hey everyone this is Nick from anxy Plants today I'm going to be going through and giving an updated nutrient solution and fertilization guide for antherium I'm going be going through and giving the different types of nutrients and you know why they're important as well as you know what I do how I apply them and all of that so let's get into it the products I'm using are the ones that I have available to me in my local market uh some of them are from brands that do sell all over but just bear that in mind and I think the most important thing is the brand doesn't matter most of these Hydroponics fertilizer brands are going to have essentially the same chemical analysis they're going to be derived from probably the same or very similar products and when I'll combined they're going to give you a very similar similar result I at one point I was using general Hydro before doing this and I was really able to switch the products essentially one for one without any noticeable differences so just uh bear that in mind I'm not trying to you know influence you you get you to buy specific products what I'm going to do is put up the uh the the exact composition for each of the products from the fertilizer line I use that way when you're shopping or if you're wanting to compare to the own your own at home you can just look at the percentages and sort of figure out how yours Compares so I just want to start with that because uh some of the products I'm going to mention are quite pricey so I don't want you to feel like you need to run out and do this uh to me this is an investment in the plants I'm growing and keep in mind I do sell plants I do sell seedlings so when I'm using an expensive fertilizer if it helps me increase the yield or the success rate it might make sense to me and it might not make sense in your situation so I don't want you to feel influenced or pressured to buy um all these expensive nutrient solution additives and like I was saying I do use this nutrient solution on everything that includes uh ferns orchids antherium Hoya filad dendrin monstera even my lemon tree outside I give them all the same uh all the same fertilizers because at the end of the day I don't feel like mixing up separate jugs uh and now I'm going to talk a little bit about how we figured out and I say we I mean corpin and I figured out the nutrient solution and what we like to use so when we were first getting into this hobby we were using like a you know osmode or rather sort of simple one part add to water as our fertilizer of choice but as we expanded into making our own pawn and doing the Hydroponics thing we realized we needed to step up our fertilizer game a little bit and so we started using like I said earlier the General Hydroponics three-part plus cow mag and when we were doing that we know were like okay this is great this was like better than what we were experiencing before our growth was better faster bigger healthier looking and then from that point on we started to you know you once you get 90% you want to like tweak that last 10% is what I like to call it so I think if you're wanting to start out on a general on a Hydroponics fertilization Journey definitely just start with the you know three-part plus a cow mag I think that's like a really good starting point um especially since a lot of the brands now sell a one part that does three the grow bloom micros which is what I say when I say three part that's what I'm referring to um a lot of the brands now make a one part that does those three together uh in just a more diluted form so after we did our three part uh we added some of the humic and fulvic acids this product it it just happens to do both and that's really convenient so that's why we've pretty much stuck to this one there's really anything else like it and then you know we added a kelp supplement so in this case super Thrive and then we were having some issues with Leaf shape warping I'm going to do my best to insert photos I didn't really take many of them and I I I very quickly we very quickly researched and figured out that the leaf warping in the way we were getting it is um a sign of silica deficiency so from that we started adding our silica I'm going to talk about more of all of these parts going in and then at the time we've been using dynamico but that is just a micro risal so we we switched and we were just ripping through it because you know every time you do a repot you use a good amount and we were just ripping through the bags of the dynamica so we switched to the liquid Orca which also has the bacteria um it's super convenient cuz you just add you measure out a couple Ms and add it to your nutrient solution there's the only difference between this and great white is there great white has one more strain of micro risal yeah and if you're doing Hydroponics and you find yourself spending a lot on moo I definitely recommend this it's like a little bit pricey and here in Canada we're dealing with like a reseller on Amazon so I think you pay double retail however it still works out cheaper than buying like the bulk bags of dyo and we get to apply with every single watering which is really useful for helping build that healthy microbiome now I want to talk a little bit about the importance of a complete feed and how you can identify potential um issues with your current routine uh I couldn't really find any good examples of uh nutrient deficiency just cuz everything in my collection is getting uh fertilized uh probably as much as they can tolerate so I think what I can show you hopefully is some examples of what happens when a plant that previously wasn't being fertilized very heavily starts getting uh the full feed so this leaf on this uh blood moon was the uh last leaf that came out before my care and if you're not familiar with the antherium look at so this was Leaf before my care first Leaf after entering my care and getting fertilized then next Leaf after that here's another example Leaf not in my care first Leaf into my care and uh this is on a dress L ey so if any of you grown them you know they don't really like to size like that all that often so one thing you like immediately notice when you start fertilizing properly or heavily whatever you want to call it is uh a pretty good size jump in the foliage what I was trying to find was an example of what potential calmag deficiency looks like and what's interesting about calmag nitrogen and um what out with antherium is the importance of sulfur so antherium like quite a bit of sulfur and what sulfur is going to do for you is it's going to allow them to take up that cow mag you feed them and then with that cow mag the plants can upake the nitrogen so you need all three because to get each of the you know to get nitrogen you need calag and to get CAG you need sulfur so with antherium a lot of people like to make sure they're supplementing with calag because that can often be a bottleneck and it can lead you to you know more chlorotic looking leaves if I can find some good photos I will insert them plenty of my own issues but right now nutrient deficiency isn't one of them because when I see a plant that's doing it I just add a little bit of fertilizer to their water and with say know couple weeks they will color right up as I was saying when you're looking for that you're wanting to see almost like a yellowing throughout the Le leaf and I find often at the peaks of the bumps bolti uh you'll find that's where most of the color will be fading out of the plant and to me if I was seeing that in my plants and I wasn't doing anything to complicate with my fertilizer I'd probably think about supplementing with ceg to start out and then once I was a little bit comfortable with that I would make sure I'm adding something like uh something to supplement the sulfur and the iron which just happens to be a kelp extract it does a good job of helping with both antherium I think it's pretty important to make sure you're adding a little bit of extra sulfur calag and that's simply to uptake the nitrogen you know you have other issues with like the leaves getting little pinches and little tears in them and on certain species like or certain cultivar like the Ace of Spades I you know people say the red vein DP you get a lot of the pox marking around the edges and the reason silica helps with all of those issues is it uh in reinforces the rigidity of the cell walls making plants have a better time fully expanding and making them more resilient to environmental changes and pest pressure which is what often leads to the what people like to call the pox marking around the edges of the plants I got Sila a little bit wrong last time I explained it the difference between potassium silicate and monistic acid it's not that monistic acid is more bioavailable it's that monosilicic acid is the reaction byproduct of potassium silic and something like a PH down so the the potassium silicate just requires a lot more pH adjusting that's the main difference but potassium silicate does become mono solstic acid when exposed to uh low PHS so if you're going to be going the route of pottassium silicate you really need to make sure you're pH adjusting it well below s um same goes to monic acid it's just uh the potassium silicate is going to require more pH adjusting and I I'm going to try and Link a paper that explains it a whole lot better than me uh down in the bio below if I don't remember and you really want to see that comment and that'll remind me to go link it into the description Okay and like I was saying at the beginning the product doesn't really matter I'm using growch I like them they're local to me I know it can be a little bit hard to find the monistic acid formula if you're looking to use the other one just make sure you do your research and you figure out how to properly convert it to make sure I got everything right because there's a lot of I not necessarily incorrect but what not information out there about silica and sort of the sort of what you have to do surrounding it so before doing this video I went and I emailed the grow Tech manufacturer to get sort of their definitive guide and application that way at least for these products that I'm using I'm making sure I'm giving you guys the most accurate information on how to use it so one thing they recommend that if you're applying silica you do it as a folar feed uh unfortunately for us uh the reason we're growing these plants is cosmetic and fol your feeding especially with the silica will leave um an unpleasant residue on the leaves that I find very hard to remove I don't do that so they did give me the directions on what to do if you're adding it to the nutrient solution because this tends to be where there's a lot of differing opinions one thing some people say monocytic acid does not require a waiting period after being added to the water since it's the reacted form of silica however grotech does recommend you wait 20 to 30 minutes I also tend to always wait the 30 minutes so let's just get that out of the way also it should be added first I know some people say calmag but according to the manufacturer silica first then calmag with a 30- minute weight in between the silica and any other nutrients you're wanting to add just wanted to make sure that we had that down because I've been hearing a lot of differing opinions on that especially as with which order whether you do caleg first whether you do silica first so I just want to make it clear you do silica then you wait 20 to 30 minutes and it doesn't matter which form of um the silica you're using and that's just to prevent uh potential nutrient lockout since it can take a while for these things to properly dissolve into the water and if they're not properly dissolved that's when unwanted chemical reactions can take place so next I want to cover why I like to add the fulvic and humic acids the big thing about this is it's going to help with your moo so this will help grow the good stuff in your soil and it also gives these guys a little bit of something to digest so that they stay alive better in your nutrient solution other things it does it's going to help with how they absorb the nutrients it helps with that um but the big thing it does is make sure you're building a good microbiome in your substrate and then along with that another thing that helps building the microbiome as well as the General Health of the plant is the kelp additive so this one you know you're giving some organic material for your bacteria and your M to digest uh the other thing this does is adds beneficial vitamins and nutrients that are potentially not um in great enough quantities in your complete feed the the big things from this is It's a good source of iron and sulfur both of which are really important for antherium um and the second part to that is those nutrients are both more available at lower PHS so when you're doing your nutrient solution a big thing you got to get comfortable using PH down stuff very scary very dangerous so make sure you're properly geared up and you know what you're doing like you spill it on your floor it eat through your floor like that kind of be careful with it yeah so like I was saying we're going to want to make sure we're pH adjusting our nutrient solution I like to Target the range 4.5 to 4.9 I use a pH probe to do it if you're using a pH probe you got to make sure you have the calibration solutions for your probe so that you're keeping it accurate because they can drift pretty fast so you stick it in and it tells you the pH reason I like the lower pH is is it helps with the absorption of iron and sulfur iron helps bring out really pretty colors in the antherium and like I said the sulfur is for the the Deep greens because it allows for the maximum amount of chlorophyll produ and then to my nutrient solution there's one more one more thing I often add and that's a root accelerator this is just like a rooting hormone reason I like it is I find it um increases the branching of the root system and helps build like really crazy dense root balls I've been using it for a little bit over 6 months so as I get more experience with it I will share more but yeah so far I've been enjoying it um I think it makes uh I think there's definitely a noticeable difference in the root systems between before I used it and now after so now that we've talked about sort of the whole fertilizer regimen I guess I will uh like I said at the beginning I wanted to show the the analysis of each of the products so I'm actually going to just quickly hold up the different ones and talk about the gr Tech fertilizer line so first off here's their cow mag well I got to make sure I'm slid over here so I can put up the graphic cuz I'm going to put up the graphics of each of the um bottles here is the grow so this is like think of it as as the the components focused on foliage or vegetative growth here's the bloom so this is the one that's going to provide the stuff for flowers and burying and then here's the micros which provides all the little little other uh the non big three essential nutrients and so like I was saying KAG plus those three makes a complete feed so if you're looking to do something like a growth Tech the GT fol Focus or the super Thrive foliage I foliage I can't keep up with the names that would be replacing the three parts um and not all of them always have the necessary uh sorry not necessary as high level of the bloom component so I know some of them have supplemental additives for the blooming part unfortunately there isn't really like one good one part uh cuz you'd have to just make it so diluted that would be very expensive per application um and a big thing with using like these complicated Parts is these bottles will last me like a really long time whereas if I bought one of these one parts or the fewer number of parts I would be ripping through those bottles just because of the amount of nutrient solution I have to make every month okay another potential upside to using the hydroponic fertilizers is they're formulated in a way that reduces the amount of salt buildup in your substrate you do not want salt build up in your substrate if you're seeing if your stuff starting to look salty just make sure it's not um micro risate because sometimes it will form what looks like a salt on the Sur surface but it's just fungus yeah if you're seeing salt build up I think it can be important to start maybe step back on that plant I will sometimes just skip a month or two of fertilizing and I will just like water through with filter water um and then obviously dump it uh a little bit just to try and flush some of the salt out of the soil and allow the plant to consume what's already there before I'm adding more fertilizer I'm not the best about remembering to flush which is why I I fertilize like quote unquote like once a month when I give a full Reservoir change and when I do that I like to water through the top of the substrate just with filter water I should flush more but especially with the smaller plants those are the ones I've been having I I've had in the past nutrient lockout take place on I Now understand uh sorry not understand I've learned to wait until they're at like four to five leaves before I start fertilizing which has saved me a lot of issues with the small seedings that is having so like definitely be very careful feeding the small ones heavily uh so instead of you know feeding them constantly I'll just give them a little bit of a little bit of nutrient solution every once in a while um if I'm starting to notice that they're you know yellowing or looking um deficient so like if you ever give your plant nutrient lock out I think the best thing you can do is remove it from the substrate uh wash down the Plant make sure the roots are uh remove you remove any rot and I would place the plant into to fresh clean substrate and I would just give it a little bit of um a little bit of you know filter water maybe a tiny tiny bit of tiny tiny bit of super Thrive but I would avoid any fertilizers until the plant has had a chance to you know recover settle in and then once it's reating and growing I would slowly add back fertilizer and you can do that by just mixing nutrient solution and filter water on the Fly I I should have said this earlier but when I was talking about the soil PH another a couple reasons I like the low ph is that low PH it is harder for rot to take hold especially at pH is under five and the other reason is in the wild these plants are growing in very acidic soils and they've adapted to um uptake and uptaking and processing nutrients and just living at very low phes so giving them that environment does Aid in the growth and I think it can be a big contributor to having darker foliage I think I've been I said this a little bit earlier but we we fertilize quotequote like once a month because that's when we do our Reservoir changes recently we went like two in a bit almost 3 months without uh swapping the reservoirs on these bucket pots and the plants in here and some of the other ones we were just uh topping up the plants that were running out you know we're just busy tired and it was kind of nice taking a couple months off of having to water another benefit of growing the reservoir pots with these buckets like like I just said we went pretty much 2 months with two over two months without having to water our plants and we definitely did notice some downsides so there's a little bit of root death the nodf didn't flower on on the snow which kind of sucks but it's not a big deal yeah other than like potentially missing out on some flowers it's and the foliage not being as dark and Luscious as it could be there weren't really any too many other downsides I don't recommend you guys do it but it's nice having the ability to go several months without watering without there being too much harm when I asked you guys for some of your questions about this I got a few responses about hydrogard uh from my understanding it's a product that coats the roots to reduce the risk of root rot it's something I've looked a little bit into I just haven't you know pulled the plug and decided to give it a go I think it's something I could potentially see myself exploring in the future but as of right now I haven't decided to add it I think as I was saying earlier I sort of fertilized by feel when the plants are small until they hit near cataphyll when I start giving them consistently full strength nutrient solution and the way I judge it is based off of the appearance of the plant so if I'm seeing yellowing in a way that is nutrient deficient and not nutrient burn you know I know I need to add a little bit more or a little bit less and I think that sort of topic of identifying nutrient issues requires a whole video of its own with a lot of good examples I've been thinking uh Sydney plant guy the what does he call it his doctor clinic for the plants where he takes the viewer submission I was I've been thinking about doing a similar video for antherium issues it's definitely something I can do in the future it'll just take a long time to make sure I get enough uh user submission foler feeding I think I said this earlier but I don't like to foler feed uh when the plants are at a size where I'm enjoying the foliage just because I don't like the salt residue it can leave when they're seedlings I do pretty frequently uh go the route of folar feeding when I'm looking to fertilize them that's just because it works great um the plants are take a do a really good job absorbing the nutrients through their foliage fungal issues in antherium I'm a little bit of a crazy person here I've been trying out the last few months barely running our fans so what does that mean it means I run them maybe a couple hours a day and I I don't want to say there have been no issues but things have been going okay and I think it's because when the plants are happy and healthy they're able to keep at Bay any of the fungal issues you could potentially have and my biggest annoyance with not raring the fence is actually been seeing just like a little bit more mold on the surface of the substrate but other than that the plants seem to have been doing okay with very little air flow which I think would normally cause pretty massive fungal issues for most people I'm I'm very curious I think definitely before doing the nutrient solution the way I do it now we had a lot more fungal issues even with you know lots of airf flow and other stuff whereas now like the plants can sit sopping wet no air flow and fungal issues are much less of a problem and another reason I can attribute it to feeding is because in the small plants that I'm not feeding I do still deal with fungal issues when they're in a super wet environments and they have like w water sitting on them and stuff the last big thing which is measuring your PPM so that's how much stuff you've dissolved into your nutrient solution I this is I can just give you what my PPM is I just measured it it's 700 it was like $699 to 701 so I'm just calling it 700 that just represents all the stuff I've put in and dissolved into the water so that's the about where I like to keep things I've had it be up to about 900 I haven't gone beyond that so I don't really want to speak to it but my fear is if I push it too much higher I will have more instances of nutrient lockout or burn because I'm not as reliable in my flushing yeah I think that just about covers my whole guide to you know why I do what I do when it comes to fertilizing and the products I use and sort of my thoughts on antherium nutrient Solutions so I thank you guys for watching here to the end I really appreciate it have a great rest of your day bye [Music]