Dyna-Gro vs Advanced Nutrients Connoisseur (AK47 Grow)

Hello homebrewer,

Ive been a long-time lurker here but this is my first foray into a discussion on this site.

Ive been growing for a couple of years after not growing for over a decade. Ive been using GH with some pretty good success, especially recently now that Ive got my new favorite strain dialed in (ChemDog 4). Im pulling over 100g a plant now, under two 600w, CO2, A/C in a DIY 14-pot ebb-and-grow system with 4 gal pots. But Ive been looking for a better nutrient system. Ive been running the flora series with kool bloom and a little bloombastic, targeting a 100-100-200-70 elemental PPM with the base nutrients per Mel Frank and the Cannastats guys (http://www.angelfire.com/cantina/fourtwenty/articles/profiles.htm). Have you ever used the excel spreadsheet on this site? A bit easier to use than HydroBuddy.

Anyway, I know you're a fan of DynaGro, and I had been looking into this anyway when I stumbled upon your threads. Very informative, I now am definitely going to go with the DynaGro bloom, protect, and Mag-pro. Im also a convert to the 2:1 P/K ratio for fertilizers (which is the case with DynaGrow bloom), which results in a 1:1 ratio at the elemental level. I plugged the DynaGro-recommended nutrient dosages into the Cannastats spreadsheet and found it has a similar N profile as what I currently run, (but double the P and a lot more micros) so I dont think I will need the grow formula to supplement the N like you do early on, but we'll see. The overall EC is similar to what I currently run, so hopefully I dont run into any issues with DynaGro being "hot", although I will start a little low and ramp up to full strenth. Im also not going to use any of the kool bloom or bloombastic anymore... no need and is potentially detrimental. I do like the kelp in the bloombastic, so maybe I'll just use that GH floralicious or something instead.

Im gearing up for my next run... 10 Chem4, 1 Blueberry Headband, 1 SFV OG, 1 Sour Diesel, and 1 White Widow. They currently are in 4-inch rockwool cubes, which I am going to put into the 8-inch grodan Big Mommas, and then into my 4-gallon flood buckets. Dyna-grow all the way on this run! I will start a grow journal for this one.

My apologies for the late update, we’ll just blame it on work. The pics below however were taken on their normal day which puts them at day 43 in the pics. One thing I’m noticing about Connoisseur that I really don’t like is that it tends to burn at lower feeding levels. I already feed low (1.2 EC) and at those levels, it’s easy to grow healthy plants with DynaGro and GH. Connoisseur at those same levels (and lower) is causing some ‘eagle clawing’ of some leaves and some tip burn. Overall plant health is fine but I do not like unhealthy leaves. I wish I had an exact answer as to why this is happening but my overall impression is that this is not a fertilizer that my plants like. I don’t know if it has to do with the quality of the mineral salts or their chelation or whatever it may be. We’ll see how things unfold as the weeks progress.

Leaching of the salts: Every 3 weeks I run plain tap water through my system in effort to remove excess salt buildup from the medium. The system runs for a minimum of an hour and I make sure to pour fresh water through each rockwool cube multiple times. Keeping rockwool (or any medium) free of excessive salt buildup is important to maintaining healthy plants.

After I leach salts, I take a TDS reading of the runoff water to see how much salt accrued in the medium. GH tends to be pretty salty. TDS readings were usually 200ppm higher in the GH reservoirs (compared to DynaGro) though when done frequently enough, doesn’t present an issue to plant health. Surprisingly, the TDS of Connoisseur’s runoff water was almost identical to that of DynaGros’. Given the look of some of the leaves, I'd have assumed the medium had excessive salt buildup but that's not the case here.

I’ll do my best to get the update up on time this week, here are the ladies:

Connoisseur day 43






DynaGro day 43




Connoisseur day 43:






DynaGro day 43

MasterS said:

Ah so burrr you got to see a good example of too much nitrogen at flowering.

Homebrewer I have a question. Dutch Master Gold has a lower Phosphorus amount for this ratio. However, their nutrients are horrid when it comes to pH balance and require pH down (Phosphoric Acid) daily. Should I assume the rapid pH spikes are due to a lack of P that my plants are guzzling? I can assume either DM:Gold went cheap and want people to add loads of Phosphoric Acid so they don't have to worry about it, or they have no idea what they are doing haha

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GH’s pH stability (1-2-2 ratio as I was mixing it) was similar to that of what you describe above but that was largely due to the higher bicarbonate levels in my tap water. When used with RO water, it was more manageable. DG was great regardless of water source.

Connoisseur’s pH stability isn’t bad in RO with its 1-1-2 but it does need a few adjustments per week.

Great mention of salt build up. I have always been ignorant of using giant rockwool cubes because old experiences left me with rotten stems and root rot. (I was a novice so I'm sure I would have seen them in any medium I used at the rate my group was going ^_^) I have always had success with hydroton and with a simple DIY recirculating system can clean it very easy which is the main complaint most people have about them. What reasons do you use rockwool cubes over a pot of hydroton? I have never leeched salts from my medium except the cleaning that gets done between uses, do you think that I'd benefit from a salt leech and if so, how much does it benefit your plants? Leech vs non-leech grow? haha

MasterS said:

Great mention of salt build up. I have always been ignorant of using giant rockwool cubes because old experiences left me with rotten stems and root rot. (I was a novice so I'm sure I would have seen them in any medium I used at the rate my group was going ^_^) I have always had success with hydroton and with a simple DIY recirculating system can clean it very easy which is the main complaint most people have about them. What reasons do you use rockwool cubes over a pot of hydroton? I have never leeched salts from my medium except the cleaning that gets done between uses, do you think that I'd benefit from a salt leech and if so, how much does it benefit your plants? Leech vs non-leech grow? haha

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I use rockwool only because it was how I started. I bought the single site water farm system and if it didn't come with rockwool, I picked some up and started a plant in it. Hydroton's tendency for salt buildup has to be much lower than rockwools' but unless you're seeing some unhealthy plants at harvest for no good reason, I'd say you're ok to not to leach salts from your roots. I would probably leach anyways because it's an easy insurance step.

The result of leaching salts is a cleaner medium for the roots to be in. I can't flood 3 times a day with 1.2 EC water and expect my medium to remain pristine for 60-80 days (flowering periods for my various strains).

Thank you, I'll do my own leech vs non-leech but not sure if I can keep up a journal like you. Personal life and careers take up too much time as is.

from the pics, it looks like the connoisuer plants have green buds instead of white. just oozing with excess nitrogen.

That dynagro seems to be working well I am glad I picked some up. Sensi made my plants look the same as your connoisseur results so far.

Quick question man. Do you think I should flush my dyna-gro, grow? I'm chopping in 2-3 weeks.

hornedfrog2000 said:

Quick question man. Do you think I should flush my dyna-gro, grow? I'm chopping in 2-3 weeks.

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I would never flush any grow. Your plants have nutritional needs during the last weeks of their life and by 'feeding' with plain water only, you're depriving the plant of those essential minerals. Those minerals you want to cut are called 'essential' for a reason . During the last few weeks, I feed at about 1.0EC which is about a 20% reduction in feeding levels. I don't do this because I'm close to harvest, I do this because the plants aren't taking in food like they were during the first 2/3rds of flower.

Ok, I wasn't planning on flushing. Just wondered if you did.

homebrewer i never knew u didnt flush at harvest, again i learned something new...just want to say the bud to leaf ratio is amazing!

Yeah, it looks a lot like my Chronic. Which I know Chronic has some AK-47 grown into it. It's like the buds just keep getting bigger, and bigger. Really cool man.

coonword said:

homebrewer i never knew u didnt flush at harvest, again i learned something new...just want to say the bud to leaf ratio is amazing!

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Flushing to me makes zero sense. I don't flush my garden veggies and it's impossible to 'flush' anything grown outdoors. Why flush cannabis? Uncle Ben used to say flushing was invented by the Dutch to atone for the sins of over-feeding. I tend to agree with that. Just give your plants what they need at all times and keep in mind they have needs at all times .

Speaking of the bud to leaf ratio, Serious Seeds has done a great job at breeding that desirable trait into their strains. Serious Seeds Chronic below from seed, day 37 in the dirt, DynaGro of course. This will probably be my keeper pheno, looks like an easy chop:

Yes. The other thing I've noticed about Serious Seeds is that they have such Great Stability in all of their lines. Very consistent phenos plant, to plant.

I dropped my EC down a little more on my last res change. I'm at .8 EC, using RO water and per gallon: 5ml protek, 6ml bloom, 2ml magpro. My ppm went from 388 to 400 in 24 hours, but my girls drank huge amounts of water. 50% more water usage than most days. I believe my girls like a light diet of nutes. My fan leaves are showing no deficiencies, and the bud leaves still have a little curl on a few of them. I bet I could go through bloom at 420ppm, and grow happy girls.

burrr said:

I dropped my EC down a little more on my last res change. I'm at .8 EC, using RO water and per gallon: 5ml protek, 6ml bloom, 2ml magpro. My ppm went from 388 to 400 in 24 hours, but my girls drank huge amounts of water. 50% more water usage than most days. I believe my girls like a light diet of nutes. My fan leaves are showing no deficiencies, and the bud leaves still have a little curl on a few of them. I bet I could go through bloom at 420ppm, and grow happy girls.

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This is exactly what it takes to grow healthy plants. You're observing your plants and making small tweaks based on their needs. You're also letting them do what they do, which is grow at their own pace and develop into what their genetic code allows. +rep to you.

Edit: looks like I need to spread some rep before hitting you back

Hey Homebrewer can you repost a side by side pic of a Dnya-Grow plant next to an AN feed plant?

Vindicated said:

Hey Homebrewer can you repost a side by side pic of a Dnya-Grow plant next to an AN feed plant?

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I grow groups of plants in hydro and single plants in the dirt. AN is only being used in hydro. I can't do side-by-side without moving a flood table across a room, which isn't going to happen.

The pics were taken yesterday which puts these ugly ladies at day 51. As I mentioned in the previous update, I’m not pleased with the yellowing of the upper canopy and the leaf curl. I do not encounter this with DynaGro at this EC and I’ve taken steps to correct these ‘issues’ the day they started to appear. I lowered the amount of ‘booster’ (koolbloom 0-10-10) from around 15% of total ppm to 10%. I even switched the ‘booster’ to Hydroplex (0-10-6) thinking maybe these girls are getting too much potassium. I even lowered the EC to just over 1.0. The only reason I was using koolbloom to begin with is to emulate a similar ‘booster’ offered by Advanced nutrients.

The buds however smell like I’d expect them to smell and the yield is better than it looks. This strain/pheno tends to grow buds too heavy for the stems to support which is why they’ll just lay on the trellis netting instead of remaining upright.

I do want to note the difference in yield and the health of the plants (visually) between the two nutrient brands. Connoisseur is requiring more work on a daily and weekly basis to seemingly maintain plants that aren’t visually as healthy and don’t appear to be yielding nearly as well as the lower maintenance DynaGro brand.

We have about 2 weeks left here and I’m doing my best to do Connoisseur justice. I want healthy plants, I want big yields, I need a high quality end product. I know it may not appear this way but I’m doing everything I can do to ensure all of the above given what I have to work with.

Here are the ladies:






DynaGro day 50:



Connoisseur day 51:



DynaGro day 50: