Please PM or post that read when you get a chance HB . Very curious. Do you have the PH perfect Connoisseur or the original? Maybe the newer version they axed most of the urea. The original Sensi had some and ,because I grew in coco, i supplemented with an organic grow formula to process the urea. Grew great. Have you tried growing in coco instead of peat? The great thing about coco is it's re-useable. 3 grows!!. great ph buffer and earth friendly. (not that I'm a hard-core greeny or anything)
Edit: I read your Conn-Dyno WWF cage fight and I have 1 question: Why did you let the Conn fry when you knew clawing and tip burn meant over-fert?. AN does not boast the CONN formula as plug and play. It specifically states you have to read your plant and adjust accordingly, that is why it is the grand masturbator . I'm not defending the product in any way, in fact I think it is a rip-off also. However, I think your variance to the suggested program ended up as a detriment to the final yield.
Maybe you read the journal and missed the details. I run my base nutes under 1.0 EC, do you understand how conservative that is in regards to suggested feeding rates out there? Have you seen the feeding scale on the back of the Connoisseur bottles? The pictures in my next post speak volumes about the plant foods I've used over the years, so why did Connoisseur do so poorly? I was eluding to it above in pointing to Connoisseur's cheap '
other water soluble nitrogen' ingredient but once thought it was the proportionately high nitrogen value in Connoisseur's NPK ratio. Aqua Flakes actually supplies MORE nitrogen but they're not using inexpensive sources and that is apparent in the overall health of the plants.
I have a vested interest in doing as well as I can at all times regardless of what plant food i'm using. In the Connoisseur grow, I pulled out all the stops in regards to keeping those plants healthy. I lowered the feeding levels, I changed boosters, I even tweaked the base:booster ratio. The 'issues' that came up due to their poor sources of nitrogen didn't show up until about the 6th week and even up to that point, it was very clear that Connoisseur was a below average plant food. I welcome you to run Connoisseur (the exact same one I ran) in your own hydroponic flood tables with rockwool and document it here. I'll be the first to follow along.
Feeding them 0-10-10 boost from another vendor didn't do well for impartiality either. How did the root zone look?
To the plant in a hydroponic environment, 0-10-10 is the same as a 1-5-4 which is the NPK content of Overdrive. If one thinks actually using Overdrive instead a hydroplex or a kool bloom would have yielded different results, I'd say someone needs to go back and study their salts. In regards to the roots, I don't remember exactly how they looked but I have
never had a root issue, ever. I actually find all those root products at the hydro store funny as I seem to have the exact opposite issue; overly prolific root growth each and every round.
Your overall tone throughout the experiment seemed ostensibly biased toward Dyno from the get go.
That may actually be true but then again, Connoisseur was inferior to DynaGro in just about every single metric. DynaGro was pH stable, Connoisseur wasn't. Connoisseur costs more than DynaGro and is
substantially less concentrated too. Being that Connoisseur wasn't pH stable and the nitrogen sources caused some issues later in the grow, Connoisseur required more daily maintenance and troubleshooting. Since switching to DynaGro almost 2 years ago, the terms
Daily Maintenance and
Troubleshooting aren't even in my vocabulary. It was also clear early on (as early as week 2) that Connoisseur would not be able to compete with DynaGro so sure, my tone could have been that of bias,
or just plain disappointment. How would you like to normally yield 20 ounces and realize early on that you're going to have to work really hard only to pull a measly 16 and it's costing you more to do so?
I'm currently testing H&G's Aqua Flakes and am 'journaling' that with people following along. I think Kite might be the only one in this thread with access to that grow but feel free to ask him what the tone of that comparison is like. I'm sure he'll say that the tone is a positive one because Aqua Flakes is doing really well and it's a pleasure to work with.
Overall I am not convinced on which nute is better based on this standoff.
The info is there, you can do what you want with it. I will add that before I started running DynaGro, I was a GH guy and my first time ever using DG is documented in a journal in my signature. As much as I loved my GH 3-part, DynaGro wound up being the clear winner and I switched to DG immediately after that journal. Guess what, if Aqua Flakes pumps out 23 ounces from this current test, you won't see me using DynaGro anymore. Point is, my loyalty to a plant food brand is based on the actual
performance, not a colorful label or marketing claims.
Someone else conducted a DynaGro vs Connoisseur test on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-Dpx0K3WE0
I believe he was growing in promix and it was a tie in the end. So what does that say about the 'Grand Masturbator' of all plant foods? It only yields as well as a 30 year old Orchid food that costs 1/3 as much to use.