Fertilizers costs in Hydro

[aphyllophoral]

Hello guys, I want to migrate from top soil to hydro but I am a little bit scared of the costs specially doing bottom fed on F&D set up. How much do you invest in chemicals doing an hydro?? At this moment I produce 2 lb every month

Have a great day

 

[myke]

This depends on where and what your able to get local. I use dry and mix my own. Cost is about $4 a litre.for ea A and B. Calmag ph down etc is about $40 a gallon.ea.
I’m a hobby grower so don’t seem to use a lot. I don’t remember when I last purchased as I buy a bunch at one time so I can haggle the price a little.

 

[Gemtree]

Jacks 321 is real cheap

 

[aphyllophoral]

This depends on where and what your able to get local. I use dry and mix my own. Cost is about $4 a litre.for ea A and B. Calmag ph down etc is about $40 a gallon.ea.
I’m a hobby grower so don’t seem to use a lot. I don’t remember when I last purchased as I buy a bunch at one time so I can haggle the price a little.

Thanks for the reply guys, @myke at the beginning I thought mixing from the basic A and B hydro formulation for tomatoes as you mentioned but then I have read that some growers are having nutrients deficiencies and not so big harvest so how it works for you this approach?? Does cal/mag is enough? Some of you guys are using Garden & house or Canna products?? Even if I imported directly from the manufacturer via LCL sea shipping the cost per lt is far away from 4 bucks.
In another post @nurrgle https://www.rollitup.org/t/drip-emitters-vs-open-flow.995721/post-15172108 estimates the water requirements for each plant in DTW system based on this numbers I calculate 343 lt for the whole cycle (2 weeks veg/8 flowering). regarding water usage do you think it will be better than a F&D table of 9ftx4ft ?

Have a great day!

 

[HolyAngel]

I think the costs are fairly cheap. Need either a+b liquid nutes(h&g aqua flakes or GH micro/bloom) or dry nutes like jacks 321 or megacrop. May need some calmag if running RO/low ppm tap water, or just epsom salts if using tap water and already have a decent amount of calcium carbonate in it.. And then either run sterile with some hth poolshock or run beneficial bacteria with things like hydroguard/tribus. Thats it. Should be able to get all those for under $75 total for sure, under $50 if deals or available locally.

For growing, I've had better much better/faster growth with some form of DWC or aero over any ebb&flow/flood&drain setup.

 

[myke]

So you’ll have to find out what is available to you. Shipping defeats the purpose. Obviously your not in NA so this will definitely be a problem. Production like what you have in dirt is impressive. Quality is on point no doubt. Which begs the question why do you want to change?

 

[aphyllophoral]

So you’ll have to find out what is available to you. Shipping defeats the purpose. Obviously your not in NA so this will definitely be a problem. Production like what you have in dirt is impressive. Quality is on point no doubt. Which begs the question why do you want to change?

The main reason is to increase gpw. Last year I changed from hps to cmh and the gpw increase 30% at least, additionally it cut my light bill but as the soil pot is an heterogeneous media I was thinking to eliminate this bias and go hydro. Do you experiment some nutrient deficiencies using basic A and B solution? For flowering do you incorporate other chemicals like Bud XL or a alike? Thks for all the feedback I appreciate it

Have a great day

 

[aphyllophoral]

I think the costs are fairly cheap. Need either a+b liquid nutes(h&g aqua flakes or GH micro/bloom) or dry nutes like jacks 321 or megacrop. May need some calmag if running RO/low ppm tap water, or just epsom salts if using tap water and already have a decent amount of calcium carbonate in it.. And then either run sterile with some hth poolshock or run beneficial bacteria with things like hydroguard/tribus. Thats it. Should be able to get all those for under $75 total for sure, under $50 if deals or available locally.

For growing, I've had better much better/faster growth with some form of DWC or aero over any ebb&flow/flood&drain setup.

Hey @HolyAngel thks for the reply. May I ask you what type of set up do you use? How much water to do use to achieve a full growth cycle (2 weeks veg/8 weeks flowering)?

Have a nice day

 

[myke]

The main reason is to increase gpw. Last year I changed from hps to cmh and the gpw increase 30% at least, additionally it cut my light bill but as the soil pot is an heterogeneous media I was thinking to eliminate this bias and go hydro. Do you experiment some nutrient deficiencies using basic A and B solution? For flowering do you incorporate other chemicals like Bud XL or a alike? Thks for all the feedback I appreciate it

Have a great day

I use A and B. Some calmag and epsom. No other additives.
Do you have good water?

 

[HolyAngel]

Hey @HolyAngel thks for the reply. May I ask you what type of set up do you use? How much water to do use to achieve a full growth cycle (2 weeks veg/8 weeks flowering)?

Have a nice day

Right now i'm using aquaflakes and hydroguard only, with tap water doing DWC in a 10gal tote. About 4-4.5 gals of water in the tote. Swap out once a week so should be 40-45 gallons for a 10 week grow at worst.

 

[fragileassassin]

I use megacrop.
My water comes out of the tap at like 50ppm so I just filter that and use it and dont worry about ro anymore.
I use 1/4mL per gallon of southern ag fungicide.

Megacrop is a super easy 1 part dry nutrient. Is very cheap and really easy to use. Very ph stable and the plants seem to love it.
Very happy with it so far.

Water usage will depend on the size of the system and number of plants. My last crop of 9 could drain my 50 gallon top of barrel in under a week.

 

[pulpoinspace]

this is interesting question. gonna use it to figure out how much i spend on ferts in a year.

i use house and garden aqua flakes A and B. 5L of both is $80.
at each watering, i use 1ml of each A and B per 1 L of water. So i can make 5000L of feed water, or about 1320 gallons = $80 (this measure is what i'd pay attention to when shopping for nutrients)
Each feed i give my plants 1.5 gallons in their 3 liter pots. Meaning i can do 440 feeds for my $80
Since i have 6 plants 440/6 i can actually do 73 feeds. I feed every other day. So this would last me 146 days.
365/146 = 2.5 so I spend about 80*2.5 = $200 on nutrients per year, assuming Im feeding 6 plants every other day without ever shutting down or missing a gap in perpetual. in reality its a bit less. definitely not the cheapest nutrient system, but it shows you that even these are not that expensive.

and fun was had by all.

 

[fragileassassin]

Check the link for more info and price breakdown on megacrop vs some comparable competitors. MC is considerably cheaper than your flakes.

I ended up with megacrop after chasing the best price per gallon for my 120 gallon flower system.

MEGA CROP – Greenleaf Nutrients

greenleafnutrients.com

 

[pulpoinspace]

Check the link for more info and price breakdown on megacrop vs some comparable competitors. MC is considerably cheaper than your flakes.

I ended up with megacrop after chasing the best price per gallon for my 120 gallon flower system.

MEGA CROP – Greenleaf Nutrients

greenleafnutrients.com

yeah ive heard mostly good things about MC, maybe ill order the free sample although it is 10 dollars to ship.

for my small grow tho difference isn't so large. also i dont use the full H&G line, so it doesn't cost as much as that chart says. about half. but still about 4x more than MC. my attitude has always been don't mess with a good thing. if i ever expanded my grow or grew commercial though i'd def be looking into MC or Jacks. 321 always peaked my interest as well.

 

[GBAUTO]

I've used GH Flora trio, Megacrop and Jacks 3-2-1.
All of them worked well. As with most liquid nutes, you end up paying mostly for water.
Megacrop worked OK, but it was very hygroscopic and would turn to soup if it wasn't sealed.
Jacks has been the most economical and allows me to do minor adjustments of nute proportions.