"Talked to a friend that runs comercial hydro and they do not run bene's because of cost."

Bene's don't cost anything if you know how to run your own culture. It takes two days, one agar dish, and a bacterial sample from a washed root system. Total cost, maybe five bucks for the agar dish and the q-tip for obtaining the culture. Two days, you've got enough bacteria to load a 20,000 gallon reservoir and begin full bioconversion of unabsorbable nitrogen-based nutrients.

It's what we do in our fodder systems in Australia. Dirt cheap and the yields increase at minimal costs.