High Brix Hydroponics

[FelipeBlu]

This is the mix I’m trying right now

SLH in 3rd week since first pistils

Had some clawing a couple of weeks ago, so I cut back on N

 

[Skybound]

Your plant looks great, but I can't understand your chart. Can you translate the NPK ppms, or itemize them?

Edit - n/m, I see it now, you have the megacrop column all the way right. I just saw zeros everywhere and got lost super quick.

 

[FelipeBlu]

Yeah, I’m always copying from other pages into the calculator page, so the order is a bit willy-nilly.
I’m thinking to increase the P a bit, maybe to 40-50. Was looking at a Dyna-Gro product Mag-Pro (2-15-4).

 

[Skybound]

My thoughts, in my grow (ratios considered), 100ppm of nitrate was toxic by mid bloom, but that's with my K at 200 and P at 65. This PC is at day 26, is under developed, but I stuffed her in there at 6 weeks old which is very young in my grow. Her leaves are very dark green and that is the result of too much nitrate, so I'm heading back down to 95ppm with my NO3 and bringing my K back down as well.

Back to the P topic, 25ppm is much closer in range to other brands, as well as Hoagland and Steiner's. I started off deficient at 50 so I went north. My petioles resemble half green apples so I'm confident I'm close to ideal at 70ppm, otherwise they stay red at 65 and lower.

I'm glad I got to see your regimen. I've never seen another Megacrop user give half a fuck to dress up the brand with other products like you're doing. You did well to reign in the contents and got them much closer to ideal. What I dislike most about all brands is the difficulty it is to change the ratios. It's like you'll always need to accept that you can't change certain things if you want to, especially in the micros. Ever since I mixed my own micro blend, I hit all of my macro targets perfectly only taking errors to sulfur, but in a good way, lol.

IMO, 100-50-150-100-50 (N-P-K-Ca-Mg) is a great starting point for hydro, rock wool at least.

Edit - the pic is the product of 3 weeks of

N - 100
P - 60
K - 180
Ca - 120
Mg - 75
S - 138 (targeted to 100)

Edit#2 - the above is my "stretch" regimen, 3rd revised high brix attempt. Next res I'm doing my 4th revised that will be less N, more P and less Mg

 

[FelipeBlu]

This is what I was thinking with the addition of some Mag-Pro

 

[Skybound]

The results with MagPro look good. I think you could use more sulfur and a touch more copper, but both can be put into a foliar spray and topped off from above.

 

[Skybound]

An excellent excerpt from the hydro book that explains elemental concentrations in plant tissue

Elemental content data are mostly based on dry weight determinations, although some element determinations, such as N (as NO3– anion) and P (as H2PO4– and HPO42– anions), can also be made using sap extracted from live tissue.

An element may not be evenly distributed among various plant parts (roots, stems, petioles, and leaves), and uneven distributions may also exist within a leaf and among leaves at varying stages of development. Knowing the concentration of an element in a specific plant part of known stage of growth status, and even its distribution within the plant itself, provides valuable information for defining the nutritional status of the plant.

 

[Skybound]

Here's a great old post from an IceMud thread that I wanted tied to this thread for future reference.

High Brix Refractometer Results Log & Data Thread - Post Your Brix Levels Here


.

 

[Skybound]

Amidst all of the things I read, I get ideas of various things to try in hopes of regaining some form of gain or benefit that is otherwise chalked up as gone when growing in hydroponics. That said, I'm now also trying my luck at making custom foliar sprays at a reduced concentration. I devised 2 sprays, one aimed at enhancing the P and also with a small cache of calcium, magnesium, N and K as well and I am calling it Energy as that is what P is known for. The other I call Density due to the use of micro nutrients which in my reading are the enzyme activators. I still need to research which micros activate which enzyme to send out which exudate and just learn how that whole process works. I tried to imagine how to prioritize each micro and the pictured ratio is what my brain produced.

I'm embarrassed that I didn't write down the added details, but I am also using Neptune's Harvest Fish Hydrolysate which is the body of the NPK, and phosphoric acid fills in the rest of the P requirments. Perhaps for a soil plant a much higher nitrate percentage would be desired, I have found that in hydro, my nitrate levels can become toxic rather quick so I need to keep such things in mind when considering what to blindly add up top. All considered, in my grow, I find that N and K is the easiest to overdo it with. It seems the roots pull those two in the quickest and easiest. I am also using a smidge of Yucca extract in each bottle as a wetting agent, 1/4TSP of Amino Acids and an 1/8 TSP of Fulvic/Humic/Kelp blend. Finally, in the bottle of Density, on a whim, I added a 1/4 TSP of Seaweed extract which is 0-0-17. I mixed each last night and tested TDS and PH moments ago;

...............Density...........Energy..................
.....TDS.......242.............280-300
......PH..........6.0...............5.0

 

[Weaselcracker]

How long does acid rain stay acid? ... does the CO2 escape the water and fuck up the PH when sneaking out?

....my assumption has always been that the ph of a low ppm solution, like most water, is fairly meaningless- at least for a soil or soilless grow. It takes so little to shift the ph of a weak solution. Like one drop will drastically shift a bucket full. So what does that tell you?
I assume that if you turn things around and look at it from the opposite way- the weak solution must have almost no power to sway the ph of your grow medium
When I see soil and soilless growers religiously adjusting the ph of water with teeny little amounts of PH up or down I tend to think they’re wasting their time.
.

... for soil/soilless I think it’s pointless to ph any water at all, as long as it’s fairly pure and not high ppm.

Sorry if this isn’t super relevant to your thread, but I just wanted to revisit this conversation if you don’t mind. It’s something that makes sense to me, but always flies over like a lead balloon when I mention it- I wanted your thoughts.

So this was in response to your comment about the rain ph possibly fucking up my plants.
When you have a solution with such low ppm- to me the ph seems pretty irrelevant.

How could that rainwater possibly screw up my plants? There’s just nothing there to do it, as far as I can see. We are talking about a very very minuscule trace of minerals from the atmosphere.

Watering my plants with PH 5.6 rainwater has to be a very different thing than if I’m watering with some wellwater that is 200 ppm, or a nute mix at 1000 ppm, doesn’t it?

Personally I’ve always ignored the ph of weak solutions.
I’ve tried to explain this to various ph obsessed newbies but have always been met with confusion.

 

[Skybound]

In the context of that conversation, you mentioned that rain water accumulates carbon in route to the ground and is why the PH is at 5.6. I definitely didn't mean to imply that I believe it was fucking up your plants. What I was asking was for your opinion of how long the PH remains stable after decarbonating. I believe you were making calcium carbonate in seltzer water.

FWIW, about the topics discussed in the thread, it doesn't matter to me so long as it's food related. I just tried to make the topic appear attractive in hopes of generating deeper convos about feeding habits in healthy growing environments so that I can either directly implement in hydro, or transpose the concepts as best I can from an organic process.

 

[Weaselcracker]

Thanks. No I didn’t think you were saying the rainwater was a problem

Just curious on your thoughts re how the importance of ph control relates to the strength (ppm) of a solution. It’s been my operation assumption for years, but every time I mention it everyone goes quiet

 

[Pennywise]

My experience is ph becomes more stable at higher EC.

 

[FelipeBlu]

That’s my experience also. My tap water has a TDS of 32ppm, and it doesn’t take much to drop the pH from 9.2 to 6.5, but once nutrients are added, it takes a lot more pH Down to do the same.

 

[Weaselcracker]

Sure, so if you look at it from the other way round- The same way that the ph of a weak solution is so easily swayed- that solution will therefore be just as easily swayed by whatever buffers there are in your grow medium. (If there are any). Basically at that solution strength the PH won’t have any effect and can be disregarded.

Presumably different in true hydro, but for most grows I just can’t see it being necessary to fiddle around adjusting the ph of a 32ppm solution.

 

[FelipeBlu]

BTW, I don’t adjust the pH of my tap water for plants in the ground. But for container plants, since they are all drain to waste and require all nutrients be provided, including calcium, I adjust the pH of the fertigation solution, which tends to run about 400-500ppm (TDS), so that those nutrients will be more available.

 

[Pennywise]

I look at the big picture mainly, as long as it's between say 5.6 and 6.5 I don't fool with it. Anything much lower than that and you'll start seeing lockouts.

 

[Skybound]

I have found PH stability mostly on the lower end, but the difference in my experience is the GH line at high strength to mix from salts with the low strength. FWIW, GH had things in the bottles that can rot and/or ferment, so that was just waiting for trouble. So it's like my opinion has been skewed due to only ever using the one brand. I'm now dealing with PH instability, but that's only because I am frequently tweaking my elements, so there's always a different set of rules being applied to the final solution.

That's just in the water too, I bet exudates influence our PH if there are no microbes in the media to catch the excretions. The media itself has buffer influence.

 

[Pennywise]

The hydrogen in water has an influence as well.

 

[FelipeBlu]

Heya Sky
Have you seen this product?

Liquid Bone Meal 0-12-0

www.downtoearthfertilizer.com

Seems like a good way to get P without K, and Ca without N.