It’s a combination of salts. Numbers make sense, but it isn’t going to be the same as athena. If they have the chelates in the same bag as the phosphate, it doesn’t contain a “line cleaner” salt because they are incompatible with chelates.
I or anyone with hydrobuddy can calc a quick clone of athena with pekacid. But I suspect they are using pekacid and mkp, just because I think pekacid at that concentration would mix to a lower ph than low 4’s. I have plenty of pekacid to do a couple of test mixes with. I just want to verify the the mg and k levels before I call it a clone.
I ran a 1000 sq/ft flower spot with full advanced nutes. Loose rockwool recirculating system for 5 years. Drippers. I got it to $1.50 a gram total cost. Including trimmers. Rent power nutes new drippers all of it included in that price. At a small scale gotta keep it simple. Yes 1000’ is small scale these days.
Do you know your nutritional/ipm cost per gallon at that time? Even at 1,000 square feet the fact that something like advanced costs 10 times more than salts adds up quickly.
A lot of the value that custom mixes bring regulated operators is a reduction in ipm costs. You don’t realize it until you’re regulated but even simple pesticides like insecticidal soap can have 12 hour rei’s. So now in addition to having a trained handler actually apply something you’re shutting down sections of a facility for 12 hours.
We always have a pretty solid amount of completely insoluble crud in our SOP, I actually had to build a prefilter out of our stock tanks specifically because of all the dirt.
As far as the bags being basically a single brick, we found that “accidentally” dropping them off the pallet at a height of 3 ft is effective at getting chunks that will fit in a blender lol. It’s a bitch
We actually got some a month or two ago in a pinch because our Haifa stock was delayed but if I’m totally honest I didn’t pay attention to how it went. Couldn’t have been that much better because I’m sure our techs would have requested more lol
What general area are you in? It might make sense for us to split full containers to offset supply issues. As soon as Yara Epsom went out of stock I ordered a whole container of brandt(only thing available) that went really well for us. Only thing that bothered me was China was the country of origin, doesn’t make much sense to ship epsom on a boat half way around the world.
Good write. Yep they go for cool looking labels. We used Flairform’s nutrient line for a decade. Loved it. Enjoyed your write up. Brought me back in time a bit.
We have spoken about them. For a 1-part they aren’t bad if you are in a peat-based medium buffered with lime. I don’t tend to use any hydro store fertilizers because you are paying to ship water and the “Green tax” for marketing towards cannabis.
If you want a good 1-part soluble powder, Jacks Nutrients TAP or RO depending on your water source. If you want a good 2-part Jack’s Classic Hydroponic or Masterblend and calcium nitrate is what I always recommend in consults.
We’re in western PA, we’re working with gromark right now to see if we can set up a better warehousing/supply chain deal. If you’re anywhere near here I’d be happy to work something out
My dumb ass saw the title of this thread and came in here ready to comment “yeah I think getting all your nutrients from whole food sources, minimizing processed foods, and ensuring you’re getting 1g protein per lb bodyweight” and then I realized y’all were talking about plant nutrients
There are a few ways to buffer pH in hydroponics, citrate/carbonate, MES (the ungodly expensive ingredient in AN pH Perfect) and NH4+ NO3-. Masterblend a great balance of nitrates to keep pH in range.
I think the AN nute set up was about 70 to 90 cents a gallon with like 7 jugs. I won’t list them you all know. 300 gallons or so mixed a week depending on phase. Venerate was main ipm. I still use it. But we had all our own genetics in sealed environment so bugs were never much of an issue.
