Man I don't know why people have such big ego's in this industry. I was hoping with legalization & the widespread of this psychedelic plant, one love would become more prevalent. ;p
When it comes down to it, nutrients are nutrients, the key is to learn to break down nutrient labels and be aware of what elements and what time in the grow cycle you are adding them & the balance of them; instead of just blindly throwing some magic new bottle of something with a cartoon on the label that promises you a Bling Bling big $$$ money harvest, you just end up doubling down on the same elements and causing lockout somewhere else. Those bottled nutrients & powdered all come from the same mineral salts; just look at the ingredients on the side. Some little things are unlisted sometimes like pgr's such as brassinosteroid,
triacontanol, chitosan, 6-bap, but if you search around enough you can find info & application rates on these as well, you can even read the marketing on their magic additives and compare it to the effects of these PGR's and you'll see they are the same. If you think they're adding something magical to the bottle that modern agriculture hasn't already figured out then you're just a victim of slick marketing. We can get away with spending a lot on our fertilizer programs because of the large margin on these flowers but look at tomato gardeners with their margins so slim if theres a way to squeeze an extra 5-10% out of the plant they'd have figured it out already. Just remember that even though this plant is wonderful and has changed many psyches, it's still a plant, not some mystical being who needs nutrients from mars to grow.
In the end though they're all the different ends to the same road & its all about how you dial it in.
Salts taught me to be aware of each element & their relation to each other, thats what mother nature is all about... balance. Keep it balanced and the plant will trive.
To be honest on smaller tent grow or something its a little easier sometimes to use a bottled nutrient because the cost savings doesn't justify the time it takes to weigh everything out and mixing till dissolved completely. But if you're running anything larger than a light or two you'd be hard pressed to not look into the savings of mixing your own fertilizers & stop paying the markup on water used to dilute it down. The difference in costs is plain ol business, extra profit +shipping costs. 10lbs of water is a lot more expensive to move across the world to your hydro store than it is to send a 1lb of salts.
Just be careful and don't fall victim to that Price=/=Quality mindset & think for yourself sometimes. Just cause Gucci charges $3000 for a belt doesn't mean its gonna hold your pants up better than that 10 dollar one from Walmart.
www.onbuy.com
This "nutrient chemistry" is laid out for anyone who wants to learn it in this thread and on the web.
