Dyna-Gro vs Advanced Nutrients Connoisseur (AK47 Grow)

Trichy Bastard

Well-Known Member
Cool man.. the line across the top of the forum has a tab called "thread tools" sometimes it's hard to read, but "subscribe to this thread" is in there. What makes it easy is in your general settings you can make it so any thread you post in it will automatically sub you too- I like that the best and can just unsub as necessary...
 

rosecitypapa

Active Member
I guess my only surprise is how acidic the bloom formula is. I find I have to use what seems to be a lot of "PH UP" to bring the mix up into the desired value. But once it's there, then it seems to drift back into the acidic range again after a couple of days. This is the opposite of any experience that I've had with Ionic or Advanced where they would drift to the alkaline range gradually.
I have the same issue with pH dropping over time in my rdwc and have to adjust my pH daily.

In bloom, my thoughts are that the plants are taking in lot's of potassium K(+) ion so to compensate are contributing OH(-) ion to the solution to maintain it's chemical equilibrium. Thus over time the pH is drifting down.

However, the plants in veg are producing the same pH drops (not a quickly). This is puzzling for in my understanding the plant is consuming lots of nitrate N03(-) ion. This would have the plants contributing H30(+) thus causing to pH to drift up.

I've attributed it to two factors:
1) the use of beneficial bacteria and fungi tea's since they can acidify the nutrient solution.
2) the use of charcoal in my growing medium, it's use is known to acidify solutions.

As for pH stability, rarely do I experience it. (yes I do use Pro-Tek)
 
Cool man.. the line across the top of the forum has a tab called "thread tools" sometimes it's hard to read, but "subscribe to this thread" is in there. What makes it easy is in your general settings you can make it so any thread you post in it will automatically sub you too- I like that the best and can just unsub as necessary...
Thanks Trichy, done.
 

fallinprince

Active Member
View attachment 1721519View attachment 1721520

My ph is 5.8
Tds is a little low at 400
temps are 70-75
R/o water
and only the largest plant seems to have any problems

any ideas? this seems to have manifested in two days im planning a res change because i have no idea why only one has this problem....the plant problem guides ive been reading seem to point me a calcium def but idk
 

homebrewer

Well-Known Member
Prince, I'm thinking magnesium deficiency. I'm not that great at diagnosing deficiencies as I don't think a few bad leaves here and there will kill a harvest, but maybe some calmag or magpro could correct that? I think it's important to look at the plant as a whole while noticing individual leaf health at the same time. Vigorous growth, healthy flowers, and strong aromas point to a plant that is doing pretty well. You appear to be in veg at the moment so keep an eye on that leaf thing. To be honest, I've never had an issue in veg and I use just DG grow and protekt. I never saw an issue with GH either.
 

fallinprince

Active Member
yeah me and trichy agreed it was probably mag def. thx you were the first person i thought to ask with as many grows as you have had. thinking really hard i might have skimped a little on the mag-pro. But yes im in veg and didnt expect to see any issues cuz i didnt have a single coloring issue the whole time i had the last plants until they died from root rot.

regardless of the crazy color issue that plant is still growing at a tremendous rate(much faster than either of the previous plants b4 that died) and much faster than any of the other plants in the room. And yes i still have a crazy strong aroma that w/o having a carbon filter is beginning to make the house smell even though its just in veg

I reset my nutrients and added a good amount of mag-pro. im going to wait a few days to ensure the problem stopped getting worse and then clip the damaged leaves the rest of the leaves on that plant but the two i took a picture of are normal like you see at the right of the second picture
 

MasterS

Well-Known Member
homebrewer you need some new testers. It doesn't normally take this long, everything going well?
 

homebrewer

Well-Known Member
I just sampled the Ak47 grown with Connoisseur last night along with the Chronic pheno that i've decided to keep. Below is the most sativa dominant Chronic that was in my seed pack and at 75 days, I was finally comfortable harvesting her. My average Chronic plant was lower in odor but this lady had a really nice mixture of bread and pineapple, sort of similar to the Ak47. She yields really well, grows lots of tightly packed flowers in a small space but my one complaint is that she's a little leafy. I can only describe the buzz as a more sativa dominant indica buzz, meaning there is an undeniable body buzz with motivation to do stuff. I can't say that I've had a strain like this before and I was pretty impressed. Being a sativa guy, I like varieties that are more social and avoid strains that make me tired. This pheno would be an excellent pain relieving daytime medicine. After my sampling, I got a lot done in my plant rooms last night whereas the more traditional Chronic pheno tended to drag me down a bit. I'll reserve my comments about Connoisseur's Ak47 until I hear back from my apparently busy testers :roll:. My apologies.



 

maphisto

Well-Known Member
good stuff H\B as always. keep up the good work.I have a quick question have you ever messed with Kush's pr have you always stayed with reputable seed banks like serious.can't wait till you show us the seed project.can i take a guess on what your bseeds are im gonna say kalimist x dumpster x ak 47? anyone else got a guess?
 

homebrewer

Well-Known Member
Dyna-Gro vs Advanced Nutrients Connoisseur final writeup

*** Cliffs notes: I paid more for lower yields and more daily work ***



The reason for this comparison was to take an honest look at one of the most over-hyped and most expensive fertilizers currently on the market and see if its performance justifies either. During my last comparison ( Dyna-Gro vs General Hydroponics (Dumpster grow) ), I was so impressed with my first run with DG that I not only switched the fertilizer that I used for my flood and drain system, but I also replaced the Botanicare products that I was using in the dirt. Just like last time, I wasn’t looking to make a switch away from my current nutrient brand but if Connoisseur’s performance justified its price, I was of course open to improvement.

I’ve always wanted to try an expensive, ‘cannabis specific’ nutrient like Advanced Nutrient’s Connoisseur but aside from their price, the one thing that made me hesitant to conduct a test was their NPK ratios and overall mineral content. According to the guaranteed analysis on the backs of the bottles and on their website, Connoisseur only supplies 7 minerals whereas DynaGro supplies 16. For flower, DynaGro offers roughly a 1-3-2 NPK ratio as I use it and Connoisseur offers a 1-1-2. Personally I’d think a 1-1-2 would make a better veg ratio than a flower ratio but according the ‘PhDs’ and ‘tissue samples’ over at AN, they say fertilizers today contain too much phosphorus and not enough potassium.

In this test, the 1-1-2 ratio resulted in smaller yields than I have previously seen with GH and DynaGro and the yield that I did get was leafy and lacked density. I don’t know if AN purposely supplied a poor NPK ratio as to encourage the purchase of their expensive boosters or they genuinely believe in their choice to under-supply phosphorus during the flowering cycle. Either way, the yield results are below and are exactly what I expected.

In addition to the smaller yields, the visual health of the plants started to decline around day 40 and I believe that this is due to supplying too much nitrogen during the last third of the flowering cycle. When I use the DynaGro grow and bloom in flower, I use more grow in the first third of flower because the plants are creating leaves and branches. As the flowering period progresses, I cut back the grow because they simply don’t need that much nitrogen to maintain healthy, green leaves. With Connoisseur’s 2 part formula, you have no choice but to oversupply nitrogen and undersupply phosphorus late in flower which for me resulted in leaf curl, margin burn, leafy flowers and lower flower density.


What I initially liked about Connoisseur:

There isn’t a whole lot that I liked about Connoisseur. It comes in two parts and neither part is cheap. Separately, both mix fine with water and part A has a really attractive candied apple color. When mixed in the res, the res stays crystal clear and the lack of salt buildup in the medium over an entire grow cycle is very desirable. When adjusting the pH, it didn’t take very much up or down to get to an optimal range. Also, the nutrient concentration levels of Connoisseur is about average based on other hydroponic fertilizers that I’ve used so I give them a little credit for not selling an overly watered-down product.

PH Stability:

Connoisseur’s pH stability is simply not very good. I consistently had to make several adjustments per week as I was using it in RO water and I’d say that the GH 3 part performed just as well in this category. There isn’t a day that goes by where I’m not in my veg or flower room so on a small scale, the lack of pH stability with Connoisseur might not be an issue for some. However, when running multiple reservoirs, it becomes tedious and time consuming to pH all of them and skipping this step is of course a better scenario. Comparatively, DynaGro’s pH stability is about as good as it gets. Sometimes I need to do an initial adjustment at res change time. Other times, I can go weeks without touching my pH Up or Down bottles. DynaGro’s pH stability is honestly so good that a competing brand could only be equal in their performance.

Price:

Connoisseur is expensive at a total cost of $170 for 1 gallon of part A & B. The other thing to note is that part A and B are only used for flowering so if you need to veg some plants, you’re making another trip to the hydro store for 2 more bottles. DynaGro on the other hand has a grow and a bloom formula which costs roughly $100 total for a gallon of each and that’s all you need to take plants from seed to harvest. Fewer bottles to work with at a lower cost is something that I really like and DynaGro.

Comparatively with no boosters and given the same feeding levels, Connoisseur costs me around 128% more than DynaGro ($32 vs $14) for a single flowering cycle. Factor in vegging and Advanced Nutrients’ cost only goes up. In case you’re curious, the GenHydro 3 part would cost close to $19 for a single flowering cycle or only 35% more than DynaGro.


Yield:

The final yield of this 600 watt grow using Advanced Nutrients Connoisseur was 450 grams or about 1 pound. Based on the average yield of my last 5 grows with AK47, this is a decrease of 20% as compared to DynaGro (AK47 with DynaGro usually yields around 20 ounces). The issue with this final yield number is that just over 2 ounces of the 450gram yield had such poor density that I’ll either have to cook with it or process it in another way. I’ve never had an issue with poor bud density before but the lower buds on the plants were leafy, airy, and unsmokeable. I’m still calling the yield 450 grams but only about 13.8 ounces will be donated to patients, or about 31% less than normal.

As early as day 15, I could tell DynaGro was probably going to out-yield Connoisseur so I even implemented a few different bloom boosters as to emulate what the average AN user might be giving their plants. I started with KoolBloom and even switched to Hydroplex in case Koolbloom was bumping the potassium content up too much.

Another thing to note about the yield is that my AK47 strain when grown with DynaGro almost ALWAYS out-yields my Dumpster strain. My first run ever with DyanGro and Dumpster yielded 17.2 ounces which is 7% more than the AK47 in this grow. Had I chosen my Dumpster strain for this grow, the yields would be even smaller than the 450 grams that I yielded this round.

Another side note: the GenHydro 3 part would have also out-yielded Connoisseur with average yields around 17 ounces with AK47 and not to mention better density from top to bottom.


Cost per Ounce:

The cost per ounce measure is a metric that factors in everything from the price you pay at the hydro store to the concentration levels of your given fertilizer. Looking solely at fertilizer cost here, Connoisseur is 3 times more expensive than DynaGro as it costs $2 an ounce with Connoisseur vs about 70 cents per ounce with DynaGro. Just to throw another brand in there, GH is around $1.11 per ounce.

Why am I making such a big deal about cost and the number of bottles needed to grow healthy plants? I don’t like making trips to the hydro store. I don’t like using 6 watery products throughout the grow cycle that all run out at different times which calls for multiple trips per month to the grow store. I like buying a highly concentrated fertilizer knowing that it will last a very long time and that I’m not paying for a company's marketing budget every time I’m buying fertilizer.

Quality:

During this grow, I’d say resin production was pretty close between the two fertilizer brands. After the excessively long trim job, Connoisseur grew a good looking product with the only visual and tactile difference being the lower density flowers as compared to DynaGro. My personal opinion was that at its best, the Ak47 grown with Connoisseur was only as good as the product grown with DynaGro. In no way was the effect more potent or longer lasting. I will say that the flavor was a little blander than I’m used to but the smoke was also smoother than I was used to. Now I’m not going to pretend like my sampling was objective and blind like it is with my testers, but these were just my impressions. Based on the smoke reports from my blind testers, they actually thought that the 2 samples were indistinguishable from one another. So with the cost-per-ounce being 3 times greater with Connoisseur as compared to DynaGro, the medicine was only equal in quality at best.

In summation...

There is really nothing that I liked about Advanced Nutrients’ Connoisseur except for the low salt build-up in the medium (which is as good as DynaGro’s lack of salt buildup) and the color of part A. Connoisseur is expensive, the pH isn’t stable, it grows excessively leafy flowers as compared to DynaGro, it yields lower than the GH 3 part and DynaGro, the yield that you do get lacks density but the quality and potency is there. So with all of Advanced Nutrients’ hype on their website, what exactly is the consumer paying for? At the end of the day, Connoisseur is just a fertilizer and there is nothing magical about it. Well, fertilizer in and of itself is a little magical in my opinion. But magical in the factual scientific sense, not magical like Harry Potter which is what Advanced Nutrients would like you to believe.
 

maphisto

Well-Known Member
Thank's H/B as always YOU deliver the goods.:cool:You should send this off to FAT MIKE but he probably wont answer back only because ya exposed him.like ya said before A/N is for newbies or people who dont know.
 

lunchbox421

Active Member
Nice write-up and great job! Thanks for taking the time to do this for the community.

I picked up a fresh gallon of bloom and grow as well as some magpro since I use RO. Mixed a batch for my cantaloupes since they were yellowing a bit, 2ml grow, 2ml bloom and 3ml protekt ph sat at 6.2 and an EC of .80. Damn simple if you ask me. So once again thank you for dispensing some knowledge here and hopefully it'll open others' eyes to the fact that it's what's on the back of the bottle that counts.

What'd you settle on as far as ratios go on the tables during flower? See any benefit of the floralicious plus, solely aesthetic?

Thanks again and be safe.
 

fallinprince

Active Member
that is an amazingly complete write up i especially enjoyed that you used GH in there as well. subjective taste test aside you did give it the benefit of the doubt in every way

send this to big mike and he will probably mail you the whole line and ask why you didnt use everything they offer for the 1000$ it would take just to buy ferts
 

homebrewer

Well-Known Member
What'd you settle on as far as ratios go on the tables during flower?
I have a tray of AKs going right now where I started giving them only bloom and protekt from week 4 until now (which is basically harvest). So in that case, it's a 1-4-2 ratio and the plants aren't going N deficient like I remember my Dumpster strain did. It's all about finding that balance of what makes your plants perform best in your environment which of course takes some trail and error. Burr back on page 37 feeds differently than I do and has some siiiiiiiick looking plants. I bet that turned out to be some fantastic stuff. Burr, how about an update?

See any benefit of the floralicious plus, solely aesthetic?
Floralicious plus is something that I've found increases aroma and resin production, maybe flavor as well? It's up to the individual as to whether they want to spend the money on it as it costs like $4 per flowering cycle. I like it and am going to run some liquid karma next to it soon to see how it does in hydro. I only used it in dirt back when I used Botanicare. It doesn't smell as potent or as concentrated as floralicious plus or floralicious bloom but it has some similar stuff it in. Personally I love the mineral based fertilizers for their sheer performace but also enjoy an organic-ish additive as long as it doesn't cause issues.
 

Trichy Bastard

Well-Known Member
Once again, this has been one of the most professional and informative threads out there. I wish I could do more to thank you than just a rep- but that's the best I can do on here man... Thanks so much. I'm not trying to give you a job if you don't want it, but I wonder if you ever decided to do another comparison in the future, perhaps a poll to help decide what the new competing brand would be might be interesting? Then again, you're doing all the work and are ultimately responsible for the outcome, so perhaps you should just kick back and enjoy your dynagrows, knowing you are using the most ideal product for yourself... You're one of the best contributors to this forum in my opinion, and I really hope you chose to continue to keep us company here.
 

surphin

Well-Known Member
Awesome job HB! Thanks again for a another good comparison, and for spending the money and time to do the comparison. I'm sure your efforts will save many others from wasting their money and time. Thanks.
 

burrr

Well-Known Member
Burr back on page 37 feeds differently than I do and has some siiiiiiiick looking plants. I bet that turned out to be some fantastic stuff. Burr, how about an update?
The final product is down right awesome! It's curing in mason jars and getting better every day. I'm still rolling with the same strain, and .8 EC and I could not be happier. My last batch of 3 started off under a MH 600 for a couple weeks, as well as bloom mix only. This is giving me a perfect canopy, and tight internode space. Less still makes more!!!!
 
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