i have a item i got for my veggy garden. it's called the recipe for success. it is made by technaflora plant products ltd. it sounds much like the kit you was talking about. i got 3 of the kits off ebay for $30.00 each. shipping was free.

i think these kits(the ones i have and the ones you are talking about) were made for growing pot. i figured if it worked for that it would have to work on the veggy garden as well. i just won't use the bloom on some of the plants. the peppers, tomatos, and beans i will give it a try with the bloom to see if it sets them off anymore.

i hope they keep coming out with stuff like this for us legal indoor growers. i'm ganna start doing this every year from now on out. it helps with me and my girlfriends food bills for sure!!!

This looks interesting, I'd like to know how this is going to work.

Okay, the coolest thing happened. Since I couldn't find anyone who had information on this and the other forums I posted this message on I decided to send an email to Advanced Nutrients (to the info at advancednutrients dot com email address) and see if I could get any kind of confirmation or denial or something like that.

Heh. None other than Big Mike replied. He asked where I'd heard about this and I was like "I don't want to get the guy in trouble so I'd rather not say" and Big Mike said he understood and to make a long story short I ended up giving him my phone number and he called and talked to me for like an hour! This was a couple days ago and I meant to type this all up and post it for all the forums talking about it then, but one thing leads to another, I kept putting it off, you know how it goes.

I took some notes of the conversation, but apparently I still completely suck at taking notes cause now I look back at them and it's not much help at all. Of course my college transcripts could tell you that. Anyway, I'll explain it all the best I can from what I remember and if I remember more later I'll come back and update you all.

The big question I had for Big Mike was how the whole pH thing is supposed to work. It's funny, he was all like, "Well I'm not gonna tell you, that's proprietary" and then he went ahead and explained it but it doesn't help much because I totally didn't understand the smallest bit of the science. But it actually works better than the brochure I've got which, by the way, isn't even printed by AN. I guess the shop guy printed it off from a pdf that was sent out to him by AN. Big Mike said the one I've got is out of date and not right. They're still finalizing all that stuff but he said he'd send me pdfs of the final versions as soon as he gets them.

Oh, but about the pH stuff. He said it actually works with water between 4.5 and 8.5 pH which is pretty much everyone. As long as the water is within that range all you do is mix up your nutes like the directions say and it just comes out the right pH and stays buffered there. I definitely can't wait to see if that's true. No more pH checking? I'll admit I'm skeptical, but he was all like "that's not even the coolest part".

The big thing is that they've developed some way of jamming all this stuff together without it reacting and clumping up and stuff. That's how they can do the 4-in-1 thing with the base nutes where they've all got H-2, F-1, and Wet Betty in them and some of the other stuff is doubled up as well. Also, he said they'll be doing a thing where each level, the hobbyist, expert, professional, etc has one of the products thrown in for free. Like with the Hobbyist level you get Overdrive for free. I asked him about the price and he said they didn't have the numbers totally decided yet but that they were actually looking to cut their margin by like 17% or something like that. From what was saying it sounds like the new formulas cost more to make but that he expects that to get better so it won't hurt them in the long run, but I'm not sure. I wish I'd gotten it all written down better.

Oh, I asked him about the market/advertising thing people bring up. He said that they spend five times as much on research as they do on advertising. Most of the magazines won't even let them buy advertising, but they don't care, they'd rather spend the money on research anyway. I asked him about the labeling and he said that he gets the idea and then he hires a guy to do the label and they go back and forth until its what he envisioned or something better, and then that's it. It's like a thousand bucks one time and that's it. So they're not spending a lot there either.

The Weeds thing, he says he just flies out there a couple times a year to consult on the show, but since AN supplied all the expertise to start out with and a lot of the equipment they just keep using all the same props. Which is pretty smart on the part of Advanced Nutrients if you ask me. That show's like number 1 on Showtime and has been forever.

He was telling me about how there's this big time conference every year, I don't remember the name, but it's for all these leading plant scientists from all over, like 2 or 3 hundred are invited and you're only supposed to come if they invite you. Well he's telling me about how a couple years back he just decided to crash this conference and no one seemed to realize he wasn't supposed to be there for quite awhile and by the time they did realize they figured out how much he and Advanced Nutrients were contributing or could contribute to plant sciences and now he gets invited every year.

See each of these scientist guys out there has their own little pet project they want to do but it's a pain in the butt to get financing to investigate some odd little thing about growing alfalfa or something. I mean farmers are always looking to get better yields or heartier plants that are more resistant to bugs and disease and such, but no one wants to spend a truckload of money for something you can fix by just planting more of it. With the legal stuff at least until we're getting much tighter on farmland space  there's the constant struggle of whether it's worth a million bucks to find a 5% increase in yield.

So along comes Big Mike at this conference thing and he's talking with all these scientists and finding out stuff that they'd love to research if they only had the money. And it's totally win-win for them. He was telling me about how this guy or that gal's research played a role in improvements to Voodoo Juice or whatever.

I just gotta say it was really cool talking with him too. He's totally a cool guy, just talking with me about whatever and this guy really knows his stuff. Which makes sense... all the guys that started Advanced Nutrients are former growers.

I'm sure I'm forgetting a bunch of stuff. Big Mike said he was going to have someone send me the pdf stuff and that it would probably be next week sometime. Oh, and he said the new feeding system should hit the stores next month.

meh. my pH doesn't often need adjusting, so I'll stick with the inexpensive home brew.
sounds intersting though, if a bit like an infomercial.

Before you buy it, remember what they are selling.

Most hydro nutrients are Ph stable and the only thing that is in the nutrient is varying amounts of N, P or K.

I find that I do nicely with nutrients that don't require any hype. Hydroponics is not rocket science, no matter that someone on the phone tells you it is.

If it smells like p**p and looks like p**p, it's p**p.

lol, you're pretty excited about these nutes

Well I been meaning to post more on this but I didn't really have anything new. The stuff I was gonna scan well I never got my scanner working and it wasn't right anyway. When I talked to Big Mike he said it was an early draft and that they were still putting the finishing touches on the nutrients so it wasn't right anymore anyway.

Well I got my hands on what is supposed to be the final draft, but we'll see about that. Anyway, I got the pdfs uploaded so you guys can see them.

Oh and I found out more about that whole pH thing works. I guess they have this stuff that like encapsulates the molecules of pH up or pH down so that it doesn't change the pH of what it's in. So they can dump a bunch of both kinds in with the nutrients and it doesn't go crazy. This coating stuff reacts to certain pH levels and like pops the bubble at the right level. So if the pH gets too high or too low the right pH adjuster is automatically released to counter it.

Cool, eh? Also there's some kind of super chelates or something that they developed that makes the macro and micro nutrients available way outside the usual pH ranges. What I heard is that as long as the pH isn't so high or so low that it actually melts the roots this stuff can still be absorbed and used by the plants. That sounds a little far-fetched to me but who knows.

The guy at my hydro shop says he's going to put out some stuff himself here in a week or so. I'm not sure what all he has but I'm looking forward to that.

links to the pdfs:

http://hyperfileshare.com/d/bf21e086

http://hyperfileshare.com/d/2b78dce6

Now, I'm just starting out with hydro, but do you really need coated ph pellets? Wouldn't it be chemically the same to just add equal amounts of pH up and pH down to the cheap stuff to get a buffered solution? You can experiment with how much you need for your setup to keep PH stable until you change out your nutrient water.

Is there a problem with that I'm not aware of? Like I said, I'm just starting out.

Strictly speaking you don't need anything fancy at all. You can certainly take 1-2 pH readings a day and make manual adjustments like most everyone else does.

What it seems they've done is fix it so that when the pH goes too high the solution automatically releases more acid to bring it back in line and vice versa.

If you add a lot of pH up and pH down together you get (aside from a potentially violent reaction) nothing but water and salt. Water is H20. Think of it as HOH, an oxygen atom in the middle with a hydrogen atom on either side. If you yank off one of the hydrogen you get H+ and OH-, a hydrogen ion (atom with one or more electrons more or less than it prefers) and a "hydroxide" ion. The H+ ion (which is nothing more than a single proton) will combine with a nearby water molecule to make a hydronium ion (H3O+).

Hydronium is acidic, hydroxide is basic, and if you get the two together they reconfigure as two water molecules by trading the extra H atom from the hydronium to the hydroxide.

Unless there's something in place to prevent the two from reacting, you can't mix an acid and a base without this kind of process taking place.

Normally a good hydroponic solution is "buffered" which if I remember correctly means it has another substance in solution that tries to absorb excess H+ and OH- ions to avoid big pH swings.

I'm planning to get my hands on Advanced Nutrients new line soon to see if it lives up to their claims.

The stuff I use GH Flora Nova, says that they use nutrients that come from both acidic and alkaline sources. As the plant uses up the nutrients, it uses both at the same time, therefore keeping the ph in balance.

I have been doing Hydro for a year now and really enjoy it. I had 24 buckets (DW) going at the same time in a small bedroom in my home.

I started out using cheap nutes, and found myself adding PH up and Down all the time. After a few days I wondered how much I had altered the original nute mix by adding all the PH up and Down stuff.

Like anything new, you do not expect to have a perfect outcome the first time.

For some, money is not a huge deal. I tried a much more expensive nute solution, and found myself changing the PH once or twice a week.

If you do not mind fussing with your nutes and checking it with a ph meter etc, then by all means buy the cheap stuff, but I like the no fuss stuff myself, and would love to hear more about this stuff.

Hydroponica: I remember making buffered solutions in chemistry lab back in college. You are totally right about that process, except that while the solution is still liquid, the extra water molecules will also(still) be broken up into their ions, as well.

Try this...take just a water solution and add a drop of pH up or down and measure the pH before and after. Then, starting from a fresh batch of water, add equal amounts of up and down, and remeasure the pH to make sure its the same as when you started. Then add the same amount of pH up or down as the first bucket, and you'll see that it didn't move the pH as much as the first time around. As long as everything is dissolved in water, all the acids and bases are still broken up into their component ions. And if you are adding more positive and negative ions in equal amounts, then it will take larger amounts of offsetting ions (say, from plant feeding) to swing the pH around.

Say you have 1 mole each positive and negative ions in a bucket of water. If you add or subtract 1/2 a mole of either, you'll get a large swing in pH. OTOH, if you have the same bucket of water with enough pH up and pH down in it to have 10 moles of positive and negative ions in equal amounts, then the same 1/2 mole swing only swings the pH level 5% of the original swing maybe 10%...I'm too lazy to get the calculator out).

Of course, I'm just starting out so I haven't had a chance to try this outside the lab, yet. Buffering the nutrient solution will work chemically, but I'm not sure what affect it will have on real plants.

A guy on another forum found this video that shows how Advanced Nutrients does this. I linked it below.

This was on one of "Those" forums so I don't want to link it here. The last few seconds of the video seem to have been cut off so I'm not sure if the video is finished or if it's a preview or what.

That looks like the perfect thing for a lot of people looking to get started. It doesn't get any more simple than that. Looks like it does just about everything for you.

My brain-dead brother could do that.

Making nutrient solutions that do not require pH balancing and that do not react with each other is something we have been doing in the research community for years. pH is something that can be predicted very precisely with current chemical knowledge. I did some simulations on this matter, pH buffering effects and using several different compositions. You can check the results here http://allhydroponics.blogspot.com/2009/02/keeping-ph-of-your-hydroponic-nutrient.html . You can actually make a solution that maintains a proper pH range for two months or more.

Just saw this on CNBC:

http://www.cnbc.com/id/29135049

Advanced Nutrients is proof that, through aggressive marketing and knowledge of end users, a company can stay in business selling a product for $14.95 retail that is identical to the competitions' $11.95 products.

Magic and miracles aren't sold in bottles, chemicals and microbiology are. Keep that in mind when you buy a hobbyist product that promises great things. Most of this stuff you could make in your own garage if you had the right catalogs and some simple equipment.

Here is a patent from Aerogrow for a buffered nutrient formula filed back in 2006. Interesting, but not amazing. Uses 2-(N-morpholino)ethanesulfonic acid (MES) as a buffer.

http://www.google.com/patents?id=ykyZAAAAEBAJ&printsec=abstract&zoom=4&dq=hydroponic+nutrient+buffer#PPA3,M1

All very interesting posts here! Danielfp, great link and thanks for sharing! Also thanks to IamGrowMan for finding that youtube link!

Sure, it would be better if we would all prepare our own nutrient solutions. Once you get a grip you can easily make your own preparations and enjoy marked improvements with your crops. You also open up the possibility to some amazing experimentation ! For example, I use eight different solutions to grow my tomatoes, each one for a different development phase (you can call that obsessed with optimization !)

I have also used MES as a buffering agent, quiet good by the way, although I do prefer my formulation with citric acid and potassium carbonate which are two products that are cheaper and easier to get.

Someone on another forum found a better version of the video, thats not cut off at the end. Its actually on the Advanced Nutrients website.