Nutrient Ratios Information

Billy Liar said:

Yes mg/L is parts per million!

Not just saying it because I'm British, but it's much better and easier to work in the metric system where nutrients are concerned. Litres, and grams directly relate to Mg/L which is PPM. No conversion factors or any other things to be misinterpreted.

I thought it was a rubber duck at forst lol.

Peace
BL

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I agree with your POV regarding metrics, but because I've been using US gallons my whole life, it's not something that comes easy. Ironically, when I got a 3D printer, because there is no mention of imperial measurements, I was able to easily pick that up, yet I continue to struggle with liquid measurements I guess.

Rubber ducky, you're the one!

bearded.beaver said:

I'm a soil grower, growing earth boxes. But I still find this really interesting. If I could use those numbers and customize an organic soil to match those numbers. I would be GOD. Or the male version of mother nature.

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Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think soils can be mapped out like hydro can due to the fact in organics, you have to provide more than is needed, yet what the plant gets is what the microbes produce/make available.

@Skybound420 very true. There are just too many variables. We still don't understand all the relationships between the soil ingredients, the bacterial life, fungal life, etc.
Dr. Ingram has just scratched the surface of soil science. But hydroponic grow are playing a part in the whole understanding. By being able to figure out the nutrient requirement of the plant is one part. From that understanding soils can be customized to contain those elements. But then microbes are there to help convert those basic elements into plant available forms. Just like some hydro growers are using microbes as well as salt based nutrients for really spectacular results. I think soil growers and hydro growers can learn from each other. So I read everything to help me get a better understanding of the whole picture

Most definitely we will learn from each other's styles and transliterate the knowledge as needed. FWIW, I use ACTs twice weekly with great results too, even though the bennies dies shortly after I pour it into my roots. They live long enough to keep pythium at bay, that is for certain. I just learned yesterday from a soil grower about using malted barley as a soil amendment or top dress to get those enzymes as they are supposed to speed up growth such that it will knock a few weeks off the finishing time. Sadly, I don't think it works with hydro, but I'm still trying to verify for sure because I'd really like to grow some strains, but after reading of some that finish in more than 9 weeks, makes them not a viable option for my grow.

All very true. You can use seed sprout tea. It makes available all the enzymes and growth hormones that newly germinated seed have. And I have heard of hydro grower utilizing SST. Also using different seeds have differ benefits. Some people use corn, or wheat grass and also barley and other grains. @hyroot has a video on YouTube about it

You could even take alfalfa straw the kind from a pet store as rabbit food. Let it soak in water for a few days. Or even add an air stone. Alfalfa naturally has tricantnol a plant growth hormone

The metric scale was invented by the French I think, to try and make it easier to understand (believe it or not), and also to fit in-line with scientific measurement, and maybe something about revolt too. All it really is, is just a system where were multiple or divide by a 1000. Though it does have new names. Metric names are all greek words really:

milli means 1 thousandths of

The scale simply is just to shift base units up or down by 1000. The base unit for mass is the gram, symbol: g. The base unit for volume is the liter, symbol l. Here is the principle behind converting between grams g and milligrams mg: just simply move along the number scale by 3 zeros. So:

1 gram (or 1g) = 1000 milligrams (or 1000mg)

1 milligram (1mg) = 1 gram / 1000 = 0.001 grams (0.001g)

And thinking about the liter, we can then also think in terms of going between liters l and milliliters ml too just by shifting 3 zeros up or down:

1 liter (or 1l) = 1000 milliliters (1000ml)

1 milliliter (1ml) = 1 liter / 1000 = 0.001 liter (0.001l)


1 miligram per litre of water (final size) or 1mg/l = 1ppm

PPM fundamentally is a concentration scale about mass, it says mass of nutrient divided by the mass of final whole solution. Why we say per final volume. So as a formula it's:

part you interested in divided by the whole
or
mass of solute / (mass of solute + mass of solvent)

eg 2mg of K2SO4 / (2mg + 998 grams of water) = 2mg / 1000g solution, which gives 2ppm

And the neat trick here with the metric system and water is that the volume of water equals its mass, so: 1 liter = 1 kilogram, 2.89 liters = 2.89 kilograms and so on. The PPM scale can be expressed as 1mg per 1 million milliliters ml or 1 liter of final solution, which is incredibly useful for someone who weighs out a nutrient and measures water in volume, like fertilisation.

Hydroponics and organics are generally oil and water, but I have found they can involve each other, though they are still distinct, but kinda like a ying yang. Hydroponics needs chelates, can use organic yet inert media, bennies etc. Organics can most certainly benefit from chemistry as that's the currency between microorganisms, everything is a chemical after all. To bennies, bio-chemistry is their economy.

Great content in here! I more or less get the difference between imperial and metric, in fact I mix my concentrates at a 1:10 grams per ml ratio to make it brainless to calculate my feeding regimens using hydro buddy (HB). So if for instance HB tells me I need 0.049 grams per gallon of something, I just shift the decimal over one position then multiply the result by the size of the res in gallons (10) and move the decimal once more. It's 10 times weaker than every off the shelf nutrient, but isn't as prone to precipitation and much easier to get accurate very small doses.

I'll make effort to adjust my understanding and practices to better comprehend the math. In this example, is there a misplaced decimal or something? 998 grams plus 2 milligrams would be 998.002.

HydroLynx said:

eg 2mg of K2SO4 / (2mg + 998 grams of water) = 2mg / 1000g solution, which gives 2ppm

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I do like that in the metric, weight and volume directly translate which makes reverse engineering bottled nutes possible. If a liter of nutes weights 1.1kg, I'd know there's 100 grams of salts in there. But then, wouldn't that make their concentrates also 1:10 weight to volume ratio? I need to ponder that for a while, lol.

Skybound420 said:

IDK the level of truth, but I've read that potassium sulfate will enhance the lemon scents whereas mag sulf will enhance a fruity sweeter smell. In my final week I use both, but Hydro Buddy hardly calls for the use of any pot sulf all throughout the grow and mostly sticks with mag sulf. I'm doing a Triple Cheese (UK cheese x blue cheese) that smells like 80% pineapple juice with a minor tinge of palm sweat, and that's mostly all mag sulf fed.

I'm also chasing out the same rust spots which has me scouring the web for more info. I read an interesting article yesterday about the relation of Ca to B and how they influence each other's uptake, yet are somehow each only available in the opposing ph range of the other.

https://www.commercial-hydroponic-farming.com/nutrient-interactions-calcium-and-boron-ratio/

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Excellent thread. I'm curious if you have played with calcium chloride vs calcium carbonate? I've looked everywhere and have yet to find why they perform differently my guess beyond false ph readings for 48 hours is the solubility factor but was curious if you'd tried it?

pinner420 said:

Excellent thread. I'm curious if you have played with calcium chloride vs calcium carbonate? I've looked everywhere and have yet to find why they perform differently my guess beyond false ph readings for 48 hours is the solubility factor but was curious if you'd tried it?

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No, I've only been mixing nutes from salts for about 3-4 months, but as is now, I use 2 different kinds of Cal Nit, the second being called Biomin Chelated Calcium Powder has almost no N which makes it easier to adjust my Ca independent from the N. Granted, I still have minor issues with calcium, so I'm not 100% sure of what I'm using, but I also factor in that my Ca PPM target might be too low as well. I found another very similar thread that I was able to query the community for desired PPM ranges for each element, yet when I compare that to every line of nutes, my collected ranges are in many cases a lot lower than what brands use. The reason being for that is to discover ideal ranges for every element for cannabis without overdoing it as every brand does overdo it. I also built a multi head peristaltic dosing system, but instead of adjusting GH brand, I'd rather adjust for raw components such as home made concentrates. So, to properly code that, I need to chase down ideal elemental PPM ranges. Here's 2 related threads.

First thread I jumped in at like page 8, second thread I started.
https://www.rollitup.org/t/jacks-jr-peters-nutrients.850683/page-40#post-14518827

https://www.rollitup.org/t/jacks-321-questions.974851/

Skybound420 said:

No, I've only been mixing nutes from salts for about 3-4 months, but as is now, I use 2 different kinds of Cal Nit, the second being called Biomin Chelated Calcium Powder has almost no N which makes it easier to adjust my Ca independent from the N. Granted, I still have minor issues with calcium, so I'm not 100% sure of what I'm using, but I also factor in that my Ca PPM target might be too low as well. I found another very similar thread that I was able to query the community for desired PPM ranges for each element, yet when I compare that to every line of nutes, my collected ranges are in many cases a lot lower than what brands use. The reason being for that is to discover ideal ranges for every element for cannabis without overdoing it as every brand does overdo it. I also built a multi head peristaltic dosing system, but instead of adjusting GH brand, I'd rather adjust for raw components such as home made concentrates. So, to properly code that, I need to chase down ideal elemental PPM ranges. Here's 2 related threads.

First thread I jumped in at like page 8, second thread I started.
https://www.rollitup.org/t/jacks-jr-peters-nutrients.850683/page-40#post-14518827

https://www.rollitup.org/t/jacks-321-questions.974851/

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Would love to see the doser array.. are you using a raspberry pi module?

pinner420 said:

Would love to see the doser array.. are you using a raspberry pi module?

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I began with arduino, but have since discontinued that and am in the process of migrating the project to an ESP8266 environment. Continued research has me wanting to skip the 8266 and focus on an ESP32 and microPython. Here's a link to the code. I used to have testing videos on the tube, but I think I deleted them some months back.

https://community.blynk.cc/t/run-8-pumps-from-blynk/12604/77

Billy Liar said:

Buds like this one will use up over 320mg/L K in my experience. P reduced to around 15mg/L from mid flower.

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Is that "15ppm of P" expressed as atomic P, or as P2O5 (as mandated on product labels, at least in the UK & EU)?

15ppm (mg/L) of P expressed as P2O5 ~=69ppm - could this explain the difference between yours and Skybound420's numbers?

This is what I'm currently mixing for myself (comments very welcome): It's based on what a 50% strength GHE Flora (using Soft Water Micro) mixed with pure water would produce. Still getting a lot of stretch at the moment, but my overnight temperatures are lower than ideal (16-17 C) which may be to blame.

N is expressed as N; P as P2O5, K as K2O (in line with mandatory product labelling, for easy comparison).
I've also expressed Si as SiO2, Ca as CaO, Mg as MgO, and S as SO3 (again in line with product labelling, although I don't think this is mandatory.)
All microelements are expressed as elemental.

I use GHE Essentials for Micros (aka B'Essentials, they seem to have changed the labelling at some point for unknown reasons: it's not a B-mix), which is just Microelements - mostly chelated - wthout any Macros or secondaries.

I've recently started using 100% RO water, as we have ~120ppm Calcium in the local water, and bringing that down to pH 6-ish with H3PO4 gave a starting point around 250ppm of P.

(EDIT)

Just to add context, I'm running a recirculating hydro system, (two stackboxes, top one full of LECA, bottom one as a reservoir, submersible low power pump constantly irrigating the pebbles with the nutrient mix). This is running in a tent, with thermostatically controlled extraction and cooltubes - temps kept around 27 at the top of the tent.
I try to keep it relatively sterile rather than relying on bennies, so once they're into flower I add a small dose of Peroxide to the res once a week to prevent any slimes/algaes/root-rot taking hold. My thinking is that almost all my N goes in as Nitrate rather than ammonium, as there are no microbes to break the ammonium down.

I can't remember where I picked this little tidbit up, but I saved it to my notes

You can figure the ACTUAL amount of P by multiplying the label# by 0.44 and the K amount by 0.83

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Also, it is extremely hard to look at your numbers due to the width and formatting. If it helps any, when I first started plotting out my own nutes, I think I had about 8 or 9 different feed charts. I've since slimmed that down to 4, Veg - Stretch- Mid Bloom - Late Bloom. Veg can be indefinitely, Stretch is only for 3 weeks, and late bloom for the final week before flush. I am also extremely close to VERY ideal with my feed, so much so, that I have now switched gears and in pursuit of high brix hydroponics which will be a game changer if successful. I use a lot of organic inputs and am always looking to expand that list. Organics are the chelators and when used correctly greatly enhance the health of our plants. I finish every round (every 3 weeks perpetual) with perfectly healthy leaves and no tip burn. I highly suggest that you ditch using H2O2 and adopt the practice of using beneficial bacterial. There's a very good thread here on RIU called "DWC Root Slime" wherein Heisenberg outlines a long list of products that can be used to create an Aerated Compost Tea (ACT) that will add much vigor to root growth activity which directly translates into vigorous plant growth. Not to mention the thousands of benefits the microbes do to our imperfect nutes. All in all, everything we can do to increase plant health will be realized in increased yield and superb quality (for hydro)

I have a couple ongoing threads on 420 regarding these topics, but I do implore you to learn "How To Use Hydro Buddy".

I'm running those GHE numbers but P is ppm of P, not ppm of P2O5 etc. Do you know for a fact that GHE labels all nutrient weights as an Oxide?[/QUOTE]

Actually I have a label here which says only P and K are as Oxides (P2O5, K2O) while Ca, Mg, and S are just stated as such..

HydroLynx said:

Actually I have a label here which says only P and K are as Oxides (P2O5, K2O) while Ca, Mg, and S are just stated as such..

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Here in the UK at least, GHE's labels are thus:


The 6% Potassium Silicate solution product I've been using (Silicon Max) also lists the % of the oxide content, as does the CalMag product I've used in the past. The NPK label values are mandated by EU legislation, I'm not sure whether the others are, but it made my calculations simpler, in some ways, to follow that convention for easier comparison.

In Hydro Buddy, there are drop down menus for P>P2O5, K>K2O and Si>SiO2 which allows me to input either the refactored values, or the oxide, whatever is listed. IDK what's available in Europe, but EVERY hydro grower would be much better served to acquire nutrient salts. I mixed my own chelated micro blend and have been using it for the past month or so. Because I am able to dial in my micros to perfection, it is much easier to target all of the macros and secondaries. Those are where the changes are made throughout the grow. My feed usually resolves in an EC range of 1.0-1.4 which is perfect for max calcium uptake. All in all, I am nowe growing the best cannabis I've grown in 5 years and I used GH Flora series for about 4 of those years.

Re: "Hard to read"
Sorry about the "wall of numbers" format, will consider a better format in future: It's a little crowded as it gives weekly ppms, but in reality each 2-week block is identical - I change out my res every two weeks (except for very early veg, where I ramp up the nutes weekly). It works out as pretty much a veg mix, a bloom mix, and a ripen mix, but with some noise from cutting out the potassium silicate in mid-bloom, and ramping up in veg. After ripen, I flush for 48 hours with Florakleen at the end, in line with GHE's feedcharts.

Re: "Stretch"
I'd been meaning to ask a silly question: do you class stretch as the first 3-weeks or so of 12-hour (when the plant is growing vigorously), or do you class it as after the transition, (ie weeks 3-4 of 12 hour, the period when tiny preflowers develop into clover-heads)?

Re: "Organics & bennies & teas" - One step at a time for me, I'd rather work methodically to optimise my current setup than completely change gears again at the moment, and that means sterile stability for me for now. Perhaps in future though...

RE: Hydro Buddy
I've looked at Hydro Buddy - really impressed, and if I'd found it before I built my spreadsheet, it would have saved me a lot of work. I've used it to check my own formulas, and it's helped me spot a few errors in my calcs.

Best regards

(Sorry about the weird formatting of the reply - for some reason the forum software wouldn't let me use as-hoc QUOTE tags, and detected them as a link)