I’ve heard that from time to time. Ever wonder how closely? That’s what I intend to find out 
Tomatoes are far better studied than cannabis, so I guess if they have similar requirements, then maybe we should be starting with their recipes. 
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Would Calcium Acetate be an option? I’m trying to figure out what to use to keep my Ca levels high while dropping N. I’ve been using Calcium EDTA but, keep it to a max of .5 a gallon. Was using way to much last run and it was causing antagonization issues with all the other elements. Someone on another forum set me right about the problems it causes in a hydroponic setting.
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Did this thread ever just take me down memory lane lol
I grew up with a guy whos dad use to have a basement full of plants. Still to this day some of the nicest plants and bud I have ever seen. Anyway he took one of his dads grow journals one time and it had a ton of stuff in it about him mixing his own base salts with a shit ton of numbers that at 13 I had no idea wtf they meant lol
Anyway it always gave him mad scientist status to us . Goodluck with your venture 
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I haven’t looked into calcium acetate for hydro, but I had a similar experience with the EDTA. It doesn’t work well… too many other interactions and maybe too much sodium? I think the other option I would consider if calcium glucoheptonate, because I’ve seen that in some formulas. But it’s liquid, fairly expensive and low density. So I’ll see how the chloride does first. I’ve read about people using it at around .5g/gal and having good results. So if I stay under that, it might be ok.
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I’ve heard of others using the Calcium Gluconate with decent results. Some of the commercial operators I’ve spoke with recommended using the chloride at .25 per gallon to try and keep chloride under 40 ppm.
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Thanks, that’s really helpful. I think that’s the number I’ll target then and see if I can make up more calcium elsewhere. I know that 190ppm N in late flower is not going to be optimal, so I think it’s going to become a choice of more Ca or less N.
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Definitely want the more Ca in late flower. I think if you go the gluconate route to make up the extra Ca, you’ll be good to go.
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I think I’ll give it a try. I have some of this stuff:
When K hits high values (350ppm) I can probably make up about 25ppm of Ca using that and 25ppm from the CaCl2. I’d like to keep N at ~150ppm, and I think with those Ca can still hit 200ppm.
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Here’s a fairly unusual take on micronutrients:
https://www.cannabisbusinesstimes.com/article/cultivation-matters-ncsu-boron-fertilization-nutrition-deficiency-toxicity/
https://www.cannabisbusinesstimes.com/article/when-micronutrients-become-macro-problems/
Everything is normal, except… 8.5-10ppm Boron. What the?! “Normal” fertilizers apply like 0.5ppm Boron. Anybody ever heard of this?
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I am admittedly a micronutrient dummy. Have a sack of TM7 but yet to make use of it.
For comparison I see Bioag’s TM-7 contains .37% Boron.
Is that approx .9775? PPM
Searching around, several sites talk about higher than 2ppm being risky.
.2 ppm risky on the low end.
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Peters STEM, Plant Prod Chelated Micros and Jacks MOST all have ~1.3% Boron. At least for the plant prod, their recommended rates come out to about 0.5ppm – which is what I’m used to seeing.
The recommendation from that site is just way higher than anything I’ve ever seen.
On that note, I think I understand how to use the Peters STEM. It’s separated from the Iron DPTA so that it can be tank mixed separately.
On that tomato page, they show this for tank 1:
and this for tank 2:
So the iron gets tank mixed with the Ca, while the rest get mixed with the sulfates/phosphates.
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I love it for foliar spray any time prior to bud onset. There’s a few insoluble bits, so I don’t mix it in my reservoirs. But it’s great for my purposes as a foliar feed.
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Thanks for all of this!!
This guy was referencing it the other day 
Also,
I’ve been using ‘Solution Grade Gypsum’ (Calcium Sulfate)from DownToEarth and BaS with my flood and drain table for the last few months now without any issues I was using CaliMagic before but switched upon some recommendations. I’ve had better results with the gypsum than I ever had with the CaliMagic. So maybe just need the right kind of calcium sulfate? Or maybe the maxibloom I’m using for base ferts has something to do with it?
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Calcium sulfate precipitation is the reason you can’t make concentrated mixes with calcium and other sulfates. So my assumption is that it is unavailable in hydro.
In soil, and probably coco or similar media, it’s probably a microbial or enzyme process that makes it plant available. So if it can stay in the root zone for a long time then breakdown can occur. At least that’s what my thought process is…
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Interesting! This is new to me. I have some borax, so I’m going to try bumping mine up to 2ppm. That seems to be a fairly at least somewhat safe to try. Any more than that I’d want to use boric acid or something. I’d rather avoid adding 10ppm of sodium 
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Gotcha… I do have to mix it before the maxibloom and stir for a solid couple minutes. 1 tablespoon per 5 gallon bucket. A very small amount still won’t mix in. I have to wait a good 20-30 minutes before I can add the maxibloom or something does immediately precipitate out. Otherwise it’s fine and plants look great!
Plants are in solo cups or 5inch pots on the table, in 50/50 coco/perlite… so you might be onto something there ^^
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Oh yeah if you’re in coco then it’ll get caught in the media and work fine. I’m in hydroton and I think it would just wash out of the media before it breaks down.
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You familiar with hydrobuddy?
It’s a spreadsheet based nutrient calculator…essential for mixing up nutrients from scratch! 
You can use this to make any nutrient formulas you want…or copy existing products on the cheap!! 
Enjoy
Brian(Alaskagrown)
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I love hydrobuddy! I use it on everything. 
The screen caps in that post are from hydroboddy. Though I’m admittedly less concerned with using it to copy other formulations and more using it to experiment with plant nutrition and test out things that I’ve read.
The reason I don’t care so much about other nutrient formulations is that they are all over the place, and they don’t often provide any reasoning about why they provide what they do. In many cases, it may be a lot of somewhat detrimental factors toward finding the ‘best’ formulation, such as general nutrient regiments for broad classes of plants, economizing the cost of individual nutrients, misconceptions or lack of knowledge in the cannabis domain, failure to grow strains of broad variety (specifically, nutrients engineered only for heavy-feeding hybrids where plants can tolerate high EC, and less optimal nutrient ratios are acceptable).
The last point is a big one for me. A lot of landraces and especially landrace sativas don’t tolerate nutrients well – so the window of optimal nutrition is very narrow. By comparison, if you have a hybrid that can tolerate a 2.5-3.0 EC feed, you can afford to fuck up nutrient ratios royally and still come out ok just by blasting in high concentrations of fertilizer.
And you see this in recipes left and right. Some front load tons of nutes prior to bloom, some aggressively ramp nutrients during bloom, some wildly vary the nutrients at different stages of growth. These things might be possible for most heavy feeding polys, and most strains grown in the commercial market. But growers now have access to heirloom landrace seeds straight off of farms on the other side of the globe that have been grown in nothing but camel dung for a couple hundred years. 
What I’m trying to do is really understand cannabis nutrition closely enough that I can grow those strains hydroponically and tailor a nutrient program to make them happy maybe the second or third time through.
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Being able to “read” plants is absolutely paramount if folks want to grow quality cannabis…or anything for that matter!
Equally important is actually knowing what the nutrients themselves actually do…and how to use properly…like you said…so many misconceptions and myths…
For instance…Cal-Mag…in my opinion the most overly used product around!! Period
I’ve studied organic/chemical science, chemistry, botany…the crazy thing is I’ve spent almost 30 years studying, practicing and trying to fully understand what it is that I’m actually doing…so much information out there(and misinformation) that you could pick just one practice and spend your whole life doing it and barley scrape the surface of the information available…
Knowledge…never stop the train of learning! I try to learn at least one thing new everyday.
For me as a good baseline I usually start with a ratio of 3-1-4-2-1(150-50-200-100-50) NPK Ca, Mg…keeping a cal/mag ratio of 2:1
I find this will grow almost everything without even a single booster…but I like to strain specific every nutrient recipe as I’m anal about it…OCD maybe!! Lol
Happy growing
Brian(Alaskagrown)
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