High Brix Hydroponics

[Skybound]

Sky, I’ll likely be unable to help, but I’m intrigued as hell. Are you working on adding both forms of nitrogen, NO3-N and NH4-N?

Working on, not yet, but am reading and researching as best I can in hopes of finding more precise information that would give me a better idea of what kind of ratio I will need of each. In the article I linked to last page, there was a lot of good and compelling information being shared, but there were clearly 2 schools of thought competing for dominance, so my unschooled novice ass definitely needs to flesh that out much more before committing to a course of action. As of now, I don't even own any ammonium. When getting into salts 6 months ago, I was lead to believe ammonical N is a no no in hydro. That article in some regards confirmed that, but then there was also info that lead me to believe that perhaps NH4+ in small QTYs would be beneficial, or might serve to ballast some of the nitrates, or something along those lines.

At any rate, I can definitely see that I bit off more than I can chew to a certain extent. My true goal is perfect elemental content to grow perfect cannabis plants, but can one achieve such perfection w/o getting very close to high brix healthy plants? If you read up on how high brix is achieved, you can see that some of the practices are counter productive to hydroponics, so to achieve the same goal in hydro, some hydro practices will need to be abandoned or augmented at the very least while adopting some of the practices, and of course that will take a lot of time to figure out what needs to be changed and how much, and all of that to achieve a lesser brix.

Hydro growers generally favor quantity over quality. This is just me, a hydro grower, trying to reclaim a bit of lost quality. Learning how to mix and control nutes was just the first step for me.

 

[Skybound]

Sorry, I got my pages and journals mixed up. Here is the Nitrogen debate I linked yesterday;

Why nitrate is considered to be the best form of nirogen for plant ?

 

[Pennywise]

Very interesting information

 

[FelipeBlu]

Digging your approach!

 

[mr childs]

Can you elaborate some? IDK what basalt is, or blk water.

blk water is fulvic acid water blk.water | Black Alkaline Water with Fulvic Trace Minerals | blk.

 

[Skybound]

blk water is fulvic acid water blk.water | Black Alkaline Water with Fulvic Trace Minerals | blk.

Thanks for this share! I already use black water w/o knowing what it's called, but the schpeal about Iron is making me give greater consideration to making an updated micro blend as I suspect a few things to be low and had already considered tossing my current blend, or maybe just putting it off to the side to make a new. I already use chelated metals with EDTA and DTPA for the iron, but my hope for the organic acids was that they would grab hold of any calcium and chelate that from the sulfates. As of now, my micro blend was built to the following ppm per volume;

Fe = 2
Mn = 1
B = 0.3
Zn = 0.3
Cu = 0.2
Mo = 0.2

what I might like to try is to make it

Fe = 2.5
Mn = 1.4
B = 0.4
Zn = 0.5
Cu = 0.4
Mo = 0.1

More consideration and thought is needed, but I think I'll try this next week sometime. I might even see about stuffing some aminos in there as well, but I gotta read about mixing different chelators. I went through hell to learn that EDTA and DTPA could be mixed together safely.

 

[Skybound]

I hit another road block already. Ever since I started supplementing calcium with either carbonate or acetate, PH has had a very strong upward tow, almost like a PH tractor beam, so I have to beat it back down with a lot of PH down, but then the next day when testing PH, the meter starts at about 5.0 and it slowly climbs to 5.8-6.0 in about 3-5 minutes. Overall, it's a severe burden to use. I might be ditching the Cal supplement and just seeing what I can make happen with cal nite alone. This sucks!

 

[Pennywise]

That's probably the same issue everyone else encounters.

 

[ilikemsticky]

im interested to even though I don't grow your way stay the course sky youll get it I can tell you have real determination all of a sudden youll discover a major breakthrough good luck bud!

 

[Skybound]

Thanks Sticky! I'm definitely that nut that'll blindly commit to a goal armed solely with maximum effort and the best of intentions, lol!

 

[Skybound]

For reference. FWIW, the optimum micro ranges look great, but the macros look very high, though are on par with GH at full strength. But it's reference material for ammonium.

Hydroponic micro and macro nutrient sufficiency ranges

 

[Skybound]

I found something that makes me now consider lower levels of heavy metals from "Hydroponics; A Practical Guide for Soilless Growers"

Calcium (Ca)
Content in Plants
Calcium content in plant leaves varies considerably, from 0.50 to 3.00% of the
dry weight; the critical value depending on plant species. In some species,
relatively little soluble or what may be referred to as "free Ca" is found in
plant tissue, with most of the Ca existing as crystals of calcium oxalate or as
precipitates of either calcium carbonate and/or phosphate. It has been suggested
that the Ca requirement for plants is very low (about 0.08%), similar
to that of a micronutrient, with higher concentrations required to detoxify the
presence of other cations, particularly the heavy metals, such as Mn, Cu, and
Zn (Wallace, 1971).

Right now, my ppm levels are;
Mn - 1.0
Zn - 0.3
Cu - 0.2

IDK if I want to lower Zn or Cu, but maybe Mn can decrease, or maybe everything can remain, I still need to research, but I would like to improve calcium uptake, or decrease the need to to detoxify anything.

and so goes the search for a perfect feed regimen. I'm just thankful to finally be able to do something about it.

 

[Pennywise]

It would be nice to lower heavy metals without sacrificing plant health.

 

[Skybound]

It would be nice to lower heavy metals without sacrificing plant health.

It would be nice to lower everything w/o sacrificing health. From what I've learned, my feed already is lowered compared to most other feed programs. Like even salt users on RIU use higher ECs than say GH. My jaw hit the floor when I went through that thread. I bet their meters read like 2300 ppm. At any rate, I obviously felt my micro were already borderline deficient. Copper especially I've long suspected of being deficient. It now makes slightly more sense tough to lower other things around copper. I just hope the result is less need for calcium which then translates to to less Ca deficiency expression. It's complex beyond my scope, that's for sure. I'm a firm believer in "fake it till ya make it".

 

[Archiweedies]

In that case don’t stop, keep going!

 

[Skybound]

A little more reading and I find gypsum (calcium sulfate dihydrate) will dissolve at almost 3 grams per liter, and at 1 gram per gallon it gives 60ppm of calcium which more than covers my needs as much as I can tell, the only known draw back is that I won't be able to pre-make a concentrate with that and would have to add the powder to the reservoir at every change.

I think I would feel a lot more comfortable adding to the reservoir than using a foliar spray because more important than achieving high brix to me right now is discovering ideal elemental strengths to be able to keep the crop repeatably healthy. I feel I was close before, am still close now, but my levels are still a little off, I can see it in the leaves.

 

[Pennywise]

I think that’s why companies sell calcium as a separate additive.

 

[Skybound]

I think that’s why companies sell calcium as a separate additive.

In liquids it's usually with magnesium, but in salts, it's always bonded to another element, like nitrate or phosphate. I'd like to give calcium phosphate monobasic a whirl, but I can't find any, at least not in the states. Amino calcium is a soil amendment/foliar, calcium EDTA has a lot of sodium plus also EDTA at high doses is toxic to plants, calcium carbonate was a nightmare, calcium acetate was also problematic. I'm now at the point where calcium sulfate is the one thing I never considered trying because I insisted on being able to make a concentrate to prevent the need to scale out a dusty mix each week and only have to put on the HEPA mask when I make weigh out for concentrates. Granted gypsum would be identical to doing drywall as I've done more than plenty of that, so maybe I'll live on the edge with that, but if it's only draw back is that I can't mix it in a concentrate, but it will give me healthier plants from the res, sign me up. Strong stems, here I come!

Reading about Magnesium suggests that it can be as much as evenly matched to calcium, so I will bump the mag up a touch and see how that goes. It said if the Mg:K, Mg:Ca, Mg:NH4+ ratios are out of whack, the plant will uptake more Mn and cause some systemic chaos which further nudges me to lower Mn like I was considering a few posts back. I'll still use the current micros till I can get some gypsum in play and I'll likely bump the mag up next week. I'm hoping to keep the TDS below 1000. Originally, I had it at 730 and that was great, but ever since High Brix, caught my eye, and I got to bumping things, my TDS is up to 850 already. More Ca, and Mag will lift that still higher. It all adds up quick.

 

[FelipeBlu]

Sky,
Have you established any relationship between elemental ppm from your spreadsheet (Hydro Buddy) and actual TDS measurements?

For example, I will get a TDS measurement of 872 for an elemental ppm of 345.

 

[Skybound]

Sky,
Have you established any relationship between elemental ppm from your spreadsheet (Hydro Buddy) and actual TDS measurements?

For example, I will get a TDS measurement of 872 for an elemental ppm of 345.

Nothing definitively but I've generally observed an estimated 40-50% markup of EC from what Hydro Buddy says, to what my reservoir measures. So for the old charts I used, the app resolved to 1.0 EC, this is 500 TDS at a 0.5 conversion factor, well m y meter would measure about 730, which is basically 750. Granted I have to account for the uncertain volume that I believe is 10 gallons, plus residual leftover PPM from last week stuck to the tote, my RO is not perfect zero and I have very questionable storage habits of my salts, it all would add up to skew the results, but generally speaking, Hydro Buddy resolutions require an estimated 40% added forgiveness.