The complete asshole response I just got from a General Hydroponics rep...

Greenthumbskunk

Greenthumbskunk

Well-Known Member
jonnynobody said:
I've been a long time user of GH's products. I've since switched from their liquid flora line to the dry maxi line. I only use their maxi powders, potassium silicate (armor si), and floralicous plus. Instead of burning through endless amounts of liquid cal-mag I switched to magnesium sulfate and calcium nitrate in dry form. It's much cheaper and I stocked up on both. I was looking at the GH feed chart for the maxi line and there's a small note about the required order of adding some products to the res. It says always add Armor SI first. Then there's a caption that says when using the flora series always add calimagic after the Armor SI and then add flora micro etc. I thought it was stupid that they placed that caption on the maxi series feed chart and it got me wondering if I am adding the fertilizers in the correct order. When I was using Jack's 321 they suggest adding the base fertilizer, epsom salt, and then calcium nitrate. I've always added my Armor SI, maxi base, epsom salt, and lastly calcium nitrate. Floralicious and PH after all the bases have been added. I thought maybe I should email GH's product support to ask. They've been helpful in the past on occasion. This is the exchange I had today on 2 separate messages:

Hi, I'm using Maxi grow and bloom in my garden as my base fertilizers for my veg nursery and flower room. I also use Armor SI. I run reverse osmosis water in a hydroponic water to waste application, so I supplement with magnesium sulfate and calcium nitrate. I'm hoping you can help me determine the proper order of adding the fertilizers to my reservoir. I have been adding my fertilizers in the following order: Armor SI, Maxi grow, magnesium sulfate, calcium nitrate, floralicous plus, then PH up. Is this order acceptable or do I need to correct the sequence? Thank you for your assistance.

Best Regards,
XXXX XXXXX

We do not recommend running, or make calcium nitrate or magnesium sulfate additives, so we will not comment on the use or order of mixing for those items as they will not work as well as our versions of them.

Mixing order always has Armor Si First, and omitting your home remedies- Maxi Series will come next, followed by additives in any order you wish.

Thank you

My followup message:

In what order do you recommend adding Armor SI, Calimagic, and Maxi grow?

This info is also in the margins of every feedchart on our website: Armor Si, CALiMAGic, Maxi Series will be your mixing order for these three items.

thank you

The maxi feed chart discusses the order of adding fertilizers for the "flora" series in the caption on the left. It says nothing about the maxi series. You would think if you were going to be a complete prick and respond in such a flip ignoramus manner you would at least make sure you were fucking right first. What a complete fuck tard.

I have not responded as of yet. I will be shortly, and I'll share it with you all.
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Are you having problems? To me it seems your mixing it up right.

I've been having problems with grey algae in my RWDC system for almost a year now. I was chatting with Jacks for a long time trying to figure out what the hell was going on. Even talked about using other nutes in my system. Never got short with me about any of it.

I do know that most companies do not like mixing of different companies products together because it can cause a reaction and the nutes fall out. Using base epsom salt and calcium nitrate should not do any of that if mixed in the right order.

I was using this one brand of liquid calmag and it caused my PH to climb to 7. 4 while others was in the normal 5.8 range. Using the dry never does it but I dissolve it all in seperate buckets of water to make sure they are completely dissolved. Sometimes this takes an hr or more with the Epsom. I use a black bucket to do that in. You be surprised how long it takes for everything to disappear
 
J

jonnynobody

Well-Known Member
Greenthumbskunk said:
Are you having problems? To me it seems your mixing it up right.

I've been having problems with grey algae in my RWDC system for almost a year now. I was chatting with Jacks for a long time trying to figure out what the hell was going on. Even talked about using other nutes in my system. Never got short with me about any of it.

I do know that most companies do not like mixing of different companies products together because it can cause a reaction and the nutes fall out. Using base epsom salt and calcium nitrate should not do any of that if mixed in the right order.

I was using this one brand of liquid calmag and it caused my PH to climb to 7. 4 while others was in the normal 5.8 range. Using the dry never does it but I dissolve it all in seperate buckets of water to make sure they are completely dissolved. Sometimes this takes an hr or more with the Epsom. I use a black bucket to do that in. You be surprised how long it takes for everything to disappear
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The people are Jack's are really decent human beings. I've never gotten anything but detailed professional responses from their reps any time I've emailed a question in the past. I understand they want everyone buying every single product from them, but in my case I've got a considerable stock of epsom salt and calcium nitrate from a previous Jack's grow. I've used calimagic from GH and cal-mag from Boanicaire. I had the same precipitation problem with both of them if I attempted to mix a reservoir for the entire week. Particulate started floating by day 2. By day 3 it was as if hundreds of broken white root strands from a cloner was dumped in my reservoir. It may very well be a reaction with the maxi fertilizer when I'm adding scalding hot water and blending prior to adding to my reservoir. I found this over @ ICMAG:
https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=231051&page=5

I mixed a flower res with maxi bloom yesterday using cold water instead of hot to see if there's any validity to the claims made in the ICMAG thread. If my res goes bad again it is what it is and I'll just deplete my stock of maxi then switch to the flora series or Jack's. I never had a problem with the flora series. It's really bugging me so I'll probably look at the ingredients of both fertilizers to see if something is in the flora line that is not in the maxi line. I'm really hoping I don't see particulate in the res tomorrow, but if I do I'll just start mixing on demand again until I deplete my supply.

Are you using anything to keep your water sterile in your RDWC setup? I run the garden friendly fungicide by southern AG. Same ingredient as hydrogaurd, but highly concentrated and a much better value for the money. 1ml/10gallons. Good stuff for sure. Cheap too.
 
J

jonnynobody

Well-Known Member
Well the cold water theory is out the window. Res went bad again today. Lots of white particulate floating around like a dirty clone bucket. I'll be mixing on demand the day of watering moving forward until I deplete my maxi supply. I'm going to mix up a 5 gallon test res to see what happens over the next 3 days. It's an issue I've only experienced with maxi grow and bloom. I never saw this type of thing with the flora series or jack's. Go figure. The most expensive fertilizer I've ever used is causing me the most headaches. Just for fun I'm going to test one final theory. Potassium hydroxide is the active ingredient in PH up. KOH is a strong base, and I believe may be the source of fallout in my reservoir. I did a quick search on google and found a lot of discussion about KOH causing fallout in reservoirs, so clearly this is an issue that's happening to others. One of the suggestions to remedy the issue is to dilute the PH up in a gallon of water. Then add the diluted gallon of PH up to the res. The addition of an undiluted raw base such as KOH into a reservoir full of fertilizer doesn't seem like a good practice if you're not interested in creating a chemical reaction of some kind, so the logic seems sound to me. The Cyco brand that I use is dam near twice the concentration of GH's PH up because I have to use twice the volume of GH's PH up as I do of Cyco's brand. I wonder if GH purposely dillutes their PH up to address this nasty little chemical reaction issue? When I add the Cyco PH up to the reservoir it appears cloudy white as it mixes with the water almost like the chemical reaction is happening immediately. I'm going to make a 5 gallon test reservoir of maxi bloom and a 5 gallon test reservoir of flora series. I will then dilute the PH up in a 1/2 gallon of water then add it to the reservoir. I'll report back results in 3 days. After this experiment I'll run a test 5 gallon reservoir of maxi with GH's PH up to see if their diluted version addresses the fallout. Doubtful, but we'll see. I just want to zero in on what's causing the reaction. Times like these I really wish I took a chemistry class :) Onward and forward.
 
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jonnynobody

Well-Known Member
Confirmation! Concentrated potassium hydroxide is what's causing the issue. This is why GH heavily dilutes their PH up. I'll still continue my experiment, but I feel like I've found some light at the end of the tunnel here.

"so im running 2 reservoirs one advanced nutrients and one general hydroponics and i just ran out of GH ph up so i used my AN ph up i added the same amount to each res. but now my GH res. is very cloudy and it is not going away but the AN res is just fine can anyone explain what is going on and if there is anything bad that can come from that the ph is perfect but the water is just kinda cloudy and its never happened before im using RO water."

"You alway's need to dilute PH products with water before you put into a rez. I recomend 10 parts water to 1 part PH up or down.
If you dump PH solution straight into the res without diluting it, most likely you will have nutrient fallout. Which is what you have, when a res get's cloudy from adding nutes and PH, you messed up. You need to dump the res, start with fresh water filled half way, dump part A, fill up with more water, dump part B in, fill with more water. Then you can put your other nutes in. After all that is mixed up well and settled you can now ad you PH solution slowly.
You need to dilute it, then ad the PH solution VERY SLOW, it should take you about a hour to adjust it properly. You need to put the PH solution in steps, put a little bit in, mix well, wait and do again.
A cloudy res is a Nurient Fallout and is garbage. The main step in this is diluting PH and putting it in the res slowly."

"cloudiness that doesn't go away (which is different from that white *poof*) usually means something's been bonded or neutralised. (DH explained this to me once - i'll ask him again when he gets home.) this isn't necessarily bad, usually just unsightly (think curdled milk in lemon tea), although i wouldn't make a habit of it either ;)
and yes, all brands of -up and -down are slightly different, i find that -ups are usually more concentrated than -downs. even potassium silicate (which i like to use to adjust up a few points) varies in consistency/strength between brands"

"thanks guys, ya i knew going into it AN was much stronger so i used alot less, and when i woke up this morning it looked like all the cloudiness had fell to the bottom of the res and gathered together in globs so i agitated it and the res. had come back to its original cloudy form the plants have already got several feedings from it and look fine, but it was just a little weird, mellowkitty please see what he says and ask him if he would recomend changing the res. thankyou for all of your feedback."

https://www.thcfarmer.com/threads/wtf-ph-up-issue.31314/
 
T

twistedwords

Well-Known Member
jonnynobody said:
Calcium nitrate and epsom salt aren't "3rd party nutrients", they're compounds. Nearly identical compounds to GH's Calimagic. The only difference is I'm using calcium nitrate rather than calcium carbonate. They knew exactly what I was asking and instead of providing the information they made me send a second email to inquire again so we could both waste more of our time.
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Understood but you can't mix Calcium Nitrate with Magnesium Sulfate as it will cause a precipitation problem. Your solution will precipitate and turn to a milky white and will not mix. This is why!
 
J

jonnynobody

Well-Known Member
twistedwords said:
Understood but you can't mix Calcium Nitrate with Magnesium Sulfate as it will cause a precipitation problem. Your solution will precipitate and turn to a milky white and will not mix. This is why!
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I never indicated I was mixing calcium nitrate with epsom salt, but thank you for sharing common knowledge we are all already aware of. Calcium nitrate and epsom salt are 2 of the main components in Jack's 3 2-1. They have to be added to the reservoir separately if that isn't too difficult a concept for you to grasp. If I were you I'd call them and tell them to pull their product immediately. Their chemists got it all wrong, and thanks to your incredible insight the company's future will be saved from calamity. Don't ever change sir. You're amazing.
 
Hollatchaboy

Hollatchaboy

Well-Known Member
jonnynobody said:
That's basically what I got out of it. I thought it was very petty and childish how the rep responded to the first question. I kept my cool and typed another politely worded email trying to cut through the nonsense in their first response. I've purchased their products for over 10 years now. I rarely ever call or ask any customer service or sales people any questions, because I don't like to bother people. I'm that guy that will walk around home depot for an hour before walking up to an employee and asking them to do something for me. On the rare occasion I take the time to actually write an email or approach someone to ask for their help I am respectful and kind. So when someone responds in a completely disrespectful manner that means the person on the other end is a real asshole. I grew up with a simple philosophy on how to deal with others. You treat everyone as a gentlemen or lady until they give you a reason not to. If Dr. Jekyl can't communicate tag him out and put Mr. Hyde in the driver's seat :) I bought a pipe at my local headshop today and brought the counterman in a free 1/8 of maui as a tip. I'm that guy. Not cool to treat people that treat others kindly like shit.

Thank you for your well articulated response.
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Should just use jacks 321 anyways...I use gh micro, bloom for Lucas but I use jacks also and I'll think I'm just gonna use jacks exclusively now.
 
J

jonnynobody

Well-Known Member
Hollatchaboy said:
Should just use jacks 321 anyways...I use gh micro, bloom for Lucas but I use jacks also and I'll think I'm just gonna use jacks exclusively now.
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You know man I have been thinking real hard on doing just that for a couple months now. I don't like buying my product from a company that overcharges for plant fertilizer just because they've done it for so long they think it's acceptable. $120 for 50# of Jack's part A. $212 for 50# maxi. I'd much rather patronize a company that does business ethically by charging a fair price for their product. You just convinced me to order up a bag. I ran 2 cycles with it and had great results. I stopped using it because I was experiencing a few odd leaf issues that I couldn't resolve, but I believe the problem was attributed to poor quality tap water I was using at the time. I installed a 6 stage RO filter about 8 months ago, and I think it's high time to give Jack's another shot.
 
Hollatchaboy

Hollatchaboy

Well-Known Member
jonnynobody said:
You know man I have been thinking real hard on doing just that for a couple months now. I don't like buying my product from a company that overcharges for plant fertilizer just because they've done it for so long they think it's acceptable. $120 for 50# of Jack's part A. $212 for 50# maxi. I'd much rather patronize a company that does business ethically by charging a fair price for their product. You just convinced me to order up a bag. I ran 2 cycles with it and had great results. I stopped using it because I was experiencing a few odd leaf issues that I couldn't resolve, but I believe the problem was attributed to poor quality tap water I was using at the time. I installed a 6 stage RO filter about 8 months ago, and I think it's high time to give Jack's another shot.
Click to expand...
Nice. Jacks works great. Lucas works good also, but it's overpriced, and jacks is more versatile.
 
Greenthumbskunk

Greenthumbskunk

Well-Known Member
jonnynobody said:
The people are Jack's are really decent human beings. I've never gotten anything but detailed professional responses from their reps any time I've emailed a question in the past. I understand they want everyone buying every single product from them, but in my case I've got a considerable stock of epsom salt and calcium nitrate from a previous Jack's grow. I've used calimagic from GH and cal-mag from Boanicaire. I had the same precipitation problem with both of them if I attempted to mix a reservoir for the entire week. Particulate started floating by day 2. By day 3 it was as if hundreds of broken white root strands from a cloner was dumped in my reservoir. It may very well be a reaction with the maxi fertilizer when I'm adding scalding hot water and blending prior to adding to my reservoir. I found this over @ ICMAG:
https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=231051&page=5

I mixed a flower res with maxi bloom yesterday using cold water instead of hot to see if there's any validity to the claims made in the ICMAG thread. If my res goes bad again it is what it is and I'll just deplete my stock of maxi then switch to the flora series or Jack's. I never had a problem with the flora series. It's really bugging me so I'll probably look at the ingredients of both fertilizers to see if something is in the flora line that is not in the maxi line. I'm really hoping I don't see particulate in the res tomorrow, but if I do I'll just start mixing on demand again until I deplete my supply.

Are you using anything to keep your water sterile in your RDWC setup? I run the garden friendly fungicide by southern AG. Same ingredient as hydrogaurd, but highly concentrated and a much better value for the money. 1ml/10gallons. Good stuff for sure. Cheap too.
Click to expand...

Oh ya. I've tried everything from replacing lines, tubes, airstones etc. Used Fusan 20, UC Roots, Dutch Master Zone, hydroguard, other beneficials, teas, lowering temps down on my chillers down to 62, went to reverse osmosis, different brands of nutes etc etc etc. I'm in the process now of convertering over to coco hoping to control it better.
I've read if you get it you will always have it because it gets in the air and sticks on the walls. I even bleached the walls and used fusan20 on em.

I got it in a clone I bought.

I bought 24 clones and placed them in my veg system. The next day I moved a plant to my flower system. I do this by picking up a plant and putting it in the flower system and then smashing a net over it. 24 hrs later that plant was sickly looking and the plants in my veg was sickly looking.

I thought maybe I had broke the stem or something but nope. Next day that plant was looking really bad so I scrapped it. A couple days later all my flowering plants were dying. Roots were all brown by now.

Of course I flushed everything on both setups by then but I lost everything. In order for anything to grow now I have to change water every couple days and I add UCRoots every day. My veg setup is 70 gal and flower side is 130 gal. So I'm going through a lot of product flushing every few days.

I spent anywhere from 100-300 each on the clones and bought more didn't know what I had.

I lost around 15 large plants in flower that were close to finishing and a bunch of others. I usually get around 3/4 lb to a lb per plant. So I lost a shit ton of money.
Between money lost on sales and money I've spent trying to fix it, i'm approaching 30k. Pretty much broke now. lol

So now I'm gonna try coco.
 
Greenthumbskunk

Greenthumbskunk

Well-Known Member
jonnynobody said:
Well the cold water theory is out the window. Res went bad again today. Lots of white particulate floating around like a dirty clone bucket. I'll be mixing on demand the day of watering moving forward until I deplete my maxi supply. I'm going to mix up a 5 gallon test res to see what happens over the next 3 days. It's an issue I've only experienced with maxi grow and bloom. I never saw this type of thing with the flora series or jack's. Go figure. The most expensive fertilizer I've ever used is causing me the most headaches. Just for fun I'm going to test one final theory. Potassium hydroxide is the active ingredient in PH up. KOH is a strong base, and I believe may be the source of fallout in my reservoir. I did a quick search on google and found a lot of discussion about KOH causing fallout in reservoirs, so clearly this is an issue that's happening to others. One of the suggestions to remedy the issue is to dilute the PH up in a gallon of water. Then add the diluted gallon of PH up to the res. The addition of an undiluted raw base such as KOH into a reservoir full of fertilizer doesn't seem like a good practice if you're not interested in creating a chemical reaction of some kind, so the logic seems sound to me. The Cyco brand that I use is dam near twice the concentration of GH's PH up because I have to use twice the volume of GH's PH up as I do of Cyco's brand. I wonder if GH purposely dillutes their PH up to address this nasty little chemical reaction issue? When I add the Cyco PH up to the reservoir it appears cloudy white as it mixes with the water almost like the chemical reaction is happening immediately. I'm going to make a 5 gallon test reservoir of maxi bloom and a 5 gallon test reservoir of flora series. I will then dilute the PH up in a 1/2 gallon of water then add it to the reservoir. I'll report back results in 3 days. After this experiment I'll run a test 5 gallon reservoir of maxi with GH's PH up to see if their diluted version addresses the fallout. Doubtful, but we'll see. I just want to zero in on what's causing the reaction. Times like these I really wish I took a chemistry class :) Onward and forward.
Click to expand...

I bought a bucket of Potassium Hydroxide from Jacks for my RO system A little bit of it goes a loooong ways. I just use a pinch of it and it raises a 5 gal bucket of RO water from 4.8 to 6.0.
I put 25 grams in a 60 gal barrel and it raised it up to 7.7
 
Hollatchaboy

Hollatchaboy

Well-Known Member
Renfro said:
Before I used Jacks I would look at the Chem Grow 4-20-39 formula. Unlike Jacks it's designed for cannabis. You will need the epsom, cal nitrate and MKP. I am using it now and like it a lot. Way better than the Jacks.
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I've never heard of it. I'll check it out.
 
Greenthumbskunk

Greenthumbskunk

Well-Known Member
Hollatchaboy said:
I just got the jacks hydro. I believe they only have the ro and tap formulas no?
Click to expand...

They have others like the clone formula, finish formula and outdoor.

I've used their 20/20/20 in my gorilla grow and greenhouse for many years. Of course that is a urea based fertilizer where you have to use it in soil.



I just took a look at their site and looks like they have removed many different formulas they had. They also have a lot of stuff about hemp on their as well as they didn't have earlier in the year.


CANNABIS AND HEMP SCHEDULES | jrpeters12345

www.jacksnutrients.com www.jacksnutrients.com

Jack's Nutrients Lineup | jrpeters12345

www.jacksnutrients.com www.jacksnutrients.com


If you like to change formulas often during flower I'd look at this page.

Grow with Jack's | jrpeters12345

www.jacksnutrients.com www.jacksnutrients.com


here is their potassium bicarbonate

Shop Now | jrpeters12345

www.jacksnutrients.com www.jacksnutrients.com
 
Hollatchaboy

Hollatchaboy

Well-Known Member
Greenthumbskunk said:
They have others like the clone formula, finish formula and outdoor.

I've used their 20/20/20 in my gorilla grow and greenhouse for many years. Of course that is a urea based fertilizer where you have to use it in soil.



I just took a look at their site and looks like they have removed many different formulas they had. They also have a lot of stuff about hemp on their as well as they didn't have earlier in the year.


CANNABIS AND HEMP SCHEDULES | jrpeters12345

www.jacksnutrients.com www.jacksnutrients.com

Jack's Nutrients Lineup | jrpeters12345

www.jacksnutrients.com www.jacksnutrients.com


If you like to change formulas often during flower I'd look at this page.

Grow with Jack's | jrpeters12345

www.jacksnutrients.com www.jacksnutrients.com


here is their potassium bicarbonate

Shop Now | jrpeters12345

www.jacksnutrients.com www.jacksnutrients.com
Click to expand...
Cool, thanks man.
 
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