Fallout / precipitation issue with GH's Maxi line solved!

jonnynobody said:

I just thought I would follow up on this post. The problem has not been solved. I got maybe 1 extra day out of maxi bloom before the res went to trash. No change in maxi grow. 2 days to trash. A friend of mine just started a DWC garden. He's having the same problem. I told him to dump the maxi and switch to flora series. I've never had a problem like this with the flora series and if it ain't broke don't fix it. Forever fuck the maxi line. It just seems to be a terrible fertilizer that will not stay in solution and continuously forms precipitate. I ordered the flora trio in gallons from grow green MI for $75.69 with free shipping.

A 16# tube of maxi grow gets me 47.78 res fills @ 150g per res @ 30gallons total fill for about $80. The flora trio gets me 126.16 res fills @ 1tsp/gallon each @ 30gallons total fill for $75.69 @ grow green mi with free shipping. Why the fuck is anybody using the maxi line when it's such a horrible value? I get almost 300% more res fills @800PPM (already clocked it @ 1tsp/gallon micro, grow, and bloom) using the flora line versus the maxi line. The reason anybody is using the maxi line is because so many of us are bad at math. There really is no more complicated answer. And GH is making tons of money off of our inability to execute simple arithmetic. I eventually got 'er done. Don't mind me - I'm a little slow Long story short - Fuck the maxi line in it's maxi asshole. It's a horrible value to the consumer. Not to mention it's impossible to hold a reservoir without producing nasty white particulate in 48 hours. End of diatribe

Edit: My math was incorrect. I eat a lot of hash caps. Don't judge me
3785ML in a gallon
1tsp or 150ML per reservoir.
3785/150=25.23 reservoir fills for $75.69
I fill my bloom res every 2 days, so this works out to about 50 days worth of fertilizer. Not quite enough to finish a flower cycle, so the value isn't as amazing as I first thought. Dam you arithmetic! However, the product will stay in solution and not require me to keep wasting my RO water and fertilizer due to particulate trashing the res after 48 hours. Jack's is looking better and better everyday considering the savings.

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Hollatchaboy said:

Do it... just do it!

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jonnynobody said:

25# bag of jack's 5-12-26 number crunching:

25# BAG
448x25=11,200g
3g/gallon application rate. 3g x 30gallon reservoir =90g jack's per res fill
11,200/90g=124.44 res fills.

Goddam that's cheap! I'm debating between the 5-12-26 and the RO 12-4-16. I like that the RO is a 1 part formula quite a bit. I'm torn

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Hollatchaboy said:

I haven't tried it. I'm actually thinking about getting the micros and macros and mixing myself. I've heard weighing out the micros sucks though. I have a good jewelers scale so I'm thinking that I can get the weights right. It's just now id have to learn the ratios for my plants. It's a steep learning curve in my situation. Lol... jacks is pretty good but I've heard megacrop is good too. That jacks ro 12-4-16 sounds a lil high in N, and low in P and K for flower though no?

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jonnynobody said:

The 12-4-16 is definitely high in N for flowering. The 5-12-26 seems more appropriate. I can increase or decrease the calcium nitrate as needed. The 12-4-16 just boxes me into a corner offering no flexibility to customize how much N I want in the mix. I have heard great things about mega crop too. The price is fantastic. $60 for 25# of their 5-12-26 on amazon. It looks like a juiced up version of jacks 5-12-26 with added ammendments. The only reason I am thinking about ordering it is because amazon has a wonderful return policy. If it doesn't perform to my expectations I can return it for a refund. I've gotta get away from these GH products. They're overpriced. I did see jacks 5-12-26 on amazon too. $82 I think. I may just pull the trigger on the jacks. I don't feel like I gave it a fair chance when I used it last because I wasn't using RO water yet. I think the issues I was having were related to my poor water quality at the time than anything to do with my fertilizer. If for some cooky reason I can't dial it in theres always that easy amazon return policy to save the day. GreneGene highly recommends Jack's and he's no dummy. That $60 price for 25# of mega crop does look pretty dam sexy though

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jonnynobody said:

I pulled up my old thread when I was using jack's 3-2-1 growing gg#4 under a single 600:
https://rollitup.org/t/jacks-321-gorilla-glue-4-bud-shots-need-opinions-day-54-flower.990058/
I got 14.32 oz from 4 plants under a single 600. That's .66 GPW. Heck if I pulled .66 GPW under my current setup I'd be looking at a 6.5# harvest. Reading that old thread convinced me to cancel my order for the flora trio and instead order a 25# bag of jack's 5-12-26. It's $20 cheaper than the flora trio order I'm about to cancel with free shipping. That's a very nice value. I'll start a new thread once I've got the garden running on the 5-12-26. I'm excited to the tits to be able to be able to safely hold my reservoir again without the whole thing going bad in 48 hours due to precipitate. I never had one problem with jack's in a res. PH stable. Completely soluble. Why the fuck did I switch in the first place? I asked myself this. Which is why I search for my old thread. When I read it I found my stupid answer:

"I'm very satisfied with the performance of jack's in regards to potency and quality of the finished product even prior to curing. The shit is an absolute pleasure to smoke and is very potent. I'm trying maxi bloom in flower this cycle to see if I get larger colas. If I don't see a noticeable difference then I'm just gonna keep rocking the jack's. In all fairness I didn't strip down my lower branches and had tons of small flowers sucking up energy that should have gone to my canopy. If I had stripped down the lower branches I believe I would have had much larger colas, and that's just operator error."

What a fucking moron, right? Sometimes my logic is not very sound. I had the best GPW I ever experienced. No problems. I just thought I could get "bigger colas." Just wow man. And then I read on to see I failed to strip the lower branches which was a rookie mistake. Nothing your brand of fertilizer has anything to do with. Long story short it was a completely asinine reason why I switched. As soon as I post this I'm emailing grow green to cancel my order for the GH flora trio gallons I placed earlier today and telling them to instead send me a 25# bag of jack's 5-12-26. The best part about jack's 5-12-26 is it's the same formula for veg and flower. Just reduce the calcium nitrate in flower. Increase the jack's. The GH maxi experiment is officially over. What a waste of time and money. Feel free to learn from my mistakes. Order some jacks

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Hollatchaboy said:

Lol I did the same thing. Those lower branch buds just aren't as potent as the main ones. I like to use the Lucas formula with the gh flora trio minus the flora grow. It's a lil cheaper that way. Don't switch because of any persuasion from me. I'd hate it to not work for you and I steered you in the wrong direction. I know you've used it before but it may not work again.

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jonnynobody said:

Done and done! I just can't get over the incredible difference in value here:

Jack's 25# for $57 for 124.44 30 gallon res fills @90g per res
Flora Trio gallons for $76 for 25.23 30 gallon res fills @150ML/gallon

I'm glad I had this little epiphany before I overpaid for more GH products. This is a good day. I'm officially back to jackin it

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jonnynobody said:

I had to post a followup to this thread. I literally stopped mixing my res to make this post because of what just happened. I've been going back and forth with jack's and maxi. I'm still trying to get my jack's dialed in where I want it. So far I've settled nicely at 3g jacks' and 2g calcium nitrate. Today I mixed up some maxi though as I'm trying to burn down my stock so as not to waste usable product. I remember having this discussion about calcium fallout when using maxi with a cal-mag supplement or calcium nitrate / mag sulfate combo and several people who never experienced a problem all had a singular theme. None of those people seemed to be using scalding hot water to mix their maxi or any of their dry fertilizers for that matter. As I was mixing my calcium nitrate with hot tap water as I always have done I observed a cloudy mixture. It looked like the beginning of the fallout was already occurring and had nothing to do with maxi. I started thinking. What's in tap water? Magnesium sulfate is the only element I'm concerned about, and it's in tap water. Calcium nitrate + magnesium sulfate = calcium sulfate precipitation. That's exactly what the folks over at the chemist thread on reddit told me. Is my calcium nitrate mixing with the trace amounts of magnesium sulfate in my tap water forming calcium sulfate in my 1 gallon pitcher before I ever even add it to my reservoir? It seems as if I'm beginning the chemical reaction inside my mixing jug and then when it gets tossed into the reservoir it grows and worsens. It's a theory I'm gonna test anyways.

What got me to stop mixing my reservoir and hop on the computer though? I followed the advice of others who didn't have a problem mixing maxi. I used room temperature RO water right out of the res. I blended on medium for a minute while I cleaned some shit in the sink. I thoroughly expected a large amount of sediment in the bottom of my blender. 80g of maxi in 1/2g of RO water. Zero sediment. I mean none. Even when I use scalding hot water I always have some white sediment. Every time. I just accepted it as the best I could do. Someone at some point suggested the use of scalding hot water may actually cause an issue with the elements in the mixture. As in undesirable bonding and precipitation. Anyways I'm going to mix up a 5 gallon bucket of maxi, calcium nitrate, and epsom salt with room temp RO water. I'll toss an air stone in and see what happens over the next 48 hours. While I have essentially moved on to jack's I want to understand why the precipitation was occurring that I experienced, so hopefully I can help others down the road that may find themselves in a similar situation. I'll report back in 48 hours with pics of the liquid from the 5 gallon reservoir. God willing there will not be any precipitation.

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jonnynobody said:

I had to post a followup to this thread. I literally stopped mixing my res to make this post because of what just happened. I've been going back and forth with jack's and maxi. I'm still trying to get my jack's dialed in where I want it. So far I've settled nicely at 3g jacks' and 2g calcium nitrate. Today I mixed up some maxi though as I'm trying to burn down my stock so as not to waste usable product. I remember having this discussion about calcium fallout when using maxi with a cal-mag supplement or calcium nitrate / mag sulfate combo and several people who never experienced a problem all had a singular theme. None of those people seemed to be using scalding hot water to mix their maxi or any of their dry fertilizers for that matter. As I was mixing my calcium nitrate with hot tap water as I always have done I observed a cloudy mixture. It looked like the beginning of the fallout was already occurring and had nothing to do with maxi. I started thinking. What's in tap water? Magnesium sulfate is the only element I'm concerned about, and it's in tap water. Calcium nitrate + magnesium sulfate = calcium sulfate precipitation. That's exactly what the folks over at the chemist thread on reddit told me. Is my calcium nitrate mixing with the trace amounts of magnesium sulfate in my tap water forming calcium sulfate in my 1 gallon pitcher before I ever even add it to my reservoir? It seems as if I'm beginning the chemical reaction inside my mixing jug and then when it gets tossed into the reservoir it grows and worsens. It's a theory I'm gonna test anyways.

What got me to stop mixing my reservoir and hop on the computer though? I followed the advice of others who didn't have a problem mixing maxi. I used room temperature RO water right out of the res. I blended on medium for a minute while I cleaned some shit in the sink. I thoroughly expected a large amount of sediment in the bottom of my blender. 80g of maxi in 1/2g of RO water. Zero sediment. I mean none. Even when I use scalding hot water I always have some white sediment. Every time. I just accepted it as the best I could do. Someone at some point suggested the use of scalding hot water may actually cause an issue with the elements in the mixture. As in undesirable bonding and precipitation. Anyways I'm going to mix up a 5 gallon bucket of maxi, calcium nitrate, and epsom salt with room temp RO water. I'll toss an air stone in and see what happens over the next 48 hours. While I have essentially moved on to jack's I want to understand why the precipitation was occurring that I experienced, so hopefully I can help others down the road that may find themselves in a similar situation. I'll report back in 48 hours with pics of the liquid from the 5 gallon reservoir. God willing there will not be any precipitation.

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Aeroknow said:

That’s weird man. Hopefully you do find out what the reason for the precipitation was.

i was rockin the maxi for quite sometime. I also mixed it up with hot water first to speed up the process before adding to reservoirs. Never had a problem like that. From different well water to different city tap waters.

i had switched to the maxi series, and then also using the flora nova series on and off, when they first came out because how much easier it is to use compared to the flora series 3part. And also was thinking the maxi was WAY cheaper. It really isn’t that much cheaper when I had finally did some
math like you said earlier in the thread. I’ve been running megacrop only for a few years now. Even though they had raised there price a bit it’s still a great deal.

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Rurumo said:

I never have this sediment issue with maxi, but I don't mix it with hot water either, just dump it into a bucket with airstones-works fantastic. I'm thinking of trying out their Flora Pro series though. It's similar to Jack's 2 part but with a few differences that I like. Funny thing is, GH claims you can't mix it in small batches, so I'm going to get some and do just that. The bulk price difference compared to Maxi or Flora is so much lower, I think they're trying to steer small growers away from the cheaper product.

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jonnynobody said:

What in the monkey nuts does that mean? I mix up batches from 5 gallons to 20 gallons regularly. Really never more than 20 for the most part because I run water to waste. I keep 2 32 gallon reservoirs full of RO on float valves, but I mix my nute juice on demand with water from those holding reservoirs. I just pull out the amount I need for the plants I'm watering for that day. If I couldn't mix up small batches I wouldn't be able to use the flora pro. What is the smallest batch size GH suggests?

It seems the issues I have been experiencing with maxi only occur with the addition of cal-mag when using RO water. Without cal-mag the res stays stable. I actually got to the point I would mix my maxi in my big res for the flower room and keep a couple air stones in it. Then on my water days all I had to do was pull out however many gallons I needed for the day, add my cal-mag, PH, and water. Any time I attempt to mix cal-mag in the holding res with maxi it precipitates calcium sulfate completely trashing the res in 72 hours.

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Rurumo said:

Sorry bud, I wasn't clear. I was talking about Flora Pro https://growgreenmi.com/general-hydroponics-florapro-bloom-soluble-25-lb-bag-6-10-21. I talked to a GH rep about it and he was insanely adamant that you had to mix the entire bag at once. I call that BS, he just made me want to order a bag of each and test it out on my next run. Imo, they want to push the regular flora, nova, and maxi series on small growers due to the higher cost, and want Flora Pro going to commercial ops only.

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