basics.

I never did chemistry beyond the age of 14, they wouldn't let me do GCSE Chemistry as they felt it was too much of a risk as I would most likely destroy the scholl in an explosion or fireball! lol

I shall have to have a look if I can find some old textbooks.

If you find formulas with each element listed in % or mg, I should be able to turn it into a formula with salts(salts comes in pairs of possitive and negative ion(s) ) if that can help you on your mission.

CalMag supplement?

CalMag supplement?

Great info here, thanks. BUt where do you find these raw ingredients?
Any suggestions on how to make a liquid Cal/Mag supplement for a coco grow? I have heard epsom salts (Mag Sulfate) plus I have some fine powdered lime (whiting or CaCO3) just not sure how to incorporate it into a liquid form for hydro or coco. Im currently firing it in a kiln-should burn off CO2 to make CaO (true lime), then adding water should make Ca(OH)2 (Calcium hydroxide or hydrated lime) Im thinking that the CaO plus MgSO4 in H2O is all that you need for a Ca/Mag sup, just not sure on mix ratios- Any help welcome

Never seen a bottle of CalMag IRL But Ca and SO4 doesn't go well together in concentrates.
What else is in it? Any NO3 listed on the bottle?

I grow in coco and if I ever see any calcium deficiencies I just use a bit of Calcium Nitrate, however it's 20% N so is not good for use in full bloom. So far I've only ever had cal def in veg or early bloom so calcinit has worked for me.

I add epsom salts (magnesium sulphate) to my nutes as I find I often get mag def without it, I use it right up until I start to flush and I think the sulphur in it adds flavour, I use molasses a lot too and that has sulphur in it which may be one of the reasons it enhances taste.

I wish there were more info on the effects of different micronutrients on flowering cannabis, I have heard that Boron is critical in getting large buds but no science to back that up. Maybe I could make a formula with higher levels of boron by adding some boric acid (I have some, reagent grade) to investigate this? You can chelate Boron, what would be a goot chelator? Glycine?

superpedro said:

If you find formulas with each element listed in % or mg, I should be able to turn it into a formula with salts(salts comes in pairs of possitive and negative ion(s) ) if that can help you on your mission.

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That would be fantastic. There are several products that I know work very well from experience but cost a lot of money, especially considering what's in them. AN Big Bud works really well, I used the powder for a while, the original 0-15-40 formula, since I ran out and they changed the formula I've been getting similar results using powdered aminos, powdered seaweed, epsom salts and my DIY copy of Hammerhead for the PK.

If companies were accurate with their labelling, it would be easy to copy their formulas with a bit of maths you could reverse engineer and make your own for a fraction of the price.

This is the original AN Hammerhead formula label, it was 0-9-18 and I had great results using it. On the label it says it is derived from monopotassium phosphate and potassium sulphate. They went and chaged the formula to make it half the strength at 0-4-8 and hiked the price 40% so I decided to make my own copy as you can buy both slats that go into it very cheap locally. I made a copy that works well, but mullray has a guaranteed lab analysis that shows Hammerhead also contained magesium sulphate and was slightly different in lefels of mono pk and pot sulph than the labelling suggested, so my copy was slightly off but worked fine. I happen to add mag sulph to my nutes anyway. I just mention this as an example of how copying what it says on the label is not always going to give you a copy of what's actually in the bottle.

I always had a lot of success of with An Big Bud, it really did increase budmass if applied from week 2 of flower. I never tried Bud Blood or Overdrive, which you are supposed to used as well in the order Bud Blood-Big Bud-Overdrive and a lot of people reported great results using those three in combo. I used Big Bud for it's aminos, I have always used seaweed extracts which have aminos but the Big Bud seemed to have a very noticeable effect when used with my usual regime that includes seaweed.

Since they changed the formula from the original 0-15-40 an hiked the price I've been using cheaper alternatives, I found a place on ebay that sold powdered aminos, cost me 12 bucks for a pound, which is enough to last quite a while. I suspect it's alfalfa meal after what someone told me about the aminos to be found in alfalfa, it's a pale brown coarse pwoder that clumps together so it's not a bag of powder, it's a bag of solid lumps of slightly sticky granules. The info I got from the seller makes me think that the same alfalfa meal is the source of the aminos in Big Bud as the list of the constituent aminos and what quantities they are present in was almost identical to what AN list on the old Big Bud label. Big Bud was a slightly clumpy pale brown powder that was made up of small white grainules and larger pale brown ones, I imagine if you mixed alfalfa meal, mono pk and epsom salts it would look exactly like Big Bud powder.

Big Bud also has PK and Epsom salts, I can add those to the powdered aminos in the form of mono potassium sulphate and potassium sulphate so it's not hard to copy the Big Bud formula. The label also lists Citric Acid, I use that as PH down so by using powdered aminos, my DIY hammerhead copy for pk, epsom salts and citric acid, I am giving my plants everything that was in Big bud and to be honest, my garden is doing every bit as well as when I was using Big Bud. Big Bud also lists Magnesium Phosphate, I don't see any reason why I would miss that from my regime as I include plenty of Magnesium and Phosphorous in other forms.



The liquid version is a lot more dilute and slightly different formula, never used it cos it's a rip-off, for a while the powder was fairly cheap.

What a great thread!
Making our own nutes is a long needed topic. I think your right FunkyMonkey, what I have is a Mag deficiency. Im new to coco and have clones in it right now with some yellowing on the leaves overall but the veins are still green or turning reddish purple. Yesterday I sprayed a light epsom salt on them and also watered with it. I have hard water so Im thinking now that Calcium may not be a problem but Ive also heard that too much Calcium can lead to a deficiency in Mag (?) --Sorry this is probably off topic a little bit.

No answer yet on where to get raw nute ingredients?

Overdrive always struck me as an over-hyped and expensive PK booster, it hasn't got a lot in it, the label talks about 'extensive and complex array of potassium and phosphorous sources' yet if you looked at what it lists as ingredients, there are precisely two sources of P and two of K so AN are really gilding the lilly.



Instead of Overdrive I used Hammerhead which has two sources of K and one of P, worked good for me.

Does anyone have any idea if multiple sources of P and K in a PK booster is really better than just 3?