bigjuhin,
I'm not saying that you would be as well off using just water, I'm saying you don't need to make big mike any richer than he already is lol. I have seen some very fine grows done in Miracle Grow for penny's on the dollar compared to some of the more popular commercial hydroponic nutrients solutions. I am saying the additives are not worth the expense, there is absolutely nothing in any of the additives that a plant cannot live without, IF YOU USE FULL strength nutes (2 E.C. is what I consider full strength). If you screw with 50% of this and that... youre back to needing additives although nutrition contains many subtle elements besides the basic 4, NPK and Mg, the plants dont actually live on nutrients. Nutes are just like vitamins, or electrolites, they help the plant build tissue by helping it to transport things it is extracting from air and water.
Carbon, which comes from air, not nutes, is the main ingredient in plant life, on a gram per gram basis. Hydrogen is one of the other main four elements that make up the body mass of a plant, it is obtained by splitting the water molecule. As if photosynthesis was a form of nuclear fission. Oxygen is also a very high proportion of plant tissue, again from air, not nutes. Nitrogen is the final top four in mass contribution, it does indeed come from nutes. The only one of the top four.
Now for Magnesium, the metal that catches fire. When sunlight hits the magnesium molecule in the middle of the chlorophyl, it "sparks" the photosynthetic reaction. As if Magnesium was somehow harnessing sunlight, it causes the plant to accumulate carbon. when we later burn the plant, the sparks of sunlight energy that were used to assemble the carbon that built the plant tissue is released as fire
So do not stop using your nutes, just be smart about what you buy i.e. don't fall for the marketing hype and use them correctly for a happy garden.
2b2s