JD, do you have to use a very small dose of MaxiBloom? I personally tried using Maxi already and it fried my month old clones to almost no return. I was thinking if I'm not mistaken the correct dosage for bloom would be like around 1 tsp/5 gallons of RO. Also, do you PH your Maxi? It says it's ph buffered but when I used Maxi I noticed it made my 15 ppm RO water that is normally 6 PH go to a red 4.5-5 ph.
I would like to use MaxiBloom start to finish since I'm growing Autos just in my personal experience it was hard to mix into the water and also burned my plants at half dose.
What manufacturers do is to provide N in a balanced manner. Using nitrates, ammonium and urea based N to buffer nutrients. Only problem is that it works best at specific concentrations.
I notice that with Maxi in that once I mix up a gal. The stronger I mix it...the more acidic it is (low ph)...
Also...if you are using a res with bubbling...the air can affect ph as well.
On any nutes...it's important to NOT use at manufacturers dosage. Always too high.
Do you have a ppm meter. I use a bluelab truncheon and it works great.
This is what I do in my veg room. To feed anything from seedlings to small veg plants.
I measure with a teaspoon. 5 mls. Been doing it this way for 10 years so I'm good at estimating 1/2 tsp or even 1/4 tsp
I use de chlorinated tap water at around 80 ppm. I put in roughly 1/2 tsp of Maxibloom or Maxigrow. Works either way. Then I add calmag which puts me close to 700 ppm.
I always have a gal of ph corrected tap water too.
So now I can dilute the nutrients as needed without messing with ph. 200 ppm for tiny seedlings in coco (in soil...no need for food)
Clones get roughly 300 to 350 ppm and small veg plants maybe 500ppm. Heavy indicas need a little extra strength.
JD
PS I tsp on 5 gal should have been fairly low. It wouldn't have burnt a clone (clones are just small adult plants) unless your ph was way off. Also a 1 tsp does not mean 1 heaping tsp...way more.