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Thread: Silicon - A discussion

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    Quote Originally Posted by V8 View Post
    Yours or did you find on tha internett?

    V8
    Found it on the interwebz, and it's ridiculous that it's being sold as 0.0.13 at many places here in the UK.

    Glad you mentioned that it was incorrect V8 because that's a massive difference!

    (I posted it before you edited and added the picture of yours to your post).

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  3. #12

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    I grow in soil and there should be enough in soil without the need to add extra.

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  5. #13

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    Silicon and plant uptake has and remains a subject for researchers. The grow variables and subsequent complex chemistry data in the research make it literally impossible to deliver a common universal opinion as its role and application to plants. Attempts to arbitrarily supplement with Silicon does not come without its cons. While I do believe all plants need some Si it’s only needed in very minute quantities. In excess Silicon compounds can react and interfere with important macro and micro nutrient minerals causing deficiencies or a shift to a higher pH value. Si is like a vitamin…it’s not going to cure an ailment but may help prevent one. I don’t add Si to my grows since my tap water supplies me with about 3,900 micrograms per liter of silica(Si02). A significant portion of the research does suggest Si helpful with plant immunity concerning mold and mildew in particular… but I don’t look for it to boost yield. If your plants are growing better using a Si supplement, then chances are your nutrient shelf or grow medium is Si deficient.

    JMO.

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    Quote Originally Posted by V8 View Post
    I dont know where you get your info from but the Rhinoskin i use has a NPK of 0-0-0.4.

    I think all manufactores claim to use more then needed. Thats why i never has gone over 33% strenght of addetives and 66% strenght of base nutes

    V8
    Yep understood - I've not slavishly followed the guides either even if I don't know what I'm doing.

    I got THAT information, as many have said, from 3 or 4 UK websites, all of which quoted 0/0/13 which is exactly why I had kittens! I did also look on the manufacturer website and there's no mention of what it is on there (which leads me back to the sketchy comment). It's not even on the MSDS where the cite "S33kretz" which I never like.

    Funnily enough though the 0.4 sounds a lot less batshit crazy (no offence!) and about bang on as it's exactly half the Shogun. That suggests the Si in both are roughly the same and are being recommended in roughly the same amounts. You just pay a lot more for the Rhino. Moral of the story is don't believe everything you read on the Internet. Doesn't change my opinion of them though.

    Quote Originally Posted by IceCalibur View Post
    A good thread and potential for a great discussion on the silicon subject MadJohn

    I know you've already explained that you're unsure which you're going to choose, but it would be great if you could share with us your 'contenders' and reasons why they are in your list of 'potentials' from the research you've carried out so far.
    Of course (allowing links would make this so much easier...)

    First up is Grow Genius. UK based company who's website I like as it's a no bull approach. Tells you exactly what's what and even though it's eye wateringly expensive you only need an absolutely tiny amount (less than 0.1ml/L). It's "proper" monosilicic acid with no mention of Potassium on the MSDS and seems to be the real deal. They talk about it being 2nd Gen 40% as opposed to 1st Gen 1%.
    Next up I looked at FloraMax. After a load of delving into the product and checking the MSDS it's actually just concentrated potassium silicate (double shogun concentration and 4* Rhinoskin) which they're trying to make out is pure monosilicic acid.
    Then we come to Elite 91 - reading the MSDS again this just seems to be another concentrated potassium silicate. Starting to think MAYBE all the Gen 1 1% monosilicic acid is always just a concentrated potassium silicate
    Next is Bionova Silation - I can't find the MSDS on this but see below.
    Next up is BioForce X-Force - again I can't find the MSDS but I'm guessing as it has potassium on the label it's going to be another concentrated potassium silicate. This, coupled with the dead give away of "always add <silicon product> first means it's almost certainly another potassium silicate
    SuperSi by Dr Greenthumbs looks really interesting. I can't find any information on what's in it but it clearly states it's NOT derived from potassium silicate. Unfortunately it looks like it's only available in Australia.
    Psi is another seemingly Aussie only product. I can't find almost anything about this anywhere and I wonder if it's a re-label of SuperSi (looking on the Dr Greenthumbs site it talks about producing "white label" and being happy to sell on) Can't comment on it as I can't find out anything about it.
    Med-Tek Super Silicon this was a very interesting product. Almost certain potassium silicate but claims to have a plant available concentration of 14% which is off the scale. See below for more on this

    So here's some other interesting updates.

    As I was researching Bionova Silation I found an article specifically about it. If you search "Clearing up the confusion about silicates: Case in point—BioNova Silutio" from Emeral Harvest they have a picture of the label. Yes it's another potassium silicate and they go into some detail similar to my post here. Funnily enough the seem to have also written a whitepaper which is no longer available on the subject. I have emailed them for a copy.

    Another site I came across was Med-Tek. They talk at length about plant available Silicon and claim to have the highest plant available Si numbers they tested. They really do have a NPK of 0/0/20 (yes twenty) so it's clearly a type of potassium silicate but their numbers were very impressive.

    So out of all those I'm probably looking at three seriously

    Grow Genius, Solar Green Power and SuperSi. I don't think I can get hold of SuperSi and being as I'm in the UK I can just go straight for Grow Genius or Solar Green Power. Based on suggested performance as a foliar spray I think I might give Grow Genius a go. Not going to pull the trigger yet though curious to see if anyone else finds anything else I've missed.

    Quote Originally Posted by Stokes View Post
    Funny you start this thread. I just messaged beth because i think i may have went overboard with what i bought. Seems super concentrated
    If it's the Solar Green Power then yeh, it's stupid concentrated.

    MJ
    Last edited by MadJohn; 07-08-22 at 07:33 PM.
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  9. #15

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    So an update.

    This weekend I did some research on Grow Genius and Buddhas Tree. My rationale for this level of research is there is no proof these products work so you have to have some belief that what they're telling can be believed, either through a good feeling about the company/owners or gaining confidence through some other method.

    Grow Genius Mono Silicic Acid
    Grow Genius background as a company is a worrying one. The company that sits behind the product, Grow Genius Ltd. #11978679 is a UK registered company that's listed as 62 Nottingham Road, Nottingham, NG14 7AP. This is a pretty non-descript semi-detached house in a residential area on the outskirts of a village called Lowdham. The company is owned by two individuals. Peter David Heron who's occupation is listed as "Product Development" and Matthew Peter Mountain who is listed as a "Consultant".

    The company was incorporated (created) in May 2019 and has a very low turnover. Their assets currently only run to £23,000 but there's only been a single return to date.

    Matthew Peter Mountain has had no prior directorships or company positions on record.

    Peter David Heron on the other hand has a number of previous companies and directorships. He has been listed as "Sales Manager" "Chimney Engineer" and "Contract Manager" however there is no evidence or history that he has any knowledge or experience in chemistry or biochemistry. In fact apart from being sales manager for a company called "Botanical Health Oils Ltd" he seems to have absolutely no background in horticulture or chemistry at all. This all makes me **VERY** dubious about both the veracity of the claims being made for Grow Genius or the core efficacy of the product.

    The product itself is based on etraethyl silicate (TEOS) along with what looks to be a handful of stabilisers. Organic chemistry of this complexity is WAY above my knowledge level so I can't critique the actual chemical or its efficacy. I did find this however is a scientific study from 2018

    "Up to the end of last millennium, silicic acid was not available on the market because of its instability. Since 2002, mono-silicic acid, the only plant-available silicon form, can be used due to patented production processes in which the polymerization of silicic acid is prevented. After 2003, many trials were conducted to test the efficacy of this direct form of plant-available Si. Because bioavailable silicic acid is used, the concentration of SA in the foliar sSA sprays is higher compared to that available in the soil. Several silicic acid products can be classified according to the stabilizing agent used: a) choline (=Chol-sSA) or b) polyethylene glycol (=PEG-sSA). Both categories of sSA products contain concentrated forms of SA (2–2.5%), with a mere Si content of 0.7–0.8%. Both sSA products are very acidic in order to prevent polymerization. These concentrated products have to be greatly diluted 1000 to 170 times (=1–6 mL/L) with water before being used as a foliar spray (with Si concentrations ranging from 7 to 45 ppm). After dilution, the pH ranges between pH 4–7. For optimal use, this is adjusted to pH = ±5.5."


    So these kinds of products have been around a while but don't seem to have made much of an impact in the cannabis world as almost all the cannabis focused products I found were potassium silicate based. The only other product I found was SuperSi by Dr Greenthumbs who openly offers it for sale white label so I strongly suspect this may just be a re-lameling of SuperSi however I have absolutely no proof or evidence for this.

    There is nothing else I can find on the site or anywhere else that shows or talks about the efficacy or effectiveness of this brand of silicon. It does have a couple of benefits. The amount you need is tiny. It still works out slightly more expensive than Solar Green Power however it's still a lot cheaper than traditional silicon. Secondly it's naturally acidic and in such low quantities makes almost no impact on the PH. On the other side it is VERY sensitive to water which can cause it to spontaneously re-polymerise so you have to maintain good handling procedures to not expose either the syringe nor the bottle to water.

    Overall though I can't hand on heart say for certain that this specific product has any efficacy or credible science behind it. Certainly there's plenty of evidence that TEOS has and can be used as a silicate delivery method and that plants do certainly use it but at £20 ($25) for just 10ml and £40 for 100ml (about $50) it's a very high cost for something without any credible proof. Worse there's also almost no way short of laboratory testing to find out if it even works at all, let alone better than potassium or sodium based silicons. There is no question about the efficacy of silicon in general but I can find no proof or evidence of this specific silicon brand outside marketing. Of course that's not to say it doesn't exist, just that I couldn't find it. The fact that the people running the company seem to have no chemistry, biochemistry or horticultural backgrounds raises more questions. For that reason I just can't recommend anyone trying this product until some hard proof surfaces that it's better than the alternatives and worth the additional cost.

    Buddhas Tree Solar Green Power

    So all credit to Bethmeg again for bringing this product to my attention and starting me off on this journey.

    Buddhas Tree are a slightly less worrying company. Although the main Buddhas Tree website doesn't state it some trivial research found the company listed as Buddhas Tree Limited #07474718 and based on the telephone number is based in the Machester area. Looking at their website there is no address and there is also no reference to Buddhas Tree Ltd which I'm pretty sure is a legal requirement. The owner is listed as Steven Keegan who lives in Sale near to their warehouse. I have no background on him.

    That aside the background picture seems to imply they have close ties or are co-located in a unit which also houses the UK arm of Biobizz (a Spanish based company), hydrogarden and some other logo I don't recognise. A bit of further investigation suggests they don't share their offices as hydrogarden is actually located in Coventry which is a few 100 miles away. What was slightly worrying is that Google Streetmap from 2019 registered address being a very drab looking industrial unit. No signage to show it's Buddhas Tree or anything. Not in itself an issue but it's starkly different to the staff group photo they have on their website. The company seems to have a lot of cashflow with a tidy profit (about 2.5 million). So much for the positives what about the negatives.

    Their financial statement lists the average number of staff as 3 for the past 2 years and this includes the owner. There are 6 staff in the picture on their website so unless they've had a 50% reduction in staff since the photo was taken the picture is not of the companies salaried staff. They state they have 30 years of growing experience, which may be true, but the company has only been in existence in it's current form for 12 years. Trying to imply way more longevity than is the case is never a good thing. Next they talk on their website about their biochemist who "is rated as one of the top 4 biochemists in the world and in his particular field of agriculture he is number 1 in the world." I find this INCREDIBLY hard to believe as not only is it a meaningless metric (top for what? who rated him top? who were the 3 who were better than him? and so on) but considering the breadth of the discipline (quite literally 100's of fields) it's just unsubstantiated marketing rubbish. He's also not named.

    Now onto the product.

    There is almost nothing about the product anywhere. I found an MSDS for it and it simply lists silicon dioxide (SiO2) as the only ingredient so it's definitely not silicon salt based. The word "colloidal" refers to it being in the form of nano particles and I found a couple of scientific papers that referred to silicon for horticultural use in this format.

    "Other silicon sources for use in foliar spraying are silica nanoparticles (synonyms: nano-Si, silicon dioxide nanoparticles, SiNPs) and Diatomaceous earth (DE). Silica nanotechnology is the engineering and use of nanosized particles of silica as an antifungal agent, biopesticide and agro-fertilizer. Silica nanoparticles (nano silica) are produced from several sources, like tetraethylorthosilicate (Si(OC2H5)4), or inorganic salts, such as sodium silicate (Na2SiO3). Another (organic) source for silica nano-particles is rice husk. These synthesized silica powders are amorphous with diameters in the range of 10–100 nm."

    In the case of Solar Green Power the website notes the nanoparticles are in the 15nm range. It being based on this approach would also explain why the MSDS only lists SiO2 because it's basically just SiO2 nanoparticles suspended in water. Again there is no evidence, studies or proof this specific product works any better than any other product or even works at all. Similar to Grow Genius it does have a couple of large benefits. Firstly you only need a very small amount of it compared to traditional potassium silicate additives. Secondly with a natural PH between 9.10 its effect on PH is so minimal as to be not relevant in normal use.

    TL : DR

    Both companies are a bit sketchy with their websites. Neither product have any proof or backing of the efficacy of their specific products that are any more than "trust me bro" statements on their respective websites. There is some evidence in other plants that both approaches, more generally, have good efficacy with foliar testing showing a superior result from silicic acid suspensions like Grow Genius and nano particles showing a lesser result but still superior to silicate salts such as potassium silicate. What benefit, if any, either approach has in cannabis is not clear.

    What am I going to do

    I'm highly conflicted. Neither company really fill me with confidence that either have any proof behind their products and both are disingenuous to some extent on their websites. Whether that should mean I don't buy them is perhaps unfair. The MSDS for both products suggests they're the real deal but on reflection I think Solar Green Power is the pick of the two. They both benefit from low (no) PH impact and both have reduced volume requirements but Grow Genius has a very high sensitivity to water ingress or contamination. This makes it more difficult to use. Additionally the dosage (0.03ml per litre) while incredibly small and potent makes measuring out a bit of a nightmare. So I'm going to give Solar Green Power a stab and see how it goes.
    Last edited by MadJohn; 17-08-22 at 02:56 PM.

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  11. #16

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    Jeez

    All that research
    Should have just trusted me bro

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  13. #17

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    Quote Originally Posted by Bethmeg View Post
    Jeez

    All that research
    Should have just trusted me bro
    I'll take that on the chin!

    Truth is I enjoy the research as it furthers my knowledge and experience and I can confidentially say I probably know as much about silicon as anyone else on the forum so all good. Everyone benefits from my diligence (or is it anal retentiveness...) so I see it as worthwhile.

    For what it's worth, I never ever doubted you by the way. Before this I wasn't even aware there were multiple different types of silicon and I was genuinely just curious and wanted to know more about it. After I found that third type of silicon (which is allegedly "better" than the nano silicon used by SGP) I wanted to know if it was worth the risk/money. One of my (many) failings is I like to be sure I'm getting the best I can for the money.

    But it's all good and thanks for the tip off in the first place as it's made me better informed.

    MJ

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    Having used potassium silicate & mono silicic acid, mono silicic acid is the shit.

    Power Si produces huge fuck off dense heavy nugs (when your res isn't 30c ) & it's well worth the initial outlay.

    Another bonus is it lowers pH so once my nutes are mixed it typically doesn't need the pH adjusting
    B1unt XIII: Chemdogging & Sour Diesel - https://www.thctalk.com/cannabis-for...post1071304159

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    Quote Originally Posted by B1unt View Post
    Having used potassium silicate & mono silicic acid, mono silicic acid is the shit.

    Power Si produces huge fuck off dense heavy nugs (when your res isn't 30c ) & it's well worth the initial outlay.

    Another bonus is it lowers pH so once my nutes are mixed it typically doesn't need the pH adjusting
    This Power Si is extremely expensive to what I'm used to dishing out for, and I honestly don't think I could justify the cost for me personally, (not knocking anyone else who does mind).

    I've been using Solar Green Power for a long time and it seems to be working very well for my grows, but I'm always open to new products if they're within my price range and have the potential to do better than what I'm currently using.


    I usually pay roughly £15 for 250ml of the Solar Green Power, and the Power Si costs £65 for 250ml (I've seen it being sold for £45, but they decant it from larger bottles).

    Perhaps you need a lot less of the Power Si, but I use such a small amount of the Solar Green Power anyway, I can't see it making that much difference.

    Solar green Power directions state 0.5ml per litre.

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  19. #20

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    Quote Originally Posted by B1unt View Post
    Having used potassium silicate & mono silicic acid, mono silicic acid is the shit.

    Power Si produces huge fuck off dense heavy nugs (when your res isn't 30c ) & it's well worth the initial outlay.

    Another bonus is it lowers pH so once my nutes are mixed it typically doesn't need the pH adjusting
    Hate to break it to you but Power Si Original is just another potassium silicate. It has some other base neuts (boron, molybdenum) as well as nitrogen too to be fair but it's seemingly no different to any of the others. It has 10% phosphoric acid as well which is probably why it's PH is so low (2-3 on the PH). I have NO idea how they're managing to stop the silicon from re-polymerising which is apparently what happens if a silicon salt is stored in an acidic medium but as I said above I'm not a chemist.
    .
    They do seem to have a Original V2 as well and a Bloom version of it but as I can't find the manufacturer anywhere or the MSDS for either product I can't tell what's in them. Looking more closely at the address on the MSDS of the Power Si is actually a small hairdressers. Sketchy isn't the word...

    I admit my Googling skills may be weak but I just couldn't find anything.

    All irrelevant of course if it works for you but it's not the same as Grow Genius or Solar Green Power which definitely don't use Potassium Silicate.

    MJ

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