Another CalMag thread

jijiandfarmgang

jijiandfarmgang

Well-Known Member
Hello,

I'm trying to straighten a few things out.

Details:
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5 gallon buckets Miracle gro moisture control potting mix

No nutrients add until mid-flowering

Jacks Blossom Booster 10-30-20 http://www.jrpeters.com/Products/Jack-s-Classic/Blossom-Booster.html

If late towards flower and low on nitrogen Jacks Calcium Nitrate 15-0-0 http://www.jrpeters.com/Products/Jack-s-Professional/Jack-s-Pro/No-Phosphate-Formulas/15-5-0-0-Calcium-Nitrate.html

RO water
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What should I do for watering for calcium and magnesium and possibly iron?

According to an old post by atomizer the ingredients comparable to botanicaires cal-mag:

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calcium nitrate: 1.87g per us gal
Epsom: 0.3g per us gal
chelated iron: 0.076g per us gal
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Can or should I just mix up a batch of that in individual bottles and add them to my watering reservoir as necessary?

thanks,

- Jiji
 
jijiandfarmgang

jijiandfarmgang

Well-Known Member
No pics now.

This is more of a general question. I have been using Botanicaires Cal-mag, but realize I'm wasting money.

Since its RO, and there is a low mag content in nutrients (that I use very little of late in flower), I know I need to supplement one way or another.

Forgot to mention that I amend my potting mix with 1 Tbsp of dolomite lime per gallon

- Jiji

p.s. Thanks for the broad mites tip
 
Aeroknow

Aeroknow

Well-Known Member
Aren't you also adding some extra Ca and Mg by amending with the dolomite lime? I wouldn't add the cal-mag, unless you are showing deficiencies.
If you do fall short on the Mg, you could JUST add some epsom salt.
jijiandfarmgang said:
No pics now.

This is more of a general question. I have been using Botanicaires Cal-mag, but realize I'm wasting money.

Since its RO, and there is a low mag content in nutrients (that I use very little of late in flower), I know I need to supplement one way or another.

Forgot to mention that I amend my potting mix with 1 Tbsp of dolomite lime per gallon

- Jiji

p.s. Thanks for the broad mites tip
Click to expand...
 
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A

az2000

Well-Known Member
jijiandfarmgang said:
This is more of a general question. I have been using Botanicaires Cal-mag, but realize I'm wasting money.
Click to expand...
Search the forum for user Churchhaze. He can tell you how to use calcium nitrate and epsom salt individually. He's a big advocate of using bulk salts instead of pre-packaged. With you comment about wasting money, his thoughts might resonate with you.
 
J

Jbone77

Well-Known Member
Yep, in hydro if you get a calcium def you add calcium nitrate, if you get a mag def you add mag sulfate, if you get an Iron def your base nutes suck, what any of that has to do with a soil grower I dont know but paying extra for calcium nitrate that says Jacks classic is silly, they repackaged yara or southern ags shit and marked the price up. Ammending with lime works wonders for soil, a cal def and a mag def are 2 totally different things so what one do you have? Cal isnt going to fix a Mag def and mag wont fix a cal def, and neither will fix an N def, just sayin. Everybody thinks they have a cal/mag/iron def lately. My guess wit the little info provided is you have a lockout and not a def because you are throwing raw salts on a time release soil, but im dumb
 
jijiandfarmgang

jijiandfarmgang

Well-Known Member
Maybe I wasn't clear.

It's potting mix not soil.

I did a bulk order on Jacks. Maybe I'll order from somewhere different in the future.

I didn't say I have a deficiency. Another Cal/mag thread, I meant it jokingly.

I posted the links to my nutrient profile to make it easy to see the guaranteed analysis.

Like I said earlier, I hardly use any nutes. Don't add any for veg, and in middle in flower I use sparingly.

I use RO water. TDS is near 0.

Been supplementing with Botanicaire's cal mag, and it works fine, but I know there is a cheaper way.

After reading some of @churchhaze posts I'm probably wasting my time amending the potting mix with dolomite lime.

- Jiji
 
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az2000

Well-Known Member
J

Jbone77

Well-Known Member
jijiandfarmgang said:
Maybe I wasn't clear.

It's potting mix not soil.

I did a bulk order on Jacks. Maybe I'll order from somewhere different in the future.

I didn't say I have a deficiency. Another Cal/mag thread, I meant it jokingly.

I posted the links to my nutrient profile to make it easy to see the guaranteed analysis.

Like I said earlier, I hardly use any nutes. Don't add any for veg, and in middle in flower I use sparingly.

I use RO water. TDS is near 0.

Been supplementing with Botanicaire's cal mag, and it works fine, but I know there is a cheaper way.

After reading some of @churchhaze posts I'm probably wasting my time amending the potting mix with dolomite lime.

- Jiji
Click to expand...
Ok, good luck with that
 
P

Picnicbill

Well-Known Member
az2000 said:
I use RO and don't have to use much calmag. Maybe 2ml / gal during veg. In transition to flower I supplement with dissolved egg shell (calcium acetate)[1] at 1 Tbsp / gal. I haven't had a Ca deficiency doing this. If I needed to treat a Mg deficency I would use Epsom salt.

I may not even need the calmag during veg. If I do, maybe just some egg-shell and Epsom.

[1] http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/load/soil/msg0422555019136.html#GWCPostBody5
http://gilcarandang.com/recipes/calphos/
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Would you recommend ground up egg shells anyway during flowering?
 
A

az2000

Well-Known Member
Picnicbill said:
Would you recommend ground up egg shells anyway during flowering?
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The web pages I linked to speak of it as a supplement for use in transition to flower. One of them says to use it in late/ripening. I'm going to try that.

I'm not having Ca deficiency in flower, but I supplement Mg using Epsom salt, like 1/4 to 1/2 tsp / gal. I use RO water so it probably wouldn't hurt to use Ca acetate at lower levels after the transition. But, it seems to get enough in there that I don't have to.

Following the same progression of thought, it probably wouldn't hurt to use low levels in veg and stop using CalMag+. But, I use so little of that in veg that I don't think about it much. (I don't think CalMag+ is that expensive at 2ml / gal. But, yeah, I'll have to try 1 tsp of that, and a 1/4 tsp / gal Epsom salt as a low (RO mineral replacement) dose.
 
C

churchhaze

Well-Known Member
If the intention is to use the potting mix as a hydroponic medium with hydroponic nutrients (I think it's called hempy buckets), then it makes sense to use calcium nitrate over insoluble forms of calcium like lime or bone meal.

I wouldn't bother trying to recreate the cal-mag+ product. If you want to feed magnesium and sulfur, use epsom salts. If you want to feed calcium and nitrate, use calcium nitrate. You can use limestone in a peat moss based potting mix, but then it would make sense to feed with miracle grow or jacks classic with a high percentage of urea.

It's easy to really over think what's going on here because of all the marketing around the products, but there is no "way to use it". It's just another nutrient with an NPK ratio + Ca%. You can find the NPK of any salt by finding the molar mass of what you're looking for over the molar mass of the entire salt, then multiplying by P2O5 or K2O conversion factor if you're trying to find the P or K part.

You can literally go on google and type "molar mass of potassium nitrate" and then "molar mass of potassium" and figure out most of your answer that way, or just get a periodic table with the molar mass of each element.

Use calcium nitrate as if it was gh flora micro without iron, as it's basically the same thing. Eventually you'll realize that you don't need that either!
 
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churchhaze

Well-Known Member
I use peat based potting mixes for my outdoor flowers and catnip plants without limestone, and feed a complete hydroponic formula with every watering using these stock solutions I made. The obvious disadvantage here is that outdoors, the rain will leach out all my salts.

The 0.4M 5Ca(NO3)2 . NH4NO3 is the double salt yara and jacks use that we call "calcium nitrate'. 0.4M of the double salt works out to 2M Ca(NO3)2.

The g/mL (mass concentration) allows me to quickly convert grams of the salt to mililiters of stock solution, so if i need to add 5g of KNO3, I can add (5)/(0.202) = 24.75mL of the stock solution.

Indoors, I use it for DWC.

IMG_0303.JPG
 
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jijiandfarmgang

jijiandfarmgang

Well-Known Member
churchhaze said:
If the intention is to use the potting mix as a hydroponic medium with hydroponic nutrients (I think it's called hempy buckets), then it makes sense to use calcium nitrate over insoluble forms of calcium like lime or bone meal.

I wouldn't bother trying to recreate the cal-mag+ product. If you want to feed magnesium and sulfur, use epsom salts. If you want to feed calcium and nitrate, use calcium nitrate. You can use limestone in a peat moss based potting mix, but then it would make sense to feed with miracle grow or jacks classic with a high percentage of urea.

It's easy to really over think what's going on here because of all the marketing around the products, but there is no "way to use it". It's just another nutrient with an NPK ratio + Ca%. You can find the NPK of any salt by finding the molar mass of what you're looking for over the molar mass of the entire salt, then multiplying by P2O5 or K2O conversion factor if you're trying to find the P or K part.

Use calcium nitrate as if it was gh flora micro without iron, as it's basically the same thing. Eventually you'll realize that you don't need that either!
Click to expand...
Thanks. I think I'll just skip on the iron thing for now.

It's been a while since chemistry but I think I got it. Finally got hydrobuddy to work with 64 bit linux so something to tinker with.


- Jiji
 
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churchhaze

Well-Known Member
Basically there's 2 ways hydrobuddy works... "input desired concentration" and "concentration from weights".

using calculation type "input desired concentrations", in the substance selection, set each of the salts you're using to 0 mass. It will calculate this for you based on input ppms, attempting to find the best solution given the ingredients you told it to use. It will not be able to find a perfect result due to the empirical nature of salts. (if you add one element, you get another at an empirical ratio), but that's not an issue. You can adjust your inputs so that the result is perfect. :P The more substances you use to make the calculation, the closer it can get to your desired ppms, although if it can't find a good solution using the basic salts, you're probably designing a bad formula anyway.

If you use "Concentration from weights", set each substance you're using to how many grams you want to use, and it will calculate the ppms of each element. No calculation error here. This calculation is way more straight forward than "input desired concentrations" which is a a reverse engineering calculation.

So one finds the mass of each substance based on the ppms of each element desired, while the other mode finds what ppm each element will be given you add a certain amount of each substance.

jijiandfarmgang said:
Thanks. I think I'll just skip on the iron thing for now.

It's been a while since chemistry but I think I got it. Finally got hydrobuddy to work with 64 bit linux so something to tinker with.


- Jiji
Click to expand...
 
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