How to make your own nutrient solution

[DOGIDOG]

hidro stores will be watched in the future more and more

we must be prepared for worst....

someone will test and tell to others

i did not find anywhere on the forums

It is still untested

but someone must do it but we dont know him yet

You are lucky to hawe GH and lucas.

But there are people who cant get GH and others ferts but

can perhaps get components to make own .

I hawe seen people on grower cz mix premade fertilizers together

to get formula but it can be done better with components alone and

you can tweak N.P.K ratios and ratios of others elements

as you cant with any premade fert in the world.

So you can change your formula trough grow the best way.

playing with N.P.K ratios as you want.





I

 

[BabyHughie]

hidro stores will be watched in the future more and more

we must be prepared for worst....

someone will test and tell to others

i did not find anywhere on the forums

It is still untested

but someone must do it but we dont know him yet

You are lucky to hawe GH and lucas.

But there are people who cant get GH and others ferts but

can perhaps get components to make own .
I hawe seen people on grower cz mix premade fertilizers together

to get formula but it can be done better with components alone and

you can tweak N.P.K ratios and ratios of others elements

as you cant with any premade fert in the world.

So you can change your formula trough grow the best way.

playing with N.P.K ratios as you want.





I

Very true, something many of us probably take for granted.

 

[pHaroaH]

I agree that for most folks it might be easiest for them to buy premade solutions. I for one thank sproutco for all his hard work in providing information that gives each of us the opportunity to make our own choice. I also read his pH thread with great interest. I really like the idea of being able to go down to the local store and pick up a few items with out anyone being suspicious.

I discovered that my local Hydro shop is suspected in cooperating with the police. Apparently they were involved in more than just the Hydro business, got caught, and made a plea bargain to become Narcs. There are no other Hydro shops in my area. And I don't want to hear the "order it on-line and send to a friends address" advice. Does anyone do this? I wouldn't put a friend in a postion to be watched or harrassed by the police, and I wouldn't want a friend like that either...

It is the sharing of information like this that makes sites like these so valuable to our community, and another reason to mourn the loss of OG.

 

[BabyHughie]

I agree that for most folks it might be easiest for them to buy premade solutions. I for one thank sproutco for all his hard work in providing information that gives each of us the opportunity to make our own choice. I also read his pH thread with great interest. I really like the idea of being able to go down to the local store and pick up a few items with out anyone being suspicious.

I discovered that my local Hydro shop is suspected in cooperating with the police. Apparently they were involved in more than just the Hydro business, got caught, and made a plea bargain to become Narcs. There are no other Hydro shops in my area. And I don't want to hear the "order it on-line and send to a friends address" advice. Does anyone do this? I wouldn't put a friend in a postion to be watched or harrassed by the police, and I wouldn't want a friend like that either...

It is the sharing of information like this that makes sites like these so valuable to our community, and another reason to mourn the loss of OG.

I was just at my locol homedepot type store and they had 3/4 of the stuff you need to do this. At your local nursery you can get the rest of the stuff. If they don't have it they can probably get it for you. Better yet get all of it there and support you local economy.

 

[sproutco]

Once you understand how to do the basic math and use the fertilizers, you can copy any formula. Be sure to check out this thread: http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=21119 It lists the fert. numbers for the popular lucas fertilizer formula and includes a link to Mel Frank's insiders guide with suggested fert. numbers just for mj at different stages of growth.

 

[k2imperial]

oh good lord, i am not following any of this ... i know a little bit of chemistry so please help me figure this out
Note: i am not trying to be an asshole, just trying to understand what you've got here, you obviously know your shit.

Where you write
>To convert the phosphate with oxygen to just pure phosphorus, you multiply by .43 This would really
>be only 4.3% phosphorus. To convert potassium with oxygen to just pure potassium, you would multiply by .83 This
>would really be only 8.3% potassium."

first, where are these percentages coming from, maybe the relative atomic weights to 'weed' out the oxygen in your
calculations? also i am confused by the 0.43 and 4.3% ... multiplying anything by 0.43 gets you 43% of the original,
not 4.3%.

i also don't get how you calculate parts per million ...
>You will have to learn parts per million (ppm). 1 gram or 1000 milligrams of a pure element in 1 liter of water
>is 1000 parts per million (ppm)

i'm not sure how you are calculating the 'parts' - 0.5 gram of N added to 1 liter of water is not 500 ppm. here is
why i think so ...

a part is the molecule itself, 1 gram of N does not contain the same number of 'parts' as 1 gram of, say, lead.
so adding 1 gram of N to 1000 ml of H2o would result in...
0.5gram N * 1 mol/14g N(<-molecular weight) * 6.022e23molecules/mol = 2.15e22 molecules
1000 ml H2O * 1g/1ml(<-density of water) * 1mol/(2 + 16)g H2O * 6.022e23molecules/mol = 3.35e25 molecules
so ... you have 2.15e22 parts N and 3.35e25 parts H2O, which equates to 2.15e22/3.35e19 = 642 ppm.

now here is where you really lost me...
>To start, you will want to figure out phosphorus. We will use the monopotassium phosphate (0-52-34)
>33 ppm p (33 mg in 1 liter of water) x the inverse of .23 Remember we had to convert 55% phosphorus on the
>fertilizer bag to real p by multiplying by .43 The inverse is 1 divided by the number (your calculator may have a x-1 key;
>.23 x-1 key). So, inverse .23=4.3 33 x inverse .23=143 mg per liter of monopotassium phosphate. For 1 gallon, multiply by
>3.8 So, 543 milligrams(mg) or .5 grams(g) would be added.

i am at a loss has to how you are getting these numbers, the 55%(typo maybe?) and this inversing business. here's how i would
go about it, with a bit of help from wikipedia "Fertilizer grade MKP contains 52% P2O5 and 34% K2O" but i am unsure if these
percentages are by weight or mols, i will assume mols ...

0.542g of MKP (KH2PO4) * 1mol/(39 + 2 + 30 + 4*16)g MKP * 0.52mol P2O5/1mol MKP * 2mol P/1mol P2O5(<-how many P's for 1 P2O5)
* 6.022e23molecules/mol = 2.51e21 molecules of P added
and we still have 3.35e25 molecules of H2O, so the ppm would be 2.51e21/3.35e19 = 75 ppm.

our numbers don't match. if anyone with a bit of background wants to chime in, feel free. am i missing something? again, read Note.

 

[sproutco]

Yes the .43 and .83 conversion factor "weeds out" the oxygen using atomic weights.

.43 x 10% = 4.3% (.43 x .1=.043) and .83 x 10% = 8.3% (.83 x .1 = .083)...i was using 10-10-10 fert as an example

1 liter of water has a mass of 1 kilogram so 1 mg per liter= 1 ppm

If you want 1 pound of nitrogen and you are using 10-10-10 with 10% n, you would have to use 10 pounds of 10-10-10; 1 x inverse .1 = 10

55% is a typo. It should have read 52% p205 on the bag. The numbers are still right in the calculations.

Luckily, I have a book with the recipe for Johnson's nutrient solution and my numbers are almost the same. That is why I picked this particular solution...I have used it and also I could double check my math against somebody else and not give out false info.

I had to use moles in college for doing nutrient solutions. This was 15 years ago so I can't really help you doing your method. I think if I remember correctly, a 1 mole stock is the gram molecular weight of the fertilizer in 1 liter of water.

Your answer may vary slightly from mine as I tend to round sometimes for convenience.

Thanks for the input. I hope I could at least answer some of your questions.

Be sure to check out this thread. I bet few people have actually read it. I have only looked at the fert. numbers. http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=21119 Also, look at the links.

 

[HOVAH]

i really like this tread thankyou all very much , but im not that good in math ,so why dont yall just give the home made ingrediants for all the major brands... GH, botanicare,

 

[DOGIDOG]

Ah this english is kiling me i am so slow........
Hier is the link overgrow FAQ you can learn her many things.
http://www.drugs-forum.com/growfaq/GrowFAQ Basic Topics.htm

 

[k2imperial]

hey sproutco, thanks for the quick reply.

yes, that does clear up some of my problems, but i still take issue with the way ppm's are calculated because it seems as though you are using mass to calculate it and not the actualy number of 'parts.'

adding 1 gram of N in H2O and 1 gram of XX in H2O do not yeild the same ppm because the number of parts depend on how heavy the element is.

kingmaker, where are you??

 

[sproutco]

^^ If you are using moles, then atomic weight would matter in working ppm of a solution. This is based on the fact that 1 liter of water weighs 1 kilogram (which is really an approximation) and then adding 1 mg of any element would be 1 ppm. 1 mg nitrogen = 1 mg of any thing else when doing the math. A mg is a mg. Does that help at all? I know my math in the thread works out right (I also have the answers in a book) but I am having a hard time trying to make it clearer for you.

 

[k2imperial]

ok we are disagreeing on the fundamentals ... the way i see it, parts per million is a concentration ... as in 1 ppm of N would mean there is 1 molecule of N for every 1e6 molecules of H2O in solution, do you see what i mean? so when one says 1234 ppm of element X in solution Y ... that translates to 1234 molecules of X for every 1000000 molecules of Y, it's a ratio of the relative number of molecules right? therefore, when you take 1 gram of element X and 1 gram of element Z ... the number of molecules you actually have of each element cannot be the same because each molecule of X and Z are different, thus adding it to the same amount of water cannot result in the same parts per million because you never started out with the same number of parts of X and Z.

please tell me someone gets what i'm saying.

the way you are doing it, adding one milligram of anything to one kg of water does result in a 1 parts per million, but your definition of parts is flawed. parts must mean the actual molecules, not the weight of it. say you have one massive atom Q, that happens to weigh 1 milligram, and you add it to 1 kg of H2O ... that doesn't result in a 1 part per million ... it results in 1 part (the single atom you added) per the total number of H2O molecules which is magnitudes more than a million.

 

[sproutco]

Trust me, the way I am showing you results in the right answer.

For right now since I have your interest I see, use the basic directions and create another formula. Try the lucas formula that is listed in this link. http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=21119 This is extemely popular with growers here at icmag. Find the numbers of nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, and magnesium listed for this. Use the basic 4 fertilizers used in the previous Johnson's solution example such as potasium nitrate, etc... Work in the same order finding phosphorus first. Since the link does not state calcium, you will have to come up with your own number. Remember to keep these ratios... potassium to calcium 1.5-2:1 and calcium to magnesium 3-4:1 You may also want to use/refer to the common ranges that I listed for each of the elements. Skip the sulfur and the micronutrients because they were not listed and we can just use the common ranges for these.

Or as another interesting quest, use the link above and somewhere in the thread it gives a link to Mel Frank's insider guide. Find his recomendation for flowering levels for the elements. Try to copy this.

Let's see if we can use the same basic 4 ingredients used in the first nutrient solution to make one of these. Then we can discuss what happened with the nutrient levels and whether it would require a 5th or 6th fertilizer to make it work out right.

I will try to figure out how to make parts per million clearer in the mean time.

 

[Guest]

edited to make some sense:

Guys there is one place, in your world, where a metric system jump, over to an American or British gallon, gets real easy.

Here's what a part per million is:

Now here this. First thing you gotta know, and there can't be any doubt in your head about this, or it'll all fall through pretty quick.

A million, is a thousand somethings, a thousand times.

It's a thousand.....thousand.

and, the most possibly difficult thing about measuring out weights of powders into volumes of liquids, is that one is a measurement of a certain 'space',

the other is a weight measurement. So many jillion atoms of carbon weighs one Gram.

Ok?

But here, we get an extremely cool thing done for us, by our friends the Euros.

See... when the Americans set up their system, things were adopted, that had been set, soo00o many years before. For instance a gallon is a unit of volume purely.

But the Metric guys, they didn't really fuck around. Whenever they were devising a universally adoptable system, they too, needed a 'space' or a 'volume' measurement.

The easiest place to get that, was the easiest thing to get: some water. Because water's pretty universally available, and, you can distill it easily and get perfectly pure water, too. It's very uniform.

So what they did, was whenever they laid down their "gallon/quart/pint" style 'VOLUME' measurement, here's what they did:

They declared, that the amount of space, taken up by exactly ONE THOUSAND GRAMS OF WATER, would be referred to, as the Liter.

And, when they did that, they created a magical function, in the realm of measurement: they made it so that - if you were /are using water, and we here, are - you could weigh out a specifically sized 'jug' of water - and simultaneously measure out a nice, round, weight of it: a thousand grams of it.

And, what this spells for me and you, is this: once the Americans set their standard, all the Euros had to do, was get the Americans to finally up and say " ok: this, is our volume unit for liquid: the gallon.

That Euro said " gimme that thing," and he promptly set it onto, a verrry high fidelity Grams scale. And he found out, that one Gallon weighed exactly as much as: 3.79 Liters, of pure water.

Well, now we know that.

Lets get over to the 'parts per million' thing.

Let's remember again: what's a million? It's a thousand, of something, you have a thousand of. Like.... guns. Or, say... something else.

Lets say we have a thousand grams of water. Well.. ok. But now, lets say, that we found out, how much one, one-thousandth, of a gram was. If we had a unit of measurement, that was one thousandth of a gram......

and we had a thousand grams, in a bottle of water..... what we'd also have, is a MILLION.. ''one-thousandth of-a-gram"(s)

because if you h ave that thousand grams... and each one is divisible a thousand times... then... that's a million, pal. a million "one-thousandths'.

In a single liter.... there are one million, "thousandths of-a-gram".


That's where the 'parts per million' becomes defined. They're talking about, a 'thousandth of a gram.'

Seems kind of small, huh. Well, it is. It's way small but since people have been measuring things a long time, they've gotten good at it, and they can do a damned good fake, without even using a digitized pressure transducer and display.

so thousandths of a gram, were something that people in the instrumentaion and measurements fields, could handle.

You've got to be able to linguistically hop, from point A to pont B to point C, D, E, and not get lost, confused as to what you're talking about: You've got to be able to realize that a thousand, times a thousand, is a million,

and that if you 've got a thousand grams of water, you could theoretically divide each of those grams down into a thousand little equal parts, and that would add up to a million of the little bastards.

That, again: is where, the parts, per million parts, comes into definition.

A "Thousand, 'thousandths of-a-gram.'

 

[mace_ecam]

Great thread sproutco i appreciate your efforts in teaching me and others, very informative, keep up the great work!

PPM in a nutshell: its a just a ratio, it means the 1/1000000 part of something, nothing more.
mg per Liter (mg/L) are so called elemental ppm(totally different from TDS ppm), nute strengths (not ratios like 10-10-20 NPK) are usually given in it, not in mole.
wikipedia has a bunch of ambiguous meanings for ppm, check it out should clear up some of the confusion with it.

Just as a side note, PH (a grower) has made excel spreadsheets for calculating elemental ppm's of nutes, one for liquid ferts and one for dry ferts, its more convinient to handle, but i think sproutco's info is very important if you really want to understand it
link to PH's site: http://www.angelfire.com/cantina/fourtwenty
link to the spreadsheets (premixppm is for liquid ferts, saltmix for your own mix from dry ferts): http://www.angelfire.com/cantina/fourtwenty/articles/download.htm
PH on cannabis nute profiles: http://www.angelfire.com/cantina/fourtwenty/articles/profiles.htm

have fun,

mace

 

[Guest]

The reason that the 'parts per million' is so instructive to people measuring things out, is that in the chemicals business, they've long since, needed something that everybody could agree upon, so nobody got blown up by trying to convert from drams to ounces to teaspoons to grams to pounds to... whatever.

and so for some years now, the international standard for measurement in chemistry, has been, the gram. You order your load of chemicals, and get your hands on a half decent scales that'll measure in grams, and you're off and running. No more trying desperately to convert grams to ounces and back, in order to formulate your cannon's gunpowder load, while those annoying savages are letting out bloodcurtling screams through the viewports - and accidentally ripping the breach off the thing.

No more making a mistake and instead of fertilizing, poisoning whole regions, because a government conversion table had a typo.

No. Everything is set to grams, because that means one single unit. If you wanna play, you gotta get in step because other measurement systems might be ok for measuring volumes; or for weight; but no other system can cross, between volume and weight, so flawlessly and without error, because the STANDARD for volume, in the metric system, is defined around the WEIGHT of : One, thousand grams, of water.

The space taken up by that, is the liter. And, once they weighed an american Gallon of pure water, and found out that it weighed 3.79 times as much, it meant that, you can easily convert, doing only ONE calculation.

Now assuming you understand that a thousand, "thousandths of-a-gram''..... the milligram

and assuming that you know that there are one 'million' of those, in a space defined as a 'Liter'.... because a 'Liter' itself, is defined as the space taken up by one thousand grams of water

that means that if you HAVE one liter of water, you by definition HAVE one thousand, grams.

And so, if you have two grams of sugar

and that's two thousand of those 'milligrams' because "theres a thousand per gram"

well..... out of the 'million' milligrams in a liter's weight of water, 2,000 of them are sugar now.

so that's 2,000, parts per million by weight, of sugar, in a liter of water.

And if you just ignore your liter bottle there on the table and dump that 2 grams of sugar into a full gallon, well.... we know that there are 3.79 liters in a gallon...

so, the 2 grams of sugar is divided not into ONE liter of water... but almost, 4.

So what was, 2,000 milligrams

in 1,000 FULL grams of water

now is 2,000 milligrams in (3.79) liters of water. So the concentration gets spread way out, and diluted down, by a factor of almost 4.... 3.79 to be exact;

2000 p.p.million now becomes (2000 divided by 3.79)

and that comes out to 527.7 For that 3.79 liters of water in there, the amount of sugar by weight dispersed evenly, only constitutes 527 milligrams of sugar, per any individual liter of water.

and milligrams per liter is, parts per million, BY Definition: because a "milligram'' which you see abbreviated as a 'mg.' is, one one-thousandth, of a gram;

and a 'Liter' is, by definition, 1000 grams.

That is where the ability to jump around while thinking about it, becomes important: you have to realize, that you're actually being given access, to two ways of saying the same thing, with the 'Liter'. A 'Liter' is DEFINED as that space taken up by precisely 1,000 grams of water,

and a 'milligram' is DEFINED as, one one thousandth of-a-gram

So, mg/L is four alpha-numeric symbols to say, "one-thousandths of a gram, per, thousand grams' of weight in water"

That's taking a real long sentence, down to the letters m, g, /, and L.

Way shorter.

 

[DOGIDOG]

And hier is some more links

to learn how to make hydro nutrient ferts.

http://users.lycaeum.org/~npkaye/nutrients.html
http://hortipm.tamu.edu/ipmguide/nutrient/calcs.html
http://www.seaagri.com/HydroponicsFormulas.pdf
http://www.home.aone.net.au/~hydroponics/formula.html

and more laiter .

 

[sproutco]

Trust me, the way I am showing you results in the right answer.

For right now since I have your interest I see, use the basic directions and create another formula. Try the lucas formula that is listed in this link. http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=21119 This is extemely popular with growers here at icmag. Find the numbers of nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, and magnesium listed for this. Use the basic 4 fertilizers used in the previous Johnson's solution example such as potasium nitrate, etc... Work in the same order finding phosphorus first. Since the link does not state calcium, you will have to come up with your own number. Remember to keep these ratios... potassium to calcium 1.5-2:1 and calcium to magnesium 3-4:1 You may also want to use/refer to the common ranges that I listed for each of the elements. Skip the sulfur and the micronutrients because they were not listed and we can just use the common ranges for these.

Or as another interesting quest, use the link above and somewhere in the thread it gives a link to Mel Frank's insider guide. Find his recomendation for flowering levels for the elements. Try to copy this.

Let's see if we can use the same basic 4 ingredients used in the first nutrient solution to make one of these. Then we can discuss what happened with the nutrient levels and whether it would require a 5th or 6th fertilizer to make it work out right.

I will try to figure out how to make parts per million clearer in the mean time.

Let's stop the ppm talk and do what I suggested above. I am trying to take everyone on a stoner journey to beat the "store bought" fertilizers.

 

[k2imperial]

man, is nobody reading what i'm writing?

@kingmaker - i don't see the point of the first post, i understand what one part per million other parts means (a thousand thousand as you put it)
there wasn't a question about that. however, your second post makes the point exactly, you wrote ...
>so that's 2,000, parts per million by weight, of sugar, in a liter of water.

this is exactly where the problem is, you are defining ppm by WEIGHT and not the number of actual MOLECULES of sugar in your example.
let's just say that the sugar molecule is incredibly massive and a single molecule weighs 2000 milligrams. now according to this reasoning,
if you weigh out 2000 milligrams of our heavy sugar and add it to 1 liter of water, do you have 2000 ppm? no you don't, you only have
a single molecule swimming alongside assloads of water molecules. the molecular weight of the element is crucial in finding out how many
molecules you are actually putting into solution.


@sproutco - yes, i agree, this isn't a chemistry board. i'm gonna go smoke a bowl.

 

[sproutco]

There may be a difference in the number of atoms/molecules in 1 gram of something, but the weight on the scale is the same. 1 mg = 1 mg. Hows that for a dr%*k explanation.