Question!!...nitric acid could be PH DOWN?????right??

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churchhaze

Well-Known Member
Maybe more relevant, you see the black precipitates on the bottom of the bottle all the way to the right? (fail) I narrowed that down to mixing iron sulfate with sodium borate. Those 2 do not like being together at all... but i ended up fixing it by adding a few drops of nitric acid to the bottle until it turned translucent orange!! SUCCESS!!

Maybe @Atomizer could explain that one..
 
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mainliner

Well-Known Member
Then again you could look deeper into ph up and ph down through the magical world of quantum physics;)

but that would get to confusing ...... Right ?
 
ttystikk

ttystikk

Well-Known Member
nomofatum said:
Water + powder, but like atomizer pointed out, too low of solubility with calcium sulfate to be in a concentrated liquid nute. Makes sense since calcium sulfate is in all of the powder nutes I have and none of the liquid nutes.
It's solubility is fine for your res, just not good enough for a bottle of concentrated liquid.

Also, once water is added it's shelf life drops quickly.
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Calcium sulfate is not for use in hydroponics, because it's not water soluble enough.

Put it in your soil.
 
nomofatum

nomofatum

Well-Known Member
churchhaze said:
Almost every single hydroponic formula on the market is based on calcium nitrate, wet or dry.


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Indeed, both are very useful, especially at the levels produced by your PH down, lol.

In the end it comes down to Sulfur vs Nitrogen when comparing sulfuric acid and nitric acid, who could have guessed, lol. I would rather feed more sulfur than nitrogen, especially during flower. Sulfur is very good for our desired results. :weed:
 
ttystikk

ttystikk

Well-Known Member
nomofatum said:
Except it is, look at every powder hydroponic nutrient on the market. They all have it...:bigjoint:
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Cal-mag has calcium nitrate and magnesium NITRATE. Not mag sulfate.

You need to actually read the bottles.

In two part hydroponic water bottle mixes, one part is clear; that's the calcium nitrate. The OTHER part has mag sulfate, aka epsom salt, along with the rest of the nutes.
 
nomofatum

nomofatum

Well-Known Member
ttystikk said:
Cal-mag has calcium nitrate and magnesium NITRATE. Not mag sulfate.

You need to actually read the bottles.

In two part hydroponic water bottle mixes, one part is clear; that's the calcium nitrate. The OTHER part has mag sulfate, aka epsom salt, along with the rest of the nutes.
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I never referenced CalMag. I wouldn't touch that sucker product with at 12 foot poll, leave that to the RO'ers. I only referenced hydro nutes, base nutes. And if you actually read what I posted you wouldn't expect to find Calcium Sulfate in a liquid, just in dry hydro nutes.
 
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churchhaze

Well-Known Member
There'd be no point to using nitric acid with RO water anyway. With my hard tap water, I add about 11mL of a product containing about 30% nitric acid per gallon of tap before adding all the other stock solutions to the reservoir, and it comes out to the desired pH with crystal clear water. I rarely even pH check anything anymore. I just do random checks once in a while to make sure I'm estimating putting in the right amount of acid.
 
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churchhaze

Well-Known Member
nomofatum said:
I never referenced CalMag. I wouldn't touch that sucker product with at 12 foot poll, leave that to the RO'ers. I only referenced hydro nutes, base nutes.
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The thing about calmag+ is that it practically is a base nute. You could get away with using ONLY calmag+ and MOAB additives with no base nutes, and you'd pretty much have a balanced diet lacking a few micros, but you'd get to harvest with a decent yield regardless. Why anyone would do that, I have no idea, but I've heard of it being done.

Cal-mag+ is bullshit even for RO users. The main ingredients are just macro-nutrients, calcium nitrate and magnesium nitrate, as well as some iron. You don't need a special product to "replace" the nutrients you lost, tap water hardly provides anything anyway You need WAY more calcium than is provided in most tap water. Even with my 300-400ppm tap, calcium nitrate is my main ingredient by mass. It is #1.

There is no difference between base nutes and additives in this case. We're not talking about bullshit like amino acids and vitamins.
 
nomofatum

nomofatum

Well-Known Member
churchhaze said:
The thing about calmag+ is that it practically is a base nute. You could get away with using ONLY calmag+ and MOAB additives with no base nutes, and you'd pretty much have a balanced diet lacking a few micros, but you'd get to harvest with a decent yield regardless. Why anyone would do that, I have no idea, but I've heard of it being done.

Cal-mag+ is bullshit even for RO users. The main ingredients are just macro-nutrients, calcium nitrate and magnesium nitrate, as well as some iron. You don't need a special product to "replace" the nutrients you lost, tap water hardly provided that anyway. You need WAY more calcium than is provided in even hard water.

There is no difference between base nutes and additives in this case. We're not talking about bullshit like amino acids and vitamins.
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How does any of that have to do with this topic? Liquid = not calcium sulfate, Powder = likely has calcium sulfate (if it has calcium). Reason, it's not soluble enough to make a super concentrate. Is it taken up by the plants, yes, is it very effective, yes. The question is do you want more nitrogen or more sulfur in your nutrients. I would love to increase my sulfur more, so I use this opportunity to add a little bit, sulfur options are more limited than nitrogen options.
 
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churchhaze

Well-Known Member
You say that most powered hydro nutes use calcium sulfate, but I can't think of 1 off hand. I can think of at least 3 complete dry based hydroponic formulas that use dry calcium nitrate as their second part.

Calcium nitrate is also the main ingredient to almost all dry hydro formulas. :eyesmoke:

These 2 links make up a 2 part together.
https://www.cropking.com/catalog/nutrients-nutrients-and-additives/hydro-gro-vine-crops
https://www.cropking.com/catalog/nutrients-nutrients-and-additives/calcium-nitrate-greenhouse-grade

And then, of course there's this:

 
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Atomizer

Well-Known Member
You want balanced nutes, modifying a commercial nute creates imbalance, always assuming it was balanced to begin with.
Revving up the sulfur percentage puts your base P and Ca levels at risk. Sure you can modify that with calmag.or perhaps better still, a small amount of calcium chloride. A dose of PK booster to provide more P (but that adds unwanted K). So now your commercial nute at best has added S, Ca, Cl, P and K just to keep hold of the sulfur addition. The extra Ca creates a need for Mn so better add some of that to prevent Mn def. (note that some calmags contain Mn for that reason)
Unfortunately, with additional Ca and P now available to react with your elevated sulfur level it can continue to produce more unplanned/unwanted sulfates until a balance is reached.
Bottom line is the reacted sulphur wont be in an easily available form and your nutes will be so far from where they started out, you`ll have no clue whats in there or in what form.
 
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