Cheaper way to buy nutrients

[luvndrt]

I've been buying the General Hydro Flora Trio 3 pack of nutes for about 36.00- 44.00 coming with quart sized bottles and have now Found the GALLON individual 3 products on sale right now ON AMAZON for 25.00 each, one is 29.00 which is a killer deal when normally would pay 144.00 minimum. 4 Trios at 36.00 each x4 . so the moral of the story is killer deal on amazon right now for the gallon sized jugs !

[Larry1]

I couldn't find the gallon jugs on Amazon for that price. How exactly are you looking those up?

[luvndrt]

just type in flora trio into amazon search bar , and flora grow, flora bloom , flora micro . i just checked today 5/10 and still available

[azorahai]

Just to chime in on how to save money with hydroponic nutrients, you could easily make a spreadsheet with the amount of nutrients in each bottle of the General Hydroponics trio (or any other brand and line-up), and take their recommended feeding schedule to calculate how many parts per million (ppm, or mg/L) they recommend each week. With this in hand, you could purchase the base salts (calcium nitrate, potassium nitrate, monopotassium phosphate, magnesium sulfate and a prepared mix of micronutrients are the ones I'm using) for extremely cheap and have hydroponic nutrients for years. I made very concentrated solutions of each base salt, and my spreadsheet calculates how many milliliters I need to add (I use a small syringe for precision) to some volume of water to copy whatever feeding schedule I'm using (in my case, I've made my own and I'm trying to work out what is the best feeding strategy).
It's a bit of work, but once everything is set up it's very easy to prepare solutions, with the added benefit of it not containing any dyes (which stain roots in hydroponic set-ups and can make it difficult to diagnose root problems) and being completely customizable. I've also added potassium silicate to my mix to add some silicon and also serve as a pH up. I still need to buy some phosphoric acid to use as a pH down.

Whenever I'm completely satisfied with my set-up, I'll tidy-up the spreadsheets and share them with the community.

[9fingerleafs]

Sure thing. Here’s the link https://www.angelfire.com/cantina/fo...s/saltmix3.zip

In my country the jacks line it’s called peters professional. The one I got already has magnesium so all I add is calcium nitrate. 300 ppm of calcium and 600 of jacks. That’s for veg and flower. Sometime I’ll use some MKP for the plants in late flowering but mostly the same nutrients for every one

[9fingerleafs]

L give hydro buddy a look but seems like a time consuming endeavor and I’m always short on time. I keep info in my head cause I do this all day. No notes or anything

[azorahai]

Thanks! I'm not dealing with a lot of plants, and because of the pandemic I have a lot of free time at home, which I'm using to optimize my grows. I'm leaning towards simplifying it to 4 broad phases of development (2 for vegetative, 2 for flowering) with different nutrient proportions to account for the broadly different needs they seem to have, while also minimizing the amount of salts I give them based on how often I have to feed. I'm using a mix of 50% peat moss and 50% perlite, which I've found can hold enough water to see them through almost a week without watering, so I never give them pure water, but instead feed them a reasonable concentration of nutrients to last almost a week.
Eventually, I'll give DWC a shot, but right now a "soilless" grow seems to be working just fine, apart from the occasional pH problems which I think I've managed to crack and hopefully can avoid in the future.

[9fingerleafs]

I’ve been down this road. First the gallons. Then maxi line. Then like azorahai recommends went into mixing my own salts. Now I realize it’s a pain in the ass and I’m buying 11kg bags of jacks hydro and 25kg bags of calcium nitrate. Problem solved. My time it’s Too expensive to be mixing chemicals all day

[gbauto]

Exactly.
If control is a top priority, then mixing your own recipe of salts would be ideal.
After tunning Jacks for a couple of years now, I've found that it has enough adjustability using the base 3-part mix to keep ALL of my plants happy.

Simple is a nice change.

[9fingerleafs]

Yeah I agree. The jacks I’m using already has sulfur and magnesium so I just add calnit

[dilvish]

Buy local if you can. Be wary of deals too good to be true on Amazon. Many thousands of products sold by "Marketplace Sellers" are not monitored or checked for quality. If it sounds too good to be true it likely is. Somebody probably reselling colored water in reused GH jugs.....