Cropking Hydro-Gro, Yara Calium nitrate, and mixing individual salts

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churchhaze

Well-Known Member
All hydroponic nutrient solutions use calcium nitrate as their primary source of both N and Ca and have a low percentage of ammonium nitrogen. Calcium nitrate is commonly packaged as the double salt, 5Ca(NO3)2.NH4NO3 and in that form has an NPK ratio of 15.5-0-0 with 19% calcium. Cropking has this double salt under the yara brand line for an extremely cheap price.

Calcium nitrate is the main ingredient of GH flora "micro", calmag plus, and just about every hydroponic nutrient additives or main stock solutions that says it contains calcium. It goes without saying that calmag is a complete waste of money because you can buy 1 pound of solid calcium nitrate for $2.60 or 5 pounds for $7.00 and practically replace both calmag and GH flora micro, or BC boost, or whatever your calcium containing stock solution you use..

Potassium nitrate KNO3 has an NPK of 13.9-0-46.6 which provides nitrates, but provides more K than N. Add it to get lots of K and some N.

Mono potassium phosphate KH2PO4 has an NPK of 0-52-34 and is used to provide all the phosphates, but also boosts K some. This is also used in bloom boosters.

Magnesium Sulfate heptahydrate MgSO4.7H2O, also known as epsom salts has an NPK of 0-0-0 with 9.9%Mg and 13% S. Use to add Mg and S.

Here's a list of the salts they have

http://www.cropking.com/HydroponicSupplies/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=264&zenid=8a961a24cc4d512ba726907c4ad12145

They also have a very cheap complete line called Hydro-gro which is a 2 part solid mix.

1 Part is just yara calcium nitrate
The other part is the other salts along with micros (other than calcium) with an NPK of 4.5-14-34

A kit for 0.5lb of each part costs about 10 dollars there, and that's way cheaper than anything else I've seen so far and it's way cheaper when buying in bulk, or individual salts. For very large scale operations, you can get a 50 pound bag of yara calcium nitrate for about 35 dollars! It's really that cheap! I've had a lot of success using their individual salts to make my own solutions, but their 2 part mix looks like a really good choice for anyone looking to get into using solid salts.

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patlpp

patlpp

New Member
Could you explain why ammoniacal N at greater than 15% of total N is a no-no in inert hydro? Dyna-gro, with 0-0-3 K-silicate is touted around here as the mother of all nutrients regardless of growing methods. You seem to have a very good understanding of chemistry and biology. Perhaps you could shed some light on this subject? My understanding is that some Ammoniacal N is uptaked as-is but is very finite, and that the remainder of this N source must be processed by biologicals in the soil. Without these biologicals, this remaining N is wasted. Thanks so much.

EDIT: vvvvvv Thanks church for the response. +r vvvvvvvvvv
 
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churchhaze

Well-Known Member
The plant can take up both NO3 and NH4, but NO3 is a negatively charged ion while NH4 is positively charged. That means NH4 competes with K, Ca, Mg, and Fe while NO3 competes with PO4 and SO4. NH4 uses the same cellular channels as K as well. I'm not sure why the plant prefers nitrates.. i guess it's just one of those "it just does" things.

In order to raise NH4 levels without changing the overall balance of anions and cations (that aren't OH- or H+), you'd have to use less K, Ca and Mg basically.

patlpp said:
Could you explain why ammoniacal N at greater than 15% of total N is a no-no in inert hydro? Dyna-gro, with 0-0-3 K-silicate is touted around here as the mother of all nutrients regardless of growing methods. You seem to have a very good understanding of chemistry and biology. Perhaps you could shed some light on this subject? My understanding is that some Ammoniacal N is uptaked as-is but is very finite, and that the remainder of this N source must be processed by biologicals in the soil. Without these biologicals, this remaining N is wasted. Thanks so much.
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churchhaze

Well-Known Member
Here's something to work with. I used hydrobuddy to make a Hoagland solution derivative using the ppm concentrations found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoagland_solution to find how much of each salt you need to replicate it. It would make a great veg solution at 3:1:4.

Hoagland original concentrations

N 210 ppm
K 235 ppm
Ca 200 ppm
P 31 ppm
S 64 ppm
Mg 48 ppm
B 0.5 ppm
Fe 1 to 5 ppm
Mn 0.5 ppm
Zn 0.05 ppm
Cu 0.02 ppm
Mo 0.01 ppm

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Hoagland variant (derived with hydrobuddy)

N:P2O5:K2O ratio = 3:1:4

N (NO3-) = 200 ppm
N (NH4+) = 12 ppm
P = 31 ppm
K = 235 ppm
Mg = 48 ppm
Ca = 200 ppm
S = 66 ppm
Fe = 5 ppm
B = 0.5 ppm
Mn = 0.5 ppm
Na = 0.5 ppm
Si = 22 ppm

Ingredients to make solution (add calcium nitrate and micros last)

- 4 gallons 0ppm water
- KNO3 = 5.291g (potassium nitrate)
- KH2PO4 = 2.063g (mono potassium phosphate)
- MgSO4.7H2O = 7.371g (magnesium sulfate)
- 5Ca(NO3)2.NH4NO3 = 15.939g (yara calcium nitrate double salt)
- FeSO4.7H2O = 0.377g (Iron sulfate)
- K2SiO3 = 6.047g (potassium silicate)
- MnSO4.H2O = 0.023g (Manganese sulfate)
- Na2B4O7.10H20 = 0.067g (sodium borate)

The Potassium silicate is used because the original hoagland solution didn't have yara calcium nitrate. I needed another source of potassium to get Ca and K to be the same ppm as hoagland's while still keeping the same level of N. Really, potassium hydroxide would have worked just as well (not the same mass), but I figured I'd include some silicates. :) Is 22ppm too high for silicates? Honestly, I've never used silicate salts.

If you don't want to get so many salts, just get the B, Mn, salts later. I didn't even include Mo or Zn in this mix for simplicity since they're at such low concentrations. It's very hard to be deficient in Mn, Mo, Zn, Cu. Even a zinc penny (after 1982) thrown in the tank will provide too much zinc as it starts leaking zinc in like a week.
 
ThorGanjason

ThorGanjason

Well-Known Member
Sweet, great info!! I'm a bio chem major, but my brother graduated with a double chemistry major and when I was telling him about the nutrients needed he asked me why I didn't try using some salts. This is basically the way I planned on starting to grow, without using mainstream hydro nutes, I just didn't know where else to get them from. Well done, sir!

Do anions and cations from pH buffer solutions not interact with any of these salts (as I'm sure their use would affect pH)
 
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RPMJUNKIE

Member
Yes im sure they do but its in equilibrium, but its nothing too worry about as long as you keep an eye on your ph, precipitation shouldnt be a problem either

That hoagland solution looks really interesting, some great info there! Imma read around on it.
 
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churchhaze

Well-Known Member
The anions and cations in the solution buffer the pH pretty well on their own except for phosphates doesn't play well with calcium. You could use conjugate weak base for KH2PO4, but that may be a bit silly considering price and complexity. I don't think any hydro nutrient brand uses it. The hoagland solution's KH2PO4 1M base solution said to pH to 6.0, but I don't do that, I get the K+ elsewhere if needed. Actually, that may be why I needed potassium silicate in the above Hoagland varient to get enough K.. Hoagland must have got the K from pHing the KH2PO4 solution with KOH.

My background was engineering, not chemistry so you could probably answer your own questions better than me. I only took a few basic chemistry courses and picked up just enough to figure out molar equations and mass, etc, and tried to apply it to plants so I didn't have to waste my money anymore.

Most of how i determine what goes into my own mixes is really guess and check. I change the ratios of the salts until it works best. Less theory and more experimentation, etc.

ThorGanjason said:
Sweet, great info!! I'm a bio chem major, but my brother graduated with a double chemistry major and when I was telling him about the nutrients needed he asked me why I didn't try using some salts. This is basically the way I planned on starting to grow, without using mainstream hydro nutes, I just didn't know where else to get them from. Well done, sir!

Do anions and cations from pH buffer solutions not interact with any of these salts (as I'm sure their use would affect pH)
Click to expand...
 
ThorGanjason

ThorGanjason

Well-Known Member
churchhaze said:
The anions and cations in the solution buffer the pH pretty well on their own except for phosphates doesn't play well with calcium. You could use conjugate weak base for KH2PO4, but that may be a bit silly considering price and complexity. I don't think any hydro nutrient brand uses it. The hoagland solution's KH2PO4 1M base solution said to pH to 6.0, but I don't do that, I get the K+ elsewhere if needed. Actually, that may be why I needed potassium silicate in the above Hoagland varient to get enough K.. Hoagland must have got the K from pHing the KH2PO4 solution with KOH.

My background was engineering, not chemistry so you could probably answer your own questions better than me. I only took a few basic chemistry courses and picked up just enough to figure out molar equations and mass, etc, and tried to apply it to plants so I didn't have to waste my money anymore.

Most of how i determine what goes into my own mixes is really guess and check. I change the ratios of the salts until it works best. Less theory and more experimentation, etc.
Click to expand...
OK, yeah Im sure that there aren't any exceptions that would cause it to happen, but I guess I was wondering if any of the salts could interact with the buffers in a away that might cause the nutrients to form precipitates.

For example, if an ion from one of the salts had the potential to split the hydroxide ion given by the pH+ buffer, and the oxygens bonded with the calcium in another salt and carbon from the compost/soil to form calcium carbonate, which I'm assuming the plant wouldn't be able to absorb, lol.

I know that example in particular would be damn near impossible, but it just seems like some of these salts together (with a pH buffer as a catalyst) could form different polymers/or precipitates instead of just being absorbed by the plant and broken down into the individual nutrients it needs.

If there is any truth to my logic, it would probably be a 1-in-100 type of thing, where if you used a certain salt you might need to stay away from a certain acid as a buffer, so as not to create precipitates unusable to the plant, or possibly a stronger acid/base.
 
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churchhaze

Well-Known Member
Most pH up is potassium hydroxide, and the potassium ions don't form precipitates with nitrates, phosphates, or sulphates. Potassium nitrate, potassium phosphate, and potassium sulfate are all highly water soluble.

If the pH down is phosphate based, there's a chance it could react with the calcium in the solution and precipitate out calcium phosphate, which is highly insoluble. It takes potassium ions to keep phosphates in the solution as potassium phosphate is highly water soluble as well.

Nitric acid based pH down doesn't have any ions it wants to precipitate out with. Potassium nitrate, Calcium Nitrate, and Magnesium nitrate are all highly soluble in water so there's very little chance of nitrate salts to precipitate out with those metals.

tl;dr too much phosphate causes precipitates. This also means that all calcium must come from calcium nitrate, as any other form would be solid in water (calcium phosphate)

ThorGanjason said:
OK, yeah Im sure that there aren't any exceptions that would cause it to happen, but I guess I was wondering if any of the salts could interact with the buffers in a away that might cause the nutrients to form precipitates.

For example, if an ion from one of the salts had the potential to split the hydroxide ion given by the pH+ buffer, and the oxygens bonded with the calcium in another salt and carbon from the compost/soil to form calcium carbonate, which I'm assuming the plant wouldn't be able to absorb, lol.

I know that example in particular would be damn near impossible, but it just seems like some of these salts together (with a pH buffer as a catalyst) could form different polymers/or precipitates instead of just being absorbed by the plant and broken down into the individual nutrients it needs.

If there is any truth to my logic, it would probably be a 1-in-100 type of thing, where if you used a certain salt you might need to stay away from a certain acid as a buffer, so as not to create precipitates unusable to the plant, or possibly a stronger acid/base.
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ThorGanjason

ThorGanjason

Well-Known Member
Are you sure you're an engineer? Lol. It goes to show where a little reading will get you.

They did seem mostly water soluble (at a glance) but I'm going to have to check my pH plus solution and see what alkaline it has in it. I didn't get it from the hydro store BC they wanted $40 for both of them, so I went to a fish store and got some aquarium buffers, but haven't had to use them yet so I haven't even checked what they have in them. I'm gonna spend a little time (when I have the time) balancing some equations, BC this whole salt thing really seems like such a great idea. I'm just not as familiar with plant physiology, and the uptake of its nutrients.
 
C

churchhaze

Well-Known Member
Check out the application "hydrobuddy". It has 2 input methods.

One is to put the mass of a bunch of known salts (from its database) into a constant liquid volume and it will tell you the ppm of each element and any ratio you want, like N:P:K or Ca:Mg

or you could put in the ppm of each element and a constant volume and it will reverse engineer that solution telling you how many grams of each salt you will need to get all the correct ppm. The more salts you include, the better solution it will come up with. This input mode lets you reverse engineer commercial products pretty easily and it's easy to see how accurate the solution it comes up with is.

It also allows you to save mixes in a database, and has a few sample mixes you can load and work with.

Before I had hydrobuddy, I was using an excel application I made that did the first part of what hydrobuddy does, but not the reverse engineering part. My homemade excel calculator always gives the same result as hydrobuddy, so I basically switched over to using hydrobuddy and trust its calculations.

It also allows you to put the cost of each salt in the substance database and will give you the production cost of each salt per gallons of final solution. For my setup, it costs about 80 cents to completely refill 5x4 gallon bins of water. Changing all the tanks 10 times costs about $8.50. (the rounding is less accurate with 20 gallons than 200)

ThorGanjason said:
Are you sure you're an engineer? Lol. It goes to show where a little reading will get you.

They did seem mostly water soluble (at a glance) but I'm going to have to check my pH plus solution and see what alkaline it has in it. I didn't get it from the hydro store BC they wanted $40 for both of them, so I went to a fish store and got some aquarium buffers, but haven't had to use them yet so I haven't even checked what they have in them. I'm gonna spend a little time (when I have the time) balancing some equations, BC this whole salt thing really seems like such a great idea. I'm just not as familiar with plant physiology, and the uptake of its nutrients.
Click to expand...
 
ThorGanjason

ThorGanjason

Well-Known Member
churchhaze said:
Check out the application "hydrobuddy". It has 2 input methods.

One is to put the mass of a bunch of known salts (from its database) into a constant liquid volume and it will tell you the ppm of each element and any ratio you want,

or you could put in the ppm of each element and a constant volume and it will reverse engineer that solution telling you how many grams of each salt you tell it to solve from. The more salts you include, the better solution it will come up with.

It also allows you to save mixes in a database, and has a few sample mixes you can load and work with.

Before I had hydrobuddy, I was using an excel application I made that did the first part of what hydrobuddy does, but not the reverse engineering part. My calculator always gives the same result as hydrobuddy, so I basically switched over to using that and trust its calculations.
Click to expand...
No way! That is sweet. When you say application, do you mean for a smartphone? Android or IOS?
 
ThorGanjason

ThorGanjason

Well-Known Member
Waaaaay too sweet. Love the reverse engineer feature, takes all of my guesswork out of the equation (not to mention, the fewer questions I ask my professors, the more clueless they are as to what I'm up to:weed:
 
O

oxanaca

Well-Known Member
i bumped into this thread on accident, but mixing nutrients is what i do. i hate hydrobuddy, it never gives me the answer im looking for its much easier to copy commercial nutrients with a calculator and a piece of paper and pen.

cropking kind of sucks. they only stock a few different chemicals and there prices are high
i prefer customhydronutrients.com.

im about to buy a 50# bag of mono pottasium phosphate.
cropking charges $127.50 shipping included in price to my door
customhydronutrients charges $90 shipping included in price to door
its going to cost me $60 to pick it up at the local co-op
fuck cropking

for calcium nitrate 50#
cropking charges $60.50
customhydronutrients charges $57.25
i paid $33 at the local co-op
 
C

churchhaze

Well-Known Member
Hey, thanks for the suggestion! I don't work for cropking, so I'm happy to see other suggestions. The first place I got my stuff was actually the science company, and that stuff is very overpriced! The Potassium hydroxide flakes I use is from there because I use so little of it, and rarely now (got 500g a long time ago and have most of it left).

I think a lot of people looking to try this aren't looking to get 50lb bags of KDP (KH2PO4) unless they're giant setups. I've had 5 pounds last a few years and the shipping on 5 pounds isn't too high. The only reason I got the 50lb bag of calcium nitrate is because I didn't realize they sold 5 pounds for 7 dollars in the "hydro-gro" section instead of the calcium nitrate section. 50 pounds of calcium nitrate is a LOT for even large scale hydroponic growers. I will never use 50 pounds for marijuana.

When I used hydrobuddy to price 200 gallons of final nutrient solution, it estimated 8.50 dollars based on the 5lb rates for each salt used. That's all 5 of my DWC tanks changed 10 times for 8.50. I'd love to get that cheaper though!

I'm sure you can agree that getting your salts from just about anywhere is a better deal than buying AN products.

Any more places you like to pick up chemicals from?

Also, I think you need to give hydrobuddy a bit more time before you write it off. I was able to emulate the hoagland solution on the fly for the above post with a high degree of accuracy and precision. If you're not getting close solutions with it, perhaps the solution is unsolvable with the substance selection list you provided it. I used to do everything by hand until I wrote a calculator, then I found hydrobuddy and it was like my calculator with a nice user interface.

oxanaca said:
i bumped into this thread on accident, but mixing nutrients is what i do. i hate hydrobuddy, it never gives me the answer im looking for its much easier to copy commercial nutrients with a calculator and a piece of paper and pen.

cropking kind of sucks. they only stock a few different chemicals and there prices are high
i prefer customhydronutrients.com.

im about to buy a 50# bag of mono pottasium phosphate.
cropking charges $127.50 shipping included in price to my door
customhydronutrients charges $90 shipping included in price to door
its going to cost me $60 to pick it up at the local co-op
fuck cropking

for calcium nitrate 50#
cropking charges $60.50
customhydronutrients charges $57.25
i paid $33 at the local co-op
Click to expand...
 
O

oxanaca

Well-Known Member
churchhaze said:
Hey, thanks for the suggestion! I don't work for cropking, so I'm happy to see other suggestions. The first place I got my stuff was actually the science company, and that stuff is very overpriced! The Potassium hydroxide flakes I use is from there because I use so little of it, and rarely now (got 500g a long time ago and have most of it left).

I think a lot of people looking to try this aren't looking to get 50lb bags of KDP (KH2PO4) unless they're giant setups. I've had 5 pounds last a few years and the shipping on 5 pounds isn't too high. The only reason I got the 50lb bag of calcium nitrate is because I didn't realize they sold 5 pounds for 7 dollars in the "hydro-gro" section instead of the calcium nitrate section. 50 pounds of calcium nitrate is a LOT for even large scale hydroponic growers. I will never use 50 pounds for marijuana.

When I used hydrobuddy to price 200 gallons of final nutrient solution, it estimated 8.50 dollars based on the 5lb rates for each salt used. That's all 5 of my DWC tanks changed 10 times for 8.50. I'd love to get that cheaper though!

I'm sure you can agree that getting your salts from just about anywhere is a better deal than buying AN products.

Any more places you like to pick up chemicals from?

Also, I think you need to give hydrobuddy a bit more time before you write it off. I was able to emulate the hoagland solution on the fly for the above post with a high degree of accuracy and precision. If you're not getting close solutions with it, perhaps the solution is unsolvable with the substance selection list you provided it. I used to do everything by hand until I wrote a calculator, then I found hydrobuddy and it was like my calculator with a nice user interface.
Click to expand...
i use sodium hydroxide, ive done quite a bit of reading on sodium and it sounds like most plants dont mind a few hundred ppm sodium, so thats what i do.

IMO buying from a farm co-op/greenhouse supplier is the only way to go for me, couldnt tell you where to score deals on 5 pound bags or anything.

i personally go threw about 50pounds a year of calcium nitrate in my DTW auto coco setup every year. and then i mix 5 gallon buckets of 100X for commercial growers, they tell me to copy a formulation and i do it for them. ill also build a formulation based on a tissue analysiss of a plant.

AN is a scam it funny as hell what they charge for 1-5 chemicals mixed in a bottle.

honestly i can copy a nutrient formula, or create my own faster then i can punch it into the hydrobuddy, so its kind of useless to me.

do you ever add a preservative to you stock solutions such as sodium benzoate. i add it at 400ppm.
 
Mariano Gomes

Mariano Gomes

Active Member
@churchhaze Do you guys have a simple recipe I could follow for salts to create a veg nutrient plus a bloom nutrient? I live in a country with no cannabis nutrients available so i need to make my own.... @oxanaca
 
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