But why does it say it’s a .065? It’s reading higher than it should but u count ppm and its spot on… ec is reading too high for ppm values…
I fixed weight on this test to 1 ml per 1 gallon…
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That’s us mad Alchemist in us we need to tweak everything
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I think that’s fine. You only used 1mL in a gallon of water though. It’s not going to produce a high EC.
First is that your water has some initial EC. If you have a water test, then you can set your water nutrient contributions in the calculator. But tap water isn’t 0ppm/0ec. So you need to set that too if you want it to be more accurate.
Otherwise, it’s the “predicted EC” in addition to whatever your water reads.
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No I’m using ro water
What EC does that read when you test it? There should still be a little bit. Maybe there’s just some instrument error when you try to read that low anyway.
I think the program gets the EC pretty close when I shoot for a half or normal strength nutrient mixture. I haven’t tried really low values, but I know that EC is ‘estimated’ in the program, so take it with a grain of salt.
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Yeah the ppm are good … the ec is off… maybe only count ppm every time then? Ignore ec values…
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Thank you once again my friend!!
Yea, I’m not sure… sorry. I just checked my formula and it was ~850ppm and reads 1.824 ec. So that’s pretty close, but maybe there’s some offset, because it should be more like 1.7.
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Yeah it must be… so best to just count ppm for total accuracy
Okay I think my pens fucked up maybe… at 1 ml per liter I’m getting 400 ppm … on the 500 scale… it should be like 76 ppm
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This is excellent, really. Especially for the layman. I was just getting the hang of it the other day while watching a GGG video on Masterblend 0-12-24 and hydrobuddy. But this is probably the most clear and concise basic write-up on how to use HB. Thanks.
I need to go over some posts on another forum regarding making concentrates/stock solutions using hydrobuddy.
Do you mean by clicking the “floppy disc”/save(?) icon in the middle area of the substance selection window? When I’ve clicked that, it opens a file explorer window and wants me to choose a location to save something. Yet, if I don’t try and manually “save” anything, the substances that I add are still there after I “add to database” even if I just close “x” the application. Like it autosaves or something. Maybe the “save” icon is if you want to save a database file that is independant of the application? Say if you want to have it and add it to another machine, or if you lost/deleted the app or something like that?
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I know this thread is old, and maybe you figured it out or something @Terpsnpurps (and anyone else), but…
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The “ppm” that an EC meter reports is not ppm at all, in reality. It’s not the same as “elemental ppm” that a program like hydrobuddy is referring to. In case that was confusing.
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Hydrobuddy does (at least) two different things, that we might want to use it for:
(a) You can take an existing product, a raw salt like calcium nitrate, or a fertilizer blend like jack’s hydroponic 5-12-26 for example, and using the Guaranteed Minimum Analysis/GMA on the product label, you can enter those percentage numbers that the product lists, and enter them into the program (adding new substance), and then “adding to used”, and then on the main page, under “calculation type” choosing “concentrations from weights”, and then select “carry out calculation”. Then go to the “results” page, and at the top in the “amount” column, enter an amount - say the amount that is recommended on the product label, hit enter, and below it will fill in the elements table with how much of each element that amount will give you (per whatever volume you selected on the main page, under “Volume”. Usually I just put “1” and “Gallon”, because that’s what most products go by).
This use is good to figure out what a product is actually providing in the way of “nutrients”/elements in a solution at a given rate of use (eg: 4g/Gal), in “elemental ppm”.
(b) You can choose your own “targets” for elemental ppm that you’d like to achieve (for any or all elements - macro and micro). This could be based on a known “nutrient profile” from the “scientific literature” like “Hoagland” formula, or trying to modify one of those, or trying to “copy” a specific product (which is not really do-able, in almost all cases), or trying to create you own - based on whatever reasons.
For this, you basically do what @lefthandseeds has explained very well in his initial post here. On the main page, under “calculation type” you would select “input desired concentrations”. Now you will see that the “Target Conc.(entration) (ppm)” column and it’s fields are not greyed out, so you can fill them in with the numbers you’re trying to achieve with the various “products”/inputs you are going to use by adding them in the substance selection area.
3)(a) Trying to do/copy liquids has some other challenges that I won’t even try to explain because I don’t understand them enough. Daniel himself has talked about it a few times.
(b) Trying to “copy” anything in general, a commercial product, with any real accuracy, is almost a “fools errand” according to Daniel. These companies almost always “under-report” on their GMA, and they can also leave stuff (ingredients) off the label/list, so as to protect themselves from people copying them, and whatever other reasons. Not to mention, it’s a Guaranteed Minimum Analysis. Companies only have to meet the the minimums they report. It could say “4% nitrogen” and actually be 6% nitrogen, and that’s “perfectly fine” as far as legality and all that. That might not seem like a big difference at first, but it’s 150% increase!
Daniel has an entire blog post on just this practice, and an investigation he’s done or referenced that was done and just how far off many of these labels are.
Hope some of that helps. And, please, do correct me where I’m wrong.
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Thanks! It’s hoped it would be useful. I’ve gotten a lot of utility from it. I’d have to go in and check, but yea “add to database” is what I meant. It does autosave the formula when you click there.
IIRC the database file is separate and gets saved in the folder. I’ve copied it between versions and it’s worked so far.
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With hydrobuddy I ignored the ec… and counted ppms…(they never seemed to match up) and I always avoided the targeting side… I wanted to formulate myself to be sure… so I added things without using the target range feature … I have done away with hydro growing… it seems like it’s more of a hassle than it’s truly worth ( that’s just my opinion) but I’m going organic only now… I have seen research that provides information that using hydro will get you bigger buds… but subpar compared to organic… organic is smaller yield… but higher quality… I’m in this for personal smoke… not to sell weed… so I can care less about yield … I care totally about quality…
There was another part I read and watched vids about how if you’re using nitrogen from other sources like hydro without carbon… lowers the brix level of the entire plant… I want plants with high brix levels… so it’s organic for me!!! It’s good to be back y’all!!
Have you done a mix of both methods?
EC should always be inline with ppm but you need to make sure you are calculating the right one.
For example an EC of 1.0 has two ppm readings.
EC 1.0 = 500 ppm(tds) but also reads 700 ppm on the (ECx700) scale.
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I know… hydrobuddy didn’t calculate that correctly … I couldn’t figure out why… I was on 500 … and so I knew where it should have been… it was still crazy off… so I counted ppms instead and it was much more accurate @GreenHighland
HB doesn’t calculate that type of “ppm” at all. It only deals with actual/elemental ppm.
How could it be crazy off, and was crazy off? Do you mean the predicted EC value? (And if so, you must then mean whatever “ppm” value you’re attributing to that *after you apply a conversion factor - ie: x.500 or x.700?)
I’m not following what you’re trying to say.