Which additives to choose and which not.

Right, so here's my wiev on wich additives actually are beneficial work and wich really arent when growing hydroponically. Here i am only referring to standard growers not organic growers as when it comes to organics there's a whole other array of additives that CAN be beneficial.

First off we have Fulvic/humic amino acids.
I personally use Diamond nectar for foliar feedkng but there is lots of good an cheap alternatives. I add fulvic untill second week of flower then i stop. (Foliar feeding is not good beyond this point. I COULD add to water but i don't find it very usefull during flowering. Here i would rather add a Bloom booster - wich i will get to.

TRIA (triacontanol)

Alot of you probably havent heard of this one but its affects are clear in every study as a potent plant suplement in hydroponics. Added througout the plants life. May be added in solution or foliar

Silicate: SIO2 potassium acid (in order to suspend silicate in water potassium acid is used. Be sure to keep your PH around 5.5-6.5)
Exellent products are: Rhino skin (quite expensive though) my favorte sofar is a product called Liquid sand.

But watch out some products are dry powders that "claim" to be water soluble but is NOT atall. One such product is Mineral Magic from GHE. Silicate is added throughout the plants life, some choose to foliar some choose to add to water. (Some claim that the surfactants retained in silicate products will coat the leaf so the additives wont penetrate. I can't prove them wrong i don't believe that atall though.
I foliar for as long as possible then switch to putting it in the solution. I do stop adding when growth stops completely and budding/curing starts wich is around two-three weeks bfore harvest.

Now, those are the three main additives i swear by.
Also proven usefull are cell divider - boosters such as root and bloom boosters. But i do not understand the chemistry behind that so i will just have to trust the producent from wich i buy my boosters. I've read lots about these cell divide boosters and its no hoax. It works! They ARE quite expensive however and i sometimes doubt if they work as well as they cost... If u know what i mean? But i don't grow my weed for profit i do it for great weed!

And all of these mentioned additives i like i believe will make up for their costs in consistant great grows with a bigger tolerance for errors. Stronger, healthier and faster growing plants with less chance of diseases, bugs, sun and nute burns and mildew

What MAYBE to use:

Vitamins: vitamin B-1 Does not have any research to back up its use as a plant additive but the reseachers at "Advanced nutes" does claim it to have some abilities.

Vitamins C and E have under different studys shown to have some positive effects but in all studys researchers pointed out that "more study on the subject is needed"

What IS for sure is that the plant definelty do not NEED vitamins and the benefits if any are doubtfull. Plants produce vitamins. The additives in the above group arent really NEEDED eiter no additives are. But i find Fulvic-Silica and TRIA to be the additives to choose before any other.

What NOT to use:

Molasses:
Molasses aren't all they're cranked up to be. The real benefit of molasses comes when you are using organics and micro-organisms that might feed on the molasses and transform it to usefull goodies for our plants. This brings me to my next subject:

Micro-organisms/enzymes, bacteria, fungi cultures, worm castings, compost tea are ALL reserved for the experienced organic grower do NOT add any of this to your chemical grow !!! It WILL do more trouble than good!

Enzymes for example are sold as a hydroponic additive. The enzymes eats dead roots and turns them into sugars the plant can use (like it does with molasses)

But enzymes also greatly increase the risk of root rot if not paired with a perfectly balanced organic solution of bacteria, cultures and nutes.

Now i have ten yrs experience in hydroponic growing but i don't claim to be an expert theres way to much to still learn! But i put alot of thought, ALOT of reading and some experoence into this post about additives, i hope someone find it usefull!

"Micro-organisms/enzymes, bacteria, fungi cultures, worm castings, compost tea are ALL reserved for the experienced organic grower do NOT add any of this to your chemical grow !!! It WILL do more trouble than good!"

I wouldn't agree with that one. First, inoculating your inorganic grow with benneficial microorganisms can do a lot of good. They will colonize and protect your roots, decompose dead organic matter and attack other microorganisms, preventing the slime from taking over. Second, by adding just the spores, you literaly can't go wrong. With teas you can theoreticaly go wrong if you dont get your microbes to multiply and eat the added molases (thus adding sugar to your res), but that has hapened to me only once, and was totally my mistake.

[QUOTE="Spanky84, post: They will colonize and protect your roots, decompose dead organic matter and attack other microorganisms, preventing the slime from taking over. Second, by adding just the spores, you literaly can't go wrong. With teas you can theoreticaly go wrong if you dont get your microbes to multiply and eat the added molases (thus adding sugar to your res), but that has hapened to me only once, and was totally my mistake.[/QUOTE]

That IS what they are supposed to do yes and they do!
Trouble is the dead stuff the enzymes and shit "decompose" is decomposed into stuff root rot bacteria loves as well.

We are not going to agree on it cus i've seen this shit happen too many times, it happened to me lots of times back when i was dumb enough to think it had benefits for me to add it. I actually never realized that was the problem till a fellow grower of mine pointed out the disadvantages enoculating your solution with organisms. Did alotta reading on it and came to this decision based on it.

It can be beneficial to organic growers that know what they are doing, the rest of us will be throwing money out the window running the risk of even bigger problems. I experienced that first hand.

Besides, between the additives i Have found to be most beneficial in hydroponics (both in personal experience and extensively backed up by long scientific reports) - and the full array of bacteria, fungi and enzymes there would just be an unfair amount of additives to add to your solution. Some like to spend that sorta time, money and dedication. I just don't find it worth my time.

I pull 4-500 grames of godlike tasting and buzzing bud every three months from under my 600w (a few times even got 1g pr watt! )

Hah and since not adding enzymes, never had solution anaerobic/rot problems

Lets agree this far: It CAN be beneficial. It can also be harmfull especially if you dunno what you are doing!
I just find that an uneccecery risk to take for what i find to be a "doubtfull" amount of benefits.

listmann said:

First off we have Fulvic/humic amino acids.
I personally use Diamond nectar for foliar feedkng but there is lots of good an cheap alternatives. I add fulvic untill second week of flower then i stop. (Foliar feeding is not good beyond this point. I COULD add to water but i don't find it very usefull during flowering. Here i would rather add a Bloom booster - wich i will get to.

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Why dont you add fulvic acid directly to the roots throughout your grow. By definition it should help in nute uptake at and widen the range nutes can be consumed as far as PH goes?
At the moment I recently added diamond nectar to my regimen along with floralicious plus.

ounevinsmoke said:

Why dont you add fulvic acid directly to the roots throughout your grow. By definition it should help in nute uptake at and widen the range nutes can be consumed as far as PH goes?
At the moment I recently added diamond nectar to my regimen along with floralicious plus.

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You can do that for shure but you can also foliar feed to same advantages i find (thats what the guys that produce the stuff says too)

I guess it depends on preferences and how large your reservoir is. (@ 3 ml/l and the stuff not beeing cheap that matters )

Personally i find foliar feeding to be both cheaper and better than root feeding, theres alotta research to support that claim too. Check it out

Like i said, GHE's own directions about diamond nectar: "use in hydroponic solution OR as foliar spray. For foliar, use 50ml/liter and spray once every 7/14 days"

When foliar feeding i like to use a surfactant such as Aloe Vera. It breaks the surface tension of the water allowing for a more even spread of water on the leaves instead of droplets. There IS some thin claims though that surfactant will cover the surface of the leaves preventing uptake but i personally don't find any sense in that.

Many foliar feeding charts say "spray till point of drip off) I don't agree cus if you do that most of it will typically drip off
I try to spray till the point JUST bfore dripoff.

Throughout the whole grow?? If you will notice even the producer says to pull off DN second week of bloom no use for it the remainder of the grow. But hey if you INSIST on parting with ur $ hehe JK

Beyond this point the plant is large enough and its root/distribution system plenty capable of uptaking solution.

Ooh no just checked GHE says add DN till week 8 of flower! I stand corrected. But then again they make money on you using it that long
They DO however advise to stop using at week 8 and not use in late bloom.
Its the guy that sells me the stuff that told me to pull back DN @ week2 of flower.
He's a REAL old rat in the business and i trust him all the way i did try to add it once or twice the whole grow i noticed no benefits.

you guys need avatars if anyones gonna take you serious.

Lol you need a picture of my dog/plant to take me serious?

I really got more important stuff todo than try to figure how to upload an avatar from my iphone im rlly sorry

Aparently i didn't have better to do. That was quite easy haha better now?

nice lol

listmann said:

That IS what they are supposed to do yes and they do!
Trouble is the dead stuff the enzymes and shit "decompose" is decomposed into stuff root rot bacteria loves as well.

We are not going to agree on it cus i've seen this shit happen too many times, it happened to me lots of times back when i was dumb enough to think it had benefits for me to add it. I actually never realized that was the problem till a fellow grower of mine pointed out the disadvantages enoculating your solution with organisms. Did alotta reading on it and came to this decision based on it.

It can be beneficial to organic growers that know what they are doing, the rest of us will be throwing money out the window running the risk of even bigger problems. I experienced that first hand.

Besides, between the additives i Have found to be most beneficial in hydroponics (both in personal experience and extensively backed up by long scientific reports) - and the full array of bacteria, fungi and enzymes there would just be an unfair amount of additives to add to your solution. Some like to spend that sorta time, money and dedication. I just don't find it worth my time.

I pull 4-500 grames of godlike tasting and buzzing bud every three months from under my 600w (a few times even got 1g pr watt! )

Hah and since not adding enzymes, never had solution anaerobic/rot problems

Lets agree this far: It CAN be beneficial. It can also be harmfull especially if you dunno what you are doing!
I just find that an uneccecery risk to take for what i find to be a "doubtfull" amount of benefits.

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Not exactly true. There are different kinds of metabolism, but in a good batch of tea, there should be enough different kinds bacteria to be able disolve organic matter fully. There are probably going to be some byproducts root rot bacteria likes, but this way big portion of them will be digested by other kinds of bacteria. By putting in other noninvasive kinds of bacteria, you are creating competition, both for food and for space. You can never have a sterile res, but this way you avoid getting a monoculture (and that is when trouble starts).

Only thing that can be a problem is if you add bacteria together with organic aditives (like sugars), making them multiply too fast.

I have seen quite a lot of people who got rid of root rot problems by using microbes, and very few who have had problems caused by it. You might have done something very wrong (added too much sugar, brewed for a period of time that is too short, or at a temperature that is too low).

Alienwidow said:

you guys need avatars if anyones gonna take you serious.

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I refuse, my tenure is enough lol

Spanky84 said:

Not exactly true. There are different kinds of metabolism, but in a good batch of tea, there should be enough different kinds bacteria to be able disolve organic matter fully. There are probably going to be some byproducts root rot bacteria likes, but this way big portion of them will be digested by other kinds of bacteria. By putting in other noninvasive kinds of bacteria, you are creating competition, both for food and for space. You can never have a sterile res, but this way you avoid getting a monoculture (and that is when trouble starts).

Only thing that can be a problem is if you add bacteria together with organic aditives (like sugars), making them multiply too fast.

I have seen quite a lot of people who got rid of root rot problems by using microbes, and very few who have had problems caused by it. You might have done something very wrong (added too much sugar, brewed for a period of time that is too short, or at a temperature that is too low).

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Now see that right there is exactly why i stay away and advice to stay away from introducing organisms into my ress.

Like i said earlier i KNOW it can be beneficial but it can also go horribly wrong, like you said.
If you DO go that way you need to keep a perfect balance in your res - like you say its not that simple.

THAT is why i will not advice the use of these additives that are readily sold over the counter, especially if you don't know what you are doing.

And even if you do i find it too much hassle and risky than i find it beneficial.

Said in other words there's Silicate, Tria and Humic acids thats important. Also cell dividers (boosters) are very beneficial.
I think its important to keep these chemical additives separated from the full array of bacteria/enzymes and soon as starting to add that sort of stuff is a whole science in itself and in my opinion, its just not worth it having to add 4-5 more products, brewing teas and shit.. Teas will have organic nutes in them (so will alot of the other products in this category) and thereby require you to adjust feed schedual accordingly.

There is no "schedual" on how to inoculate your res and keep it well balanced. There are only 1000 different opinions on how to do this, and alot of the products mentioned arent awailable or way expensive.
I say... Just don't, save that energy and money

In my own example, when starting up i had NO idea what additives to use and was just told ALOT of gibberish and handed 10 products, some of these bacteria, fungi and enzymes. And frankly had a hard time finding anytjing specific other than alotta opinions pointing each direction and at 10 NEW products.. I still do :-/

Everything had a feed schedual and said a dosage and how to use. But i did struggle with root rot, and resolution turning bad EVERY time :-/ till i stopped using it and started looking into additives and benefits.

And this is only in my own case, i've solved several other growers problems telling them to quit some random product like "cannazym" they picked up over the counter.

These are my results, it werent meant to insult those that succesfully inoculate their ress

There are products like great white and ZHO that are basically microbe spores. Those are safer then most other aditives. By adding them you are adding really insignificant amount of organic matter, and you really have to try hard to overdo it.
Then you have microbe tea brewed by bubbling water with a bit of sugar and some microbial spores. That is a bit more easy to mess up, but if you follow some easy instructions. Again, they contain very little organics and are hard to overdo. I add some tea to my res every third day, bit nothing really bad would happen if I added some daily. Excess bacteria would just starve. Definately no delicate balance to keep.

Enzymes on the other hand are considerably more risky because they are not alive (thus can't mantain their own balance), and contain more organics that can serve as food for microbes. If you have an infection going on, they can actually make it worse.

Then again there are complex mictures of microbes, nutes, and different organics.Those can be problematic and I stay away from them.

Sorry, you are dismissing some very useful products by grouping thm too broadly with other items they share very little with.

I found that very interesting and informative Spanky thank you.
But understand me, what you said, peeps arent told in the hudroponic stores, they will have to find that iformation amongst other growers (who alot of the time tend to not agree lol) and as you know some (alot of) peeps just talk about stuff they don't really know about, i myself have recommended products i now - with experience - would never recommend so... Who do you trust?
For example: you implied that enzymes werent a good idea to add versus "safer" additives - in your mind - and that makes sense to me i have more than 10yrs experience and a better understanding of plant mechanics and problems to see what makes sense and what doesnt. But to a new grower or one with less experience?
I bet theres lots of growers that swear by enzymes and would have you wrong, am i right?

Between that and me seeing that sticking to the chems make PLENTY huge and beatifull plants with roots white as pure snow, ye i guess i do dismiss some potentially usefull products. I just have a hard time seeing how adding even more additives than i already do could possibly improve my grows at this stage. At least to an extent worth the trouble/money.

Already i am using 70/100 % more additives than every other grower i know having to add even more is just... For me not going to happen

In the main post i said simply dont use it EVER or only if you'r an organic grower.

I shoulda refrased that, i meant that these additives can be very beneficial in the hands of the grower with experience into organic cultures no doubt... But if you don't; stay away from the wodoo!

So hydrogaurd and pondezyme are bad ???

If you are against using micro organisms/tea or enzymes then how do you control any pythium outbreak in DWC?

listmann said:

I found that very interesting and informative Spanky thank you.
But understand me, what you said, peeps arent told in the hudroponic stores, they will have to find that iformation amongst other growers (who alot of the time tend to not agree lol) and as you know some (alot of) peeps just talk about stuff they don't really know about, i myself have recommended products i now - with experience - would never recommend so... Who do you trust?
For example: you implied that enzymes werent a good idea to add versus "safer" additives - in your mind - and that makes sense to me i have more than 10yrs experience and a better understanding of plant mechanics and problems to see what makes sense and what doesnt. But to a new grower or one with less experience?
I bet theres lots of growers that swear by enzymes and would have you wrong, am i right?

Between that and me seeing that sticking to the chems make PLENTY huge and beatifull plants with roots white as pure snow, ye i guess i do dismiss some potentially usefull products. I just have a hard time seeing how adding even more additives than i already do could possibly improve my grows at this stage. At least to an extent worth the trouble/money.

Already i am using 70/100 % more additives than every other grower i know having to add even more is just... For me not going to happen

In the main post i said simply dont use it EVER or only if you'r an organic grower.

I shoulda refrased that, i meant that these additives can be very beneficial in the hands of the grower with experience into organic cultures no doubt... But if you don't; stay away from the wodoo!

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Well, that's it, you are talking about what you found out works for you, I'm adding my 5 cents.

But I must correct you again. There are two very different things you seem to be mixing up. One is making an organic hydro solution with bacterial culture, and other is adding microorganisms to inorganic solution. First one is tricky, second is quite trivial. If you add bacteria to organic mixture, you'll have them divide uncontrolably and do damage if you don't know exactly what you are doing. If you add benneficial bacteria and funghi to a res with only inorganic nutes disolved in water (that's what I do), you practically can't go wrong. There is very little food in there, and they can't multiply much (and thus the bad bacteria can't either).

Everyone's posts are far 2 long! Ain't got time for your memoirs!!

R3l@X said:

Everyone's posts are far 2 long! Ain't got time for your memoirs!!

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One liner posts are for people killing time , informative posts cant be structured to teach people within the standard 50 word or less attention span .

Keep posting your long posts guys , nobody learns anything from one liners .