Latest / Hydroponics Daily / Top 5 Hydroponics Products to Avoid: A Critical Review
Transcript
- 0:00Hello, thank you for joining me for another episode of Hydroponics Daily.
- 0:04Today's episode is the five worst products in hydroponics. The five products
- 0:08in hydroponics? That rhymes.
- 0:11This is obviously just my personal opinion. Everyone has their own different
- 0:14opinions, so, you know, don't shoot me. Don't take it too personally.
- 0:19And obviously, if you think differently, please get in touch.
- 0:21And if you know a worst product, then please send me a message and I'm happy
- 0:26to showcase that one as well.
- 0:28So the first one is not very debatable
- 0:31and that is ebay grow lights and the
- 0:34sort of stuff that you get drop shipped from well let's
- 0:38say where you know lots of lights are made and
- 0:42they can have why the problem with them is that they are often not got the ce
- 0:47mark if you're in the european union so they're not necessarily to the same
- 0:51safety standards and also they are not up to the same standards of the lights
- 0:56you would get in a grow room or from a professional supplier.
- 0:59And they will claim, you know, 1,000 watts, 800 watts.
- 1:03And if you actually measure them, measure the photosynthetic energy coming out
- 1:08of them, it'd be far, far less.
- 1:10That's a good reason to go to your grow shops is that often large grow shops
- 1:13will have a light meter that measures in photons.
- 1:17And you can actually measure how much photosynthetic radiation,
- 1:20PAR, are is actually coming out of the lights and these light these meters can be used to showcase,
- 1:29the outputs and you can compare ones in the shop to the ones the my old ones
- 1:33that you've got and you'll know that leds like decrease in output over time
- 1:37so you could you could go in with your old lights and say you just want to compare
- 1:41it to the current light so they've got one of these things whereas you can't do that with ebay,
- 1:46you just have to believe what they say. And obviously we know from eBay that
- 1:49it says 1,000 watts. eBay aren't going to take that listing down.
- 1:52If it's not 1,000 watts, if it's only 200 or 50 and stuff like that.
- 1:57So if you go on Reddit, you'll see people saying, what's wrong with my plants?
- 2:01And it's like, you're under a crappy eBay LED. That's your problem.
- 2:06That's nine times out of 10. That and overwatering and the problems on Reddit
- 2:11plants when you see them growing there.
- 2:12So ebay grow lights they're normally
- 2:15trash unless you're getting a branded one and you know it's coming from a
- 2:18legitimate source the second worst product
- 2:21i think in hydroponics are any sodium based
- 2:24plant wash so these are sodium lauryl
- 2:27sulfate cheap soaps that are pretending
- 2:30to be horticultural soaps and so there are a number of products that.
- 2:33Contain these um which i'll call out the first
- 2:36one is canna cure canna are a good brand make a
- 2:39lot of good products but don't know why they use sodium lauryl
- 2:42sulfate in their plant wash and there are
- 2:45plant safe alternatives we have one that's sodium
- 2:47free at utrema and there are other people that
- 2:50manufacture them especially in north america and so there's
- 2:53no reason to use sodium based ones sodium is like
- 2:56arsenic to plants the quickest way as i've said in the
- 2:59past to kill a plant is put sodium on it so you're
- 3:02going to get some harm from applying some sodium to a plant the other
- 3:05product that contains sodium in the plant wash is sb plant
- 3:08invigorator sb plant invigorator very common
- 3:11in the uk so avoid sodium
- 3:14and go for potassium based
- 3:17ones or magnesium based ones the third product
- 3:20get my list here is any tonic that
- 3:23doesn't say what's in it so lots of tonics and
- 3:26biostimulants in hydroponics but does it say what's in
- 3:29it if it's if it looks like a seaweed extract smells
- 3:32like a seaweed extract you know and it behaves
- 3:35like a seaweed extract a lot of the claims are like a seaweed extract it's probably
- 3:38a seaweed extract if it walks like a duck it quacks like a duck and you know
- 3:42swims like a duck it's probably a duck and so you pay could be paying over the
- 3:46odds for these tonics that are essentially just seaweed extracts fourth product
- 3:51is one that i've experienced recently tents with velcro seals.
- 3:54Don't see the point in these you want to zip seal
- 3:57all the way around any hydroponics tent grow
- 4:01tent because you want to keep out pest and disease and odors
- 4:04and things like this velcro seal is useless especially if there's
- 4:07gaps in it don't see the point paying a lot of money for these
- 4:10tents and you would just assume that they're going to be hermetically sealed
- 4:14you know almost almost not quite but very close to okay so they are and then
- 4:20the final product of these five my think my worst five products is any flush
- 4:25product if you look at the the safety data sheet or the ingredients for a lot of flush products,
- 4:30they're just very, very dilute citric acid.
- 4:33And same stuff that goes in your dishwasher cleaner or your washing machine
- 4:37cleaner or your kettle cleaner.
- 4:40The flushing is just water at the end of the day. You want to put it in water
- 4:44through or even iced water, a lot
- 4:45of people do, just to flush out all the nutrients from the growing wind.
- 4:50And this is for smokable crops where they want the breakdown of the chlorophyll
- 4:54as much as possible and removing of the salts before they cure the product.
- 4:59So a flush product's really not needed. You're buying a lot of water and you're
- 5:03buying very, very expensive citric acid.
- 5:05But if you know differently and you think a flush product does work and you
- 5:08think that there is an active ingredient in there, I am more than happy to change my mind.
- 5:12And if you think that tents with Velcro seals have an advantage,
- 5:16then I'm happy to change my mind if you convince me otherwise.
- 5:19And if you think there's a fantastic eBay grow light out there that is blowing
- 5:24all the other ones out of the water and you think all the other LED grow lights
- 5:29are just a waste of money and you should be getting on this one,
- 5:31then yeah, let me know. And proof of the pudding there is in the eating.
- 5:35So that's been Hydroponics Daily for today. bit of a contentious one hopefully
- 5:39doesn't cause too much drama out there but i think it's these are fairly well
- 5:43known these things so thank you very much for joining me remember to hit that
- 5:46follow button so that you don't get don't miss any episodes they're coming out
- 5:50of you thick and fast every single day thank you very much for listening bye.