Hi.
Before giving your opinion on whether or not “CalMag” products are needed, or when they are needed, note that I’m just looking at the ingredients in these ones, to compare them. I’m not “new” to this product, I used it (GH version) long ago when I was a noob and DWC growing, I’ve just never really done a coco coir grow, and now I am.
First, this will probably benefit anyone who’s interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZ-iCBhbnvI. Now that that’s out of the way. (By the way, bookmark Daniel’s channel, and bookmark his website/blog too. Incredible amounts of useful information. He is the creator of “Hydrobuddy”)
Below will be links for four random “CalMag” products. The one I chose, long ago, was GH CaliMagic, because it had the lowest nitrogen content, relatively.
Scroll to Section 3 of the SDSs to see the composition/ingredients of the products (GH product has the ‘derived from’ on the label link.)
Emerald Harvest Calmag 2-0-0:
SDS
Diablo Monster Cal 2-0-0 (Scroll down to product):
SDS
COA (Is that Sodium level high… or no?)
Remo Nutrients Magnifical 3-0-0:
SDS
General Hydroponics CaliMagic 1-0-0:
SDS
Label
Some thoughts. Correct me if I’m wrong, as always, with any of this post.:
-GH product uses calcium carbonate (“derived from”). It’s not water soluble (not in a manner that I’m aware of), so I don’t know how they do that.
GreenGenes is currently using calcium sulfate, also not really ‘water soluble’, not fully…right.
-Diablo Nutrients seems like a bit of a joke. Maybe they were at the gym, working on their biceps, and thought “bro, we could totally make some weed nutes”. It’s just calcium nitrate and magnesium sulfate. So they’re selling high priced water with dirt cheap, fully water soluble salts in it.
-Remo Nutrients has the highest nitrogen content, and other than that, meh.
I don’t have a price comparison on these products, and that’d be an important factor as well - along with rate of application required to achieve similar levels (elemental ppm) of actual calcium and magnesium (and other stuff).
I think I would still choose the GH product of these four compared.
Then ingredients I don’t already have on hand are the acetate products, calcium nitrate, the iron products, and the calcium carbonate.
Oh - I do have some fancy calcium product (dry) I got from CHN a while back along with other inputs for making diy custom fertilizer blends. I’ll have to check what that is later.
If you have something to add, or comment on, feel free.