For some reason I was unable to add a follow up to the thread I opened earlied about hydroponic software (seems to be a forum bug :s ) so I decided to open this new thread to inform you that the first version of my FREE hydroponic nutrient calculator app is now available :o). You can download the software here :

http://allhydroponics.blogspot.com/2010/06/first-free-hydroponic-nutrient.html

Please download it, try it and tell me what you think about it. As always I will take into account all your suggestions to add new improvements and features to the program :o) I want this program to become a great help to the home or small business hydroponic grower. Right now I am already working on a pH and EC predicting feature, the addition of a formula library (that we can save/load and exchange nutrient makeups !) and a "reverse" feature so that you check the final ppm makeup of a commercial hydro growing formula you like. Please leave your comments and suggestions !

Best Regards,

Daniel

PS : hex2006, thank you for your follow up on the other thread, I certainly got a few ideas from those links :o)

But my biggest questions are the elements (salts) that are available. I think that is what you are trying to address with this update. For instance I have a supplier for
Magnesium Sulfate
Magnesium Chelate
Magnesium Sulphate
Magnesium nitrate

But to me they are all just Magnesium, so this is where I get confuses. I know that there is more than one form of calcium, I have calcium nitrate, but have no idea how it will react or work with each of the individual forms of Magnesium. Now when you have 10+ different elements (salts) to consider, getting the right forms of each and how one changes the other elements.

In other words without going to specifics say I have a recipe that calls for Magnesium Sulfate, can I use Magnesium nitrate instead? If so, what happens if I do, and now I do the same type of substitutions on other elements (salts) thought the recipe.

Thank you very much for your reply :o) Actually what you say is precisely what confuses most people who want to prepare their own nutrients and precisely what I want to solve with this calculator implementation.

The first thing you need to understand is that each salt always supplies at least 2 elements to your plants. In the case of magnesium sulfate you are supplying Mg and S and in the case of magnesium nitrate you are supplying Mg and N. So what you need to ask is, do all my salts provide the needed nutrients ? If you are using magnesium sulfate and you want to change to magnesium nitrate, then you need to see if you still have enough S from other sources to cover you sulphur needs. This in turn means that you might change another salt so that it supplies S, for example changing potassium nitrate to potassium sulfate.

On the new program you can easily test the effect of doing this simply by changing the salts you want to use. Just check different salts and recalculate the formulation and you'll see the effect this has on the errors and whether or not the choice of salts you are making is the correct one.The program will also print a warning if you are missing any elements on your formulation. With micronutrients the problem is not very important and probably the largest "choice problem" comes when choosing salts for N, K, P, Mg, Ca and S.

As I said before, the first thing you should see is that you choose salts so that they contain those elements. Then test different combinations until you arrive to the lowest errors within the calculator for the formula you want to use. It is not very complicated to do with the calculator so I hope you'll be able to try whatever you want pretty easily.

I want this to become extremely easy to use so feel free to play with it a bit and tell me what you think :o) Thank you very much for your feedback and questions !

Best Regards,

Daniel

Thank you for your comments :o) The fact is that there were several reasons for me to go through the program and not the php/java route. The first one is simply that I suck at php and java coding :o) and the second is that people who use this for field applications - where no internet might be available - might find a stand-alone program easier to carry and use. The use in third world countries- where internet access could also be problematic- is also important to me.

Your second suggestion is pretty interesting, I like the idea of a drop down menu for quick access and this will certainly be something I will be implementing in the future.

Regarding your last point, I am not sure what you mean by 'soluble' since all the formulations and combinations of salts are meant to be soluble (otherwise they wouldn't be available for plant growth). If what you mean is a solution formulation that would allow you to create liquid concentrated stock solutions then certainly I will implement one once I am done with the recipe part of the program :o).

Thank you very much for your suggestions Grizzman. I am glad you like what I am doint ! I'll be waiting for any further feedback you may have after you play a little bit with the program,

Best Regards,

Daniel

The calculator looks great, even though everything below calcium nitrate (tetrahydrate) and everything to the right of "WA (water quality?)eludes me just for now :)

Thank you very much for your comment :o) I developed the app for 1280x1024 resolution due to the fact that this is what I use and I wasn't very aware of the fact that other people might use different settings so that is my mistake. I will obviously get that fixed and probably change to a tabbed version with lower screen coverage. By the way, what you read as WA... ends up being Warnings and errors, the program prints on that dialogue box a message if it detects anything is wrong (nutrients missing, etc).

I will get these problems fixed as soon as I release the next version. Thank you very much for your message and for downloading the app :o)

Best Regards,

Daniel

Daniel

Daniel

Thank you for pointing that out :o) It is exactly what I though you were talking about. Certainly I will add some formulations to make such concentrated premixed solutions with great flexibility once the recipe part of the software is done! Thanks again for helping me make my software better for all of us :o)

Best Regards,

Daniel

Daniel

Thank you for your message :o) The chemicals should NOT be mixed to form stock solutions besides those suggested for micro nutrients since most of the N,P,K,Ca, S and Mg chemicals used are incompatible when mixed in high concentrations. As it says on the program's instructions the salts that say "dissolve directly" should be dissolved directly in the reservoir and should NOT used to prepare stock solutions. The solubility levels of the micronutrient stock solutions are checked internally and if they are exceeded the program advices you to dissolve them directly as well.

In the future I will implement recipes you can use to prepare classic A and B stock solutions but the approach presented now where only micro nutrient stock solutions are prepared and micro nutrients are dissolved directly is the easiest and cheapest.

Thank you very much for helping me make my software better :o)

Best Regards,

Daniel

The other question i meant to ask was, would a run-to-waste system benefit from a slightly different nutrient make-up compared to a method where the nutrient is constantly recirculated?
I use run-to-waste and from what i have read it seems that some elements (P?) are increased to help buffer the ph.

Thank you for your message :o) I am almost done with the fix so you'll be able to use the program on your regular computer monitor.

Regarding a run to waste system, certainly the nutrient composition should be very different than a recirculating system. A much lower concentration is recommended since no need to have additional nutrients for long periods of feeding is required. Levels of P at around 25-40 ppm are recommended but I doubt that any buffering effect is very significant in such systems since the pH changes plants can cause on such a small period of time is most likely negligible.

I hope I'll have the next version ready soon :o) Thanks again for all the suggestions,

Best Regards,

Daniel

I am glad to announce the release of the second version of the calculator (version 0.2). I have taken into account all your suggestions and I have implemented several fixes. You can download the calculator from the same link. Here are the changes :

- Fixed Resolution Problem

- Changed to tabbed interface for easier use and easier addition of future features (very easy to add new tabs :o))

- Added Ammonium Molybdates (ortomolybdate and heptamolybdate) to salts list

- Added the ability to save and load formulations through a drop down menu. All ppm nutrient levels and solution volumes are saved with the name you input. You can then load them simply by selecting them from the menu. If you close the program simply click the "load formulations" button to get them back. You can also remove them using the "remove selected" button.

-You can also add external formulations, simply place the file of the formulation in the folder where the program is located in, input the name next to the "add external" button, click it and the formulations should appear in the drop down menu. You can save your formulations and share the files with anyone you want :o) files for formulations are saved within the same folder as the program.

Well, I hope that all these changes make the calculator much more useful and user-friendly for everyone out there. Hopefully it will also enable us to easily share a lot of formulations :o). I am also implementing other features you guys suggested including the "reverse" (input salts, fertilizer, etc, -> get ppm) and a pH and EC prediction module.

Thank you very much for all your comments and support :o) Please let me know what you think !

Best Regards,

Daniel

Thank you very much for your message :o) Iron tends to precipitate under certain conditions and for this reason people usually use a little bit more iron (3-4 ppm) when using iron sulfate as the main source of this element.

In general chelates do seem to eliminate this problem. You can use FeEDTA from the salts list if you want to use a chelated form of iron. Certain studies have also shown EDTA not to be the best chelate for hydroponics with Fe-DPTA being more widely used lately. There have also been some concerns regarding Cu deficiencies caused by some Iron chelating agents like EDTA but this has yet to be proven.

I use iron sulfate because I also like to experiment with different chelates, adding them after I prepare the whole formulation to chelate the iron (this might also be a future feature of the program).

I hope you enjoy the calculator :o) Make sure you leave any further feedback or suggestions you may have,

Best Regards,

Daniel

Thank you for your message. Certainly the 13% FeEDTA you refer to is the same one available on the nutrient's list (people usually call it this way because NaFeEDTA has an Iron content of about 13%), so you can definitely use it for your solution. Let me now if you have any other comments or suggestions :o)

Daniel

Thank you for your reply :o) The calculations are bound to differ slightly due to differences in the actual molar mass values used in the program (which calculate the Fe percentage) and may be more accurate than the reported 13% which is bound to be more like 12.5-14.5%. However I am glad that your calculations are also in good agreement.

I will add a separate FeEDTA with a fixable percentage so that people are able to use Iron sources of varying purity. Thanks again for helping me make the software better :o)

Best Regards,

Daniel

Thank you for your reply :o) The calculations are bound to differ slightly due to differences in the actual molar mass values used in the program (which calculate the Fe percentage) and may be more accurate than the reported 13% which is bound to be more like 12.5-14.5%. However I am glad that your calculations are also in good agreement.

I will add a separate FeEDTA with a fixable percentage so that people are able to use Iron sources of varying purity. Thanks again for helping me make the software better :o)

Best Regards,

Daniel

Hope that made some sense :)

Judging by the difference in ppm`s it appears to have a different composition to the calcium nitrate tetrahydrate used in the program.
I`m not sure how agricultural chemical compositions vary across the world but the ability to manually enter a product into the database may be a good additional feature too.

The problem with the calcium nitrate you use is that it is actually not calcium nitrate but a mixed salt of Calcium and ammonium nitrates. Since the salt you are using is not actually calcium nitrate but a mixture, it is very important to know if what you are buying is actually what the manufacturer says it is. In this case the description of the product is simply misleading.

I will see what I can do to implement an "add custom salt" feature so that people can use such products in the future. Thank you very much for your suggestion :o)

Daniel

By the way, you just gave me another idea. I may also add a "percentage to ppm" option so that you can actually mimic your "favorite" commercial hydroponic fertilizer. There are so many things to add and so little time :o).

I hope you are enjoying the calculator,

Daniel

After a lot of hard work I am glad to announce the next version of this free hydroponic nutrient calculator which from now on will be called 'hydroponic buddy'. I made the following improvements/fixes/additions :

- Added Custom Salt/Fertilizer (you can now add any salt or fertilizer you want with a custom composition)

- Added Purity Feature (salt purity can now be specified)

- Added 'salt to formulation' feature, you can now input a given mass of salt in grams and a given volume and get the final ppm concentration. This is very useful if you want to examine a fertilizer you are currently using or just do manual modification to the automatically calculated formulas

-Custom salts/fertilizers can also be used in conjunction with other salts/fertilizers when calculating nutrient solutions through the 'direct addition' method. Using the other method this cannot be done because compatibility issues cannot be addressed knowing only percentage compositions.

- Added concentrated A+B type solution preparation. The program now has a 'preparation mode' where weights and instructions are given to prepare A and B stock solutions which are then used to prepare the final reservoir.

-Program automatically checks salt compatibility of salts in A+B solutions, it will warn you if you are attempting to use incompatible salts.

-Problem with zero divide errors when nutrient levels are set at 0 has now been fixed.

-Problem related with inaccurate calculation when using gallons has always been fixed.

-pH and EC prediction modules have been added. pH is predicted using various approximations and there might be significant deviations if non-distilled water is used. EC values are predicted according to limiting molar conductivities and the values might be 0.2-0.5 mS/cm higher than in reality. Make sure you leave a comment with your results vs the prediction.

- A calculation summary results column has been added next to the formulation input to give you a quick idea of the results without having to change between tabs.

You can download the latest version using the link provided on this post :o) I hope you enjoy it a lot ! Make sure you leave any comments, suggestions or bugs you may find,

Best Regards,

Daniel

Thank you very much for your comments :o)

@hex2006 : Thank you for pointing that possible error out, I'll check it out and I'll post a message with my conclusions and change the labels if necessary. I hope you continue to use the software and leave any additional observations you may have.

@bbrush : Thank you for your kind words :o) I hope you use and like the program and leave whatever comments you have here.

Again, thank you very much guys for helping me make the software better :o). We should start to build a database of fertilizers, salts, recipes etc ! Please continue to leave whatever comments you may have,

Best Regards,

Daniel

I have just looked into this issue and I have corrected the Mn and Zn mixup. If you redownload the latest version of the calculator you'll see that Mn and Zn now match what they should :o). I am currently working on an additive module (peroxide, hypochlorite, algicides, vitamins, selenium, sodium, silicates, etc) so I hope I can keep on improving the program. Thank you very much for helping my software improve !

Best Regards,

Daniel

PS : What do you think about a "pH and EC" journal feature with graphs, etc ? I thought it would be cool for home growers and small hydro business owners.

Not sure if you can use any of the above in your program but it could be quite useful to growers using a drain to waste system.
Perhaps the journal/graphing side could have a user button to select whether its a recirculating or drain to waste system which could enable the additional run-off PH,EC,TDS side of the feature?
A few ideas to ponder :)

Thanks again for your comments :o)

@hex2006 : Definitely, I am starting to work on this feature and I will include the options you suggest for people using run-to-waste systems. The new feature will allow people to login their pH and EC measurements and the program will tell them when they need to change nutrients, adjust pH levels, etc. It will also allow people to have accurate logs for their crop cycles and get an idea of how much nutrients, pH solutions and water they spend. Hopefully this calculator will become the "standard software tool" for the home hydroponic grower and small business owner.

@homehydro : Yes, I understand what you say and possibly I'll write a manual for the calculator when v.1.0 comes out. I have not writen anything extensive due to the fact that many more features are yet to be added and I want this to have all the main uses implemented before I start to write any document. However rest assured that I will definitely write a detailed manual for people who are new at preparing their own nutrients.

Thanks again for all the comments guys :o) Please check my blog within the next few days as I will be adding some examples on how to use the program with "commercial fertilizers", how you can figure out their main "recipe" with the program and a lot of additional stuff. Thank you very much again for all the interest :o)

Best Regards,

Daniel

The first two tutorials on how to use my calculator with commercial fertilizers are now available :o) You can access them at :

Part 1 - http://allhydroponics.blogspot.com/2010/06/using-my-nutrient-calculator-with.html

Part 2 - http://allhydroponics.blogspot.com/2010/06/using-my-nutrient-calculator-with_21.html

I hope you enjoy them :o) Please leave any comments, bugs, suggestions or feature ideas you may have !

Best Regards,

Daniel

I have just writen a new tutorial to show you how to prepare concentrated A and B solutions using my hydroponics calculator . You can check it out here :

http://allhydroponics.blogspot.com/2010/06/preparing-and-b-solutions-using-my.html

Thank you very much again for all the comments and interest :o)

Best Regards,

Daniel

You're welcome for the tutorials :o) I'll be waiting for any comments or questions you have after you finish reading them. Thank you very much for your interest !

Best Regards,

Daniel

Forgive me if this is covered already, but the GH Flora series is a 3 part series (Micro, Gro, Bloom), and from the tutorial it seems that it does A and B, but can it do an A, B and C solution also?

I understand the point of leaving out the GH Gro from the example, so you can show how to calculate the missing/needed salts to complete the nutrient solution. Just wondering if you can add a part 3, (C) to the equation in my case because I actually use a 3 part nutrient solution?

Thank you for your comments :o)

@Ken : Thank you for your input ! I hope that you will be able to use the calculator to get the values of calcium and magnesium salts needed to compliment the current Marvel Laboratories products you want to use. As always make sure you leave any suggestions for improvements (or tutorials) or any questions you have regarding the process.

@HomeHydro : The problem here is mainly that a 3 part solution is actually NOT needed to create any hydroponic nutrient formulation. The reason why Advanced nutrients and other brands use 3 parts is because they change the composition of the formulation over time. So it is the equivalent to preparing an A and B formula with the program for two different formulations sharing a B solution. What you do then is change the ratios of A1 and A2 additions such that you slowly shift from one to the other. I will write a tutorial on how to prepare and use such "A,B,C" solutions and how to slowly change form one to the other. I hope this answers your questions !

Thank you very much for all your input and interest :o) I hope you are all enjoying my hydroponic calculator,

Best Regards,

Daniel

I guess that I have not read enough because I am not sure how the A1, A2 additions work. That's my fault. If I understand correctly you are saying that only two parts are needed. I was just hoping to be able to compare the 3 part nutrients that I have, using your nutrient calculator.

P.S. I normally use the same amount (10mL of each) of all 3 parts of the GH Flora series in my nutrient solution because they are all continuously flowering/fruiting plants.

I will wait for the new tutorial (no hurry), I'm sure that will answer any questions that I have. Again I really appreciate the work you are doing, but don't rush things for me because I have a lot of things I need to deal with first. But I'm very interested.

Thank you very much for your reply :o) I have just seen your message after I posted the next tutorial on A,B and C solutions so I guess that it was a happy coincidence ! The tutorial explains the purpose of three part nutrients and how the program can be used to prepare A,B and C concentrated nutrient solutions.

Third Tutorial on A-B-C preparations here :

http://allhydroponics.blogspot.com/2010/06/preparing-b-and-c-three-part.html

Regarding your current schedule, if you are just using 10mL of each one of the three part nutrients and you are not changing them with time then you could simply prepare a custom two part formulation to do the same. As the tutorial explains, three part formulations only make sense when gradual nutrient changes are done, otherwise you could simply make a custom two part formulation to reach the same fixed concentration levels.

I will be adding a tutorial in a few days about how to go from a given fixed formulation using commercial fertilizers to a custom preparation using regular salts :o)(right now you can follow the first tutorial to add all GH products you're using and check the ppm levels you get with the amounts you are adding) Thank you very much again for your comments, I hope you like the new tutorial !

Best Regards,

Daniel

Just to clarify. When doing A+B stock solution calcs the amount you enter under '>Desired Formulation >Volume' equals the size of your stock tanks, or you reservoir tank? If it's stock tanks, say I enter '15 gallons', does this assume I have 2 x 15gal tanks or 15/2= 7.5gal A and 7.5gal B tanks?

Maybe a separate "Stock tank volume size" may be more intuitive under the 'Volume of Concentrated A and B Solutions' unit selection radial. Then on the 'Calculation Results' page have an area were you can enter the volume of nutrient solution you want to prepare and it will output the amount of A & B solutions necessary in Gal/oz/liters. I figure the more math your calculator does for the end-user the easier to use and less room for error for new users.

Second, I assume the amount of salts on the 'Calculation Results' are all in grams. Maybe adding something on that page stating it. Also possibly a calculator or a second automatic conversion column that displays the macro nutrients in ounces.

Third, it would be nice to be able to save your own list of salts either as a file or as default so that it makes it easier upon loading the software not having to change them each time.

Fourth, I found that if when running the same nutrient profile I would get wildly different results for Ca & S if I told the prog I had Potassium Nitrate in addition to my other salts or not. W/o it selected I get a much closer formulation, again this is only affecting Ca & S.

Fifth, I second the request for Yara Calcinit as an included salt selection. It seems to be the most commonly available for many, and is also what some bulk online retailers sell as well.

Thanks for the software.

Thank you very much for your comments :o) I will now try to address your questions and suggestions.

The volume is for your final nutrient reservoir. The program then gives you the volume of stock solution you need to prepare with the amounts of salts you need to weight under the results tab. The volume of stock solution is calculated so that you can make 10 reservoir changes before running out of stocks. There is no volume input field for the stock solution right now but I may implement it in the future as you requested. For example, if you have a 100L reservoir (which is the volume you input) the program will give you weights to prepare 10L of A and 10L of B solution (which last for 10, 100L reservoir changes).

The amounts of salts are all in grams (you can see the "g" symbol for gram after every quantity), I will probably add an option to convert to ounces in the future as I agree that this might be convenient for some people.

I agree with this feature, I have personally used the calculation from its inception and I have thought about this feature a few times. It will be implemented before the next version comes out.

Well, the problem with Potassium nitrate might be caused by the particular choice of salts you are using which might make the internal solver reach a "strange solution". It would be good if you could post the salt list (just which salts you are using containing Ca, S and K) and your ppm values for these nutrients so that I can further debug the problem or tell you the reason why you are experiencing these problems.

I will also add the Yara Calcinit as a default salt within the next release so that people who use this very common form of calcium nitrate can use it within all program features.

Thank you very much for helping me make my software better :o)

Best Regards,

Daniel

Calcinit: 15.5%N 19%Ca
magnesium nitrate: 11%N 15%MgO
magnesium sulphate: 16%MgO 13%S
Mono potassium phosphate: 52%P2O5 34%K2O
potassium nitrate: 13.7%N 46.3%K2O
potassium sulphate: 51%K2O 18%S

You`re doing sterling work :)

Thank you very much for your comment and the salt list :o) As you say, most of them line up well with the already added salts except Calinit which has a significant deviation due to its mixed-salt character. I will add that one so that people can use it in their preparations as it has already been suggested. I think that adding the others ones will not be necessary since they are already within the program :o).

However I should note here that you should always use the adequate purity level given on the analysis provided by Yara so that calculations are more accurate. For example, the magnesium nitrate hexahydrate provided by Yara has a purity of 98.5% which you should input on the purity field.

Thanks again for your comments and kind words about my work :o)

Best Regards,

Daniel

Daniel

Here's the part I guess, where I have a special request too.
Would you be so kind and integrate SEA SALT to the salt list?

Only if you consider it useful, of course, you may even add sea water:
Here are two links to the composition of the trace elements of sea water in ppm. As for sea salt, the average content is 3.5% of total salts (solids) to 96.5% of H2O (average I suppose).

Composition macro and minor elements:
http://0.tqn.com/d/saltaquarium/1/0/3/a/1/saltelementsenh_500.JPG

Top 14 trace elements:
http://0.tqn.com/d/saltaquarium/1/0/7/a/1/top14elementsenh_500.jpg

The downside of course ist the dominance of Cl, but as we know, same as for micro elements, the dose makes the individualized medicine ... ;-)

T.I.A.

Thank you very much for your comment :o) I will not be adding sea salt due to the following reasons :

1 - composition of sea salt and sea water is very varied through the seven seas. There may be an important under or over estimation of micronutrients from one place to another.

2 - sea salt or sea water have NOT been proved to improve plant growth in any scientific peer reviewed publication and from current literature the effect can be suspected to be negative.

3 - There is NO scientific evidence that currently points out that sea salt or sea water may have any effect besides that of an adequate micro nutrient formulation and the large quantity (in proportion) of chloride ions is bound to cause detrimental effects.

For the above reasons I believe that there is no reason to add sea salt or sea water to the calculator. An addition may also be interpreted as an invitation to use this in hydroponics which is something there is currently no scientific basis for. You can read more about this in my blog where I wrote a post about the use of sea water and sea salt in hydroponics. I did an extensive literature research from which I concluded all the above.

You are always welcome to point me to any scientific literature with adequate testing of sea salt if you believe I am missing some vital piece of reliable information :o) Thank you very much again for your comment,

Best Regards,

Daniel

It's funny because in fact I came across an actual SEA WATER formula based on 12 to 88 parts Sea/Fresh Water recently.

But never mind, I can in fact do my own calculations instead, as I anyway do.

Thank you very much for your answer :o)

No, no sensitive topic, don't worry about it :o) I am just concerned with the current "fashion" to use sea water in formulations, something which has no scientific basis and I just don't want my calculator to be a part of it. As you know I stick to proven and trusted findings that are backed up by peer reviwed publications and this "sea water" thing is just too pseudo scientific, up until now at least. I would encourage you to use a well balanced micro nutrient formulation instead of using sea water.

Of course, if reliable third party controlled experimentation confirms tha sea water is beneficial, I will use it without a doubt :o)

Best regards,

Daniel

On the other hand, I can fully understand that sea salt or sea water doesn't necessarily belong with your project or final calculator. And it goes without saying that this simply is your choice.

Anyway, from my end I didn't even know of sea salt in nutrients as a "fashion" or anything of the sort. I am not interested in any pseudo-scientific part of it either. I am simply understanding that sea water is (100% scientifically seen) a free and perfect natural source of several minor and trace elements, besides providing some extra macro nutrients. And if the chlorine levels are not exceeded in a nutrient solution, I can't detect nor imagine anything wrong with it. And there are indeed some rare trace elements that come with it.

From my side, I would encourage you to occasionally look a bit less rigidly and "scientifically" at what happens outside the box. Sometimes something doesn't necessarily need to be better or perfect, to be just fine.

Btw: appeal to authority-, in this case to science, is a very popular rhetoric argument among academics and non-academics alike. But science unfortunately isn't infallible. There is often contradiction between experts and propagation of blinkered expertise. Unfortunately scientists aren't exactly immune against error caused by and propagated through dogmatism either.

I went through quite a bunch of papers and publishing in the last few years and the problem with scientific research in hydroponics seems to be with the choices, targeted results and kind of experiments that is generally done. It's mostly very chosen, even picky and specific, mostly about single crops. In fact not very pragmatical for any "end user" and hence it can't rarely be used with, nor transferred to actual conditions and cases one is interested in. In fact there is a lack of scientific research regarding pragmatical use of hydroponics in various conditions and with various crops or varieties as we know and cultivate them. Making a long story short: you often wonder how any of it is helpful. And, in case you need some material about something you're working on, you really have to be lucky to find anything at all. Thus and in this field, the argument of "there is no scientific evidence about it", is not exactly the most convincing-one to me. ;-)

Anyway don't let me distract you, keep up the good work!

Thank you for your comment :o) You indeed point out many interesting things in your comments and I believe that many of the things you say are worth addressing.

Don't think that I am inflexible or that I rely solely on scientific literature. What happens here is that - as a chemist - I have learned to put aside the things that work and the things you might "believe work". There might be a lot of anecdotical evidence about something "working" when in fact it might not be the case. Often you find in the hydroponics field that people will use or buy anything without any true evidence that there is any value to it. A perfect example of this is the addition of Vitamins to hydroponics solutions. There are tons of additives in the industry that use them and yet there is no evidence we can fully trust that says they truly work.

The problem and the reason why you may feel that reserach in hydroponics is limited, is that the field is immensely complex and the focus of study has to be narrowed so that you can obtain reliable results. You cannot simply study the effect of X or Y additive on a wide variety of plants because statistically meaningful results would be very hard to obtain due to genetic variability. You need a carefully controlled study on a single plant which allows you to draw some limited - yet valid conclusions of the research you are doing.

Certainly I can understand that for a person who is not within both worlds (doing both academic research and commercial or hobby growth), the direct contributions of these research papers might seem limited and they are in the sense that they do not offer -most of the time- any directly applicable solution to the home grower. However current literature is bound to create the improvements and techniques which will be used in the future and I can tell you that - from my experience - I have been able to extract significant improvements for both my research and commercial ventures. Examples of this are clearly the use of ion exchange resins to control pH levels, the use of selenates to increase the selenium content of commercial lettuce crops, the adequate control of EC levels to increase the quality of tomatoes, etc.

What I am saying here is not that I am not "open" to believe that some things outside scientifc literature might work but what I am saying is that you cannot say that something works if it has not been tested through adequate research methodology mainly because results are simply anecdotical and they simply do not have the statistical relevance to say anything conclusively. For example, if you test Y additive and it works for you, how can you know it wasn't any of the other thousands of variables you weren't controlling that affected your results ? It is NOT a matter of being dogmatic, it is a matter of being RIGUROUS to obtain VALID conclusions.

Regarding sea water and sea salt... Where do I start ? :o) There is just no valid evidence showing that sea water can provide improvements to crops, either on soil or hydroponics outside what the sellers of this "magic sea fertilizers" have experimented themselves (with an obvious bias). Certainly sea water contains many micronutrients and in many cases almost all elements of the periodic table found naturally on Earth. However common fertilizers also contain a myriad of this so-called "rare micro nutrients". For example, a rigurous analysis of a fertilizer grade copper sulfate sample will reveal trace elements of almost all heavy metals. Plants have also NOT been shown to need any elements besides those commonly used in hydroponics so implying that sea water offers an advantage because it contains "rare trace elements" is just a claim made without any evidence of the matter.

Besides this you also have to take into account that the established toxic thresehold for chloride ions in hydroponics is around 200 ppm. This means that you would only be able to add less than 5% of sea water to a hydroponic solution before you reach that thresehold and stress related effects due to excessive chloride would appear. However, apparently positive effects from this mere increase in osmotic pressure might appear in some plants like tomatoes which benefit from increases in conductivity. Therefore sea water might appear to improve fruit quality when it is just the increase in conductivity that does. Many of these similar effects might be responsible for many of this anecdotical evidence and as I said before, there is simply no evidence showing that sea water has any SPECIAL benefit besides those offered by regular nutrients.

What I am saying here is that there is no evidence obtained in a reliable enough manner to draw conclusions that have the statistical validity to confirm that sea water or sea salt improves the yield of crops. So right now using sea water has simply no basis in any real world evidence that shows that the improvements are not simply a cause of something else.

As I said on my blog I was recently offered a job to carry out scientific tests with adequate methodology to evaluate the performance of hydroponic crops using sea salt/sea water. I had to decline because the company who wanted to hire me had a commercial interest on the fertilizer and therefore I was being "pushed" to obtain a certain set of results. My only condition to work on this was that any results I obtained, no matter how positive or negative, would be published on a peer reviewed journal. The answer of the company was that they would not allow me to publish negative results.

As I said, up until now there is simply NO reliable evidence to say that sea water or sea salt provides ANY benefit besides those of regular well balanced hydroponic solutions. This is the current REALITY of this matter, something that can only be changed through careful experimentation. This is not an appeal to authority but a fact, there is simply no evidence that can show that sea salt or sea water works conclusively in a satistically meaningful manner.

I think that we are moving away from the point of this topic which is the discussion of my calculator and its use so I would encourage you to email me directly if you want to continue this interesting discussion :o)

Thank you very much again for your posts and comments,

Best Regards,

Daniel

Thanks for your prompt reply. Here is compiled image of my salts and the result I get once I add KNO3. Disregard the NH4, it has no effect on the calc.

After reading your clarification regarding the A+B tank size may I suggest that you include a stock tank version of calculation. For people using proportioner's there is no large reservoir rather a small mixing tank, and therefore the salt calculations are dependent on stock tank size. As it stands one must manufacture a number for solution tank size that backs into the correct volume of your solution tanks, and also factor in the 10x change as well. And if you top up before the stock tank is completely empty it again would be easier to just enter the amount of stock you need to add back into the calculator.

On second look I see list the size of the stock solutions on the 'Calculation Results' page however they are a little lost in their location and seem part of the notes on first look and was why I missed them. Maybe highlighting them in a text box like the other results or placing the volume beneath each 'Concentrated X Solution' header. Also the line 'calculations of stock solutions are done so that you can prepare "at least" 10 solution changes' is a bit ambiguous. Maybe just stating directly that the volumes calculated for the stocks are for 10x the solution volume chosen in the calcs.

When I was talking about the gram units not being listed I was talking about those on the on 'Calculation Results' page where on my copy it shows no units either in the header or in the results column. It just states CaNO3 Mass = 1234. I see that when you save the results the text file lists them, but maybe adding a subtitle under each calc box that all masses are in gram measurements just for clarity if somebody is doing a quick formulation directly in the software without saving out the text file.

I am glad to hear you will be adding Calcinit to future versions. Regarding purity maybe we could come up with a collective of different commonly available manufactures' purities that could be in a notes file for ease in adding new salts or adjusting for proper purity since some manufacturers don't list them on the bag. That or add a list that states the average purity of each salt @ solution grade.

Keep it up, thanks.

Thank you very much for your message :o) I have taken note of all your observations and I will be implementing them on the next release. I will add the gram/ounce option (which should resolve any ambiguity) and I will change the A+B calculation so that you can have the option to use stock solution volume independently if no nutrient reservoir is actually present. I You are right in that the current implementation could be confusing regarding this aspect. I will also add some visual clarification so that the volumes of stock, etc, are not easily lost.

About the database, it is also an idea I've been having, documenting many different salts and commercial fertilizers so that they are easily available with the "click of a button" once you start the software. I will probably start to gather this information once v.1.0 comes out.

Regarding your current calculation problem, I have successfully reproduced your issue. The problem is that the software does not want to use potassium sulfate if you make nitrate available and therefore it uses potassium nitrate to fulfill all K requirements. This in turn makes the formulation not need as much nitrate from calcium nitrate which drops the level of calcium. Sulphur also drops as only S coming from magnesium sulfate is being made available. I will also see if I can implement a solution for this problem within the next release although the easiest fix is to simply try different salt combinations until you reach close compositions (like you did). Often large errors like this can appear when too many salts with the same elements are chosen.

Thank you very much again for your observations and for helping me make my software better :o) I hope you will enjoy all this modifications once the next version comes out !

Best Regards,

Daniel Fernandez

Just a thought.

But I need to point out (actually repeat) something important in this context first: I didn't ever say (nor insinuate) anything about sea water being able to providing any improvements. You must confusing me with someone else or referring to some other source, I guess. Again, I merely see it as an interesting (and free) source of minerals. That it's proportion is limited and the causes, that I did point out at the first place, didn't I?

Even if I didn't claim anything in this context, - I totally agree with your view on what you call anecdotical evidence, what in many cases I tend to call selective observation of individuals or interest groups. But the forums and the world of hydroponics is filled up with it. Unfortunately in many cases, that is all people of various levels (of understanding) can or want to provide. Perhaps that I am fighting this desperate fight against windmills even longer than you do ;-)
Especially in this forum, if you ask people to backup their claims with some credible sources or scientific evidence, they look at you if you came from mars or get cute with you. In some case I even got a reminder that this is in fact an amateur place as an argument instead LOL

When you point out that you actually did refuse working condition, under which you are not allowed to publish negative results, - have you consider that such thing is current and that in fact even independent and non-commercialy oriented scientists are under all kinds of pressure and somehow "pushed" to obtain a certain set of results? As you should know in fact, the point in most studies is to deliver something conclusive. And this premiss has indeed a great influence on choices for experiments and studies. Ranging from thesis to postdoctoral work and beyond, doesn't it? And if this isn't the heck of a penalty to the "end-user", you tell me what is. Don't you worry, I fully understand the principles of a scientific method and hence am aware of the fact that you have to use a single variable at a time and not a multitude, to get conclusive results. I actually point this out on many occasions and recommend people to not change even 2 variables at a time. Otherwise it could be either of them who brought improvement or aggravation of a problem. Your song has the right pitch, but you certainly are serenading at the wrong window ;)

With science there in fact is lots of deception going on. Why? Well because there is always some sort of INTEREST. Science is done by humans, not by some kind of ubermensch. Just have a look at the 'current' controversy and dilemma about human caused CO2, where in fact data has been selected or even falsified (or have they been confused?) to fit the hockey- or an other curve. In fact both sides actually mix hard and anecdotical evidence (as well as selective observation and data) to some rhetorical conglomerate to be most convincing. Does this make me trust in "Science"?

I am not wanting to extend the "salt water" issue, but I do have a question that I think a chemist might be able help answer. I understand that salt is toxic to plants (at least table salt). I e-mailed that question to GH and they mostly replayed that TDS stands for total dissolved solids, not salts. I am not sure, but I have come to the conclusion that the term "salts" refers to a solid that is able to be dissolved in a liquid. Thus not all salts are toxic to plants, but mostly just table salt (I think sodium chloride) and what ever the type of salt that is used in water softeners.

P.S. I never did it, but I remember being told as a kid about people who poured table salt on someones front lawn and ruined there grass.

Thank you very much for all your comments :o)

@Lucas : You are right about most of the things you have said. We - as scientists - tend to have many pressures or even personal points of view that may sometimes interfere with objective interpretation of experiments. However this is in part what makes a scientist good, the ability to separate him or herself from external influences and interpret results in a purely objective manner. This is also why the scientific community has implemented peer review as a way to control the quality and objectivity of publications. Your collegues must agree that your research is valid and worthy of publication. Also please keep future posts on this thread about the software :o) As I said before, I encourage you to email me if you want to continue this discussion.

@HomeHydro : Certainly ! you can use my calculator to calculate the final nutrient concentrations you get using the GH Flora Series. Just add all the fertilizers using the "Add custom salt" button, check them and input the amounts you are using. Then go to the "Salts to formulations" tab , input your reservoir volume and click the button to calculate the nutrient ppm values. You will be able to see the exact composition you are reaching with your FloraSeries additions.

Regarding your questions about salts, I will be glad to answer. A salt is defined - in chemistry - as a substance containing bonds which are mainly ionic in character. For example table salt (NaCl) is formed by ionic bonds between Na(+) and Cl(-) ions. The bonds are called ionic because they are formed between ions (particles with net charge) having a main electrostatic character. Many salts dissolve in water (like table salt) while many others do not (like barium sulfate) while substances that are not salts can also dissolve (like regular sugar). The TDS measurement is an approximation to the amount of dissolved solids when the solids follow a linear relationship with conductivity as exhibited by - for example - table salt. However, TDS does not measure total dissolved solids accurately when the dissolved solids do not have a linear response against conductivity (like with sugar, acetic acid, citric acid, etc).

Plants absorb nutrients as ions which come from salts. For example, plants absorb potassium as K(+) ions which can come from KNO3 (potassium nitrate). Therefore, ions, coming from salts are actually what plants "eat" since hydrated ions are the assimilable forms of mineral nutrients. The problem with table salt is that it provides two ions which are only needed by plants in very small quantities (Na(+) and Cl(-)). Particularly, chloride ions become toxic to plants when they reach 200-300 ppm concentrations and the added effect of an increase in osmotic pressure can also cause the plants to wilt. So when you add a lot of sodium chloride to a solution you are actually causing two effects, you cause chloride toxicity and you make the plant less able to absorb water. However if you do a small 10ppm addition, effects are more bound to be negligible since plants have evolved to deal with slight to moderate presence of NaCl in soil. Some plants like tomatos are highly resistant to NaCl while others like lettuce are not.

In the end, it is all about the quantities you add and the individual salts you add. It is all about knowing the ions the plants need and adding them in the amounts required. So any salt can be toxic, depending on how much of it you add.

I hope I have answered your questions :o) Thank you very much again for your comments and for helping me improve my software !

Best Regards,

Daniel

I was further playing around with your software last night and found that the A+B salt weights were off. So I compared against the straight addition calculations and found it was multiplying by the size of the stock tank a second time.

For example:

I chose 80ppm N for 3000gal straight addition it calculates a result of CaNO3= 7651.26g

If I use the same 80ppm N for 300gal A+B x10 changes = 3000gal solution (30gal stocks) it calculates a result of CaNO3 mass =229539g

229539 / 7651.26 = 30.00 x the proper amount needed.

If I select 2000gal vs 200gal A+B =20gal stocks it comes out 20x over, etc.

Thank you very much for your comment :o) I see your point, you have indeed discovered a very nasty bug that seems to cause bad calculations in the program. However you are not calculating the salt requirements appropiately :

If you make a straight addition calculation it means that you will need 7651.26g of Ca(NO3)2 to prepare a 3000 gal nutrient solution.

If you use the A+B calculation and input 3000 gal the calculator will calculate the amounts of salts needed for 10 , 3000 gallon reservoir changes. This means that the amount of Ca(NO3)2 needed is 10x7651.26 and NOT just 7651.26 since you need 10 times more calcium nitrate in the stock solution to remake the 3000 gal reservoir concentration level 10 times. A 300 gal soltion with 76512.6 does indeed give you a 1:100 concentration level over a 3000 gal, 7651.26g solution with each 30 gal addition being able to reconstitute a 3000 gal reservoir.

I have just fixed this nasty bug and the calculator now does show all the calculations correctly. It seems that I missed it before since sometimes the calculations are done correctly, the problem seems to have been related with the internal checkup procedure to determine solubility, etc. I will also fix the tutorial images to match the correct calculations if any of them are wrong.

Please download the last version of the calculator at :

http://allhydroponics.blogspot.com/2010/06/first-free-hydroponic-nutrient.html

Please leave any further comments you may have :o) Thank you very much again for helping me make my software better,

Best Regards,

Daniel

When doing the A+B calculations I used 10x less to account for the factored 10 reservoir changes. Maybe my previous post was not that clear, but I did factor the 10x. Therefore I used 3000gal for the straight addition calcs, and 300gal (30gal stocks @ 1:100) for A+B calcs.

Will test the updated software now.

Regards

Oh ok, it wasn't clear but I now see what you mean :o). Please use the new version now and make sure you are getting accurate results. If you find any other bug or errors please leave a post here and I'll correct it ASAP :o) Thanks again for your help debugging !

Best Regards,

Daniel

I erased all copies and downloaded a fresh copy from your site but I still get the same error, is v0.5 the latest version? That's what is currently being served on your site.

The correct amount of nutrients are being multiplied by the stock tank size see below image:

Regards

Another thing I just noticed from the quick calculations I ran with the updated software is that I did not update the salts, and after viewing the screen grab I see additional errors. If you look the straight 3000gal calc uses Ca(H2PO4)2 and the A+B does not, but all the salts are 30X, so it is not made up for anywhere. Also the FeSO4 is missing as well from the stock A.

Regards

My Apologies

Thank you for your posts :o) Your screen shots are STILL from the OLD version. Your browser is most likely using a cached version of the program and does not download the new one. I have just verified the download on a separate computer and the new version is downloaded correctly. To fix this problem just right click on the link to download and select "save link as" and select a new name for the program. Note that version is still 0.5 because only this minor fix was done.

The calculations, as I said before, should now give you accurate masses. I have also updated the tutorial screenshots so you can use them to verify your results. Please verify that all calculations are done accurately and post your results when you're done :o) I will also be glad to correct any other errors or bugs you may find !

Thank you very much again for your comments and for helping me make the software better :o)

Best Regards,

Daniel

PS : I am already working on V.0.7 which will include lots of new features and the answers to most of your requests :o)

I am glad to announce the release of version 0.7 of my hydroponic calculator (hydroponic buddy). The new version features many improvements over 0.5 which are detailed below (thank you for all the suggestions by the way !) :

- added option to change from grams to ounces
- added EC prediction for custom salts and for salt to formulation calculations
- added option to save selections of salts ( only works for included salts)
- added Yara brand calcium nitrate
- added option to prepare custom amount of stock solution (for A+B calculations)
- added cubic meters for stock solution calculations
- highlighted stock solution volumes in RED in the results page to make sure the user sees them when doing A+B calculations

- New section called Nutrient Log !!!
- Log your pH and EC levels as a function of time
- Plot charts
- analyze your results
- the analyzer also gives you some observations if it notes a lot of deviation or variation on your EC/pH levels.
-the analyzer also tells you when to change your reservoir or top off with water !
- You can also use the nutrient log for run to waste systems using the checkbox included
- analyze the average/highest/lowest difference between in and out pH/EC levels (for run to waste systems).
- Save data for future reference.

As always, you can download the latest version of my calculator here (the calculator should now display version 0.7 on the first tab) :

http://allhydroponics.blogspot.com/2010/06/first-free-hydroponic-nutrient.html

Please leave any comments, observations or suggestions you may have regarding the current version :o) Thank you very much again for your interest and for helping me make my software better !

Best Regards,

Daniel

Thank you very much for your follow-up :o) The current implementation of the calculator does take into account phosphate ion buffering effects but it does not let you know the buffering capacity of your nutrient solution. This is a good suggestion so I will be implementing this feature within the next release of the calculator :o).

Definitely water quality issues are also something I am currently working on. The next version will have a "water quality" section which will deal with all the needed adjustments necessary for a given water character. You will be able to input water analysis values or general conditions like "hard water" and the calculator will build the solutions to compensate for this fact and it will warn you if any salts that may not be suitable for hard water are used.

There are also a lot of other features which will be implemented before v1.0 comes out. I am also working on an additive section (giving you the choice to use silicates, trichoderma cultures, peroxide regimes, hypochlorite, etc) ,an update module so that you will be able to easily know when new versions are out and an online database so that we can easily share formulations, recipes, etc. I will also be adding about 10 more salts to the default salt list.

Thank you very much again for your comment and for helping me make my software better :o) Please feel free to leave any further suggestions, questions or comments you may have,

Best Regards,

Daniel

Nice work, your calculator has grown tremendously in a very short time.

On thing I noted is when using the new Stock Solutions based on Stock tanks size feature, that a value of 1 or less in the Reservoir Volume (not stock volume) entry box caused minor variation in the results.

On the new data logging page the date/time entry is a little tedious. Is it possible to have a "use current date" button that would auto-fill with the current date. Also maybe have a separate entry box for time, and allow graphing without a time value entered for each date for people doing only day-to-day tracking/logging.

Overall a great update.

Regards

Thank you very much for your comment :o) I am glad you have liked the latest version where hopefully all the previous issues you had found are solved.

The problem you point out when using Reservoir Volume values smaller than one is due to rounding errors since the volume of the reservoir is always used for the calculations for convenience (it is cancelled later on if using the custom stock size option). When it is very low the masses of some salts simply become extremely low and some errors that change results slightly do appear. Simply leaving the Reservoir volume at its default makes sure this doesn't happen. I will add a warning if such errors are detected so that people don't do inaccurate calculations by accident. Thank you for pointing out this issue :o)

I will also implement your suggestions regarding time input in the nutrient log section within the next release. Thank you very much again for your interest and for helping me make the software better :o)

Best Regards,

Daniel

Today I have done a minor update to version 0.72. As always, you can get the latest version here :

http://allhydroponics.blogspot.com/2010/06/first-free-hydroponic-nutrient.html

These are the changes :

- Added a checkbox to automatically place calculation weight results into the mass fields on the "Nutrient Salts Used" tab, this will make the tweaking of initially calculated values a lot easier. It will also allow you to confirm the formulation you will be finally getting.

- Added Current time button on the nutrient log. This will allow you to get the current time automatically without having to input it manually

- Added a Day to Day checkbox on the nutrient log which allows you to enter values of pH and EC without entering dates (the program assumes a one day separation between data logs).

- Made some minor graphical changes to the nutrient log section

- Automatically check for software updates feature :o) !! With this feature you will be able to easily check within the calculator if you have or don't have the latest version.

I hope to introduce a lot of additional content before version 1.0 comes out. Right now I am working on some additive features and the addition of about 20 more salts to the default list within the program. Thank you very much again for all your help and suggestions :o)

I would love to know how you are using the calculator and how I can make it better for you ! Stay tuned for more tutorials on my blog :o)

Best Regards,

Daniel

I have just made another tutorial on how to prepare your own hydroponic nutrients if you are a TOTAL beginner. The tutorial uses my hydroponic calculator and a general nutrient formulation to guide people who are TOTALLY new to nutrient making into this wonderful adventure.

It can be found here :

http://allhydroponics.blogspot.com/2010/07/preparing-your-own-hydroponic-nutrients.html

The tutorial includes the list of things needed, where to buy the chemicals, how to prepare the concentrated solutions, etc. I hope it will be very useful for all of you who are looking to start preparing your own nutrients but have been "afraid" due to the apparent lack of guidance and the overall technical complexity.

I hope you enjoy it a lot ! Thank you very much for your interest in my calculator and tutorials :o)

Best Regards,

Daniel

I really appreciate the work you are doing to help the home hydroponic gardener (as well as commercial). And I'm very much impressed with the speed in witch you are making progress and updates. I do plan to contact you through e-mail in the future (I think I have the address saved, assuming that's alright). Nothing big, but just don't want to post personal stuff/explanations in a forum at this point.

P.S. Thanks for keeping us informed on the progress.

Had a stock tank refill to do last week and needed to change my formula a bit due to high heat and wind, so I fired up your calculator and presto. Much less math to do, as in none :). Thanks!

I recall you mentioning adding a Run-to-Waste option in a future revision, is this still panned? Just curious as to what % difference, or elemental PPM's you suggest for tomatoes when going from recirculation to RtW in Perlite. Currently I have been using a 5 stage formulation from a Florida University but thought I would ask the expert.

Regards

Any chance of introducing one of the following versions:

1) Spreadsheet
2) Linux
3) Android
4) Java
5) Python
6) Web

?

Thank you very much for all your posts :o) I have been a little bit busy with other stuff so I have neglected this forum and the program for a small while.

@homehydro : I hope that now you have had the time to work a little bit more with the program and input your commercial products within it. Please feel free to email me if you need my help with anything :o)

@donkaa : I am glad that you are using and enjoying my calculator, it is good to see that it definitely makes things - such as the changing of stock solution formulations - much easier to do ! Regarding the run-to-waste option it is already implemented within the nutrient log tab (there is a checkbox to change it to run-to-waste mode). Regarding the formula, I think I am familiarized with the formula you are currently using and I would say it is alright for your purpose, however to truly do a customized formulation for your system other things would have to be known (such as temperature, varieties, growth stage, etc).

@karenrei : I do have considered to port this to linux but definitely it is not that straightforward. In the future I may release a linux version but I cannot promise you anything since I still haven't even finished the first windows version. Once V.1.0 is out I will probably look into porting this to linux. However, as Grizzman said, the program will probably run on wine with no problems.

@Grizzman : the program is not coded in C++, it is coded in Pascal using Borland Delphi. However, you are right in that it is simple code and it should run without problems in wine either way :o)

Thank you very much again for all your posts and interest :o)

Best Regards,

Daniel Fernandez

But as soon as I can afford to replace my computer I will have much more computer time. I only have so much time on the computer, and so many things to get done, some things just remain on the back burner. But thanks for the update, I never really forgot about it.

I really think the calculator is a great idea, but after using it (through wine), I ran into quite a few problems, rendering it unusable to me.

* It calculated negative zinc sulfate dihydrate (!) when I accidentally had the dihydrate enabled in addition to my monohydrate. That'd be a neat trick. ;) Why it felt that I needed a negative amount of zinc in my solution is beyond me.
* Calculate results is ignoring my added salts. So it's saying, for example, no addition of my molybdenum source, none of my zinc source, none of my ammonium source, and none of my sodium nitrate.
* Said ammonium was too high when I spelled out how much ammonium to provide.
* Forgot my added salts when I did some things and also when I restarted it, even though the files are in the directory. Had to re-add them manually (all but one -- only zinc sulfate monohdydrate loaded with "Load saved salt")
* Is missing four chemicals I use by default (not counting my silicon source): zinc sulfate monohydrate, 12-molybdosilic acid, sodium nitrate, and ammonium sulfate.
* Doesn't track sodium (which will have a big impact on EC**)
* Doesn't track silicon (an important, but undervalued, nutrient)
* Doesn't allow you to specify what your water contains by default.
* Can't specify pH adjustments. For example, for pH-down, citric, sulfuric, nitric, or phosphoric acid.

Thank you very much for your follow-up :o) I will now try to explain some of the problems you had.

The negative zinc salt calculation was probably due to an error when your custom salt was implemented. Since most of your problems are related to the addition of custom salts it seems that pascal's file handling is not done correctly when using wine. This explains why your salts are ignored within the calculations and why results were in one case even negative.

Regarding the "ammonium too high" errors message, it is displayed whenever N as ammonium goes beyond a 25 ppm concentration which has been shown in several studies to already induce negative effects. Of course, this message is purely informational but it is based on what I have learned from different studies. Of course, under certain conditions higher concentrations of ammonium can be used but this is not generally the case.

Regarding the default chemicals, water quality and the sodium and silicon tracking, I am working on that and all of that should be implemented within the next section. If you would like to mention your silicon source I'll make sure it gets added when the next release comes out. (I've added potassium and sodium silicates up until now).

Regarding pH adjustments I will add the acids and bases as nutrients so that you know their contributions but predicting pH values for some of these chemicals might prove to be very hard. Especially for weak acids like citric and acetic acid which complicate the overall equations a lot. However the pH effect of strong acids such as nitric and sulfuric acid will be implemented without a lot of problems.

Thank you very much for your post and for helping me make my software better :o) (feel free to make anymore suggestions)

Best Regards,

Daniel

Re, silicon sources: I was initially going to use sodium silicate (water glass), but instead I went with Pyrosol (aka, pyrophyllite -- aluminum silicate hydroxide), as I got a better deal on it per unit silicon and it lets me keep the sodium levels down better, plus I ran into some very positive scientific studies on it. Although they mix it at 35% with "bicarbonate" and "food grade acid" (citric?), which is kind of annoying, and it reportedly leads to a temporary but significant drop in pH when you first apply it at the recommended dosage. Sodium silicate is more widely available, though, so you'd definitely want to include it. Another thing to include is ammonium bisulfate. The pH lowering formulations frequently include it (along with citric acid). I've read of people using acetic acid, but the results reported were less than stellar so I'm avoiding it -- but it might be worth consideration since some people do use it. For pH up, you'll want sodium and potassium bicarbonate, potassium carbonate, potassium hydroxide, and sodium hydroxide.

Thank you for your suggestions :o) I am seriously doubting about the addition and merit of pyrophyllite due to the fact that its solubility is very limited and also because of problems with aluminium toxicity. The Al(3+) ions are known to be toxic to plants and they have also been linked with several diseases in humans (such as Alzheimer's disease) although the links are not conclusive, substantial empirical evidence suggests that aluminium is detrimental to both human and plant health. I will therefore abstain from adding this chemical but I will certainly reconsider it if you share the studies you found so that I may read them and see what new information they bring to light.

Regarding the pH chemicals, I will certainly add them as nutrients (to calculate how much nutrients they bring into solution) but calculating their effect on pH will not be possible for most. I will particularly not be adding citric acid because I cannot accurately predict its effect on pH due to the high complexity it brings to the pH determining equations. Other chemicals such as the carbonates are also going to be very complicated regarding their effect on pH.

I have done several pH prediction curves for different combinations of ions and their buffering effects (in order to design buffers for hydro companies) and having a solution with phosphates, citric acid and carbonates requires the solution of a very complex system of more than 25 non-linear equations. So although this is possible to do with a powerful SAC such as Mathematica or Matlab, it is obviously beyond the capabilities of my program.

Thanks again for your suggestions and for helping me make my software better :o)

Best Regards,

Daniel

It would be nice if Daniel has some knowledge of this particular minefield that could be incorporated into his marvellous program :)

Author: S. Lennard
Keywords: oilless culture, hydroponics, silicon, blossom end rot, brix
Abstract:
Soilless culture offers the potential to extend horticultural cropping into areas of the world where conventional horticulture is not possible. However, in many of these areas soilless culture is made difficult by the salinity of the local water supplies. In a project intended for establishment in the United Arab Emirates progress was hindered by the water supply containing (among other elements) sodium levels exceeding 2000 mg/l.

A pyrophillitic clay suspension manufactured in New Zealand (Pyrosol) had previously demonstrated an ability to overcome the effects of moderately high salinity in strawberries in NFT hydroponics. A trial was carried out in New Zealand to replicate this water supply, and test the effects of Pyrosol on the growth, yield and quality of tomatoes growing in NFT.

The two treatments both used the same water supply, which consisted of rain water amended with sodium chloride, sodium bicarbonate, calcium carbonate, magnesium carbonate, magnesium sulphate, manganese sulphate and boric acid to replicate the ionic content of the UAE water supply (EC=3.5 mmho). One nutrient tank was further amended with 75 g per 100 litres of Pyrosol, the other nutrient tank was left untreated.

The trial was set up using three ‘Panda film’ gullies 5 m in length for each of the two treatments. The nutrient formulation was identical for both treatments but was corrected for the high levels of magnesium, boron and manganese in the replica water supply.

Results indicated that the addition of Pyrosol to the treated water supply, significantly improved fresh weight of the fruit, significantly reduced the incidence of ‘blossom end rot’, and increased brix readings of the fruit. Pyrosol resulted in higher numbers of fruit which had a greater weight and higher marketable yield.
This data is presented along with a possible explanation for the mode of action.

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I could switch over to water glass, as my pyrosol order hasn't been shipped yet. Then again, I don't want too much sodium, either. But some sodium isn't a bad thing.

Thank you for your email :o) OK, I have purchased and read the whole article and there is simply no way in which I can add pyrosol to my nutrient calculator since what you will be using will be a colloidal suspension which contributes an unknown amount of available silicate to the solution. Therefore I cannot know how much silicate each gram of pyrosol actually contributes to your solution. Of course, aluminimum toxicity is also bound to be very low since the mineral is actually not very soluble (as I suspected).

I would advice you use potassium silicate (instead of sodium silicate) so that the amount of sodium remains low. I would also advice you trade some of your sodium for potassium salts such as NaNO3 for KNO3. If you cannot change to potassium silicate then sodium silicate would definitely be the best choice since the available quantity of silicate ions can be easily calculated from this readily available source. Other articles dealing with sodium and potassium silicates and their positive effects on crops raised with high salinity also exist.

- Study 1
- Study 2
-Study 3

I have read all of them and they all show positive results in three different plant species when high salinity is present when the SiO2 (silicon measured as silica) concentration is 100ppm.

By the way the new version of the calculator will come out shortly, this version will include all the salts you requested plus the initial water quality parameters you also requested.

Thank you very much again for your post and for helping me make my software better :o)

Best Regards,

Daniel

Either way, the low levels of sodium from the water glass should be fine, so long as I don't use too much (in many plants' tissues, sodium is one of the most common minerals, after potassium).

Oh, and I'm also getting some nickel carbonate and potassium iodate. My research shows that tap water generally doesn't have the recommended amount of nickel for plants, and while nickel is of primary importance in soil culture and aquaponics (its only role is to allow plants to break down urea), even in urea-free hydroponic grows, urea from plant metabolism has been shown to accumulate in detrimental quantities in spinach leaves in the absence of nickel. As for the potassium iodate, iodine fortifies plants, helps keep bacteria down in the solution, and in low doses can benefit certain plants, although high doses can hinder growth in most plants and some plants are more sensitive to it than others. Of course, you only need miniscule amounts of nickel and iodine to achieve the benefits (in the ballpark of 1 ppm and a couple ppm respectively, from what I've read), so I'm not sure it's worth tracking in your calculator.

Thanks for all your hard work! :)

Good news today :o) Version 0.8 of the calculator is finally out and with it I have made several important fixes and additions. You can get the latest version here :

http://allhydroponics.blogspot.com/2010/06/first-free-hydroponic-nutrient.html

These are the changes for this version :

- Added a tutorial button on the "welcome page" which contains links to all relevant tutorials within my blog.

- Added Si, Na and Cl. All of these elements are now tracked and their conductivity contributions are measured. However Cl is not included as a "recipe element" since additions of chloride ions are never necessary due to the fact that almost all water sources contain it within the necessary ranges for plant growth (chlorides are also widely present as salt impurities). However the calculator will tell you the contributions of Cl in ppm of salts within the bottom left corner box on the results' page.

- Added 28 new default salts, acids and bases including potassium and sodium silicates, sodium nitrate, zinc sulfate monohydrate, nitric acid, sulfuric acid, ammonium sulfate, potassium chloride, magnesium chloride, some carbonates, many complexes, many transition metal nitrates, potassium hydroxide, etc.

-Implemented new windowed settings for the preparation modes (direct addition and concentrated A+B)

- The default preparation mode now allows you to choose between "direct addition + Fe and micro concentrated solutions" or "adding all salts directly". This is useful if you have high precision scales or if your reservoir size allows you to weight everything directly with enough precision without having to prepare concentrated solutions.

- Changed EC prediction mode implementation to an empirical model I came up with that gives results closer to reality.

- Introduced "water quality" input with the ability to save and load different water quality settings. These measurements are used when your formulation is calculated to adapt your formulation against your particular water type.

- I also removed the pH prediction module because the simplifications it was based on are no longer valid with such a wide array of acids and bases. Sadly implementing a precise pH prediction method requires the solution of complex mathematical systems (if phosphates and carbonates are used it requires the solution of a system of about 8-12 non-linear equations) which my calculator is not capable of doing. I tried to use the freely available Maxima libraries but failed to implement a reliable solution. However I believe this feature is not that necessary and probably not worth all the trouble.

Hopefully this new calculator version will be useful to those of you who haven't been able to use the calculator due to its previously smaller salt database and lack of a water quality feature.

I hope you enjoy this new release a lot ! :o) Please send me any suggestions or observations that will help me make the software better.

Thank you very much again for all your interest :o)

Best Regards,

Daniel

Thank you very much for your reply :o) Please make sure you leave any comments or suggestions that may help me further improve the software !

Regarding the previous comments you made about nickel and iodate, I have always been reluctant to use or implement these elements since nickel can easily become toxic if added in just a slight excess and I believe that proof of iodate's qualities have not been gathered in a truly convincing fashion. However, I guess it wouldn't hurt to add very small quantities of these chemicals and study their effects. However you should realize that there are also studies that show nickel has no effect whatsoever on crops so this seems to be fairly dependent on the plant species or at least on the purity of the salts used (nickel may be contained as an impurity on iron salts for example).

Thank you very much for your interest and for helping me make my calculator better :o) (hopefully now you'll be able to use and enjoy it !)

Best Regards,

Daniel Fernandez

I just wanted to comment that a new version (v0.81) has just been released. This new version includes some fixes related to some of the new transition metal nitrates as well as some problems that caused errors when using ounces instead of gram units (just for the salts to formulation part because the copying was not done correctly).

Thank you very much for all your interest and support :o)

Best Regards,

Daniel

Thank you for your message :o) The purity feature controls the actual percentage of the salt or fertilizer you are using that is actually that salt or fertilizer. For example if you are adding potassium nitrate but the salt is only 98% pure you would input 98 on the purity field since only 98% is potassium nitrate and the rest is just impurities.

In your case you should leave the field at 100% since what you are adding is a fertilizer product for which you have the full analysis. In other words, what you are adding is 100% the product so it is "fully pure" by principle. Just use the "Add New Custom Salt" button to input the fertilizer's guaranteed analysis values and then input the weight you want to use. Remember that the program measures everything in mass so you will need to weight the amount of liquid fertilizer you will be adding or calculate the volume by using the product's density.

I hope this answers your question :o) Thank you very much again for your interest and support,

Best Regards,

Daniel

Desired: All defaults except NH4=20ppm, Na=15

Gallons: 30

Water quality: P=5, K=3, Mg=10, Co3=30, Ca=10, S=10, Na=5, Fe=1.5, EC=500 (wait -- millisieverts, instead of microsieverts?), pH=6.5

Salts used: Potassium nitrate, calcium nitrate, magnesium sulfate, iron sulfate, manganese sulfate, calcium monobasic phosphate, copper sulfate, sodium molybdate(*), boric acid, zinc sulfate(*), sodium nitrate, zinc sulfate monohydrate, sodium silicate, 12-molybdosilic acid, ammonium sulfate

(*) -- accidentally selected.

The salt it says I should add the most of? Sodium nitrate. It says I should add 121.66 g of sodium nitrate, over twice as much as anything else. And while I requested 15ppm of Na, it gives me 295.4 ppm.

I think I can see what went wrong here. The calculator brought the K level up to the max level, then said, "I need more nitrate", and instead of balancing it out, it made all of the extra nitrate come from the sodium nitrate. Proper behavior had there been no other nitrate options would have been to keep the Na:K ratio the same and just up both of them proportionally.

However, that wasn't the only other nitrate available, and here's the weird part. Ca is way too low; 200 ppm was requested, but it only gave 26.78. This seems odd, as it could have gotten more nitrate by upping the calcium nitrate.

One final anomaly, although not a big one: sulfur is off, but by less; 64 was requested, and it got 83.79.

Thank you very much for your post :o) Here are some observations about your results :

a. The EC under the water quality tab should be in mS/cm, so it should be between 0 and 1 for most water sources. Values at about 0.1-0.4 are most common. However 500 is just plain wrong, it seems that you are inputting conductivity as ppm NOT as ms/cm.

b. The calculator maintains two degrees of freedom around Ca and S since these two elements are tolerated in wider ranges. For this reason the calculator will almost never be able to fit your Ca and S measurements exactly unless they are in tune with the ratios contained within the salts you choose. Using calcium sulfate can help you correct this problem if you have both a Ca and S deficiency. However bear in mind that these degrees of freedom need to be maintained, otherwise solving the calculations is not possible.

c. I see what you mean by the K, Na and Ca nitrates problem. The calculator attempts to finish off the nitrate with NaNO3 when it probably would have been a better option to use calcium nitrate. I will correct this within the next version.

d. Bear in mind that you can always use the "copy salt weights" checkbox to copy all the resulting weights to the "used salts" page, there you can manually tweak the quantities and calculate the ppm on the "salts to formulation" tab to achieve a better fit if you believe the calculator does a poor job with your salt combination. Obviously it is a complex mathematical problem to balance all these salts and under certain salt/formulation choices the calculator will inevitably fall short.

I hope that the calculator is now good enough for you to use with your nutrient preparation needs :o) Thank you very much again for helping me make the software better,

Best Regards,

Daniel Fernandez

Just a small update to v0.82. These are some of the changes :

- fixed nitrate assignation problem that caused sodium nitrate to be used as main nitrate source despite selecting potassium and calcium nitrates

- fixed a problem with nitric acid which contributed ammonium instead of nitrate when using the "salt to formulations" tab.

- added ammonium phosphate to the default salts

- added a "deselect all" button so that you can remove all selections on the "Nutrient Salts Used" tab. This way adding your own salts becomes easier and less errors in this regard happen.

- fixed a few other minor bugs

I hope you enjoy this small fixes :o)

Best Regards,

Daniel

No -- I assumed it was microsieverts, not millisievers, as that's a more common measurement for water and it's what my EC meter reads. My home water is about 240 microsieverts. My office's water is over 1500(!) (yeah, I don't think I'm going to be able to use that for hydro...).

I'll try the latest version as soon as I get a chance. If it works right, I'll actually be making use of it on my new hydro setup. Apart from a couple minor things like hanging the light fixture and getting the pots embedded into the foam and full of vermiculite, my setup is pretty much ready.

By the way -- I find all of those buttons and blanks in the lower right hand corner of the page where you specify ppm and water quality to be confusing.

Thank you for your reply :o) I think you are a little bit confused regarding units. A Sievert is a unit of radiation dosing, conductance is measured in Siemens and conductivity is measure in Siemens per meter. In this case the calculator uses milliSiemens per centimeter or mS/cm.

I think that the calculator has solved most of the problems you had pointed out through the past two versions so it should now be able to use all your salts and give you accurate nutrient calculations for the formulations you want. Either way the "salts to formulations" tab always allows you to tweak formulations as you need.

Regarding the buttons, I consider the layout right now to be pretty user friendly and not confusing, but of course another layout might work better for you. I have implemented it this way because it is what seemed most efficient to quickly load/save recipes, formulations, etc. Obviously I cannot please everyone but I do my best so that the implementation satisfies my criteria of usability.

Again thank you for your replies and for helping me make my software better :o)

Best Regards,

Daniel

Thank you very much for your reply :o) You are welcome ! Don't worry about the buttons, I really like the way they are so probably I'll keep the layout as it is for the final version. Right now I am adding a lot of new features so hopefully we'll have a very powerful tool by the time v1.0 comes out. Thanks again for helping me make my software better ! :o)

Best Regards,

Daniel

I have done a small update to v0.821 which includes a small fix that makes the calculator use "." as a decimal separator even if the defined system separator is ",". Some people were experiencing problems on European computers where the defined separator is sometimes "," giving errors when trying to do calculations because of the default "." used. This problem has now been eliminated in the new version :o)

Thank you very much again for all your interest !

Best Regards,

Daniel

Thanks a lot for your comments :o) The fact is that what you are asking for is very simple to implement and in no way interferes with other parts of the calculator's functionality. I will therefore implement an option to copy these values easily within the next release.

I am also very glad that you are using the calculator and that it is giving accurate EC estimations. It is great to see that the empirical equations I devised to correct this are working :o). Thank you very much again for your comments and for helping me make the software better !

Best Regards,

Daniel

I just wanted to let you know that version 0.85 of hydrobuddy has just been released. This new version includes several important additions :

- A checkbox has been added to the "Salts to Formulations" tab enabling the automatic copying of the results to the "desired formulations" tab. This will make the calculator easier to use for those using this feature extensively to design their solutions.

- Instrumental error has now been implemented :o) This feature is very important since it allows you to see the effect of the precision of your volume and weight measuring instruments on your actual concentrations. For example you may get a 5% error for a given element but a +/- 10% error due to your scale's precision meaning that the calculation's error is negligible compared to your instrument's capabilities. These errors will be shown on the results page next to the regular calculation error.

- A new button to select these instrument precision parameters has just been added to the "desired formulations" tab so that you can select the precision of your scale and volume measuring instrumentation (defaults are +/- 1L for volume and +/- 0.01g for weight).

- The calculator will also worn you if your scale is too imprecise for the formulation concentrations and volumes you want to prepare. It will tell you the exact element where the problem is found and it will advice you to increase the solution's volume or your scale's precision.

I hope that you can now enjoy this new features and the additional functionality they bring to the calculator :o). Thank you very much again for all your interest !

Best Regards,

Daniel

Thank you very much for pointing that out :o) I have just released v0.851 to include a fix for this problem. Depending on your salt combination however the amount of Ca may still be increased due to the fact that this degree of freedom must be maintained to solve the required equations. Thank you very much again for using the calculator and helping me make the software better :o)

Best Regards,

Daniel

Thank you for your follow up :o) I have indeed considered this but the problem is the large complexity and factors that need to be taken into account to give advice regarding deficiencies and toxicities. Each plant and setup has different conditions that may make this very hard to do. For example some plant species do well enough with a P content of 20 ppm while others would present deficiency symptoms. However some general warnings and errors pertaining to deficiencies and toxicities will be implemented before v 1.0 comes out :o) Thank you very much for helping me make the software better !

Best Regards,

Daniel

Thank you very much for the observation :o) You are right, there is a small problem in this regard which I will fix in the next release.

Regarding the use of NaCl, it is actually used for several different purposes. Since sodium and chloride ions do not interact very much with plants it is used as a way to increase conductivity without increasing nutrient quantities. This allows you to study the "pure" effect of conducitivity increases against the effect of increases in nutrients.

In tomatoes - for example - you may get a significant increase in fruit quality by increasing the EC due to an increase in osmotic pressure however in commercial operations increasing it through the use of fertilizers is not very economical so NaCl - which is very cheap - can be used.

There are many other reasons why NaCl can be used, this however the one I believe to be the most common. I hope this answers your question :o) Thanks again for helping me make the software better,

Best Regards,

Daniel

I have just released v0.852 with some small fixes. Some broken tutorial links have been fixed as well as an error that caused Na and Cl not to be taken into account in the EC estimations when using the "Salts to Formulation" tab. Thank you very much for all your interest and visits !

Best Regards,

Daniel

Don't worry, it's great that you help me find these bugs within the software :o) I will correct this when the next version comes out. Thanks again for helping me make the software better,

Best Regards,

Daniel

The next version of hydrobuddy - version 0.90 - has just been released. This new version includes a few small fixes to correct some errors that had been reported plus a new feature that will make the imitation of any commercial nutrient formulation much easier. You can read more about this new feature here : http://allhydroponics.blogspot.com/2010/09/imitating-commercial-nutrients-tutorial.html. I hope you enjoy this new release :o)

I am working on a few new features that will be implemented before v.1.0 comes out ! thank you very much again for all your interest and for helping me make the software better :o)

Best Regards,

Daniel

IMPORTANT NOTE : The calculator's page has been changed since I changed my blog to a domain of its own. Please follow the link in the bottom to get to the new calculator download page.

I am very glad to announce a new release of Hydrobuddy today :o) This new version of the calculator (v0.95) includes several improvements. These are the main changes :

- Several UI changes to improve the user experience (especially on the "Salts Used" tab

- Added a whole new implementation of costs so that you can calculate the cost of preparing a certain reservoir change. You can now specify the cost of each included or custom nutrient to calculate how much it costs you to prepare one reservoir change of a given specified volume (note that the cost of a reservoir change of the specified volume is calculated independent of the preparation type selection).

- Added a "Download Online Database" option that allows the program to automatically retrieve an online formulation database I have created and hosted on my new website (http://scienceinhydroponics.com). Right now the database only has a few formulations but the idea is to expand this in the future to include hundreds of different choices for commercial and hobby growers.

- Fixed a few problems dealing with certain purity fields that were not linked correctly.

- Added Potassium Phosphate and Fe DTPA 11% as default salts

- Added an UI improvement which allows the user to use scrollbars to move through the program's interface if the monitor is too small to render the entire program (this allows people to use the program on netbooks :o) or screens with lower resolution).

- Added 2 new tutorials and the field for another tutorial about the online database which will be added within the next few days.

I hope all of you enjoy these new changes :o) As always feel free to leave a comment on my new blog (http://scienceinhydroponics.com) or any suggestions you have about new features or the improvement of current ones. Please remember that error reports are always welcome :o) Thank you very much again for all your interest and support,

Best Regards,

Daniel

Today I am releasing another small update to HydroBuddy v0.96 which contains some small fixes and additions :

- Fixed a problem that caused people with comma as a decimal separator to be unable to save solutions without changing the values to commas. Every saving/loading procedure now uses "." as a decimal separator, effectively eliminating this issue.

- Added the missing link to the online database tutorial.

- Added an "Add on top" option to the "copy commercial nutrient's formulation" option so that now different fertilizers can be added on top of each other to determine the final ppm. This should provide a good solution for people using Linux who cannot get the "custom salt" options to work correctly. It should also help people who want to design a preparation which is a combination of several commercial fertilizers

- Added a new "show descriptions" button which appears below the "Download Online Database" button after there is a successful download. A file detailing the description of the different available formulations is then accessible. The button reappears in the future if the "load formulations" button is pressed and a description file was downloaded in the past. This description file is also updated every time the database is re-downloaded.

I hope you enjoy this small update :o) Thank you very much again for all your interest !

Best Regards,

Daniel

A new update for HydroBuddy is out. Version 0.961 contains a small fix of a problem which made the custom salts unable to contribute to formulations. The feature now works correctly. Thank you very much again for your interest in the software :o)

Best Regards,

Daniel

I have just released a new version of HydroBuddy (v0.97) containing some fixes and a small addition :

- Added a label below the volume of concentrated solutions in the results tab to remind people that salts should never be dissolved over the final volume to account for volume increases created by salt additions.

- Fixed a problem related with volume when calculating concentrated solutions in which the 10mL per L were not taken into account to address final concentrations. This eliminates a systematic error of about 2% which was present in all previous versions.

- Fixed a similar problem with the "copy commercial fertilizer" window, now the addition volume is effectively counted as part of the final volume. This eliminates an error that could go from 0.5 to 2% depending on how large the addition is as a percentage of a liter or gallon.

This fixes will make the calculations more accurate :o) Thank you very much again for all your support and interest !

Best Regards,

Daniel

OK, it seems that the changes I made in version 0.97 were a bit rushed. There were actually NO errors in the calculation of any concentrated solutions but merely a problem with the way in which people were preparing their solutions. Which is WRONG. I have undone these changes in v0.971 and I have added a "how to prepare nutrient solutions" button in the Desired formulations tab so that people understand how solutions are CORRECTLY prepared. Final solution volumes should ALWAYS include nutrient addition volumes. Nutrient are ALWAYS added before a reservoir�s final volume value is reached. I am sorry for the problems introduced in the last version, version 0.971 fixes this and assumes that CORRECT preparation of solutions is always done.

Thank you very much again for all your interest in the calculator :o)

Best Regards,

Daniel
Reply

To be on the same page and to put it in practical terms (at least from my understanding):

1. You always imply that the actually required VOLUME (of either concentrate or reservoir content to calculate) equals the total amount of water including all dissolved salts.

2. Technically and practically one needs to proceed as follows:

I - making concentrate:
Assuming a total volume of 5 Liter "A" and 5 Liter "B" concentrate.
You dissolve every single salt (with the necessary amount of water each of them will require to dissolve properly) including micro nutrient components. You fill the dissolved salt solutions into their corresponding A-or B bottle, one after the other. You do so, until the total volume of each "bottle" reaches nearly- but never more than 5 Liter (or the five Liter mark). After having added all dissolved salts in such way, you top off each (A & B) bottle until they exactly contain 5 Liter. Respecting this actually simple procedure, your total volume is indeed and exactly (and only) 5 Liter.

II - dissolving nutrients while filling a reservoir:
In this case (either if directly dissolving and mixing salts into a reservoir, or when using concentrate) it's not that obvious. The more practical approach may indeed seem to fill the reservoir with "the total amount" of required water and only then add either salts or concentrate. After careful deliberation, (well some would perhaps have understood and considered it in the first place) you only realize, that you should have substracted the amount of salts or concentrate (volume) from the reservoir. Right, what is valid for the making of concentrates, applies here as well. Anyway, to get an accurate formulation with either procedure, you have to only top off the reservoir to the total volume required, after having added either concentrates or all salts.

III - with a different but actually quite common approach and practice:
You may as well dissolve self made concentrate in any amount of water of any reservoir or size, using an EC-meter as indicator for the right (wanted) ratio. In this case you would simply add concentrate until a wanted solution concentration (as in 2.0 mS/cm for example) is reached. In such case, the procedure is very different of the above and any of the above ways of proceeding are NOT required. In this case and scenario you don't even care about the amount of water - only your instrument (EC-meter) will serve you as an indicator for the right mix ratio .

I can't tell if this is indeed more explicit and actually translates things better into a set of practical modus operandi, but I truly hope so.

Cheers,
Lucas

Thank you for your reply and contribution :o) Well yes, I got a little bit confused by some comments left on my website. Of course, I never prepare solutions this way since - as a chemist - we always use glassware material with marked volumes for the preparation of solutions and we always dissolve solids first and only THEN reach the final volume. Therefore only after I gave it some thought did I realize that the calculator was doing everything right but people were preparing their formulations the wrong way. I believe that the best way to prepare the above solutions is to dissolve the salts (either in a concentrate or a reservoir) at half volume and continue the addition once all salts have dissolved. When people use an EC meter, well, it doesn't matter since they are aiming for a specific EC which may or may not match that of the program closely. I hope you have used and enjoyed the calculator :o) I have done several tests with the new EC prediction module (available almost since v0.7) and it seems to be able to predict EC in hydroponic nutrient solution to a very good degree with a set of simple empirical equations. Again thank you for your comment, I look forward to any comments you may have to help me make the software better :o)

Best Regards,

Daniel

As for the kind of "error", when others manage to somehow confuse you in such way, or worse - talk you into committing a logical error through their own fallacy - i guess it's actually a classic. Don't know if there is a specific term to denominate such case, though. Truth to be told, It happened to me too more than once. And in real life when having to deal with someone face to face, and on top of that when in clinch with a subject who has a Ph.D in the field from a prestigious College - it might even get a bit dicey and charged - until both parties finally agree. (in fact until the Ph.D's fallacy is completely stretched down without making them loose face completely..) LOL

It's not the right spot here to fully disseminate an example or two - but I guess you get the plot. I may just add that it seems to me that everybody (who still considers or needs to respect other's suggestions) is ever save from it. ;-)

As for the empirical EC prediction I suggested a while back, - it worked fine for me for some time and is indeed amazingly accurate. I also guessed that it would work without using complicate equations. I am glad it came to a good use for many others in this way.

To be honest, (although I am always loyally downloading the latest version) I haven't used the calculator much for two reasons: firstly I shall wait until a really 'final' version is out, and secondly my current needs can all be processed with the spreadsheet I've made and which I owe even greater loyalty - as it has served me well for so long. So to speak... ;-)

Keep on going with the exceptionally good work!

Cheers,
Lucas

-- As always you can download the calculator here : http://scienceinhydroponics.com/2010/06/the-first-free-hydroponic-nutrient-calculator-program-o.html .

I have been working hard on HydroBuddy and its first final release. Today I will be releasing the next version of the calculator (v0.98) which includes several improvements fixes and additions. I tested the code as thoroughly as possible and this will be a long-term release which will be replaced by the first "final release" v1.0 within the next several months. These are the fixes-additions in this version :

- Fixed a problem with Na and Si which made the displayed final concentration of some salts erroneous (although the weights were calculated correctly)

- Fixed a problem with H2SO4 and H3PO4 when preparing concentrated solutions (they were assigned to the wrong solution)

- Fixed a problem with the save and load "salt list" buttons that caused the status of some salts not to be saved correctly.

- Fixed the text displayed on text files where recipes were saved, especially when dealing with concentrated solutions

- Added an option to prepare solutions with concentration factors different than 1:100 from now on you can use HydroBuddy to prepare more concentrated solutions (200-250) which are more in line with what commercial nutrient sellers prepare. HydroBuddy will also warn you if your concentration factor is too high.

- The label that indicates you how many mL to add per L of final nutrient solution will update itself as concentration factors change. For example while 10mL are required for a 1:100 factor, 5mL are required for a 1:200 factor.

- Added a feature that displays the composition as % (w/w) of the final A and B concentrated nutrient solution. This allows you to directly compare your formulation with a commercial fertilizer or with other formulations you might have created.

After all these changes the calculator already incorporates all the things I wanted it to have before the first official final release. I will be testing the calculator within the next few months under its current implementation, correcting bugs and adding help features. Version 1.0 will probably feature an installation program, splash-screen and a lot of in-program help. Please send me any bugs or suggestions for v1.0 to dfernandezp(at)hotmail.com. Thank you very much again for all your help and for helping me make the software better !

Best Regards,

Daniel

I may bother some of the characters (and usual suspects) present here, with my rather philosophical input, - I am aware of that, but well: no risk no fun...

I don't know about you Daniel nor about others - but concerning my humble self, anytime I had to deal with the earlier described kind of incident, or when getting a raw deal, or even if actually screwed or kinda conned by some more or less awkward individual(s) - it has mostly been extremely frustrating first, but at the end it always ended up in becoming HIGHLY motivating as well. Several times it was the "wrongdoing" of others, that really made me "get real" and pushed me to proceed with the ultimate effort to prove myself (and perhaps others) that I am able to finalizing something - and actually nail it on my own. ;-)

Anyway - that's the spirit - congrats!

"Sounds like if you have finished with cutting bait and have start fishing for good."

I just wanted to share with you the new release of HydroBuddy, now cross-platform, open-source and filled with a bunch of new features (including a MUCH better and proper database implementation). You can get the release at http://scienceinhydroponics.com .

Please leave any suggestions, bug reports or opinions as comments on my blog as I no longer check this forum frequently. Thank you very much for helping me make the software better :o)

Best Regards,

Daniel

The one thing I have noticed in reading a lot of other forum posts, and various books / user manuals about hydroponics is that the nutrients really have to be measured carefully. Just the right amount / concentration / ratio of ingredients can produce spectacular results, but even a little bit too much can burn the plants, create all sorts of damage.

Many thanks for posting this.