Potassium carbonate makes pH go up in tap water. It is a weak base, just like citric acid in their pH down is a weak acid. When combined, they make a nice pH buffer.
Potassium silicate also makes pH go up and is a source of silica. GH may have totally changed their recipe. I have no idea. I tend to use KOH, as I just have it around the house for fulvic experimentation.
The jar test hasn’t precipitated. But I did 2 other jars, one with cal carbonate in the bottom, one with cal sulfate in the bottom. There isn’t enough pekacid in that mix to bring those low solubility. Calcium salts in solution. The ability to bring low to no solubility calcium salts in to solution is what we are looking for to keep emitters clean, and I’m not there yet.
There has to be a polyphosphage or something else similar in it that I am not aware of.
I chatted with Grant Low (GLOW) yesterday who is an amazing agronomist. He has thoughts on Athena:
Yeah a bit scary that growers would think running stupidly high ECs indicates a “bomb” nutrient. Athena is perhaps one of the worst formulas I’ve looked at in recent years in the lab. Horribly imbalanced for cannabis production so yeah based on Mulders chart lockout forces people to apply more in order to get adequate nutrients to the tissue. Scary stuff!
That said, I’m excited for @emdub27 's version with better targeted numbers and more ubiquitous ingredients like Pekacid.
Grant and I are both scratching our heads because of all the gram posts showing great plants killing it. It’s starting to become apparent to me that’s it’s paid advertisement.
I could have released a pekacid mix last week. I’m just not happy with the cleaning ability if I match their pH. I think it is important to have it mix low and bring it up with silicate or hydroxide because a lot of the doser setups only measure pH immediately after the doser, no time is given for stabilization. I measured one a couple weeks ago that read 5.8 after the injectors and 6.9 at the farthes emitter 350ft away. If it mixes low and you increase it, it’s more likely to stabilize a bit low. That’s a lot better than being 6.2+ where precipitation is a real problem.
I’ve been running Athena Pro Line for probably 10 months with HPS lights in flower, cmh (3k and 4k in dual 315s) and HPS in veg.
Was running 2.0 EC in veg and 2.7 in flower, just like the heavy chart.
I’ve bumped it to 3.0 veg 3.0 flower. I just harvested the first room I ran 3.0 EC in flower on. Don’t know the weights or have COAs yet.
I have a mono crop of White Truffle on day 25 at 3.0 EC, but was running 2.0 in veg.
I pour an entire 25 lb bag into a 30 gallon res with 25 gallons of water and run Dosatrons.
I am running rockwool, but have ran 1 gallon coco fabric pots in the same room as the rockwool on the same feed and irrigation times. I did not notice a different or have any calcium issues.
Irrigation is .5 gallon emitters, 10-11 times per day, 3-5 mins per feed. Somewhere between .3 and .5 gallons per plant per day.
I do not check run off, just go off the plants.
Since going to 3.0 in flower I noticed you need to bump up the irrigation times after week three to avoid burn.
The run with coco and rockwool, the White Truffles were in coco and testing 5.75% terps. I’ve also had it test in the mid 3s.
I’ve have ran 9 plants under LED at home, pouring my 2.7 EC bloom feed from Dosatrons at work to take home. The plants were very deficient after week 3.
I am crushing with Athena. People can hate but at the end of the day it works great for me and I’m not getting paid by Athena at all. Getting absolute top dollar for product and it doesn’t cost much at all. I’ve never really had nutrients that don’t work well, they all work if you run them right.
It’s working ok for several people. That’s why I’m going to do a clone as exact as I can. I’m going to have to use Haifa grow clean to match the line cleaning ability. ICL is the cleanest mixing SOP I’ve tried to date, but kind of hard to find, I have Protasaium arriving this week to check that one out. I’m trying to get somewhat close on the solubility. It seems a lot of folks don’t understand that settling tanks and filtering in to batch tanks are the norm with greenhouse grade salts. Anyways, I will be recommending to make liquid stock solutions since we don’t all own a prilling machine or a way to reliably get to a homogenous salt mixture.
Another mix will also be posted with alternate ratios. Similar results are attainable at lower input usage by reducing antagonism.
This is so true. Everyone is so quick to blame or adjust their nutes when really procedures, irrigation, environment (one or all) is actually the issue.