The Grow Awards 2026 🏆

Advanced Nutrients on Coco, CalMag needed?

Kreeze
Kreezestarted grow question 2y ago
I'm trying out coco as a medium for the first time I chose Advanced Nutrients as fertilizer I always read that it is important to add CalMag when growing on Coco then I read again that CalMag is not necessary when using Advanced Nutrients?
Solved
likes
Sit_Ubu_Sit_Good_Dog
Sit_Ubu_Sit_Good_Doganswered grow question 2y ago
If Ca is low, you need to play with the calculator to adjust dosage of calmag in addition to your other products until you get a total of 100ppm of Ca.. GD truncated my response.. i may not recall all i wrote... But, i'm sure someone will be incredulous about this answer, but that someone has never taken organic chemistry nor microbiology. The concepts at play here are beyond human eyes, ears, nose resolution. The concepts are generational knowledge passed down by really smart people over centuries of work and experimentation as well as technological advancements. The cause and effect of what i mentioned is how this works. coco isn't magical. it's just a water retainer. It's a soilles substrate and you treat all soilless substrates in near identical ways. ratio of nutes and concentration of total nutes fed are what you want to focus on while you observe and adjust. If you do, it won't be long before you have a dosage of all your products that gives you incredibly healthy and fast growing plants, relative to your environment, from seed to harvest. (senescence is sometimes unavoidable but cetainly no burnt to shit canopies, even with an extended flower phase) npkCaMgS - 120+ / 50+ / 180+ / 100+ / 50+ / 100ish PPMs -- these are safely low and you probably need to go higher on a couple of them.. it's roughly a 1-1-2 NPK and 4-2-1 KCaMg ratio of label percentages not ppm. So if you did a weighted average based on dosage / total dosage added of products, it should be similar to these ratios. These are ballpark ideas to give small whole number integers... expect deviations, but a good place to start and adjust quickly to very small issues that progress slowly and are easily identified.
1 like
Complain
Selected By The Grower
Sit_Ubu_Sit_Good_Dog
Sit_Ubu_Sit_Good_Doganswered grow question 2y ago
don't water with fertilized water then calmag only then fertilized... all that will do is rinse out your fertilizer when you give calmag only or dilute what was given before even without runoff. that's not how a soilless substrate functions the best. 100% of needed nutes given every time with 10% runoff. simple.. easy.. don't make it complicated. you need calmag if your Ca PPM is too low from whatever the AN nutes provide. You need 100+ ppm of Ca. Do you have 100ppm or more? if not, add cal mag. the plant needs it every single fertilization, not intermittently. it should be a consistent amount of Ca as well as all other nutes each time with 10% runoff waste water - don't let it sit in its piss. I use ME 7030, too. I prefer promix with extra perlite but the convenience of this product tips the scale for me. In general it comes in good condition. In 2 years of using it, i've had 1 bag that was a bit sketchy. It probably wasn't buffered 100% correctly. This is a risk of using coco coir. If not washed thoroughly and buffered, it'll leach some Ca from fertilizer until it reaches the equilibrium buffering should have created -- has to do with cation exchange sites.. Ca has high affinity to bond to these sites so it will replace what is ther -- K, Na, some cation (a positively charged ion). Once 'enough' Ca replaces that stuff relative to concentration of typical fertilizer, it's no longer a problem. Luckily, my "bad" batch wasn't deadly. It just caused a deficiency of Ca the first 1-2 weeks then was fine. if properly buffered, there is no difference to feeding a plant in coco coir than any other soilless medium. None. It's not magic. It's just something that holds water. So find an app or online nutrient ppm calculator. follow instructions. type in info from your labels. If Ca is
likes
Complain
AutoflowersSucK
AutoflowersSucKanswered grow question 2y ago
If you are Canadian, Mother Earth 70/30 coco Perlite is a solid coir as well that is also washed and buffered and ready to use right out of the bag. A good practice with coco feeding is feed then water with calmag, feed, then water with calmag, does that make sense? Like i feed on monday, and on thursday i water with calmag, repeat.
likes
Complain
AutoflowersSucK
AutoflowersSucKanswered grow question 2y ago
advanced nutrients is snake oil. 500 bottles of bullshit. Take it back, get something reputable like General Hydroponics. Grow, Bloom, Micro, Calmag, Diamond nectar is all you need. The rest if horse shit $$$$$ grab
likes
Complain