In that case, House and Garden Aqua Flakes. Just A and B, contains everything the plants need. I went from nearly the complete line to just AB, over several runs ditching additives. I don't expect that to change again, I'm not saying all additives are useless, at least not entirely, but especially the flower additvies can quickly have undesired effects in mediumless hydro. The portion of the EC taken up by for example liquid blue is better spend on the 3 base part. Once you got it dialed in with base nutes you can still try certain additives but blue planet' schedule is not designed for the efficient system you build and tweaking it to your needs with 7 bottles is very hard (since we know only the ec and not the npk of the soup).
I actually went to the hydro store initially to get GHE(urope) tri part but they had a good deal on a H&G starter pack so ended up with that one, I considered floranova too, I know a mapito (rockwool like slabs) grower who gets great results with those too. I got a GHE tri pack later and while I didn't have major problems,
I'm frankly without logical reason perhaps a little biased when it comes to H&G aquaflakes but several others at RIU use it with great results too and
@homebrewer who compared various brands had good things to say about it to so I can still safely recommend it. It's too my knowledge the only one specifically for recirculating hydro. Blue planet seems suitable for hydro but they do mention soil and soilless is best.
@skunkd0c uses something similar, also mostly or soley AB and littile over 1.0ec. He posted some pics of his latest results here:
https://www.rollitup.org/t/bud-pics-bud-porn.628338/#post-11771710 (thread is worth the loading time
)
Also, the liquid seaweed seems tricky. For all I know it actually contributes to your roots being healthy but I would avoid anything organic and anything that stains the roots for example. I like my soup to be bright as water, but there are plenty of guys getting great results with teas and stuff so.... It's basically a choise betweem running sterile or not.
hey mate, i have you and alpha phase and a few others from the msn forum to thank
who have been showing me how plants grow fine on a 1.3 rather than a 2.0+ lol for years now, i have finally got round to letting them run into minor deficiencies to find the sweet spot
i ran the kush x cheese on a+b flower during veg on an ec of no more than 1.0
.8 most of the time, if i had some a+b veg i would of used that too but i ran out
i only normally buy a little bit of the veg and buy the flower in 10 or 20 liter to save money
i started to see some slightly lighter green leaves and a few orange/rust spots on some leaves
i changed the solution at 5 weeks for fresh nutes, i did not mind doing this
i normally go a complete crop with no res changes, but this is because i am topping up with water all the time
and nutes when needed, 1 res change per crop is ok with me,
if i ever see any problems with leaves looking a little odd i will just replace the res, rather than try to diagnose any kind of deficiency
and add separate elements like cal mag or whatever, i just pump it out and start again, this has worked for me
i have never seen any "nute imbalance"
i bought and added some veg a+b and brought the ec to 1.3 the plant was fully green in 3 days
with no more new orange spot leaves, i am happy to run the ec as low as possible now
until i see minor deficiencies as they can be fully corrected in a few days with a res change
in contrast i can burn them in less than 24 hours, with quite a few leaves affected
overall this does not really harm the plant as once the food is brought back down again the new growth is not affected
i am finding the sweet spot between deficiencies and burn
i am happy now to set them at 1.5 and allow it to drift i will add more food when it drops to 1.2
in the past i would of run them as high as 1.2-1.5 during veg and 2.0- 2.5 during flower, there is no advantage to this as far as i can see now
running them on a lower ec saves some food , and less is always more to me when growing weed plants
i would only use a+b foods. i have used 3 part foods before but i do not like the extra cost of them
and the way the foods are used in very uneven amounts,
like you need lots of pink a little bit of brown and the green is basically a bottle of piss,
so you end up with lots of left over brown, no pink and a bottle of green piss
then you work out that you don't need the green at all and feel like a cunt for wasting money on that shit
i have been looking at optimum bloom recently might give that a run
its made by the clonex people. growth technology it is the cheapest "branded" food i can find in the uk
you can get 20L of a+b for £80 or something like that making it like £4 per liter which is cheap
they do not give much info on the bottle so i sent them an email they sent back this
Iron is DTPA chelate
Manganese, zinc and copper are EDTA chelates
No pH stabilizers/buffers
vitalink max is the seconded cheapest branded food here , it seems to keep them green well
and the food is very clean, not like canna which makes the res nasty because of that fluvic acid or whatever is added
the brown food is like iodine lol one drip and it stains its nasty horrible stuff
but i must say overall the canna disolves very well into the solution quickly
i can get accurate readings within 10 minutes of adding food,
with vitalink you need to wait for a good few hours to get accurate readings
i am still waiting vitalink people to email me whether any ph buffers in there food
i doubt it or they would most likely be screaming about how great it is,
also i want to know more details about there chealted elements
they claim that all micros are chealted appart from 3 of them which would mean
8 elements are chealted if you count npk as primary and cal mag as secondary
with vitalink which is higher than most other foods
i would always recommend canna to folk as it works its not too expensive
its easy to get hold of, and you can take quick readings, dissolves very quickly
i ran both the aqua version for recirculating systems, and the regular version of canna
for years, i preferred the regular version mainly because it is less messy than that horrible brown shit but they both work fine in NFT
"plant magic" have a a+b hydro food now
i have never used any of their products they are quite popular here mostly with organic growers
they make a lot of shit for those type of growers too
"SHO GUN Samurai" is the slightly more expensive brand of a+b nutes getting pushed here at hydro shops
never tried it, have no plans to either
peace