New Grower pH Perfect or other nutrient suggestions

[AndyBotwin]

As I'm putting together all the pieces and parts for my new grow operation, I've come to the point where I need to decide on a nute regimen. I started out growing with the trio and things were fine. But on my last grow I made the switch to full organics, not so much because I'm a granola cruncher, but I felt like the whole philosophy of cultivating a healthy microherd was a good one. So I went with GO Biothrive and related products and had really nice yields. The plants also seemed to handle pH swings much better than when I used synthetic nutes. I was about to pull the trigger and go with these products again (if it ain't broke don't fix it), but figured I should take the opportunity to possibly improve things.

I will say that dealing with pH has always been one of the more arduous tasks of growing, so the AN pH Perfect products have intrigued me for a while now. The downside is that I don't want to deal with RO water and I'm unsure how it will work with my tap water. After bubbling it's usually in the 7.5 range with a ppm of 125-150. Apparently this is not ideal for pH Perfect, but I'm wondering if it still wouldn't be worth giving a shot? I like the idea of the nutes working within a larger pH range, and it seems like this would lessen the amount of fiddling I'd have to do. Even though I might not be able to throw out the meter, wouldn't these products at least allow me to me a little more loose with the pH testing? Or does my higher ppm mean that there is no benefit to the pH Perfect technology and I may as well be using any synthetic nutes?

I'm looking for any and all opinions from the AFN braintrust on how I should move forward here. Go with what I know works, gamble $45 on the AN stuff, or go with something different altogether?

 

[sniper]

hey Andy i run grow more seagrow since 2011 they aren't organic but they work and they don't cost an arm and a leg check at www.plantsthatproduce.com cheapest place ive found for them also we have a grow more rep on site in the fert testing area

but i bought the A N ph perfect sensi grow and the bloom along with rhino skin big bud and bud candy to give them a try with my well water that comes out mid to high 7's only issue i have had was i didn't know i still needed a cal mag but after a few shots of molasses alls well again

did i mention i haven't used a ph pen since summer 2012 with the seagrow i was using rain water and after i found how much baking soda i needed to add to bring ph i wrote it down and went off my notes and never picked up the pen again i recently started using seagrow with my well water and haven't seen any problem without checking ph

 

[Grey Bear]

I have been using the PH Perfect Sensi base nutes and a few different bud additives, plus Cal/Mag with several different water profiles in Advanced Sunshine #4 using leds and or t-5's to pretty good effect.
And recently tried my hand using the same nutes in DWC and had no problems.
Now I don't go crazy micro managing the ph and ppm, I try to just keep things "close" and this seems to do it, where as I had a catastrophic ph crash using earth juice's supposedly organic.
I like the reliability of this product for my area of the country, but it is a bit pricey and I am open to other products.

 

[nuskool89]

I have some honest advice if you're looking a AN sensi, buy dyna-gro.
I ran sensi AB grow then connoisseur for flower. That's it, no additives or anything, still ran me $68.

What impressed me was the ph consistency, what didn't was the leafy end product and skinny buds. Sort of a sacrifice effect.
In my opinion monitoring ph and getting chunkier buds is worth the effort.

Now, I'm sure if you spend your heart out on the full AN line your results will be awesome. But that is way out of my price or interest range in spending

You're already on a different path if you're looking at AN, so I say dyna-gro full line as first pick. After that, the Soul Synthetics line (starter kit with every additive is just $40) by aurora innovations

 

[Muddy]

Andy, your ppm is right on the edge of what AN recommends. If I remember correctly they recommend at starting ppm between 100 - 125. I tried it using my tap water which has a ppm around 250 and it wouldn't work. I've now got RO so will be trying it again as soon as I finish up the GH Flora I'm now using.

 

[Dr Who]

I'm not familiar with these products, but I've often wondered why people don't tend to just buffer their nutrient solutions rather than faffing around adjusting the pH with acid or base. Whilst I'm sure that a given nutrient recipe made with the same water supply will probably tend to need the same dose of acid/base for routine pH adjustment. That said, it is going to require a pH meter and some experimentation/faffing to find out how much adjustment is appropriate for a new recipe, any equilibration necessary for a stable reading, etc...

I would imagine that the buffering capacity (alkalinity) of the water that the nutrients are added to is the important issue, and I expect that they are inferring this from the conductivity/TDS figures. The issue (presumably) being that if you have hard water you might exceed the capacity of the buffer to maintain the desired pH. I would guess that if this were the case the pH would be on the high side. You may be able to get an indication of the alkalinity of your water from your supplier (along with other parameters like pH, hardness, etc.)

 

[AndyBotwin]

Dang, fellas. I replied to this post a few days ago but the site must have eaten it. Many thanks for the comments and suggestions. :tiphat: I did some more reading and looking at the local water reports, and I've decided not to go with the pH Perfect nutes until I can get a RO system set up. Checking the monthly reports shows that the TDS, pH, and alkalinity very quite a bit from month to month. So my concern is that even if the nutrients work initially, they may go off at some point during the grow. I ended up ordering a box of the GO nutes that I used in my last grow. I did find that they seemed to be more stable from batch to batch compared to the synthetic nutes, so dealing with pH wasn't as much of a hassle. Not to mention that I bought the full line of nutes for what one bottle of the AN would have cost me...