To start off, I made a tutorial on 420 for using Hydro Buddy, mixing nutes as well as a few different nutrient regimens I've used. Another grower tried to mix to my targets, but his plants were in peat which behaves a lot differently than potted rockwool which is what I use. That said, he started to contract all sorts of problems and had to revert to the semi successful regimen he was using prior.
My Hydro Buddy Tutorial
I'm just about done with my 2nd batch of micros and am considering screwing around with Megacrop's formulation, but TBH, I'm discontinuing hydro very soon and am getting into soil, so I won't be putting too much more effort into fleshing out better hydro numbers.
Also, I just had SEVERE trouble when experimenting with ammoniacal levels of N. Megacrop's 19:1 ratio of nitrate to ammonium is what got me out of those woods, but I already keep my nitrate fairly low so this leaves my NH4 content to be nearly non-existent.
The micro nutrient formulations I've tried successfully are as follows;
........1.....2
Fe....2....2.5
Mn...1....1.2
B.....0.3..0.5
Zn...0.3...0.5
Cu...0.2...0.3
Mo..0.05...0.1
When you mix your micros into a separate jug, then it's just a standard dose per gallon (or liter) every res change and then those numbers are locked in so long as you use that jug of nutes. Beyond that, you become liberated in what you can do when targeting your macros and secondaries which is how you have the most influence in the way your plant grows. For micros, I only tried the above 2 formulations, but macros I easily tried 15 different formulations. My plants started super healthy with literally one or two leaves showing signs of def, so I sought out to correct those extremely minor deficiencies which then opened me up to many more problems that slaughtered my yields. I went from regularly harvesting a pound or more per plant down to about 6 ounce per plant. I just took an Em Dog for 6 ounces, but the Pineapple Chunk I'll drop in 3 weeks should do about 20 ounces, so I believe I'm out of the woods.
B/c I'm expanding my op, I can't run 9 reservoirs as the weight will crush the building, and is why I'm switching to soil. I'll yield less per plant, but be able to take a plant per week and the weed will be high brix which should make it a lot better.
My current macro targets are as follows;
----------V/S---------Mid B---------Late B
NO3 - 114 ---------- 95 ------------- 80
NH4 -- 05 ----------- 0
P --------65 ----------------------------- 50
K ------ 170 ---------- 180 ------------ 190
Ca ---- 115 ----------------------------- 100
Mg ----- 45 ----------- 50
S ------- 50 ----------- 100
Si ------- 25 ------------------------------- 20
FWIW, V/S means Veg and Stretch. This formulation in rockwool is damn near perfect and my leaves are evenly green with a waxy sheen and only minimal reddening of petioles. When experimenting with any other formulation it is imperative to consider the effects that the changes will have on calcium as it is easily blocked from uptake, albeit by other cations, P, S, PH, RH and Temps. Any one of those can limit Ca uptake which then leads to a cascading shit show of problems. That's what killed me for like 2 months. I tried to elevate NH4 to 10% of total N and it killed calcium as well as created a severe N toxicity. I could have jacked up the K to alleviate the N tox, but K is also a cation and would have further blocked Ca from being taken up. The above seems to be a happy range for all elements while not blocking the Ca.
), there's still the EDTA to contend with. I've read that most chelators are poisonous at higher concentrations. So they're fine for chelating trace metals, but calcium is used at a much higher concentration.
