Hey mate!
One thing i personally notice with the VitaLinkMax is the N content, its bloody high & judging by the dark green colour you have bro your in the same boat. My ideas are to reduce that base rate EC & increase the Bloom Booster(PK) EC during the latter stages(last 3 week of feeds). Thats my only critism of VitaLinkM<, its N is too high during the latter stages & this needs addressing. I like GHRipen, it has no N at all & is a great finisher. I been thinking about using Overdrive too, its only 1% N so im considering it, but ill defo be using GHRipen, For a Bloom Stimulator im using CannaBoost Accelarator(which has its own Carbs) & im inpowering it with AN Hammerhead this time, trying something different, crumbs the trich formation is sick. Im running Si(Budlink) along side it too & Cannazym for extra food/Carb/Sugar production. Let me know what you think of the Overdrive skotty? i might have a play with it.
Great looking plants bro, just watch that N in that Vita mate! Ive been thinking of going with a full compliment of micros & a PK booster only in the final stages to completely get rid of all N in the latter stages. I also wanted to reduce the P, which is why i went with the hammerhead! 0/4/8 new formula & im happy so far. day 38ish(i think). still looking to clear 15-17 ozcar of Primo dried offa a 400w HPS! 12 weeks total grow time, 4 plants! things look on-schedual!
Good Luck Skotty!
btw, i havent noticed a loss in yield keeping things slightly on the lean side, letting EC drift down & PH up(slowly), if anything i get better yields when i run my rig this way. plants always stay healthier. imo you can only lose yield pushing things beyond their limits!
mate wtf i knew all along something wasnt right about this grow and i think you have just nailed it,
i was using canna and getting good results with my old system but i switched to vitalink max this time for flowering and it just hasnt happened as such, my la blanca is on the vitalink max grow and she is fooking loving that stuff but the vitalinki max bloom is lacking somewhere, bearing in mind im only using vitalink max bloom and carboload + buddy so ive checked and compared the npk ratio of canna and vitalink max
canna aqua npk 6-2-8
vita link max npk 10:9:19
to me it looks like canna has a lower npk ration but does a much better job and i did state early on in this thread that my setup is dialled in on every level except something was missing from my setup to increase bud size and i thought it was a bloom booster but in fact i need to get a better flowering formula that works or revert back to canna for flowering and vita link max for veg
although i added hammerhead the new formula to my flowering it didnt make much difference to the grow im thinking i would of had better results with canna pk13/14 instead because it has a higher pk ratio, also on a side note since i have added overdrive my buds have started to increase i just wish that i had known this at the begining of the flowering stage as ive spent the last weeks missing out on some explosive bud growth due to wrong npk ratios
the fact that vitalink max has a higher n ratio could also explain as to why maxi is taking longer to finish because instead of getting proper budding nutrients she is still getting high nitrogen which is for growth this would also explain the high ec levels she reached because she needed more of the vitalink max in order to get the correct dosage of p and k whilst still having high n which she didnt need???
and on another note i have used nearly a whole litre of a + b grow on just maxi i think im gonna switch back to canna for la blanca as i know that can produce nice buds and just use carboload and pk 13/14 and tease some overdrive in there
i have a bottle of ripen sitting right next to me it says to run it @ 1.4 ec and it acts as a stress stimulant to force the plants to finish early, ive seen grows with this being used and it makes all the leaves turn purple and gold etc etc but i dont wanna jeporadise any of her flavour by doing it and force her to finish early
as far a vitalink max goes then yeah it may work well in some systems but the amount of additives needed to balance it out is a bit much and could get exspensive with the bloom feed however the vita link grow is good, but ive gotta say that canna does a much better job as a base nute from my experince