Who Makes the Best Hydroponic Nutrients?

Unless you are an experienced hydroponic gardener I recommend that you buy hydroponic nutrients ready-made/ready-mixed rather than make your own homemade hydroponic nutrient solution.

Many gardeners don’t want to go to the bother of making their own hydroponic nutrients, and pre-mixed hydroponic nutrients usually provide a balanced diet while allowing you to concentrate on other aspects of plant care. Also you may wish to adjust your nutrient solution later depending on the stage of development and conditions of the plants; readymade hydroponic nutrients are more manageable and the nutrient concentrations are easily identifiable.

You can find hydroponic nutrients for sale at many large nurseries and plant stores. These usually contain all the essential nutrients and trace elements. However if you want to give your plants an extra boost the best hydroponic nutrient brands pack nutrient solutions containing not only the essential macro and micro elements but crop enhancers such as root boosters, amino acids, microbes, enzymes, vitamins, F-1 (fulvates), H-2 (humates) and non-ionic surfactant.

Judging by sales on eBay the most popular suppliers of hydroponic nutrients in descending order are Advanced Nutrients, Botanicare, General Hydroponics, Canna, Fox Farm, Technaflora and Dutch Master.

Choosing between these brands can be confusing and it is expensive and time consuming experimenting between them. From experience and judging by others these exotic nutrient solutions can make a significant difference to yields. While there may not be a significant difference between manufacturers you should avoid lesser known hydroponic nutrient suppliers as many of these “hydroponic manufacturers” have not made all of their own products and sometimes a very different product is sold to you because they switched suppliers. This can be detrimental to your plants.

The best hydroponic nutrients will depend on many factors and there are many variables that need to be controlled to carry out a successful comparison. To discover the best hydroponic nutrients for your plants you should experiment yourself, perhaps setting aside a few of your plants specifically for that purpose and place them within the same environment to ensure a fair test. Here are some comments and reviews from around the web I found useful.

Dont forget to take the poll if you have experimented with different hydroponic nutrient products yourself:

Advanced Nutrients

According to their website advanced nutrients provide 2-1 and even 5-in-1 solutions that contain base nutrients with added ratios of chelated macro and micro elements, crop enhancers such as humates, fulvates, amino acids, and non-ionic surfactant. They have a large selection of solutions and formulas to suite your skill level and needs and claim to have developed the first-ever pH Perfect nutrients.

Here are what people are saying about Advanced Nutrients:

Did they work, yes. Did they work as good as what they state in their ads, NO. They basically made claims like they could double your yields… INCREASE WAS ABOUT 20% . and that was from an average of 3 crops, some less some more but 20% is about right. Compared to the yields I was getting from a very basic 2 part grow 2 part bloom nutrient which cost less than a tenth of A.N. total package… The increase in yield was not worth the extra cost in my humble opinion.

I have to say that i love advanced nutrients line up ! I do not beleive that you need the whole 2 plus but most of there line up is fantastic. It took me about a year to get my garden dialed in with these nutes but once i did the rsults were amazing. I went from 3 pounds to 4.5, it didnt double but an extra 1.5 pounds was real nice. I have grown for over 20 years and havnt found anything i like better… canna is way more expensive than an [advanced nutrients]

…the product line up is confusing and you need a PhD to work out what is what in between the big promises and money back guarantees.

If you havnt tried the collossal bud blast foliar boys your missing out !! I am telling you this is the best foliar out there bar none. Use it the last 2 weeks of veg and the first 2 weeks of flower….. what a difference.

AN’s organic line is great…the iguana juice, mother earth super tea, granny’s humic and fuvic …etc

I’ve used the AN stuff and although everything came out good I can get the same results with much cheaper stuff

…my plants just from the start were greener and healthier looking than with anything else (though GH [General Hydroponics] was a close 2nd).

Personally, I find my plants are healthier with the AN line I use.

…with AN it has been the best I’ve seen or used by far.

…I have used some of their products. They do work, but there is not a single thing in their line up that was not easily replaced by something that works just as well, if not better, and costs pennies on the dollar

The best growers on this forum either have no issue with AN products or heavily/exclusively use AN.

The line is very complex but the beauty of it is you can add or remove almost any part without a major issue so if you do find something that works better or is cheaper you don’t have to change a ton of things, other systems just aren’t as flexible… I’ve used GH, bumper crop, future harvest and a really good local brand, in the end AN is what got me the best results.

They use the highest quality ingredients in their products and there are 100s of side by side comparisons with tons of dif nute lines against AN and for some strange reason AN almost always wins. And these test are done by avg joes like all of us and most of the time theyre using AN for the first time against a nute line theyve used before.

I’ve ran Advanced too. My main problem with Advanced is the flavor it produces…

General Hydroponics

Hydroponic cultivation by NASA on the International Space Station is done with assistance from General Hydroponics and they claim to be at the cutting edge of scientific research into hydroponic systems and perfecting nutrient formulas

Here are some of the things people are saying about General Hydroponics:

…“I used several types and always come back to GH for it’s ease of use and great yields. But what I like mostly is it’s consistant results with each grow. I grow in coco which is considered hydro. And I trust the GH company that’s been in the hydro business since the 1970′s compared to AN’s start in 1998.”

…“Used G.H in C.O for a few grows SIMPLE and what results…with tap water not using G.H Micro (hard water) Jaw dropping!!!”

although pricey you’ll never get anything like it. your plants will be alot fuller, grow faster, and look alot healthier. wether your planting in soil or a hydroponics system it dosnt seem to make a diffrence. this is a good deal.

You cannot find or use a better hydro feed solution than General Hydroponics. Their online nutrient charts are perfect and yielded fantastic results.

This is a great starter kit for Hydroponics [ Flora Kit]. The basic formulas are easy to mix. Mixing formulas for seedlings, teens and adult plants. And for bloom or veg cycles. I love the micro nutrients. My plants never seem to miss out on anything. If you are a long time grower, buy bigger sizes.

…the General Hydroponics nutes definitely provided a ‘cleaner’ nutrient solution

Botanicare

Yup very happy with Botanicare, never need to use it at full streinght. Recommend it all the time. Never used the other so can’t comment.

Botanicare generally makes the best quality commercial Cal Mag supplement imo. Advanced Nutrients Sensi Cal Mag is good also

i’ve used the botanicare cal mag but ph issues prevented me from giving the product a fair grade. i did notice that the calcium to magnesium ratio is 3:1 and that really doesn’t seem like a good balance. too much calcium can actually lock out magnesium, but again, i really didn’t get a good chance to see how it worked.

…decided to go back to the botanicare cause it seems more stable that GH stuff is weird

Dutch Masters

Dutch Masters is the only one I do not suggest b/c it is weak and you go through it like water.

This new gold formula by Dutch masters is all that and a bag of chips. Very concentrated, a little goes a long way. no need for any additional nutes such as grow and bloom enhancers. very satisfied.

Use it on all my plants (although I avoid flowers) as part of a foliar with saturator, humic acid, and full spectrum nutrients, my plants have never been so green and lush!

Canna

I think Canna Coco A+B is fantastic, and a friend who uses the Canna Terra says the same about that, fantastic yields, great taste, just fabulous stuff…. the AN [Advanced Nutrients] stuff is less concentrated so a bottle doesn’t go as far… I’m sticking to Canna and won’t be using AN again… I think the problem with AN is that everything is in separate bottles so to get all the goodies your plants need you gotta buy loads of bottles, whereas with Canna you just need the A+B and PK13-14 to get great results. Oh, and you need a PHD to be able to understand AN’s product line!

I don’t agree canna is more expensive [than advanced nutrients] as you have to buy far less bottles of stuff.

The Canna line is very cost effective for me, which is why I use it, if there were anything else cheaper that did the job as well, I would use that instead.

Fox Farm

first couple hydro grows, I used the highly-respected ‘General Hydroponics’ 3-part liquid formulas … it was good stuff … last couple grows, I switched to 100% Fox Farms nutrients, despite so-so reviews by others … I use the ‘Grow Big Hydro’, the ‘Tiger Bloom’, the ‘Big Bloom’ and ‘Open Sesame’ … will be adding their ‘Cha-Ching’ tomorrow … simply put: I love the Fox Farms stuff, and don’t see me changing anytime soon, as I’ve been growing my best plants, ever, with it … it’s also cheaper than most nutrients…

…Not a huge FoxFarm fan, but that’s mostly cause the Grow Big doesn’t shelf very well, and it gets really expensive cost-per-use as yer using so much

I don’t use it myself because the chems crystal up and fall out of solution too fast for my taste. And in hydro, I like to look for a nute that is designed specifically for a hydroponic application and contains both a BUFFER that helps stabilize the pH around 6 and CHELATORS that prevent unwanted interactions among fert components and your source water… Some people swear by the stuff, though… But I recommend starting with something intended for hydro.

They’re just very much a soil-first kind of company… If I were growing in soil that’d be fine. But I just don’t think it’s a top-3 or even top 10 choice if you’re using hydroponics

Fox Farm does have a nutrient specifically for hydroponics .. they recently added a ‘hydroponics version’ of their ‘Grow Big’ (3-2-6), soil version is 6-4-4, and their granulated fertlizers are pH-balanced, buffered … it says so on the container, anyway, I didn’t ‘run it through my lab’ … my plants are loving the stuff

Technaflora

I’ve never tried it [Fox Farm] but I’ve used Advanced, it’s ok but now I use technaflora recipe for success. I think that gives me the same results as advanced for less money with an easier formula. In the end I think they all perform the same.