who's mixing their own salt ferts?

1itsme

Well-Known Member
Hi all,
Recently I've been looking in to possibly making my own salt nutes. I was wondering how many ppl here are doing that here and what their experience has been like.

I'm just switched to kelp4less grow pack as an in between step. It's not the best deal cost wise but it's still better than bottled nutes. The salts they use are about the same + similar ratios to the recipies i was looking at, so i figured it would be an easy way to get an idea how it would work before i buy 10 bags of salt lol.

Any info, especialy first hand experience or links to info would be much appreciated.
 

no clue

Well-Known Member
Why not use something like Jack's Classic? People who know (like Uncle Ben) say it is excellent and it is not expensive
 

weedemart

Well-Known Member
I am actually looking for something similar but after comparing price with jack hydro, it's hard to beat... you wont save a lot more and you'll need to weigh/mix your nutes with 4-5 different bag.jack hydro cost 0.03$/gal to run at full strenght and contain everything in the right ratio.if you choose to make your own recipe, calcium nitrate, monopotassium phosphate,magnesium sulfate and chelated trace are definitily a must. they usually cost more than their alternative. then you can add some potassium sulfate etc.... some organic chelator as fulvic and a bit of soluble seaweed for amino should be beneficial too.
 

1itsme

Well-Known Member
yeah the peters hydro is basically a pre mix version, theses several companies + farm supply stores that do pre mixes. most of them use the same salts from the same sources. That seems like a good option cost wise and also quality eg- calcium nitrate instead of urea/ ammonium.

still I think mixing it yourself gives you more control and seems fun lol. I am always surprised that everyone on the forums recommends bottled nutes, when there really not much advantage to it imo.
 

weedemart

Well-Known Member
which companies? calcium nitrate and jack hydro form a complete 2 part nutes start to finish and they sell 25pound of each for 160$ at my local stores. !! ~6600gal of solution at full strenght:clap:
 

1itsme

Well-Known Member
yeah the calnite as part a is the norm afaik as calcium and sulfer react with phosphorus (a prob with 1 parts like dyna).
 

churchhaze

Well-Known Member
Yeah, it's hydrobuddy. It works so well for this stuff. I actually added Jack's hydro as a substance rather than a formulation so it can be used IN formulations, in case I ever wanted to use jacks hydro and tweak it with other substances like the calcium nitrate (duh) and things like mono potassium phosphate.

When running in "concentrations by weight" calculation type, you can, for example, tell it you want X of jacks, Y of calcium nitrate, and Z of mono potassium phosphate, and how much water, and it will calculate the concentrations in ppm, NPK, etc.
 

churchhaze

Well-Known Member
There are 2 calculation types.

"input desired concentrations" means the inputs are the ppm fields and it will take a list of substances you give it and try to solve for how much of each substance it needs to get closest to the desired ppms.

"concentrations from weight" means the inputs are the mass of the substances you include and it gives you the resulting ppms.


The screenshots I posted was "input desired concentrations" calculation type.
 

weedemart

Well-Known Member
http://www.kelp4less.com/shop/4-18-38-mixed/
http://www.thehydrosource.com/nutrients/hydroponic-nutrients-bloom-formula.html
ok well i was looking for more but i'm retarded this morning so i can only find 2 part b types (they would need calcium nitrate and magnesium sulfate). theres quite a few companies/stores doing this sort of thing tho, just takes a little time to find links lol.
cost are higher than jacks and the formula are very similar or worst than jacks. I was curious to know which companies , I didn't find any competitor that beat jacks quality/price.
 

1itsme

Well-Known Member
still looking at doing this at some point. probably will go jack's hydro for a while first tho. the only problem for me is dealing with the micro nutrients. don't want to have to buy each of them separately. also the more I read about it, the more I get confused about the different chelation methods.
 

churchhaze

Well-Known Member
Yeah, wow. I'm looking at cropking now and they only sell 5 pound bags of DTPA iron chelate. That's way too much at 70 dollars. You definitely won't need 5 pounds.

I use iron sulfate right now, but you can't make concentrated stock solutions with it, only measure and pour it directly into the reservoir or keep in a separate stock bottle.

I'd get the smallest amounts of solubor, manganese sulfate, and sodium molybdate that I could possibly get. I've used practically none of it.

Honestly, you can get away with not even including copper and zinc.

still looking at doing this at some point. probably will go jack's hydro for a while first tho. the only problem for me is dealing with the micro nutrients. don't want to have to buy each of them separately. also the more I read about it, the more I get confused about the different chelation methods.
 

Jbone77

Well-Known Member
Yeah, wow. I'm looking at cropking now and they only sell 5 pound bags of DTPA iron chelate. That's way too much at 70 dollars. You definitely won't need 5 pounds.

I use iron sulfate right now, but you can't make concentrated stock solutions with it, only measure and pour it directly into the reservoir or keep in a separate stock bottle.

I'd get the smallest amounts of solubor, manganese sulfate, and sodium molybdate that I could possibly get. I've used practically none of it.

Honestly, you can get away with not even including copper and zinc.
BOOM, simple.
 
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