• If you need help identifying a pepper, disease, or plant issue, please post in Identification.

nutrients Making your own nutrients

I supplement calcium, alk and Magnesium in my reef tank all the time. I buy these 3 additives in bulk and I wonder if they could be used as nutrients for my plants. Here is a link to the stuff I buy http://www.bulkreefsupply.com/store/products/calcium-alkalinity-magnesium
 
thats calcium chloride and magnesium chloride? you could use these in smallish amounts, but its not terribly suitable as a fertilize. it would contain to much chloride(Cl-). plants can actually tolerate a fair amount of chloride, but since you need nitrates sulphates etc. id just buy calcium nitrate and magnesium sulphate among others.

i see alot of carbonates and even hydroxides, is that stuff for raising the alkalinity of the aquarium?
 
Thanks for suggesting maxi bloom/grow, I would like to use them becasue they are cheap and simple.

So, thanks again I really learned a lot. In an in-organic or synthetic fertilizer program there is no reason to worry about chlorine. In an organic program I think it may or may not hurt the micro life in organic soils rendering the the nutrients to not be broken down for the plant as in-organic the fertilizer is instantly available to the plant.
 
Yea that is the only downside to chlorine I can see. I was doing a bit of research and found your very right, some professor from a plant college said something like; plants can have a lot of water with high amounts of chlorine dumped on them with no hurt to the plant at all.
 
I am not a big fan of chlorine, in fact I don't add any chlorine in to the nutrients at all. I believe there is enough chlorine in the water. Maybe it won't hurt our plants, but the bacterial life around our plants may be hurt.

I am using a eb and flood system, where the roots of my plants receive a lot of oxygen, if I would use chlorine ( which becomes a gas ) then I am affraid that the roots will receive less oxygen.

Maybe it's just in my head, maybe I am all wrong.....still, I don't like chlorine
 
Just my 5 cents to this as I also make my own nutes, but for the experimental purpose, for the main plants I do use commercial products.

If you want to know your nutes ratios, know how many grams of each substance to add, you might look up a freeware product called " Hydrobuddy " that greatly helps with the calculations !
 
definatly use hydrobuddy, the math to calculate the mg/l is too annoying. i used to use an excell spread sheet, and just adjust chemicals manually to get the mg/l values i needed... took way to long.

hydrobuddy means you dont have to bookmark the wikipedia periodic table for damn molar weights... use it
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top