There are several nutrient calculators available online, but this guide will walk you through the math and conversions if you want to do them yourself (e.g., as part of tracking your total feed amounts or comparing two product lines).Įlemental PPMs are just the concentration (by weight) of each element (N, P, K, etc) in your feed solution. This is not the same as TDS (Total Dissolved Solids) ppm, which is a measure of electrical conductivity converted to an equivalent number of Na (500-scale) or K (700-scale) ions in the solution.
This guide will walk you through how-to calculate elemental PPMs in a nutrient mix.Įlemental PPMs are the weight ratio of each element in a nutrient solution to the overall weight of that solution, expressed as parts per million. (Probably just how-to guides? Or nutrient discussion forum?)ĥ) Should I switch to calling them "Elemental Concentrations" to avoid confusion with EC/TDS ppms?
I figured I would post a draft here first to get any comments / questions before updating and posting a final draft.Ģ) Is it clear / straightforward enough? Any areas that need to be re-written / simplified?ģ) Any comments / questions / other items that should be included.Ĥ) Which forum would be best for the final draft. One area it tends to really help with is whether / how much cal mag is needed in a grow. Tracking elemental concentrations may be a bit too involved for the average grower, and not really needed once you find a feed plan that works for you, but it helped me to cut through the information overload as a new grower. The math itself is pretty simple - it's more just making sense of the unit conversions involved. I wrote up a how-to guide for calculating elemental ppms - which is just the mass concentration (mg/L) of each element. When I first started growing, the first thing I did when trying to compare / decide on a feed plan was to look at what each brand/product/schedule actually included - i.e., how much of each nutrient.