Jack's RO 12-4-16 | Label | Stock Concentrate Formula

Custom stock concentrate:
1000 ml dry scoop to 5000 ml water, stir until no sediment for a liquid concentrate. The feed of this concentrate for 1.00 EC is roughly 18ml/gal in pure RO.

With the RO formula I like making the stock concentrate because I can just fill any bucket/reservoir with RO and add the liquid until I hit my desired EC without needing to measure out ML and such.. Just shoot for EC instead of adding extra steps measuring it. If you over-add you can always dilute it to desired EC.

pH usually lands around 5.8-5.9 @ 1.0 EC just make sure to add some form of pH up to further ensure no pH crash unless you are feeding every single day with decent runoff!

Thanks for this info. I just picked up the smallest sized bag of this stuff in order to try on some testers and I will mix up some of your concentrate recipe from above.

Were you happy with it in the end?

Snowback said:

Thanks for this info. I just picked up the smallest sized bag of this stuff in order to try on some testers and I will mix up some of your concentrate recipe from above.

Were you happy with it in the end?

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I was not happy with Jacks in the end. I now use General Hydroponics MaxiGro/MaxiBloom and in my new dwc/aquaponic systems I am using House & Garden Aqua Flakes. So far the best quality nutrient has been H&G Aqua Flakes. I used their cocos in the past with great success too. Super concentrated and extremely clean. You can feed aqua flakes without runoff and not worry about salt buildup.

Maxi is not bad with salt buildup/fillers either. I can do a full 60 day veg 60 day flower without runoff or flushing if I keep pH around 5.6-5.8 and feed around 1.0 EC in veg and 1.4-1.6 EC in flower watering once a day with no runoff/waste.

Jacks in the end just wasn't very complete, most certainly wasn't a "one part" and consistency wasn't good enough. Yields never came close to what I get using Maxi the only literal one part I know of on the market. Lots of other "one part" require Epsom Salts, Calcium additives, PK Boosters to actually perform well.

Maxi is an actual 1 part even with RO water other than possible need for a ph adjuster.

calvin.m16 said:

I was not happy with Jacks in the end. I now use General Hydroponics MaxiGro/MaxiBloom and in my new dwc/aquaponic systems I am using House & Garden Aqua Flakes. So far the best quality nutrient has been H&G Aqua Flakes. I used their cocos in the past with great success too. Super concentrated and extremely clean. You can feed aqua flakes without runoff and not worry about salt buildup.

Maxi is not bad with salt buildup/fillers either. I can do a full 60 day veg 60 day flower without runoff or flushing if I keep pH around 5.6-5.8 and feed around 1.0 EC in veg and 1.4-1.6 EC in flower watering once a day with no runoff/waste.

Jacks in the end just wasn't very complete, most certainly wasn't a "one part" and consistency wasn't good enough. Yields never came close to what I get using Maxi the only literal one part I know of on the market. Lots of other "one part" require Epsom Salts, Calcium additives, PK Boosters to actually perform well.

Maxi is an actual 1 part even with RO water other than possible need for a ph adjuster.

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Thanks for the feedback. I have a small bag, so not too large of an investment. I used to go through quite a fair amount of maxibloom back in the day. Not bad stuff.

RO works just as good as maxi. Everyone should be going by ppm N, P, K. the brand name doesnt mean shit. Everyone you listed are so close in NPK ratio that the onnly real difference is the brand name.

Roguedawg said:

RO works just as good as maxi. Everyone should be going by ppm N, P, K. the brand name doesnt mean shit. Everyone you listed are so close in NPK ratio that the onnly real difference is the brand name.

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The quality of the products all varies a lot. H&G fertilizers are super concentrated and filtered. All the dry options are going to have fillers/carriers and not be filtered at all or concentrated (as far as in a liquid sense).

The Chemical composition might be very similar but the actual quality of different brands does matter. My friend went the cheap route and got Megacrop and his black fabric pots look like he dunked them in a white salt bath while I'm feeding the same style in my grow with maxi and have a little white buildup on the fabric pots. The Aqua Flakes is designed to be used in Aeroponic nozzle systems, it's miles away from Jacks as far as quality, consistency and concentration.

I used to go as hard as 25% runoff with Jacks to avoid salt buildup, especially considering I had to add 1g/gal of epsom salts to have any magnesium or sulfur in the RO formulation. I went through 5 gallon buckets of Jacks trying to make it work when there was a hype train for it in my local grow shops. It came out before Athena, Advanced Nutrients and all these other brands started selling dry mixes.

Jacks 12-4-16 "RO" doesn't even contain Magnesium or Sulfur it's far from similar to Maxi.

calvin.m16 said:

Jacks 12-4-16 "RO" doesn't even contain Magnesium or Sulfur it's far from similar to Maxi.
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I generally agree with your statement regarding quality differences, and ratios definitely matter and are fairly different between the two formulas, but I would interject that RO does have magnesium (from magnesium nitrate), as can be seen on your label. No sulfur though, which I was planning on adding with some good 'ol magnesium sulfate. I'm sure you knew that and just made a small error, but I'm pointing it out for other readers.

I am going to run a few testers off of the RO and hopefully I will remember to post back here on how it goes. I did a run of their "clone" formula (15-6-17) + MgSO4 from start to finish and it did a decent job. It can be found on this site with a search. The big downside of that formula is that it contains ammonium nitrate, which basically means that it has a limited shelf life after being exposed to air unless one is very careful with storage (which is too much of a hassle for me). Predictably, after not much time at all, it had transformed into a hard sludge and had become pretty much useless for anything other than outdoor agricultural use.