Best alternatives to maxi line?

calvin.m16 said:

If your well water is already slightly acidic then the maxibloom is going to require a good amount of pH UP either Silica or some other type of adjuster. I run maxigro/maxibloom never found a better alternative. I have ran Athena, jacks, master blend, mega crop (dirttyyyy) and maxi always wins. 1 teaspoon per gallon @ 5.8 pH and magic happens in coco.

I'm pretty sure athenas recipe rides closely with maxibloom and I will tell you this, the athena is a straight up bitch to mix. Don't even buy it unless you have a huge paddle drill or a aeromixer to make stock concentrates with it. Athena is not designed like maxibloom your meant to mix the athena into stock concentrate and then feed ml/gal.

Megacrop is just insanely dirty stuff. I also saw some tests from here or another site of high ehavy metal values from it. The stuff turns black fabric pots into white ones faster than any other nutrient I ever used in my life. I like the idea of megacrop though cause they add basically everything into 1 part but the salts are hard to deal with..

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taproot said:

Been away for a few years and wanted to look into getting something going again. I generally grow in coco hempy buckets for the simplicity but at times like dwc when the winter comes around and helps keep the water cool. I've tried a lot of nutes; the dyna-gro and maxibloom were the best to me in both simplicity and cost at the time. While the dyna-gro was awesome it was a pain to mix and then ph the mixture. I ran across a members post years ago that all he used was maxibloom from start to finish and didn't even bother with ph cause it always settled right into the target range, it was easy to mix and affordable. He was right and I started using maxibloom exclusivly. I was so easy to just put a scoop of power into a five gallon bucket and mix then feed. I assume maxi has ph buffers in there to help adjust and lock in the ph? Maybe I got lucky like he did on my city water at the time. Anyways, I'm wanting to startup a small grow again and was looking at the maxi ferts and they have went up a little on price and I remember before I gave it a break I was seeing people talk about jacks line of ferts and how they are affordable. It appears I can get a 25lb bag of Jacks (5-12-26) for the price of 18lb of maxibloom. I'm reading it does not have cal so some calnit is needed. I've also found some other ferts you guys seem to mention a lot and am looking at them. For anybody that has used maxi ferts how would you compare Jacks to them in ease of use and ph control, does Jacks have PH buffers?

Here are the other ferts I'm looking at.

jacks
mega crop
master blend
Athena

My new home is on a well and well water is new to me. What I can say is the water that comes straight out of the well is about 5.2-5.5 on the ph meter and it does not even register anything on my bluelabs ppm/ec tds meter. The lowest on my bluelabs (500) ppm/ec meter is 100 ppm to get the first blue light to blink. There's also a creek behind my house that seems to be spring fed as the water is just seeping out of the ground with a decent flow rate and it also does not register anything on the tds meter and is very clear...so I think I might have a spring that feeds my well. The house has a whole house filter that adjust the ph to about 8 and I get about 100 ish ppm on the meter. My meter is the bluelab truncheon.

So, I have two choices of which one I use but I assume neither has enough cal/mag. Do you guys think a bag of Jacks 5-12-26 with some calnit would work or should I go the 321 route and add extra cal/mag? I have no issues with using maxi and will probably get some but...if I can do it cheaper and still have a easy to use proccess and good results why not. At least the expermentation would be interesting. Mega crop seems to be liked but people say it's fairly dirty to mix. Master blend is another one I see people talking about. If I had to add mag to jacks maybe some magnesium sulfate for the sulphur content with some calnit for the calcium?

Thanks in advance.

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shnkrmn said:

I use maxibloom. My tap water is 7.1pH @300 ppm. Maxibloom doesn't change the pH at all so I use AN PH Down to set it at 5.8.

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Billy the Mountain said:

That's odd, Maxi is quite acidic. My Lake Michigan water is .3EC, ~7.5 pH. If I add 5g/gal Maxi, it's around 6.2.
Alternatively, if I use RO water, I need to add a few ml of silica first to keep the pH from falling too low.

MegaCrop is much less acidic than Maxi fwiw.

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OneHitDone said:

How many gallons of nutrient solution do you typically mix at once? 2 and 3 part powders get to be a pain in the ass over time if you are mixing a couple gallons here and there.
Mega crop - nay
Jacks - meh
Crop Salt - blows the above 2 away but is kinda wonky the way the 2 parts are sold in equal weights but not used equally. Keeps you on your toes a bit.
Maxi-Gro / Bloom are great and can be found at very good prices if you look at the slightly larger sizes.
There are also some very nice 1 part liquids depending if you are prioritizing simplicity or cost.
The Urban Farm Flowers and Blooms and Garden of Eden
Ionic Grow / Bloom

Sounds like your water filter is some type of remineralization filter adding Calcium Carbonate to the water?

I would start by second guessing your ph meter. Make sure it's calibrated or use a liquid drop type ph test just to confirm starting ph

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OneHitDone said:

How many gallons of nutrient solution do you typically mix at once? 2 and 3 part powders get to be a pain in the ass over time if you are mixing a couple gallons here and there.
Mega crop - nay
Jacks - meh
Crop Salt - blows the above 2 away but is kinda wonky the way the 2 parts are sold in equal weights but not used equally. Keeps you on your toes a bit.
Maxi-Gro / Bloom are great and can be found at very good prices if you look at the slightly larger sizes.
There are also some very nice 1 part liquids depending if you are prioritizing simplicity or cost.
The Urban Farm Flowers and Blooms and Garden of Eden
Ionic Grow / Bloom

Sounds like your water filter is some type of remineralization filter adding Calcium Carbonate to the water?

I would start by second guessing your ph meter. Make sure it's calibrated or use a liquid drop type ph test just to confirm starting ph

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taproot said:

Yes, the filter is to lower the ph. I do plan on getting a new ph meter soon and will make a thread on this for recommends. Another user on another forum mentioned this one.

Amazon.com

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cage said:

I've used maxibloom and bunch of other hydro store stuff along the way.
I just can't justify the price nowadays.
Especially when I like tweaking the recipe according phenos, growth stages etc.

Now I have
25kg bag of Basefert for 50-60euros
25kg bag of MPK for 80euros
25kg bag of CalNit for 25euros
25kg bag of MgS for 20euros
and 5kg bag of just micros for 70euros.

Without micros, it's 100kg of nutrients under 200euros.
2eur/kg
Cheapest I saw Maxibloom is 229dollars for 22.6kg so 10dollars/1kg
Which isn't too bad.
But most of the "hydrostores" sell those 1kg bags for 30-40eur.

So don't pay too much extra! It's plant food.

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taproot said:

I’ve decided to give jacks a try since it seems a little cheaper and I just want to give it a try to compare. I was on city water but now my new house is on a well. The water faucets out on the property do not go through the house filter and are straight off the well and this is where I’d like to src the water as it’s closer to the where the grow would be. The water straight from the well is crystal clear, smells and taste clean but it is acidic which is why the house has a filter adjust ph up to 7.8 ish. The well water is 4.8 ish from what the apera meter is saying and a total tds of 40. It seems to be fairly clean so I assume it might be sulfur causing the acidity even though it taste fine and does not smell in any way. It taste like filtered bottled water. I didn’t have to use any ph control on city water since after adding maxibloom it took it down to almost perfect. But since adding nutes generally makes the ph go down I will have to use ph up I guess. I’d like to use potassium hydroxide for this and make my own ph up. Perhaps silica? Is there any powered silica for cheap and easy to mix? Does this sound reasonable?

I’ve been reading about Jacks and some people seem to buy the complete 321 package. A few seem to suggest all you need is the 5-12-26 and some calnit. What are the thoughts on this? I saw the 7-15-30 they have and it’s interesting but I think calnit would add to much nitrogen for a start to finish. Since my water seems to not have much in it I’d assume calmag will be needed, would calmag be better than calnit for me? I’d appreciate some input on this from the pros here as to what would be my best approach with Jacks.

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taproot said:

What is the MPK and MgS..is that a Jacks brand to as I didn't see it on a google search? Do you have any recipes with the ratios you use and when you use them as in a schedule?

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