So I came across an Instagram grower who swears by this nutrient mix for tropicals, aroids, and rare plants. He uses a ton of supplements in tiny amounts, and after seeing the results on his plants I decided to give it a try.
I went all in and bought everything. 😅
Here’s the full lineup:
\- Silica
\- CALiMAGic
\- GH FloraMicro / FloraGro / FloraBloom
\- Hydroguard
\- RapidStart
\- SNS 209 systemic pest control
\- Tap Water Conditioner
\- BTI drops
\- Plus syringes for exact measuring
The recipe for 1 gallon filtered water is:
\- 0.1ml Tap Water Conditioner
\- 3ml Silica
\- 5ml CALmag
\- 5ml FloraMicro
\- 5ml FloraGrow
\- 5ml FloraBloom
\- 2ml Hydroguard
\- 1ml RapidStart
\- 8ml SNS 209
\- 1 drop BTI (substituting with tree/shrub insect control)
\- pH to 6.0 (I haven’t done this part yet …waiting to buy a pH meter)
Apparently this mix is supposed to give explosive growth, stronger leaves, better roots, and even help prevent spider mites. I’m planning to start with mild doses and document how my aroids respond over time.
by Quirky-Customer5758
29 Comments
I love my plants and I make my own soil but I don’t have this kind of time.
I dont want to be a Debbie downer, I have used flora series for several years and it works really well I dont plan on changing. But mixing up gallons of that all the time is going be so tedious. I have stripped down to calmag + flora micro, gro, bloom and hydrogaurd. Even that is a lot and very tedious.
I’ve been mixing the gallons for over a year now of different experiments so I dedicate the time. Appreciate the heads up though.
I’d love to know the progress of how this works out if you’re willing to document.
Just fyi though measuring the PH part is super important. (As well as the order you add these.) I’d hold off on continuing this experiment until youre able to measure if I were you. Other wise you may just be pouring product down the drain due to nutrient lockout.
Don’t miss doing this. I started using VBX which has all of this minus the pest control.
The flora series I thought was a complete mix for macros and micros, no? That’s what I use on my houseplants.
Quite a cocktail. I’ll be interested in your results although I don’t know if I’ll be following along but I do have a lot of these ingredients. I just got too lazy to keep adding them. The only other oddity to me is your substituting BTI. BTI Bacillus thuringiensis a bacteria known to combat fungus gnats. How do you “substituting with tree/shrub insect control”? What is the active ingredient in the tree/shrub insect control? That doesn’t seem like a reasonable substitution. I mean, I get wanting to have a systemic pesticide but that’s a big one. I assume that the sns209 is the original creator’s solution for systemic pesticide.
I use Jack’s 20/20/20 and keep it simple. I’ve worked in an industrial grow for 5 years as an assistant manager of greenhouses. Fine tuning mixes with lots of different products is unnecessary and a waste of time and money IMO.
Is this mix for top watering or hydro?
This reminds me of those instagram people who throw a bunch of random food items on their dog’s kibble because it’s “better.” More things does not necessarily equal nutritionally adequate.
Mixing all these things, especially with each of their individual pHs, buffers, chelations, and additives, means you are likely not getting bioavailability of all the nutrients.
No. I am afraid I will accidentally make a bomb
Oh man. Maybe I’m missing something, but why? Why would they use 3 different npk and 3 varying strengths?
Edit *four* different npk of varying strengths. OP, did you already buy all this?
Mixing chemicals like Walter White himself.
*Yeah Mista White! Yeah Science!*
I’m curious to see how it goes.
This is completely normal for hydro. You should try posting in a different sub.
This looks a bit…. dangerous, tbh. You don’t know how all of these will mix together.
Gonna need the MuppetChef to explain in song
I have something like this for semi hydro. I have no idea if it’s overkill but my plants are thriving so I am rolling with it.
Looks like theplantandthepour’s semi hydro recipe
My semi hydro (which make up 99% of my collection) get the following mixture from me every watering. And the non-semi hydro plants also get it. The only plant that doesn’t is my Lemon Tree which gets her own 🌟fancy🌟 citrus fertilizer lol!
To my 1.5 gallon water bag: 1.5 gallons water from my tap with filter
3 drops of tap water conditioner
10mL Silica Gold (Shake and let sit for anywhere from 10-30 minutes-just depends on if I get sidetracked or not lol)
Then add- 5mL of of Foliage Pro
1mL of a Hydroguard Substitute
8 drops of PH Down
Shake and test. Sometimes I need to add 2 more PH Down drops, other times the 8 is great! No rhyme or reason-literally nothing changes lol!
I like the yellow of my PH to be smack dab in the middle.
https://preview.redd.it/r9oepjf6ro6g1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ac8de734525184e8cf01cdeeea8d2b7ef289858b
Too.
Many.
Things.
Well I let you know if I kill my plants or not. I’ve been learning and experimenting and it’s been a fun journey so far.
ok, everything except Rapid Start I can understand. But Rapid Start is just another NPK, with this cocktail it’s a waste of money. If you want to spend money on root enhancement get Grat White myco. Also, use Revitalize instead of Hydroguard, Hydroguard is insanely diluted, Revitalize actually has significant amount of the same bacteria. BTI is only necessary if you have gnats, and it’s sensitive, so no point wasting your money on it if you don’t need to fight gnats. Same for SNS, it will lose the effectiveness’ if you always add it, only start adding it if you see an actual pest outbreak, otherwise they will just get resistant to it.
Gnats I have yes. I’ve controlled it more with the shrub and tree systemic but I still see them here and there. I use over 250 plants so I see spidermites often 😭. I’ll look into that root growth you mentioned though!
It’s the amount of plain haters in the comments. Again if the plants die or don’t do anything I’ll definitely keep you updated. I’ve had my fair share of what I will and will not do again with my plant journey thus far and won’t lie
Nah lol. Foliage pro, great white, silica occasionally, and cal mag when rooting.
I use fish tank water from water changes. Everything is doing well.
Nah I got depression I cannot do all that 😮💨😂
Ehh lots of comments saying this is too much but idk how this is too much, I use the same amount of different things for my semi-hydro solution. So far so good, as long as you PH control.
The only game changer I wanna mention is using a one bottle complete fertilizer instead of multiple, makes things a lot easier. I swear by GT Formulex.
I really hope you are adding these ingredients one by one, and not mixing them together before adding water. Chlorine neutralisers work incredibly quickly, and by that same reasoning, it is also no longer effective very quickly if pre mixed in any way. You want to add it to the water by itself only, then after giving the water a swoosh, add the other ingredients.