@anon56994712 said he was adding a bit of mag, but all the videos I watched on YouTube about athena says if you have a deficiency not to add anything but increase your ec.
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I tell people who use cal-mag as a band-aid on everything to just raise their base EC.
I run Jack’s 1.2-~2.2 EC LED/CO2. If their ratios were perfect for the plant intake, wouldn’t that mean you use less fertilizer?
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This my theory, what I think is let’s say athena is a better ratio of nutrients better suited to cannabis vs jacks, wouldn’t it be possible to push them harder since they are getting what they need and not an excess of other elements?
I was just checking my run off and it was 1.5 higher then input and the plants look great, I honestly have no idea what I’m doing lol.
I talked to @Pattypan01 earlier and said everything I’ve been doing with my feed input and run off goes completely against everything I’ve learned in the last year and my plants look happy.
Like I’ve stated many times, you guys have tons more experience then me and I have lots to learn but I love these discussions with you guys.
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You’re doing it right. Always check your EC and pH input and runoff. The plants always tell you what they need.
I think Cyco used sugars as a root zone buffer that they could run higher EC, but that doesn’t make sense with the Athena line either.
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This is what hanging me up. We must be missing something. The Athena guys are feeding at 3.0ec and run off hitting 6 ec, most are feeding multiple times per day. When I feed more than 3-4x daily I normally have to cut the regular feed ec by 33%-50% or I’ll get some tip burning and lockout.
Maybe they use a buffering agent allowing them to run such high ec?
Could it be that Athena is using some kind of filler that’s not reacting to the plants but rather adding weight and Ec so they could sell more product?
I’m just a grower who learned from mistakes I too want the pros to help. This ones above my pay grade.
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We add 1g epsom in flower
If we up to the heavy we get leaf curl (claw) and tip burn
I’m well aware that it has enough mag in it for a plant I just don’t know what else to tell ya
Giving advice on an hps and led they’re 2 different beasts. Led rips mag from plants.
How I run Athena is heavy until they start looking too fed then normal and then if they look hungry back up to heavy
Could also be the coco too stealing mag from the food.
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It’s a 2-part and their numbers are high enough that they aren’t running “duff”, filler to keep the calcium from reacting with the sulfates.
I can’t get a clear picture of the bags. Does it list a citrate or carbonate on the bags?
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I’m feeding starting 2 hours after lights on, first hour is every 15 minutes then once every 1hr15mins until 2 hours before lights off, so 10 irrigations per day.
I’m trying to decide in between getting aroya or grow link media sensors to try crop steering a bit.
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How many gallons are you guys mixing at once?
Salts have inconsistencies and the more you mix at once the better the outcome.
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I have 3 x 55gallon reservoirs, one for veg, and one for each flower table.
I’m busy this week but next week I’m going to send another sample after mixing a full barrel.
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They put the micros with the calcium nitrate. It’s not going to make any difference in the final mixture, it was just an interesting formulation choice.
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It mixes super well, I just dump each part in the res and let mix for 5 minutes then add the next part, usually they last me 5 days and never was a
Any residue or sediment.
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I’m running the blended line. 1.7 ec at week one of flower now. Just put the lava cake in the rdwc for the first time. I’ll post on the rdwc thread but Athena has been solid in the rdwc for last 2 runs. 2.2-2.4 week five in the past with no issues.
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It’s not really. It just tells you there is something reactive in the phosphate/sulphate bag. Most likely a polyphosphate or something else like pekacid that is a strong complexing agent. In the case of pekacid The complexing agent (phosphate) will cleave the chelate and leave you with weird phosphate complexes of phosphates that aren’t good.
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Monopotassium phosphate, potassium nitrate, potassium sulfate, magnesium sulfate. I didn’t think right off hand those would cause problems.
Thanks for the info. I was hoping @emdub27 would hop on this thread!
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You have to remember that environment strongly influences uptake. Just for arguments sake you coukd grow healthy looking plants at 60f, but you’re going to need to run a pretty concentrated ferigation mix, probably up at like 5ec. If you run at 1.5vpd and dankem runs 1.0vpd you would get wildly different results.
Athena, hgv, or any other nute brand that uses calcium nitrate as its sole source of Nitrogen isn’t going to burn as bad as say Jack’s because it is running a more favorable Ca:N ratio. If you look at Jack’s 321 the N is actually higher than the Ca. Athena runs Ca higher than N.
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You can’t necessarily trust the label ingredients. There is some sort of powdered acid in there. Athena mixes to low 4’s pH. If I match the numbers with just MKP it won’t mix that low in pH.
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I think we know where all the Cal Prime went!
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It’s definitely not cal prime, the Ca:N ratio in @Medicine.grower test is the same as standard greenhouse grade cal nitrate.
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